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Blessed are the Poor in Spirit Today we start a series of talks on the Beatitudes. These are a collection of short statements Jesus made at the start of the famous sermon which he preached on the mountain near the shores of the sea of Galilee. They are called the Beatitudes because each begins with a blessing. There are 8 of these blessings. I understand a blessing to be the gift of a deeper spiritual understanding that enables us to see something of God and God’s loving nature present and active in our lives. Many people understand the Sermon on the Mount to be a summary of the Christian faith and life, a bit the way Jewish people see the 10 Commandments. It is the essence of Christianity and the 8 beatitudes are like the essence of the essence. Murray shared with me that he had once heard the beatitudes described as referring to the "Beautiful Attitudes" ·Gospel Reading The first of these beatitudes is: “Blessed are the poor in spirit” Whichever way one looks at this simple statement it is a rather disturbing one. Being poor is not very nice by anyone’s standards and it is hard to understand why Jesus should say that anyone who is poor is Blessed. Perhaps it is helpful for us to remember that the New Testament has been translated from the Greek and like all translations there are a number of ways a sentence like this first statement from Jesus teaching on the Mount can be translated: The Daily Study bible translates it as follows: “O the bliss of the person who has realised his or her own utter helplessness and who has put their whole trust in God. For in this way alone can he or she give to God the perfect obedience which will make them a citizen of the kingdom of heaven.” The Message translates it simply as “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.” And the Contemporary English Version reads: “God blesses those people who depend only on him. They belong to the kingdom of heaven!” It would seem from these versions that the word ‘poor’ can be understood to mean much more than merely a lack of money or material goods. Being poor in spirit is a good thing. For, we are poor in spirit when we understand that we depend on God for everything we have and are. There is nothing that we have that was not given to us by God in his goodness. Everything we have in this life comes from God. Nothing belongs to us, not even our own lives. So, " the "poor in spirit" are those who have come to see that everything in life is a gift from God ... and because they see God in every little thing of life, they are greatly blessed. For example: when you drink clean cool water and remember that God is the giver; when you watch a sunrise or sunset and think of how wonderful the world is that God made, when you have a fun time with friends and the family that God has given you.... you become more and more blessed/ happy ! God has given us many talents and gifts and blessings but we are nothing without him. We cannot manage anything without him, we cannot even breathe without him. When we realise this we realise that we are richly blessed because we are children of God the maker of the universe and he cares for us and we live in his kingdom, under his loving rule. When we choose to depend on him alone, because of who he is, then we are richly blessed because he is steadfast and dependable. I’d like to tell you a story that might help to explain what I think Jesus means when he says ‘blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven’. The other day a bird flew into our lounge. It was a baby thrush and the minute it flew into the lounge it knew it was in trouble and it started to panic. Now this bird could fly and had some intelligence. It knew it had to get out of the lounge and so it made a desperate attempt to do so. Perhaps because it was so very frightened it was not able to find its way out of the door or windows. We were all the more concerned for its safety because our cat was sitting in the lounge licking its chops and looking very interested in this bird. I suspect she thought it would make a tasty snack ! So, we tried to help it, but the bird did not trust us, so it wouldn’t let us help it, preferring to try to get out on its own. What a mess it made! Feathers everywhere and flying into bits of furniture etc. It even bit Julian when he nearly succeeded in catching it. Man was this one determined bird. It fought against us and desperately tried to get out on its own steam. Finally Julian hit on a clever plan. He grabbed a cloth and threw it over the bird’s head so that it couldn’t see anything. Only then did the bird accept that it couldn’t save itself. Only then did the bird realise that it was poor in its ability to negotiate its way out of the predicament it found itself in. Suddenly the bird became very still and quiet. So Julian was able to pick it up and take it outside and release it to safety and freedom. In this way allowed us to bless it with freedom. This is just like us. So often we struggle away at our problems determined to sort them out ourselves, almost fighting against the support and help that God is offering us. Inevitably this gets us nowhere and it is only when we realise that we cannot manage without God’s help, that we are indeed poor in our ability to go it alone in life and we turn to God and trust God to help us that we become blessed because it is then that we are able to accept God’s help to the fullest extent. When we trust our lives into God’s care and support then our lives are blessed because we are released from the anxiety and fear that comes when we think we are all alone and have to survive in our own strength. So it is that I think this beatitude means that when we have a focused dependence on God, then we are truly blessed. Perhaps this New Years’ day, as we are making our New Years’ Resolutions about losing weight, or getting good marks at school or uni; or getting fit; or making more money etc, we could spare a thought for the first Beatitude and resolve to depend on God for all things and in all circumstances this year and so we will experience a truly blessed year no matter what circumstances it might bring. |
