Sermon on the Beatitudes and Performative Blessing

Last week one of you told me about a friend of yours who, when her young brother died tragically, her church said irretrievably stupid things to her like “it must have been God’s will” as though that is a comfort, as though pawning suffering off on God is doing anybody any favors whatsoever. To be honest, and call me a heretic, but this is a concept in theology that’s always bugged me.  It’s called “the sovereignty of God” it’s the idea that everything that happens happens because it’s the will of God.  Everything. The problem is that this idea of God’s sovereignty seems to most often come up when something awful has happened.  So when someone is grieving the death of their child or is facing untreatable cancer and the church makes the claim that God is controlling and even willing all of this to take place seems to just a) make people feel worse and b) make God seem like a heartless bastard.  And I am just gonna go out on a limb here and claim that maybe making suffering people feel worse and making God out to be a heartless bastard is not what the church is supposed to be doing.

Anyhow, I bring this up because I started wondering about why God’s sovereignty is never brought up when we talk about the beatitudes.  Blessed are the meek, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn…why do we play the It’s God’s will card when it comes to suffering but never when it comes to blessing?  Why don’t we ever make big cosmic claims about God controlling everything that happens when it comes to the way in which God insists on blessing that which the world deems undesireable?

One reason is maybe because I think it can be easy to view the sermon on the mount as pure exhortation.  It can be easy to view the beatitudes as Jesus’ command for us to try real hard to be meeker, poorer and mournier so that we might be blessed in the eyes of God.

But what if the beatitudes aren’t about a list of conditions we should try and meet to be blessed.  What if Jesus saying blessed are the meek is not instructive –what if it’s performative? meaning the pronouncement of blessing  is actually what confers the blessing itself.  Maybe the sermon on the mount is all about Jesus’ seemingly lavish blessing of the world around him especially that which society doesn’t seem to have much time for, people in pain, people who work for peace instead of profit, people who exercise mercy instead of vengeance. So maybe Jesus is actually just blessing people, especially the people who never seem to receive blessings otherwise.  I mean, come on, doesn’t that just sound like something Jesus would do? Extravagantly throwing around blessings as though they grew on trees?

So I began to think this week about what our relationship to receiving and giving blessings might be if it’s the giving of a blessing itself, and not the ability to meet the conditions of receiving a blessing that make the receiver blessed

It’s a pretty Lutheran idea really, this whole because of  not in order to thing.  You see, you live lives worthy of the gospel because you have received grace upon grace.  You don’t live lives worthy of the gospel in order to receive this grace. 

It’s a pretty critical distinction, but the hard thing about looking at it this way is that for some of us it can be easier to try and meet the conditions of receiving a blessing that to simply receive a blessing. 

A couple years ago I experienced this weird thing where old ladies kept blessing me in ways that felt super awkward.  Walking off the stage after I spoke at an event at St. Mary’s cathedral in Memphis, a  British woman in her 70s walks straight toward me and in front of God and everybody, embraces me. Not a friendly “thank-you” hug, but it was like embracing-with-the-intent-to-bless.

I had just read aloud an essay about my call to ministry; how it involved stand-up comedy and suicide and AA and pornography strangely and it was about seeing the gospel from the underside of our lives. And now before I know what was happening some proper old Brittish lady is blessing me.  Red cardigan covered arms enfold me as this stranger whispers in my ear “God has given you something.” She kisses my cheek not breaking the embrace even a little: “Jesus walks with you.” Again she kisses me.  Again she whispers a blessing but always she keeps embracing me.  Me.  A heavily tattooed Lutheran who swears like a truck driver.  I don’t feel worthy of any of this But it feels like God’s own self blessing me with warm breath and a scratchy sweater.

When I sit back down I think, “What the hell just happened?”  My friend Sara, having seen the interaction, slides into the pew next to me saying, “Girl, you gotta just submit and let people bless you.”

It’s hard though.   But she’s right.  we need to let people bless us.  Maybe letting ourselves receive blessings is part of the Christian life.  It’s just not one that people talk about much because we’re so busy worrying about what we should be doing for others.        

A week or so after the scratchy red cardigan old lady blessed me…again just as I finish preaching at Church of the Beloved in Edmonds, Washington, it happens again.  Almost exactly like the last time, only this time it’s a Franciscan nun in her long brown habit. With a hand on each of my shoulders, she looks me in the eye without a hope of me turning away. “You have been blessed.”  She chokes up and embraces me.

I think looking back that maybe God had somehow caught on to the fact that 70-year-old women are the only people whose blessings even I can’t resist.

