ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

The Twelfth Sunday of Trinity, 30 August 2009
Sermon preached by Fr. Julian Browning at Solemn Evensong and Benediction

Readings: Exodus 12:21-27; Matthew 4:23-5:20

Matthew 5:8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

I can't explain the Beatitudes to you. Why put an explanation between you and a reason for living? These nine Beatitudes, or blessings given during the Sermon on the Mount, are to become a way of life for us. Each blessing is in a traditional format, identifying a class of people and the blessing they are going to get. There are many collections of these in early religious literature. Matthew's Beatitudes are different. They are spoken by the Christ, the anointed one of Isaiah. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted, comfort those who mourn, and so on. So these Beatitudes are about more than just being good people and acquitting ourselves well in different situations in life. All nine blessings are given to me, and so connect me to God, or to what St. Matthew calls the kingdom of heaven.

How does it work? Each Beatitude is in two sections, like a mantra. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. And so on. The first half is how we are now. The second half is our future. These are not orders: be merciful, be poor in spirit, be meek. Try being meek; it doesn't work for long. In the first part of each Beatitude, Jesus holds in front of us a mirror, and we see ourselves as we really are, human beings loved by God, with the spirit of Christ within us, pure in heart, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, peacemakers, we are all these things, but we have suppressed, overlooked our Christ-like nature as we make our lonely way through a violent, unfair, amoral world. These are words of consolation, God saying, I understand you and your fear, but it will be all right. Consolation and promise. So, in the second section of each Beatitude, our future is predicted, and it is a glorious one we never dared to expect. Blessed are the pure in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Now we can think of our future in terms of time passing. We can enter the kingdom now, soon, at the end of our life, at the end of all things. Or maybe the second half of each Beatitude is the hidden meaning of the first half. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Anyway the radical and rather shocking juxtaposition of the two halves of each Beatitude, us now and us in the future, all so unexpected - why should the meek inherit the earth? - has one practical effect for us: the trials of living in this world are muted by contemplation of the world to come, of how things look when God looks at them. So this is how Christians cope. This is how we live. We are people who live by hope. Hope is not a trip to Never-never Land, opting out into fantasy. Hope is a practical way of getting through today. We don't have to let things get us down all the time. Matters are not what they seem. Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. What is all this? Above the distress and hatred is heard another voice: Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.

Christianity is an entirely practical and realistic religion to hold. The Beatitudes don't try to explain evil, or prove the existence of God, or any of these things we argue about today. They show us who we are and how we live now and what it means. To understand the Beatitudes we need to use our imagination. Our imagination is given to us to understand God and his world. When we take the Bible literally, we are not using our imagination. It is our imagination, working on God's word and revelation, which brings hope and gives us a reason to live.

One simple example. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. There is the literal meaning of mourning those who have died. So we say it at funerals, although I have to say that mourners do not usually look very comforted by it. For St Augustine, we should be mourning our sins. But perhaps this is a picture of us in mourning for, or regretting and unable to get over, our past, our wasted days. That's more like it. Or maybe our mourning is our everlasting despair that the wicked continue to prosper while people of God everywhere suffer. However we intepret the text at any stage of our lives, and the possibilities are infinite, the echo comes back from the world to come that those who mourn shall be comforted, and we can live with that hope.

I can't explain the Beatitudes to you. They have their own meaning for you. They are like a poem at which we look afresh each year. We see what our lives are like and can become. We need no longer be strangers to the Christ who walks with us on the mountain and gives us His blesssing.