Fourth Sunday after Epiphany Year A

What is the source of true happiness? The beatitudes are a radical statement of what it means to be happy.

The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany Year A

Transcribed from a sermon given

On January 30, 2011

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart, Ph.D.

Micah 6:1-8

1 Corinthians 1:18-31

Matthew 5:1-12

I’d like you to imagine that you are an alien from another planet and you have discovered that there is life on this blue planet earth. You haven’t come to visit yet, but you have been able to get our TV channels, so you have this whole array of TV shows over the past 60 years. You are working on your Ph.D. dissertation where you are attempting to discern what it is that makes these earthlings happy. What is the source of happiness based, of course, on the TV shows? Well the first thing you might come up with is that the main source of happiness for human beings is money. You look at the TV shows and see that they will do stupid and crazy things on the game shows to make a little money. They hoard it, they steal it, they hurt each other for it. It seems to be their primary motivation, and what brings them joy.

You might also see that another determinant of happiness is to not get too attached to other people, to play it cool, because you see so much unhappiness because of deep relationships. And so the source of happiness is to be detached, cool, calm.

The next thing is that it is very clear that happiness comes from being assertive. You only need to watch a couple of episodes of Oprah to get an idea that you need to be assertive. And if you watch other shows you see you need to be strong, you need to take care of yourself. Clearly that’s an important source of happiness.

For the next one you might want to get a good overall view of human happiness, so you spend some time reviewing the family sitcoms from the fifties. From this you conclude that happiness for those people came from being satisfied with the way things are.

But then one of your advisors says, “But you’ve left out this whole large body of literature called Survivor. And clearly to be happy one has to be ruthless. One has to be treacherous. And clearly the ultimate source of happiness is to be ‘the winner’. Look at how people celebrate when their teams win. Look at the joy on the faces of the winners of the game shows and how miserable the ones who come in second are.”

Then finally it seems to be important to be famous, well liked, because that is how you get on the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. That’s why so many of the shows, especially on cable, are about these people who are famous. It is not always clear what they are famous for, they are just famous.

So the conclusion of your dissertation comes out and says “According to the TV culture of the United States the source of happiness, the one who would be truly happy, is one who is rich, cool, assertive, satisfied, ruthless, unforgiving, who wins and therefore becomes famous.

Now secretly in your heart are any of those things what you really want? Maybe when you were younger you really wanted or thought were important? Do you want to be famous? Do you want to win? Do you want to have that money?

But of course if you remember we just read the beatitudes. And each one of those is the exact opposite of what Jesus says is the source of happiness. The Greek word translated blessed can be translated a number of different ways. In the New Jerusalem Bible it is translated as happy. It also means that you are blessed by God, that you have a special place in God’s heart, that you are joyous.

So in the beatitudes Jesus says the one who is happy, the one who has the true deep joy, is the one who is poor in spirit, meek (that’s the opposite of being assertive), those who morn, and of course if we open our hearts to care about other people there will be times when we will grieve at the loss of another. To hunger and thirst for righteousness means you are not satisfied with the way things are. To be merciful is the exact opposite of being ruthless. To be pure in heart is to be honest, the exact opposite of the treacherous things you see on Survivor. To be a peace maker means that there is something more important than winning and losing. And of course if you are being persecuted you are not necessarily being liked.

So these are what Jesus says are our true sources of happiness. It is completely counter cultural. It goes against everything we hear about in our culture. And of course it was completely counter cultural in Jesus’ time too. The Beatitudes are radical. But there is also so many of them that you can kind of put them aside. Oh aren’t they sweet, I don’t really remember them and live them out but they are really nice.

One of the frustrations as a preacher when the reading is the beatitudes is there is not enough time to do all of them justice. In fact, I could easily preach for a long time on any one of those beatitudes. So here’s what I am going to suggest. I put on pieces of paper a beatitude and I am going to pass these around and let the Holy Spirit have you pick one, and then pass it on to the next person. Pass these around as I talk. Pick one and take it home with you and hang out with it. If you are a scholar, you will go on your computer and you will look up the translations of it. You might look up some people’s commentaries on it. You could study it that way, even go back to the original Greek. If you are a contemplative type you could sit and meditate on it. If you are a procrastinator you can go and put it on your pile and you will get around to it sometime. If you are a little obsessive compulsive you can decide how many minutes you are going to spend each day looking at it and contemplating it. If you are an artist you could draw it. If you are a dancer, you could see how you would dance this beatitude. If you are a singer maybe you can come up with a song. But be with it. And of course if you are one of those people who is a doer figure out how you can do this in your life.

