Blessed Are the Poor

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• Discussion Group & Confirmation Studies continues on the last two Fridays of every month (excluding Easter Sunday).
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Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  

Happy are the people who are hopeless, because the kingdom of heaven is theirs.  

You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope.  With less of you there is more of God.  

The Sermon on the Mount from Matthew says: “poor in spirit”.   In Luke this first line of the sermon are variations on “blessed are you who are poor”. Matthew adds the “in spirit”.  There’s a big difference between poor and poor in spirit.  Yet, both are radical and both are connected.  

The Sermon on the Mount turned the world upside down.  From the very first word, Blessed, Jesus was challenging his listeners.  From the first two words, it was radical, Blessed are; we aren’t waiting for some distant wonderful time when God will fix everything.  It’s not: it was so blessed back then or it will be blessed later.  It IS blessed right now. We are already blessed. 

It’s hard.  We struggle to find the blessings in our lives right now, at this moment, but we know they are there if we only remember to pause and look and be aware of them. We just sometimes forget to seek. Sometimes, we resist looking…for all sorts of reasons.  We find all sorts of excuses for why things are terrible versus blessed.  We look for how things are wrong…and usually we find them.  But we are blessed.  Now.  

First words are very important in ancient stories and writings.  Remember that these all come out of an oral traditions.  Remembering what was said matters, so things tended to be concise and every word important.  Especially the first words. 

Blessed.  Blessed are.  

In Jesus’s time a blessing meant…wealth.  Perhaps power.  May blessings shower upon you.  This meant, usually, money.  Too often, it still does.  Jesus turned this all…upside down with the Sermon on the Mount. There is more to being blessed than wealth and power and money.  

Blessed are…the poor?  He’ll go on.  He’ll bless the meek, the hungry, the gentle, the merciful.  He turns the word blessed into something new.  Something that belongs to everyone and perhaps the overlooked most of all. 

Jesus opens our eyes to see.  He challenges us to rethink what we believe and how we behave and what’s important.  Monetary wealth is fleeting.  Jesus challenges us to see what is real wealth.  

The poor.  He still challenges us.  We still seek money and wealth.  We call it security.  There is nothing wrong with accumulating wealth, that’s not the point.  Although it’s best not to hoard it.  And a little bit of security allows us to better do good work in the world.  We’re not challenging, or arguing, money.  Arguing is often a way of avoiding the deeper point.  Simply said: it’s best to be sure we have a healthy relationship with money.  

Blessed are the poor.  Take a moment to think about the poor.  Keep digging.  It’s likely that eventually, we’ll come to something uncomfortable in ourselves.  Maybe phrases like: “he can get a job” or “she’s milking the system” or maybe even the word “lazy”.  Yeah…it’s uncomfortable.  The challenge is to take a moment to sit with our own uncomfortableness.  When was the last time we saw someone begging on the streets?  What was our immediate response?  How do we react?  How would we like to react?  And if there’s a gap between what we do and what we’d like to do, why don’t we act in the way we’d like to?  How can we do better?   

Perhaps this is a larger Reflection for another day, but act.  Act.  Offer something to this someone who makes us uncomfortable.  Maybe, especially, if it’s someone “we just KNOW” is going to waste our offering.  Maybe it’s not about them, but us.  Not in a selfish way, but in a transformative way.  Maybe our “I knew it” gets reinforced, but we can work on not letting it make us hard.  Maybe our “I knew it” gets challenged and it creates a shift in us.  An understanding or a murkiness that our expectations are not always what is true.  A softening.  That softness begins to soften our thoughts and our words. We begin to understand that, maybe, just maybe, these people we find so easy to judge aren’t so deserving of judgment and dislike after all.  All this by acting, perhaps when we least wanted to.  

Then we come to Poor in Spirit.  Dispirited.  Down trodden.  Again, digging within.  It’s really easy to look at someone else’s life and think: “Why are they so sad or dispirited, they have everything?” or “Why am I so sad or dispirited, I have everything?” 

Comparison makes us uncomfortable.  These passages are asking to be ok with discomfort. This is what the Sermon on the Mount is teaching us. That is what Jesus is teaching us.  Look within.  See where we are lacking, so that we can become even better versions of ourselves, of Good People, and spread that Goodness.  Where are we arguing or being loud to avoid the uncomfortable?  Where might our uncomfortable lead us?  Toward blessings in the all of life.  

Many interpretations consider poor in spirit not to be about a lack of courage or spirit, but poor in will.  Weak in will.  Self will, to be exact.  When we’re full of our own “self will”, instead of using our high-spiritedness for the good of all, we use it for only our self.  When we’re focused on ourselves and our own self will, we feel full and important, but there is often…less space for Grace.  We can even be so full of the bad things and the unfair things in our own lives that there is no space for Grace.  

In both, the focus is not on others and the world around us, but our needs, our worries, and our pockets.  We’re so focused on these things, we have no space for “something more”.  And that “something more” will fill those empty spaces.  Don’t be afraid of “poor” and “poor in spirit”.  Don’t be afraid of being less.  When God fills that space…that’s the kingdom of heaven here, now.  

The Sermon on the Mount challenges us to open our eyes.  Jesus says, the Kingdom of Heaven is within.  Perhaps we need to do some looking…within.  Slow down.  Create space.  Quiet our lives.  Truly see others.  See what happens.  It’s heavenly.  

And perhaps, it is also reminding us to love ourselves.  Now. Exactly as we are.  When we are poor (in all the ways), it’s harder to love ourselves. Perhaps we blame ourselves and feel bad about ourselves.  But Jesus asks us to love ourselves, even when we are poor.  

When we are poor in spirit, Jesus doesn’t ask us to snap out of it, get your good spirits back, and then love yourself.  Jesus says to love yourself even when we are poor in spirit.  Love others when they are poor in spirit. Let Grace fill the emptiness with love. 

Jesus doesn’t ask us to love when it’s easy.  He doesn’t ask us to love those who are in the same circle or the place as us.  He asks us to love when it’s uncomfortable.  And when it’s really uncomfortable.  That’s where the challenge is, the learning is, and the blessings are.  

To love all versions of ourselves, not just when we’re the person we want to present to the world, but even when we’re our messy, scattered, unhealthy, emotional, ugly selves.  Because Jesus knows that love heals.  

To love all versions of others, not just the good and comfortable people, but all people.  The messy, the scattered, the unhealthy, the emotional, the different, even the ugly and the mean.  Because Jesus knows that love heals.  

To love all versions of Grace, not just when our lives feel blessed, but when it is blessed and when it’s ugly, messy, sad, unhealthy, terrifying, and horrible.  Because Jesus knows that love heals.  

This passage takes away the hierarchy of worth.  Who’s worthy of love? When are we worthy of love? It takes away judgement.  We are all equally worthy of love.  All of us.  When we let go of too much self focus to love everything and everyone,  including ourselves, we find a piece of heaven.  

Humility in love, poor in spirit, opens us to God and heaven. Here and now. Blessed Are. Blessed Are.