Scripture
Psalm 46; Matthew 5:1-12
For Reflection
Opening the gifts from our True Love today, we come to the heart of the Good News shared and lived by Jesus Christ. As only sharing apprehends the seven gifts of the Spirit, so the Beatitudes are most often perceived as blessing when we have lived through the tough circumstances to which they are the gracious response. When we respond in Beatitude responses, we will know we have embraced today’s gifts.
Of all the twelve days of gifts, these are the most radical. The Beatitudes go to the heart of our deepest passions and life circumstances. They point to gut-wrenching realities of life: poverty and emptiness, loss and grieving, powerlessness and social contempt, spiritual hunger and yearning for right to prevail, seeing needy persons being treated unjustly and neglected, bitter division and violence, religious persecution, insults, gossip, and false accusations. Only heaven-borne grace can conceive of and make possible the radical outlook and actions described in the Beatitudes.It is one thing to learn the Beatitudes, to have memorized them and to be able to quote them. This is often as far as it goes in Christian catechism or Sunday School. But, like the Ten Commandments or the Lord’s Prayer, familiarity does not mean we understand them or joyfully cultivate them as a heart and life orientation beyond a merely formal and legal application. Compliant and eager to be an ideal Christian as I was as a child, I remember inwardly revolting at most of the Beatitudes. It was easier to just recite them and keep them as stained glass phrases. As I have continued to revisit them, my understanding and appreciation has increased, but they are no less challenging forty years later.
The Beatitudes run counter to American machismo and status quo. They unsettle the presumptions of consumer Christianity. On the surface the Beatitudes seem to be a se-up for certain failure in society that apparently rewards rugged individualism, conformity to sameness, upward mobility, the appearance of mental or physical toughness, and a thoroughly materialistic and self-indulging orientation to value and action. Dig deeper in the Beatitudes and it gets increasingly difficult to straddle kingdoms. What emerges is that Jesus actually declares people blessed whom Western civilization has over the millennia come to despise or disparage. The rest of Jesus’ ministry is one way or another verification that his is an upside down kingdom, an invitation to downward mobility, and an lifting up of all who sorrow, who are relegated to the margins.
Above all, the Beatitudes call for trust. They call for what Brennan Manning names “ruthless trust.” Because the blessedness or results described in the Beatitudes seem so far-fetched or distant, they call for ruthless trust in the invitation, worldview, Kingdom order, and certain future Jesus describes. As Manning puts it: “Faith in the person of Jesus and hope in his promise means that his voice, echoing and alive in the Gospels, has supreme and sovereign authority over our lives.” Does it get any more radical than that?
It is appropriate that the Beatitudes are received on the first day of the New Year. And in this case they are received on the first day of a new decade. So while we wish each other a Happy New Year, we might do better by offering each other a prayer for Beatitude grace. Receive these eight maids a milking, these extraordinary gifts for the year’s journey. And may we also receive the ruthless trust to see them come to fruition in our hearts, lives, and world.
Journaling/prayer possibilities
Turn the Beatitudes into prayers for those you know are in the circumstances they describe. Who is poor, empty, at the end of themselves? Who is grieving? In need of mercy? Persecuted? Hungry for God and for justice? Turn the Beatitudes into prayers for yourself. This may be confession or petition. Offer thanks for the promises of each Beatitude. Embrace these deeply in expression of ruthless trust.
Song
Scandalon by Michael Card
The seers and the prophets had foretold it long ago,
That the long awaited One would make men stumble.
But they were looking for a king to conquer and to kill.
Who’d have ever thought He’d be so meek and humble?
He will be the Truth that will offend them one and all.
A stone that makes men stumble and a rock that makes them fall.
And many will be broken so that He can make them whole.
And many will be crushed and lose their own soul.
Along the path of life there lies this stubborn Scandalon
And all who come this way must be offended.
To some He is a barrier, to others He’s the way,
For all should know the scandal of believing.
He will be the Truth that will offend them one and all.
A stone that makes men stumble and a rock that makes them fall.
And many will be broken so that He can make them whole.
And many will be crushed and lose their own soul.
It seems today the Scandalon offends no one at all.
The image we present can be stepped over.
Could it be that we are like the others long ago?
Will we ever learn to listen and to stumble?
He will be the Truth that will offend them one and all.
A stone that makes men stumble and a rock that makes them fall.
And many will be broken so that He can make them whole.
And many will be crushed and lose their own soul.
Benediction
“Ruthless trust is an unerring sense, way deep down, that beneath the surface agitation, boredom, and insecurity of life, it is gonna be all right. Ill winds may blow, more character defects may surface, sickness may visit, and friends will surely die; but a stubborn, irrefutable certainty persists that God is with us and loves us in our struggle to be faithful. A nonrational, absolutely true intuition perdures that there is something unfathomably big in the universe, something that points to Someone who is filled with peace and power, love and undreamed of creativity; Someone who inevitably will reconcile all things to himself.” Amen. -- Brennan Manning in Ruthless Trust
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