The beatitudes, each one of them is so rich that you can spend months thinking about it, reflecting on it, living with it and letting it change you from the inside out. You can’t do all of them at once but spend some time with whichever one you pulled out.

The beatitudes are a little long, in our limited attention span culture, to memorize. We like little pithy statements. I was at the board of trustees and the standing committee for the diocese retreat and we were talking about strategic planning. We were talking about the importance of having a motto, a logo, something that is short and clear and that can appear everywhere and sets up your mission statement in just a few words that everyone can remember.

The beatitudes would be a great mission statement but no one would remember them. But the first reading today from Micah gives us from the prophet a sort of shorter version of the beatitudes. Very simple. Very clear. “What does the Lord require. Three things, do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.” You can remember that one. Do justice, love kindness (and sometimes it is translated as love mercy) and walk humbly with your God.

To do justice means that God wants us to be active. Jesus put it in terms of bringing in the kingdom of God on Earth. Thy kingdom come, here on earth. A just world. A carrying for those who are weak, for the widows and orphan, for the poor and the sick, of seeing that there is justice done on earth.

The second one is love kindness, love mercy. Jesus put it, “Love one another as I have loved you.” To treat every human being as a child of God. To be and live in kindness.

And to walk humbly with God. Humility is one of those words that is often misunderstood. Humility is not a bad self concept. In fact, a person with a bad self concept is often very egotistical because “I’m no good,” “I’m overweight,” “I’m so uncoordinated,” “I’m not smart,” “I just can’t do anything right.” I, I, I, every sentence starts with I. It is all about what is wrong with them. That’s not humility. Humility is being honest about who we are. Acknowledging the gifts we have from God and giving glory to God. That it is not about us.

It is interesting that walk humbly with God is translated by Peterson in the Message (he has some very interesting translations sometimes) as, “Don’t take yourself too seriously, take God seriously.” In other word, being humble is acknowledging the gifts you have and using them to help other people but not taking it too serious. Not thinking too much of yourself, or too little of yourself, and giving all the glory to God. Or as Paul said in the reading today, “if you are to boast, boast in the Lord” because that is where all our gifts come from. It keeps us in the right perspective.

So remember and try to live out “to do justice”. That a wonderful mission statement, vision for your own life, to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.

Today we are having our annual meeting and we probably as a vestry will look at a vision statement. But what a wonderful mission statement for a church. A church that does justice. And we do a lot of caring about other people and outreach. That loves kindness, that loves mercy. That knows how to forgive and that teaches people about reconciliation and love. And that walks humbly with God. That acknowledges who we are and what our gifts are. And always remembers that God is the source of all that we have and all that we are. Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with God, that is the source of true happiness.

All Saints Day Sermon

Sunday after All Saints Day

Transcribed from a sermon given

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

November 6, 2011

Matthew 5:1-12

I was exploring the Internet on my IPad this week and came across an interesting advertisement. I wasn’t sure whether it was on Craig’s list or somewhere else, and it wasn’t clear whether it was a help wanted ad or personal ad, but it read something like this:

Wanted - merciful, meek, naïve person, preferably slightly depressed, who wants to change the world. Must be comfortable living in poverty. Persecution to be expected. Rewards heavenly.

Anybody want the job? Or whatever it is? Can you imagine going in for a job interview and saying, “I think that one of my greatest strengths is that I am very meek.” In the world of assertiveness training?  Jesus says the meek will inherit the earth. Or would you say, “Well, yes, I am in deep grief right now and tend to sort of cry at random times, but I am just the person you want to hire.”

What Jesus says is very countercultural. It is countercultural today, and it was countercultural when he said the beatitudes 2000 years ago.

But wait, there was more in this advertisement. It did have the duties if you chose to accept the position.  The duties include trusting and praising God, going to church, proclaiming the good news, serving everyone, loving everyone, and working for justice - and when you fail at any, or all of these, asking to be forgiven. Those are our baptismal covenant - it is what we agree to do when we are baptized.

