We’re caught in a funny period in the Christian year, somewhere between the elation of Christmas and the epiphany, and the wonder that comes with Lent and preparation for God’s Easter sacrifice. Our readings this week culminate in the Beatitudes, which anticipate the coming kingdom of God for the blessed, whose ranks are detailed. In fact, all of our readings seem very concerned with detailing who is properly God’s: who receives God’s love, those for whom the promises of heaven are made. The Beatitudes leave much room for inclusion, though the way is hard. They anticipate God’s love for those who exemplify the virtues Jesus enumerates. They exist in sometimes confusing contrast to our other readings, which sometimes seem less concerned with troubling the question of those who belong to God than they are involved in closing ranks and determining who does not.
For me, these texts offer an important reminder. Though Jesus came into history and offered all a view of Heaven, and of eternal salvation in God, what we know to be true in faith is still tempered by what remains enigmatic. Jesus offers us, through the Gospels, a number of irrefutable, absolute truths; but he also remains partially a mystery. The whole truth, the whole picture, we’re made to believe, won’t be revealed until time comes to an end. I believe we’re less meant to relish that end than we are to revel in the mystery, implementing the virtues the scriptures encourage for their own sake, and not because they’re going to bring about the kingdom.
Do the readings bear this out? Absolute conclusions seem elusive. We could as easily read them as a unit, and see all the exclusions in the earliest readings as disclaimers: blessed are some, and we know who is not among that ‘some’. But it strikes me as equally valid to consider the possibility that the places where the texts seem at odds represent actual discord between them, and that rather than being a scriptural inconsistency, this reflects the eternal mystery of divine love.
Micah speaks of a controversy between God and God’s people, and means the people of Israel. It reminds us of the works of God which underlie the covenant: “I brought you out from the land of Egypt,” God recalls, “and redeemed you from the house of slavery; I set before you Moses, Aaron and Miriam” (Micah 6:4). The texts proceed to say that these grandiose gifts—of freedom, of love that moves kingdoms, of prophets—can never be justified by equal deeds, of which humans are incapable. Rather, we’re enjoined to respond to them humbly, recognizing that they’re a grace: “what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with…God?” (Micah 6:8) Faith, in Micah, seems best displayed by accepting grace quietly, rather than through ritual gestures, which hardly seem to make awe requisite.
The following verses seem to set a trap: Psalms both continues the theme that the humble belong to God and sets up a paradigm wherein some are outright excluded from God’s presence; and Corinthians seems to make near enemies of those who have failed to make humility the rule, and in fact attempts to name them in groups. These are curious lead ups to the Beatitudes. But we could also read the exclusion in Psalms as a choice, in that none seem permanently barred from “dwelling on [God’s] holy hill” or “abiding in [God’s] tent”’; entrance to both is granted when people speak truth, revile cruelty, and protect the innocent. Dwelling forever with God requires intentionality, and that can be developed, it seems, by any who hear and comprehend the Scriptures.
And of Corinthians, we might remember that Paul himself sometimes displayed an unfortunate habit for trying to unravel the mystery prematurely: for anticipating the kingdom as imminent, for stockpiling only enough counsel to last until then. He thinks “God’s people,” and imagines a new, primarily Gentile nation, a new gathering of people who freshly understand God’s word, but he forgets situation, location and the possibility that truths remain which are yet to be revealed. Paul condemns where he came from, and locates that place among “Jews seeking signs and Greeks seeking wisdom,” but we’d be mistaken to believe that those exclusions are absolute. Perhaps there are aspects of the divine which Paul felt his former communities were incapable of comprehending; and yet we know that the path highlighted in Micah is the same we’re encouraged to follow again through the Beatitudes.
Paul requires elaboration. Corinthians declares that “Christ crucified [is] a stumbling block,” but in actuality the stumbling block seems to be in assuming that this part of the story is the whole story, or even that this one part has been wholly understood. Christ is not a rigid figure, and does not meditate upon themes of exclusion; that doesn’t seem to be what we’re meant to take from this week’s gospel, or from Paul’s epistle. The truth is that, if God chose “what is foolish in the world to shame the wise… chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong,” we have to locate our faith in the grey areas. Spending time delineating who belongs to the kingdom, and who does not, becomes futile; Christ’s love is never in question, but how we approach it may be; and all we can know is that receiving the grace of salvation is entirely personal, and entirely dependent upon our own humility.
If we attempt to dole out numbers for the kingdom, we assume the position of the wise; if we offer absolute declarations regarding who is God’s and who is not, we presume a certain “strength”. We should take from Paul that both decisions require leaving God’s path. Those who think themselves wise remain to be humbled; those who think themselves mighty await undoing by the meek. Arrogance makes little room for grace, and there’s not much spiritual about what is considered static.
It seems to me that the lesson of these early readings is that approaching the kingdom of God is much less about ascending over other humans than it is about humbling ourselves to take it on. Movement toward God seems, here, not to be an upward climb as much as a steady kneel.
We reach the Beatitudes; they shine a light on the way. Jesus numbers the apparently lowly, those whose lives are a kneel and not a climb: the meek, the poor in spirit, the mourning, the hungering, the persecuted, the pure, the peacemakers. They seek no fame and they resist our naming them; naming them is not our job; it seems certain that the work of any Christian is not to point them out, but to find one’s place among them. To be God’s, to be filled with God’s love and mercy, we need to accept these worldly-small but incredibly complicated, even taxing, positions. We learn that to be “little” is to be blessed; to lead “quiet” lives of faith and humility is to be chosen. These are apparent reversals; they’re both mysterious and enticing.
The simple truth of our readings for the week is that they aren’t meant to leave us feeling comfortable and assured; they’re designed to unsettle. We’re approaching Lent swiftly, a time of preparation in which we’ll remember Jesus’s own humble preparations for his ultimate sacrifice. It’s a period of denial, of asceticism, of an emptying of Self into God. The correlating work which we have to do is entirely about humility, about the situations praised in the Beatitudes. The great gift of Lent paves the way for the heavenly kingdom; the mystery of it looms, burns brightly and defies explication. What we know from the teachings of Jesus, what we gain from this week’s readings, is that growing great in Jesus is no key; the key lies in knowing to be grateful for all which we still don’t know, and in the beauty of the perfect humility of accepting grace.
photo credit here
