- Neighbors Hot Dog and S’mores Social is today from 11-2!!!!
- INC Picnic on the Lawn on July 26th at 1pm
- Village Fair and 5K is on August 15th this year (third Saturday of August); mark your calendars. Please message Charlotte to register for the Race (last call for t-shirts!).
- Discussion Circle is on the last Sunday of June after Church. These discussions are here to to inspire, teach, guide, and challenge us–all are welcome to join us (we often explore sacred passages, poetry, and other words to inspire us toward freshness, surprise, and wonder).
Visit our Calendar of Events to explore our upcoming dates and times
All are Welcome. If you are uncomfortable with the word God, please feel welcome to insert your own word for the divine or Mystery in your life (Universe/Grace/Spirit/Divine).
These Reflections are written to be read aloud, please forgive any writing errors. You can find the recording HERE later on Sunday morning.
SUNDAY REFLECTION:
These are some beautiful translations of the first Blessing:
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.
These blessings teach us to love and tend to who and what is right before us. Not when life is better, when things are better, when people are better. But to love and take care of one another. Right now. What is real and what is right before us. Perfect and messy.
Perhaps this is Jesus really seeing what is before him. Real people. People who feel unblessed, forgotten, and unseen. Jesus is saying: you are blessed, yes you, exactly as you are…poor you. God loves you…right now, exactly as you are…poor you.
Jesus sees what is real and what is right before him. People feel seen for who they really are. This is a blessing.
It is a blessing to feel seen, and loved, as we are. I believe we sometimes get frustrated by this feeling that we’ll be blessed in some far off, perfect (imaginary) future…when we are worthy.
To be blessed as we are, now, is…incredible.
Maybe this is why we love books like The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days (Kate Bowler) which I have used a few times for our blessings. These are blessings for the grieving, the hungry, the tired, the sick…and also the sick and tired, the unremarkable, the boring, the confused, the lost, the painful. They are blessings for our real lives with no sugar coating or pretensions that things are different than they really are or that we must “fix something” before we are worthy of blessing.
Jesus is blessing people and life as they really are with no need to be bigger, better, richer, stronger. We are worthy of blessing. The blessing is to be small, poor, and weak.
Reverend Nadia Bolz-Weber wonders if the blessings might look a little bit more like this if they were given to us today:
Blessed are the poor in spirit. You are of heaven and Jesus blesses you.
Blessed are they for whom death is not an abstraction.
Blessed are they who have buried their loved ones, for whom tears could fill an ocean.
Blessed are they who have loved enough to know what loss feels like.
Blessed are the mothers of the miscarried.
Blessed are they who don’t have the luxury of taking things for granted anymore.
Blessed are they who can’t fall apart because they have to keep it together for everyone else.
Blessed are the motherless, the alone, the ones from whom so much has been taken….
Blessed are those who no one else notices. The kids who sit alone at middle-school lunch tables. The laundry guys at the hospital. The sex workers and the night-shift street sweepers.
Blessed are the losers and the babies and the parts of ourselves that are so small, the parts of ourselves that don’t want to make eye contact with a world that loves only the winners.
Blessed are the forgotten.
Blessed are the closeted.
Blessed are the unemployed, the unimpressive, the underrepresented….
Jesus’s blessings turned the world upside down. They were surprising. They were uncomfortable. So if this reading of Nadia’s made you uncomfortable, or it surprised you, maybe we’re getting a sense of what it might have been like when Jesus first said his words. PAUSE.
Blessings were, and it seems still are, for the powerful, the rich, the mighty, the VIPs. These are things we still, very much, over-value. It is not the money we have, the influence we have, or the technology we have…it’s our values around these things. PAUSE. It’s how we put these things to use in this world.
The Blessings reorient us. PAUSE. They show us that God sees us as we are. They ask us to see the world as it is. To pay attention. To seek clarity.
They asks us to reorient our Compass. PAUSE Where is our compass leading us? Are we even paying attention? Do we care?
I’m reading the novel Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. I love books. The more you read the more you know and the less you know. It’s like every book is intricately connected to another and another and another. It’s like they have a lineage. A fellowship. A kinship. They ripple. But that’s not where I’m going with this.
In the story, one of the characters creates a game where the player builds things in a factory. The more the player builds, the more points they get. The player can click on the optional text boxes, which will tell them about the factory. But they lose points if they take time out of the task of building to read the text boxes.
So, the best way to win is to keep your head down, do your work, and accumulate points. PAUSE
At the end of the game, with that great high score, the player finds out that they were great workers for the Nazis in Germany. They would have found this out if they had chosen to lose a few points to look around (read the text boxes) and find out what, and who, they were working for.
The twist of the game, and the key to “winning”, is to pay attention, learn, and then be strategic enough to earn enough points to stay in the game (not getting caught and eliminated), while doing as much as possible to slow down and sabotage the factory.
Maybe paying attention to what is right before us isn’t such a small thing after all. Maybe our small ripples matter a great deal after all.
The Blessings teach us to open our eyes to all the world, and all the people, around us. Jesus challenges us to see clearly and to think and rethink what we believe and how we behave and what’s important. Monetary wealth is fleeting (and sometimes tainted). Jesus challenges us to see what is real wealth. Strength is an illusion. Jesus challenges us to see what is real courage. Power is deceptive. Jesus invites us to find what is most precious. Winning isn’t quite so obvious as it might seem…winning might be more than having the most points at the end.
Everything that matters is right before us. Everything that is most precious is right here.
Yesterday, someone posted pictures of their day to day life this July. A selfie at the beach. A birthday party. The summer harvest of the garden. Game night in the living room. They captioned it: maybe this is what really matters in our lives.
Yes. Yes, it is. This is what Jesus is asking us to notice. The beauty of our ordinary lives. The beauty of who we are, where we are…as we are.
The Sermon on the Mount challenges us to keep our eyes open. Not just to see what’s happening around us, but also what is happening within. Jesus says, the Kingdom of Heaven is within. Perhaps we need to do some looking…within.
When we look within, we discover what is of real value. What matters most. What is most precious. PAUSE. We often don’t look until we are shaken up (often by tragedy or grief) to open our eyes. These blessings remind us to keep our eyes open, at all times…now.
These blessings orient our compass to love and to tending. Blessings teach us how important it is to take the time to read the text boxes of life. Those little text bubbles of our neighbors, our friends, ourselves, (and, yes, even our enemies). The text boxes of the earth and all her creatures.
They are often Love Notes.
As we read these Love Notes, we to get to know one another and our lives so deeply that our choices, and the time we spend on those choices, are rooted in our values, in what matters most, and in what is precious.
These blessings are the Precious.
Love is what is Precious.
Grace knows this.
Community Church of North Orange & Tully 