Learning the Beatitudes

Collect for Tuesday in the Second Week of Lent

O God, you willed to redeem us from all iniquity by your Son: Deliver us when we are tempted to regard sin without abhorrence, and let the virtue of his passion come between us and our mortal enemy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Learning the Beatitudes

Matthew 4:23-48

As a child, okay, who am I kidding, even as a new priest, I wasn’t very fond of the Beatitudes. I think I managed to spend the first four years of my ordained life avoiding preaching and teaching anything related to the Beatitudes.

Looking back, I saw the Beatitudes as yet another set of expectations of how I must live my life. You know, like the Ten Commandments: another list of thou shall’s and thou shall not’s! I have this understanding that we are children of God who are loved by God not for what we didn’t do wrong, but for who we are in our created being...the last thing I needed was another list of expectations.

It was sometime about 2 or 3 years ago, long after I found the Episcopal church, even after I had been ordained, that I began to see the Beatitudes not as a to-do (or not-to-do) list, but as a set of “sign-posts”, as John Purdy calls them in his Blessed are You Kerygma study (p. 3). The Beatitudes are, for example, sign-posts to remind us that when we are going through life and we feel as if someone has done an injustice to us and we should seek justice, we must remember “blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.”

This portion of Matthew’s Gospel we are to read today, the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, calls to our attention that we need to focus on our intentions as we continue along our spiritual journeys. If we focus only on our actions, then we are already lost on our journey. However, if we can control our intentions, then our actions will surprise even ourselves. As you go along your journey, let your yes be yes and your no be no and when you see the uprising start, “remember that blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.”

Oh, and one final thing, this year, for the first time, I am teaching, and learning even more, about the Beatitudes. What an awe-filled experience! God’s truth was unchanging, but my understanding of God’s truth was transformed by the sign-posts along my journey. This Lent, how will you be transformed by God’s signs posted along your journey?

The Rev. Kenny Miller

Rector

St. Boniface Episcopal Church, Mequon