For me the beatitudes and baptismal covenant are a job description for a Christian, or as Paul put it in the reading today, a child of God, for once we make the commitment to be Christians, we become children of God.

Now I wonder who would possibly accept such a position. Well today we’ve got three people who said yes to that. We have Ethan, and Audrey and Dylan. They have all decided that they want to be baptized. They want to make that commitment. They find themselves at a place where they want to know Christ better. They want to walk with Christ.

We always read the beatitudes when we celebrate All Saints Day. All Saints, to remind you who don’t know, All Saints Day is celebrating everyone who has died. All the saints who have died. Not just people who lived what we might call saintly lives. In scripture, the Greek word that is translated as saints comes from the root word for holy. So a saint is a holy person and a holy person is one that is close to God, or like God. It is not a group of people who had miracles. There was no special kind of decision that they were a saint. It is rather everyone who said yes to God. Everyone who did their best to try and serve God. Or even did a mediocre job to try and serve God, but who wanted to. The saints are all of us, and the saints that we remember on All Saints Day are the ones, the faithful in Christ, who have died and are part of what is called the fellowship of saints, or the communion of saints.  All the people being baptized are joining this great communion of saints. All the Christians alive today, all the Christians who ever lived, and all the Christians who ever will live. When we are baptized we become part of a huge community, and they are here with us today - that fellowship which we celebrate. 

Now the beatitudes are kind of interesting. They say blessed are…. And we can sort of get around blessed are ones who morn or blessed are whatever, because blessed means to us that they are saintly. But there are other translations, English translations like the Jerusalem Bible, that instead of using blessed they use the world “happy”. And they say happy are those who mourn. Happy are those who are meek. Happy are those who are persecuted. Happy are those who are poor. Well that’s really countercultural. Because in our culture we think that you are going to be happy because you’ve got money, and you don’t have any problems, and all that. But happy to me is not quite the right word to translate it, because I usually think of happy as something I feel from something outside. Like happy is how I felt when my daughter called me up and said that her work gave her a new IPad, do you want my old one? I was happy then. Happy is when everything is going great in the external world.

So I think a better word, instead of blessed or happy is the word “joyous” because when we are joyous it is not dependent on the outside world. Joyousness is something that comes up from inside of us. Something that over takes us and wells up from within. And we can be in grief and yet also know that there is that inner joy, in the grief and beyond the grief. That is a joyousness that can’t be taken away and isn’t affected by getting good things or bad things. It is a state of being.

The beatitudes - if Jesus lived today I am sure he would have used Twitter because the beatitudes are just the right length to tweet. You can imagine that, right? If you got a tweet that said, “blessed are the poor.” And you go “Hmmm, I could think about that for a couple of days.” They are easy short summaries.

I encourage you to pick one to spend a year with because the beatitudes are something that you can meditate on for a long time. Each one of them takes you to different places. For example, the one “Blessed are those who mourn.” Joyous are those who mourn. Happy are those who mourn. What in the world could that mean? Because to mourn, doesn’t that mean sadness. That’s just the opposite of being happy. And yet it is honoring that grief is real. And there is a blessing in those who are able to feel their grief, to know their sorrow, because it is only by knowing our sorrow that we can go through it and find the joyousness that lies beyond it. And those who mourn are not just those who grieve for someone they know who has died. There are those who mourn form the world, those who mourn for the people one the other side of the earth who have died in an earthquake, those who mourn for the poor and the children who don’t have a home, those who grieve for the imperfections of the world. Blessed are those who can really feel and acknowledge their grief, and know their grief.

It is interesting that the first reading that we read today is one that is often used at funerals. And it ends with “He will dry all their tears, wipe away all their tears.” So when we grieve, we grieve with Christ and there is a way in which when we are honest with how we feel and with our lose and our grief that we are close to God. God is there with us, walking through it, helping us through it. And so on those nights when we grieve, and we stay at home, and we curl up on our bed and we cry Jesus is there, his arms around us, helping us and promising us that we will make it through. Promising that we will begin to be able to experience that joy again. Not the happy, happy joy, but the deep satisfaction of knowing God.

One can do that kind of meditation on any one of the beatitudes.

(At this point the recording ended. I am not certain of the words I used to end this sermon. I am pretty sure that I reviewed again that the beatitudes and baptismal covenant make up the job description of Christians and then went into the service of baptism.)