Sermon: Blessed are You
Text: Matthew 5:1-12
My name is Ha Na Park. As the minister of Immanuel United Church, it is my great happiness and honour to be here and share my reflection with you, in the beautiful sanctuary and sacred space of Steinbach United Church. Congratulations, Steinbach congregation, for celebrating and covenanting your pastoral relationship with Susie and Paul, and with all who gather tonight, in the presence of God. I met and began to love the gifts Susie brings to the church when, along with a group of intercultural/indigenous leaders in this region, Susie and I worked together to plan a panel discussion at last June’s Inaugural Regional Council Gathering. Today is the first time for me to meet Paul; I hope to get to know him better, as I see Paul’s gifts shining among you already! I see that you’ve started some significant decolonizing work and study. I encourage you to continue. That is so AWESOME. I am excited to return here next June, when you host the next Regional Council Gathering.
I am beginning to learn that in the indigenous world view, God has never been a God. God or Sacred Mystery is manifested and people see the presence in duality: the sky and the earth, grandmother water and grandfather rock, in matter and in spirit, and all things under, above and in between as relatives, as female and male, never a God, simply as one in the brilliant diverse relationships in the world. The Osage theologian, George “Tink” Tinker says, in an indigenous vision, Jesus is Corn Mother (Mother Earth, just like Jesus has Sophia Wisdom as “her” in the early Christian vision.). Jesus is also a historical man, yet still the mystery, the parable, as any human being can be when their divineness is revealed. Jesus was born, lived and proclaimed to people extraordinary blessings, as shown in today’s reading, the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount.
In today’s story, Jesus walked to the mountainside along with the crowd who followed him. I imagine the crowd as a multitude of people with different life experiences and backgrounds. Some of them are fairly well off, others are not. The majority may be Jewish, but some may be Canaanites or other ethnic, cultural identities. Who are the Canaanites? Canaanites are the original people who lived in the land, Palestine, before the Hebrew people, in their exodus, conquered it, believing that this is the promised land given by Yahweh. The Bible records that Canaanites still lived in Jesus’ time, side by side with the Jewish settlers. Jesus, a Jewish settler, healed the daughter of a Canaanite woman. Just like our lives, the Bible is full of “contact zones”. It invites us to look at the stories, hear the stories, read the stories as narratives that happened in the “contact zone” between settlers and the native people, to engage in the act of reading through Canaanite or other non-dominant eyes. (Laura E. Donaldson, Cherokee, USA).
Today’s story continues. After Jesus spent some time with the crowd, he sat down. Then, the disciples came to him, and he began to speak and teach them through the eight Beatitudes.
I chose this passage for tonight, for Susie, for Paul, for the people of Steinbach, for all of us, because Jesus’s sermon on the Mountainside urges us to ask important questions:
What will you do, who will you be, if you must preach the Beatitudes, especially proclaiming the first blessing, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.” to those who are actually poor, those who suffer from the real impacts of devastating poverty, spiritually and materially? How can we proclaim, how can we say to them, “Blessed are you”? What would this act of blessing mean in such moments and how will it change us and those who hear it? The Beatitudes are not just blessings but a call to action. We must go and actually meet those who are poor in spirit, and be accepted as their friend.
The second blessing also calls us to ask the same question…
What will you do, who will you be, if you must preach the Beatitudes, proclaiming the second blessing, ““Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” to those who actually suffer from long-term grief? How can we proclaim, how can we say to those who see their loss with pain-filled eyes, deep sorrow or even inexpressible anger, “Blessed are you”? What would the proclamation of that blessing mean in such an encounter and how would it change us and those who hear it?
We must go and meet those who mourn, and be accepted as their friend.
One definition of friendship which makes sense to me from my lived experience comes from Beverley Harrison. “Friendship is a relational mode in which security can be felt in intimate equality.” Equal, reciprocal, sensitive, caring friendship between two peoples, two groups, two worlds… I find this definition of friendship useful and meaningful, because first of all, we meet each other every day, and we also live in the "contact zone" of different cultures and different life situations all the time, especially in pastoral ministry.
“Tink” Tinker says God is Healer. It makes so much sense, then, that Jesus is the healer, too. I believe, in today’s eight Beatitudes, being blessed, or the “blessedness”, means being “healed". Jesus is a healer, therefore preachers and pastors must be healers too. In a real sense, in a good sense, in a right sense. In the first Beatitude, “poor in spirit” does not just mean humility. It speaks about the condition of where people are and how they are doing; the dispossessed and abandoned people of the world. Those who suffer from financial poverty. Those who have been deprived of their rights, land, resources, history, culture, language, and because of the wrong, colonial forces of deprivation, those who have lost hope, therefore, those who have become poor in spirit. Being “Poor in spirit” is not so much a characteristic one would seek; it is, rather, a characteristic of who God cares for and embraces as her people.
In this sense, what Jesus is teaching with the first Beatitude, “Blessed are those who are poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.” is that the kingdom of God is the promise of healing. Being blessed is the promise of healing; its sign is the rising of the kingdom of God among these people. Healing and peace must come by two roads. Healing at an individual level, which is the healing journey that finds its way in every person’s heart. Its signs are restoring beauty, peace, harmony, hope, spirit, tradition, and culture. Societally, in terms of healing in the world, “blessed” means the reversal. In the Good News, reversal of status is at the heart of what happens when Jesus and the kingdom of God appear. The proud are scattered; the powerful are brought down, and the lowly lifted. The system will be turned over, and in the space that the change creates, the light of God will shine stunningly above everything, opening the eyes of all people on the earth to see: those who mourn are comforted. Those who have been “humiliated (the meek)” inherit the earth, the land. (It means that their deprived rights and lands are restored and returned.) Exodus is reversed. People in this land find a home in harmony, learning how all can live together on the Creator’s holy mountain, no one hurt or destroyed, the wolf and the lamb feeding together. And in this peace, those who have been hungry and thirsted for justice are filled in satisfaction, anticipating the hopeful future.
I chose Jesus’ beautiful preaching to be our scripture tonight because these Beatitudes are the model in which we learn from Jesus how being prophetic and pastoral should be one, can be one and are one. My blessing and hope for Susie and Paul and for their ministry, together with the leaders and elders and children at Steinbach United Church, is that tonight we will promise to each other, whilst proclaiming the Beatitudes, that we will be prophetic and pastoral to one another in true spirit, in this region and in the world. We need more decolonizing leaders. This call is not just prophetic; it’s pastoral because we live side by side, with “contact zones” in our daily lives. I believe this commitment, this covenanting, this communion is at the heart of why we gather tonight. God’s people. Her people. God is wonderful, reciprocal duality and multiplicity, and manifest in relationships. I wonder if we sometimes treat covenanting or a covenanting service as a passing one-time event, something like a rite of passage, rather than a set-aside time to reflect deeply on how communities can enact the Beatitudes for one another and in the world. Jesus looks at us, and points his finger to us and says, “‘Blessed are you’ who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.”
Today, a myriad number of churches, like the countless number of stars in the night sky, celebrated World Communion. So, communion is a very appropriate and timely metaphor for what we do now. Communion is the manifestation of relationship in the Circle in which no one is higher or more central. In the circle, in the communion, everyone practices friendship as a "relational mode". True security and hope are sought and felt in our intimacy in equality. Steinbach, congratulations again. May you be a blessing as you are blessed. Continue to participate in God’s continuing creation, especially through your prophetic and pastoral ministry, in this region, and on earth as it is in heaven.
Ha Na Park
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