A Poem and Reflection 4th Sunday of Epiphany St. Thomas Episcopal, Ahoskie, NC
January 29, 2023 Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant
Micah 6:1-8 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 Matthew 5:1-12 Psalm 15
Blessed Are You Who Leave Past Behind
In 1994, in the 8th year I had been serving as Rector of a Church in Virginia, I took a Sabbatical. One part of it was to Study of St. George's College in Jerusalem on “The Palestine of Jesus”. One day the class went from Jerusalem down to the Galilee. We spent the better part of one day on the Mount of the Beatitudes, the place where Matthew places Jesus preaching the Sermon on the Mount to the crowd that follows them there. It is a grassy hill, a perfect place for a picnic, where you sit down with a picnic basket, getting comfortable where you can look out and see the Beautiful Sea of Galilee and listen to an inspiriting talk, beginning with a poem that starts off with the same word, μακάριος, Makarios, a word meaning blessed, happy, enviable, fortunate; it is a gift. Many scholars suggest that what the writer of Matthew does is to paste together sayings of Jesus, into a poetic structure, to make it easy to memorize the core of the Good News of Jesus. But when I was on that Mount, I put that idea of that analytic part of the brain away and I went to my imagination and I lived into a vision of the crowds who were so intent to hear Good News they followed that wandering Holy man in search of hearing hope. Because Hearing Hope is why I was on a Sabbatical to begin with.
I was in recovery from a building project for the church. The good news was the church had been growing and we needed more room, The bad news was that I did not believe the kind of battles needed to be fought over things that didn't make a lick of sense. We had one meeting dissolve into tears on the debate on the colors of the paints on the walls in the rooms in the new addition over if it would be “off white” or “eggshell” of “Ivory”. Churches pick the silliest things to prove who is in control, or who is the most important, how long they had been members, who had the most children. You name it; churches waste time fighting about it, and it usually has nothing to do with the Gospel.
What was was going on with the writer of Matthew that he entered into the mind of this crowd of people following Jesus? Maybe he had been there years before, in a crowd of people searching for hope, a renewal of faith. Maybe Jesus had said to him that following Jesus is not about following a bunch of religious strictures but a need to change oneself. Maybe Jesus suggested to Matthew, thirty years before Matthew wrote his book, that he needed to enter into emptiness, empty out his own ego and allow his soul to be filled with hope. Maybe Jesus asked Matthew to look at each of what he perceived as weaknesses and find in them the core of strength. Most of the people Jesus is taking to are people who have spent a lot of time losing to corrupt governments, to distrusted grasping religious institutions and contempt by foreign Roman occupying powers. They are looking for a new future
The Beatitudes are placed by Matthew to say good bye to the past and start over in this setting where we can feel the good earth of God's creation. Derek Walcott, a Caribbean, West Indian, Poet, said in his 1992 Nobel Prize acceptance speech: "For every poet it is always morning in the world. History a forgotten, insomniac night; History and elemental awe are always our early beginning, because the fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world, in spite of History."
What Matthew, the poet, is urging those who follow the Risen Christ is to forget about the past, the heritage that they loved and put their energy into the present with the Risen Lord, falling in love with the world so changed by the Christ event. This is my translation of of the Beatitudes: follow along with me
I learned to mean that when all my energy is exhausted, there is a power greater than myself to get me through.
If I mourn, it means I loved and that love is where I will find strength- (the word com -fort means “with strength” instead of “soft and easy”.)
If I give up trying to push people around, my new world is open to a deeper hope and strength within myself.
If I long for justice I will find it by dealing justly.
Being merciful is a Habit of letting go of the faults of others cluttering my life.
Being pure of heart, means I are not wasting my precious time with hate, resentment and finding ways to hurt others.
For us humans, Peace is what we share with each other and seeing the Good and the God. even in our enemies.
In the middle of the Hate from others, I find strength knowing I am surrounded by the love of those who have gone before.
I am in good company and I can be reunited with my better self, the one I abandon when I enter into trying to be stronger, richer and meaner than my neighbor.
Again we call on Derek Walcott who wrote about being reunited with your better self. I came across this poem last week and it haunts me. I already used it once when I did a reflection on the Conversion of St. Paul on Wednesday filling in on a midweek service for a Priest whose wife was going through surgery. He was exactly where he needed to be, and so was I.
The time will come
when,
with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own
door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's
welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the
stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your
heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all
your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the
photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the
mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Memorizing the Beatitudes was one of the requirements for being confirmed in St. Mark's Episcopal in Chenango Bridge, New York when Bishop Peabody of the Diocese of Central New York was to visit on March 15, 1959. When I was 13, I memorized the Beatitudes, but I was sure that “Blessed” meant being a martyr. Sure you get a reward after you are dead, but heck who wanted to cry, be sad, weak, hungry and thirsty, merciful instead of getting revenge, pure in heart when fun was so easily available, peacemakers when it was always better to win, being persecuted when all you wanted to do was get along, who wanted to wait until I was dead?. Sure I memorized it, got confirmed and I got my own personal Prayer Book to prove it, but I was not all that sure it was any big blessing.
As the years passed and I gradually learned that my ego was not the center of the Universe, I would begin with the verse from the 121st Psalm:” I will lift up my eyes to the Hills; from whence cometh my salvation./ My help cometh from the LORD, which made Heaven and Earth.” In my mind, I would move myself back to that small hill, the Mount of the Beatitudes and I would say the blessings over and over again. As I got older, to when my memory wasn't as sharp when I had one more damn thing to do cluttering up my mind and soul, I would open the New Testament and re-read the beautiful poetic words from Matthew or Luke and then I would translate them into what my soul needed to hear.
If you want a much shorter version to memorize, the answer is in the Hebrew Testament Lesson for today from the prophet Micah, “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
What does your soul need to hear?
Blessed Are You Who Leave Past Behind
In a room where you're no longer there,
I say, “I'm sorry for what I did not do,
all those years ago, which I now rue.
But let's fall often into love again, here,”
Let's leave history behind, starting again
to find what will really matters this time
without letting our warning bells chime,
we can unleash forgiving spirits to reign.
We can't fix the people, places and things
of our past, that we should have done then,
so now's time we'll say together “A-men”
to anti-prayers. Set 'em free without strings.
When agree to do that, we return to a Mount,
learning about a folly of keeping an account.
