Kerra's Last 5 Sermons - Blessed Are You

January 29, 2023
Blessed Are You
Matthew 5:1-12; Micah 6:1-8
Kerra Becker English
Recently I discovered the “How to Build a Happy Life” podcast with Harvard professor Arthur Brooks.
With a title like that, the producers acknowledge that many of their listeners are looking for a formula for happiness – when just “one” formula doesn’t exist.
The same could be said of the Christian life - many search for the one formula, or the best strategy for getting it “right,” when a singular way isn’t enough.
Brooks’ podcast looks at a variety of pathways to happiness through sociological and scientific lenses, asking what “is” possible to know about those who live seemingly happy lives.  Trust me, if there really were a formula – there would only be one episode, right?
Luckily for the longevity of the podcast, there are multiple pathways to happiness – through healthy romantic partnerships and fun friendships, through caring for your physical well-being and spending time in meditation. Happiness comes in many different forms, and the most surefire way to not have it is to relentlessly pursue it for its own sake. That’s the paradox of happiness.
We wish it were simple, but it’s not. Life is complicated. Relationships are messy. Though there isn’t a foolproof way to make our lives golden, that doesn’t mean we quit trying to come up with one. We are meaning making creatures, so we still want answers, even if we don’t have a ready-made solution by the end of a 30 minute podcast or a 20 minute sermon.
So, in the episode I listened to on Friday, Brooks talked about how our culture of success teaches us to love having the things, to use people as a means for getting the things, and to center ourselves as the pinnacle of the known world which leads to worship that is no larger than our own self-orbit. That sounded familiar. It’s called, in the Christian world – idolatry – and it generally means loving the wrong things, or loving the right things in twisted ways - like taking our fellow human beings for granted and having a narcissistic adoration of ourselves rather than an appropriate level of awe for the Divine.
Instead, Jesus taught his followers, and therefore he also taught us to love God and love others as ourselves. He also told us to quit worrying so much about stuff. Give away your possessions as often as it is asked of you. That’s crazy logic according to most folks.
Brooks then noted that the key to happiness is an inversion of that cultural model. Not sounding that different from Jesus, he claims that happiness is a result of loving other people, using things for good purposes, and worshiping the Divine.
I like it. It’s a modern take on much that we can learn from our own faith tradition.
The prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures certainly liked exactly these kinds of inversions. They use them all the time to show us the really real among the things we usually think of as real.
Let’s switch to Micah’s text.
God is angry. “The Lord has a case against his People.”
God seeks justice, resolution, perhaps even compensation in the form of changed hearts.
Sometimes, God even seeks destruction and punishment when people have strayed too far.
Micah proclaims that the Israelites have forgotten how God had delivered them.
Now that they had their own land and had experienced some of their own prosperity, they were in a position to want more, to expect more.
They want the success that the world gives. Well, surprise, surprise.
They even start to think God wants things too - burnt offerings, oil offerings, more stuff, more proof that God chose the right people to bless.
But that’s not what God wants. Not in the least.
God wants justice, kindness, humility.
God wants us to look outside of ourselves.
God wants us to want healing and wholeness for all.
What does the Lord require of us?
What is the strategy for living a faithful life?
Is it making the required number of sacrifices?
Heavens no.
It’s to seek justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly.
Worship God, love people, don’t be a jerk.
It’s another abbreviated formula I guess, but one that makes a lot of sense even as hard as it is to fully put into practice.
The strategy is to just live differently, perhaps even completely opposite, from what everyone else is telling you the key to winning at life is. Got it?
Of course, Jesus has his motivational speech too.
This sermon manuscript, the ONE fully articulated one that still exists, is precisely a strategy for living the blessed life.
Happiness. Faithfulness. Blessing.
How do I get to live a good life? The one God wants me to live?
Human beings have always wanted to know. How do we do this living thing – right?
The beatitudes are an inverted model as well.
Jesus is asking us to think differently about what it means to be blessed, or happy, or to be doing what God wants from us.
We perceive ourselves as blessed when we are the strong and mighty, that blessings abound for the well-loved and satisfied among us.
The world tells us that the “blessed” days are the prosperous days, or the relaxing vacation days, the Instagrammable days.
Jesus preaches this differently.
To be a follower of Jesus is to be perpetually dissatisfied.
To always feel like the world is a little bit off.
We are blessed when we know that the way things are is not the way they should be.
That’s the strategy for living a Christian life.
A relentless pursuit of the better.
This pursuit cannot be only for my own betterment, but it is the anticipation that the Kingdom of Heaven is going to show up.
In fact, these qualities that Jesus lifts up aren’t ones that we generally welcome into our lives.
Who wants to be poor, or sad, or meek, or perpetually dissatisfied?
Who wants to be merciful to those who’ve wronged us?
Who wants to keep room in their hearts ONLY for God?
Who wants the unenviable job of making peace in a conflicted environment?
And who, in their right mind, would seek out to be reviled or persecuted?
Jesus says, Blessed are you – when you are in these places.
If this is Jesus’ weird strategy, what exactly are the results we can expect?
It’s fully based on the eternal rewards of the Kingdom of Heaven, not on the petty prizes doled out in the kingdoms of the here and now.
The framework of the beatitudes is around the expansiveness of a Kingdom that is spiritually accessible, not materially accessible.
There are promises that those states of being aren’t perpetual, and that’s a comfort.
Those who mourn will be comforted.
Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled.
Those who don’t ravage the earth for control will inherit it in all its beauty.
To feel connected to others and to our planet is to feel both pain and joy.
Then to be merciful as God is merciful, to purely love God is to know, really really know who God is. You will see God.
If you act on behalf of peace, you will be called children of God.
Love God. Love others. Let the desire for stuff go.
Jesus will talk more about the things later in this sermon, but for now realize that people will use you, or at least try to. If you see your own power in those systems, you have already changed the game. You are not a victim when you are persecuted or reviled. You can rejoice, knowing that you are in the company of God’s prophets, and that you are seeing the world rightly – not wrongly.
My friends, preachers come and preachers go.
Some are gifted with words, others struggle to get their points across.
What is most important is that they are tirelessly repetitive about the message.
There’s nothing new to see here. There never has been.
It’s all just re-packaging.
Living a good life. Living a faithful, blessed life will come from loving God, loving each other, and respecting yourself.
Don’t love your stuff too much.
Don’t make your God too small, or let God look too much like yourself.
It won’t be easy, but it will be your window into the Kingdom of Heaven.  Amen.