January 31, 1999
Here we are on Super Bowl Sunday. Perhaps for some of you it is the primary object of your meditation this morning! This afternoon millions of people will avidly watch a group of grown, very large men in an imitation of combat, with much noise, vigorous thumping (and occasional injury) of bodies, and dashing back and forth up and down a field in pursuit of a smallish object wrapped in the skin of a dead pig. Amazing, isn't it?
Millions will watch this annual rite, and it's estimated that about five billion dollars will be bet (much of it illegally) on the outcome of the contest. Unlike most other kinds of combat, this one will have carefully timed periods of engagement and in the times between, advertisers will pay thousands of dollars a minute to send their message to the watchers. The pre-game show will last for four hours. More people will travel to Las Vegas to watch and gamble than will go to the game itself. Souvenirs will be sold, sports bars will be filled, and ticket "scalpers" will probably be at work. What a monumental undertaking!
What happens if we put all this up against today's Gospel? Quite an interesting contrast, isn't it? Both begin with crowds, although scholars tell us that in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew has actually gathered and distilled Jesus' ongoing teaching to his disciples from a number of occasions. Both hold out rewards to those who persevere but they are very different in nature.
In Luke, the beatitudes are at a relatively concrete level: Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God; blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. The Bible is filled with stories of God's concern for the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the outcasts of society, and with admonitions to provide for them. You'll probably see commercials this afternoon featuring some football players who work with charities, giving their time and lending their fame to providing for society's less socially and economically fortunate. Certainly, for those who choose to do so, they can help out in that arena, and a number do, and good things do happen as a result. (Others provide a less helpful example.)
But what Jesus is teaching here, according to Matthew, takes the meaning of poor to a different level. It is not a song to poverty in the economic sense, but to poverty in the spiritual sense. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who realize Who is really in charge of the universe, and their utter dependence on Him in all ways.
Megan McKenna, an Irish Roman Catholic activist, tells this story in her book Blessings and Woes: I am always struck by a simple devastating memory when I bless the food I am about to eat. One day a couple of years ago when I was on vacation in southern Mexico near the Chiapas border I had spent the morning with some youngsters talking about the rebels and church, about Bishop Ruiz and the gospel for the following Sunday. I bought lunch for a half dozen of these street urchins, as most people would call them, and one of them said grace. It was a direct hit: "God is great. God is good. God lives in this neighborhood." I have never forgotten that experience, and when I eat in so many places around the world, I wonder: does God live so clearly in this neighborhood, my neighborhood?
Today as you leave the service, you will be asked to donate to the Souper Bowl of Caring, to contribute to our youth's participation in an event in over 8600 congregations, to provide food for the hungry. Your money will go directly to Martha's Kitchen, in one of God's neighborhoods. Please be part of God's presence, God's blessing, in the lives of people served there and then take the time to pay attention to the blessings of God that you find in your own neighbor-hood, blessings we sometimes forget to notice or to assign to their true Source.
In Isaiah 66, God says Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is my resting place? All these things my hand has made, and so all these things are mine, says the LORD. But this is the one to whom I will look, to the humble and contrite in spirit, who trembles at my word.
That awareness of our littleness before God is a very different attitude than the one you'll see deliberately portrayed on the "game faces" of the football players as they line up across from each other this afternoon the face that says I am invincible, and I'm coming after you right now! But that appearance, that "game face" of assumed invincibility is what typically gets valued in our society, in business and other enterprises as well as in the physicality of football and other sports -- a face that often separates people from each other and keeps them closed to true communion with each other and with God. What are we teaching our children and grandchildren and each other about who's in charge? Can we dare to afford the self-knowledge it takes to admit that God is bigger than we are? I'm not talking here about false abasement, but about the rigorous practice of a real and humbling awareness that leads us to God in trust and obedience. Humility, like meekness, is much maligned these days but properly understood, they are both positions of great strength, not weakness.
This afternoon will be a time with much emphasis on celebration celebration of winning, of outplaying the other side, dances in the end-zone. And on the sidelines, the whipped-up screaming rooting and celebratory frenzy of the fans and the cheerleaders and the mascots. Those who win will celebrate; those who lose will be morose but (we hope) sportsmanlike.
But the kind of blessed mourning Jesus talks about is about more than losing a game, even though that can certainly be painful. The word used for mourning here is a word about total broken-heartedness, deep lamentation. Why in the world would he say that there could be a blessing in the midst of that? When we are in that deep mourning, whether from grief over the loss of a person, a relationship, or a way of life that we hold dear or over our dawning, painful realization and repentance over how often it is that we all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, as Paul reminds us in Romans, at such times it may seem to us that nothing is a blessing. But God never abandons us, even at times when it is difficult to see and hear Him. Again there is the promise we claim from the anointed servant in Isaiah: the Lord has ... sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners... to comfort all who mourn... to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.
God comforts us directly but He also comforts us through the ministries and the presence of other people of faith. That is a work in which we are all called to share as members of the communion of saints. Perhaps one of your Lenten disciplines this year may be to take note of ways and places that you can share with others the comforting God offers to the people of God, and then act in love on the basis of that noticing. Or perhaps you can do something equally (or even more) daring and accept the comforting offered by someone else when you need it. God is always with us in the giving and in the receiving, God who is the giver of all blessings.
Well, here we are inside the two-minute buzzer on the sermon clock, and we've only talked about two of the beatitudes! Both are ways that God turns upside down our usual perceptions of what the world is like, what our goals should be, how our lives should look. They're not necessarily comfortable, but they are necessary for our spiritual lives.
As you listen to the tumult of the Super Bowl today, and as you go on through this week and move closer to the beginning of Lenten self-examination, I invite you to carry the Beatitudes with you take them home, read and ponder on all of them, and listen for God's challenge to -- and love for -- you in your own particular neighborhood. Read God's advertising -- it's worth more than the pizza and beer hyped this afternoon. It'll be time well spent.
The Rev. Lois Hart
lhart@stmargarets.org
31 January 1999