Jack Hardaway
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Have you ever wondered if the words are out there to make things alright? Have you ever searched and agonized and dreamed of the right thing to say that will fix things, pull things together, build something, fix what has been broken, save someone?
Are there words, if put together in the right way, that will make it work?
What to say?
The right thing to say.
That’s why some of us talk too much, trying in desperation to hold control of things, drowning in a panic of words.
And its why some us say so little, words are too important to waste, too powerful, fearful of what may happen, of what may be let loose in the world, in their lives, survival is in question.
It’s a gift, when we find the right thing to say.
Do you know someone like that? Who knows just what to say?
Have you ever heard the words spoken to you and for you that set things right? That pulled your world back together? That saved you?
Jesus begins a long sermon today, the Sermon on the Mount; it goes on for three chapters, the most famous sermon in human history.
He begins with the beatitudes.
A sermon that pulls a new world together, different from what we know.
The right thing to say to save the world, re-speaking the world back together.
We spend the next four Sundays and then Ash Wednesday hearing the words that reorder and reconnect our fragmented reality, that change the laws, rules and expectations by which we order our lives.
A really long sermon, not really all that long, it just covers a lot of ground in a short time, the Sermon on the Mount.
It is like Moses on Sinai, bringing the Law, the Torah to the people, remaking God’s people.
The new Moses, gathering and restoring God’s people, gathered under the tent of his words, a safe place to live and gather, under God’s Tent.
Now that is a sermon, the words that we can live in and under, God’s Tent, God’s tabernacle.
And we begin with the Beatitudes, finding God’s presence, God’s blessing in the unlikely, the harsh, the difficult, the painful and uncomfortable stuff of life.
Not in the beauty of life and nature, but rather in the brokenness of life, in life being brought back together. Blessed are those who have no blessings to count.
A holy struggle, for the right thing to say. God is there. The blessing is in those places, where things need pulling together again. Blissful is the meaning of blessed in the beatitudes. Blissful are…blissful are those…, blissful are the soup makers…blissful are you…the bliss of touching the holy in the pain of the world.
That is the Gospel, the good news of God that Jesus is and that Jesus brings to the world, words of bliss in our struggles to be for each other rather than against each other.
The Beatitudes, they reveal where to find God, and they show us God.
The God who knows just what to say, to save, to re-speak our world back together.
And that word is Jesus.
Be blissful.
Bring the bliss.