So if we have a God who, out of God’s sovereignty blesses the poor the hurting, the peace making and the meek then I wonder what a Church might look like that submits to these blessings offered us by God.  Perhaps you yourselves have your own version of old ladies with scratchy sweaters who are bringing you God’s own blessings.  Look for them this week perhaps in the form of a text message or love from a pet or someone who lets you in front on them on I-25 or a smile from the homeless guy you just handed a dollar.  Submit to these blessings brothers and sisters.  Because God is a God who blesses in order that we might be blessed in order that we too might bless.

So if there is something we take away perhaps it is not to try and fulfill the conditions of receiving God’s blessing, but perhaps being God’s people is being a people who, like God, bless the world around us not on the basis of the world’s values but on the basis of God’s values. So I say let’s just make up excuses to bless people and places and things because it just seems so Jesusy and kind of fun and I’m pretty sure that human blessing and NOT human suffering is  “God’s will”.

 

Comments

[Michele]

Absolutely lovely! Bless you.

[Karen]

Yeah. I like it. :)

[Kirk VanGilder]

Seems like God had something to say about this topic!

Meet my friend Jeremy Smith and his hacking Christianity post on this very topic!

http://hackingchristianity.net/2011/01/10-commandments-why-not-the-beatitudes.html/comment-page-1#comment-7571

I love it when theological streams cross like this!

[Mich]

Yes!
Beautiful post; we always assume we must DO something to earn God's Grace.

[Jim Fisher]

There is a knife edge between God's causation and His choosing not to prevent. In the gap there lies the blessing. I took a slightly more poetic take on this same thought this week. I love where you went with this Nadia.

[Susan N.]

I recently found your blog, linked at someone else's blog that I read (don't ask me whose now)...

And in spite of the heavy tattoos and the truck driver language, I hear a lot of blessed truth in what you say.

I came reading the post about Judas. Then read the more recent one about identity (telling demons to piss off). And now this one on the Beatitudes comes right on time, seeing as this past Sunday's sermon was on the Beatitudes.

Thank God for the many unusual ways that He uses to bless us (including blog writers such as yourself!)

[Beach Walkin]

that's what i preached. we can say that jesus was giving us our discipleship list... but truth be told... he was giving the disciples and us... a blessing beyond compare. we annointed one another as part of the service.

keep up the great work sl... teach us to change the way we think about god.

[Jim M]

I appreciate your post. My take on the beatitudes, and indeed much of what Christ declares in the gospel is that He is showing us the impossibility of fulfilling God's desires, except when by His grace, and in faith, we turn our supposed sovereignty over our lives to Him alone. Christ elsewhere declared: "Be ye perfect, even as He is perfect", and yet we fail to be perfectly meek, perfectly merciful, perfectly anything. The Law in the Old Testament is declared by Paul to be our schoolmaster, and here in the New I see the beatitudes as instructive of our own failings, and providing us the blessing of leading us to Christ alone, in whom we can find our blessings.

[Elizabeth Sweeny]

Here via Kirk's link on Jeremy's blog :)

I love your "maybe making suffering people feel worse and making God out to be a heartless bastard is not what the church is supposed to be doing."

I also love the idea of blessing as performative speech act. (And am reminded of the invitation in Barbara Brown Taylor's _An Altar in the World_ to cultivate a practice of blessing everyone, and everyTHING, we encounter.)

I've been making my way through back entries and have been loving your sermons, so you may see more comments from me :)

[Elizabeth Sweeny]

Addendum: I remembered this morning that BBT talks about blessing as not bestowing something on the blessed but rather recognizing the holy in them.

[Beth]

Love it. I get so sick of "it's God plan," or "God gave xxxxx to some person because they can handle it while some others can't."

Now, I just have to bless the people before they rush in to bless me. And I'm going to bless them for something good and probably unexpected.

[Marsha]

I love twitter. By following Tony Jones, I ended up on your blog. What a blessing :>) Your words have marked my day. I've sent a link to some of my dearest friends to tell them what a blessing they are to me. I will take your thoughts with me today.
Thank you.

[Steve Wilson]

Maybe 70-year old women are better at filtering out the noise of the world and can see and hear God better than the rest of us. Maybe they knew you were on the verge of being able to comprehend God in a new way and wanted to nudge you there. Since my Mom was diagnosed with a pretty nasty cancer, my prayer has led me to approach God with open eyes, ears, and heart; there is a growth opportunity in this and I want figure out what it is.