The Paradox of the Beatitudes and Paul's 1st Letter to the Corinthians, the senior sermon by Jeffrey "Bear" Gibson, Class of 2005 from the Diocese of Central Gulf Coast, given on February 3, 2005, in Christ Chapel

I remember it like it was yesterday. There we were - - a gaggle of noisy children playing in the churchyard without a care in the world. It was one of those hot, sticky summer mornings, the kind that causes your shoes and socks to get all wet from the dew covering the grass. Over the sounds of the cicadas humming in the trees, we heard that terrible noise…the sound that stopped all of us in our tracks. It was the church bell! Like Tasmanian devils from all corners of the yard, we children ran toward the back door of the Sunday School Building. It was time for Vacation Bible School to begin.

A curious name isn't it? - - Vacation Bible School. The tension between vacation and school still seems unresolved to me, and I'm still in recovery from some of those, and other, early childhood church experiences and the ambiguities of our language about them.

In between making little churches out of milk cartons and gleaming crosses from Popsicle sticks and aluminum foil, I remember my first engagement with today's gospel reading. That section from the Sermon on the Mount known as "The Beatitudes" was prominently displayed on a large poster in the corner of the room. Those states of "being" that were blessed were in bold type so we wouldn't miss them, and the lesson was clear indeed. In order for us to become one of the blessed, we had to figure out which one of those categories we would strive to live into. In the rough and tumble world of third grade Vacation Bible School, this was a daunting task. I wasn't sure I could accomplish any of those great spiritual feats of personal piety - - things looked pretty grim indeed.

Now before you and I judge that type of teaching too critically, we must remember to be honest about what we (the Church) have done with this text. Haven't there been times that we have used this list of "Blessed Are's" to gage our own sanctity or that of others? Haven't we found this text to be appealing in the sense that on that "great getting up morning," God is going to level the playing field?

As I've studied this passage, I've come to believe something quite different. According to Eugene Boring:
Mathew's beatitudes are not practical advice for successful living, but prophetic declarations made on the conviction of the coming -- and -- already present kingdom of God (p.177).

Blessed are… for they…are all those who in the here and now have oriented their lives to a kingdom consciousness. Contrary to what is apparent in their day-to-day existence, Matthew's beatitudes declare a realized eschatology. The present and future reign of God has begun and those who He names blessed are they who are living into that realization now.

Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor says of the beatitudes, that if you:
Read between the lines this is what you hear: You are loved; act like it. You are redeemed; act like it; you are a (saint); act like it. Become what you already are and you will be blessed with every breath you take, because blessedness -- which means happiness, which means joy, which means fullness of life -- is just what happens when you are who you were created to be, living the life you were created to live. Which is, incidentally, what the Kingdom of God is all about (Mixed Blessings, p.83).

Taylor goes on to say that the beatitudes might be best understood if we read them while standing on our heads because of the inverted nature of these proclamations.

Jesus is calling blessed those who are used to being at the back of the line…the unnoticed…those who may be living lives of quiet (but faithful) desperation. It is the "least of these" that Jesus is calling blessed and lifting to places of honor.

In the honor/shame culture of the day, Jesus' upside down or downside up notion of who is honored was revolutionary to say the least. The disciples and those nearby who heard these words must have been shocked by such a bold claim. Those who are living into this kingdom consciousness are now called to "Rejoice and be glad" for even now they are participating in the present and presently dawning reign of God.

The paradoxical language used in the beatitudes is in part what makes them so hard to grasp. The writer of Matthew's Gospel obviously had Moses and the Ten Commandments in mind as he recounted the scene in our text. Both Moses and Jesus went up on a mountain and delivered to those below a word and words from the living God. Moses' were straightforward instruction on how to live in right relationship with God and the rest of the community, but it is Jesus' pronouncements that cause us to pause. Unlike the instructions I received in my Vacation School Days, Jesus' nine pronouncements are not necessarily traits that we can strive towards. To see them as such would indicate we may be missing the point altogether. They are not a list of who's in or who's out, but are instead examples of those who despite what we might expect because of their impaired social location or non-existent theological savvy are the ones who really get it. The ones who really "do justice -- love kindness -- and walk humbly with their God."

Before you and I feel too smug about those who didn't get it in the past, let's think about our own time and place. In the U.S. today, we have many examples of a kind of growing prosperity theology that's absolutely out of control. The culture we live in tells us non-stop that if we have this -- that -- or the other thing, we are happy indeed, and some even translate that into the language of the Church and equate those things as blessings from God. We rarely hear someone say that my house burned down, I can't pay my car loan, or I got punched in the eye for trying to stop a fight and call these examples of being blessed, but that's how upside down the beatitudes sounded to those who first heard them. God is turning us around -- calling us to have a "conversion of our imagination" so that we can see the world in a new way -- permeated by an ethic of unselfish love.

This same type of paradoxical language is also seen in today's reading from St. Paul. In his first letter to the church in Corinth, Paul speaks of the ultimate paradox of our faith story…the scandal of the cross and our foolish preaching about it. Written around the middle of the 1st Century to a predominantly Gentile and quite diverse assembly -- Paul's first, and quite pastoral, letter to the Corinthians deals with a familiar topic -- division within the Church. It appears that some there had departed from the gospel they had received in the beginning and have become enamored with the philosophy of the day and certain spiritual gifts that only those [who are in the know] possess. The acquisition of certain Gnostic knowledge and a heavenly language caused some to boast of their own sanctity and claim special privilege and a spiritual status above the rest of the community - - sounds familiar doesn't it?

Aren't we guilty from time to time of that same kind of boastful pride? Are there not times when we too are enamored with our own abilities to clearly exegete the mysteries of God almighty? Don't we occasionally think we've got it all figured out?

Paul's response to these folks is to help them have an epiphany -- much like the other readings for this day also provide. Both Jesus and Paul are turning upside down our notions of how things really are. Jesus redefines who is blessed, and Paul utterly confounds all notions of human wisdom.

Listen to what Paul says in 1 Cor 1:26-30
"Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God."

Paul says that God has chosen what is foolish, weak, low, and despised in the world to be the standard by which all else is evaluated.

To Paul the cross is that seminal event in the cosmos that leads to the only knowledge one can boast of.

According to Richard Hays, "Paul has taken the central event at the heart of the Christian story -- the death of Jesus -- and used it as the lens through which all human experience must be projected and thereby seen afresh. The cross becomes the starting point for an epistemological revolution."

"Epistemological revolution" -- quite a lofty phrase isn't it? What Hays and St. Paul are telling us is that all true wisdom and knowledge have their starting point in the story of Jesus being nailed to a tree.

God has chosen this scandalous and foolish tale to confound the wisdom of the ages, but once you and I can catch a glimpse of this vision we can never see the world the same way again.

In the cross of Christ, the wisdom of the world has been turned upside down and right side up again. This "apocalyptic event" causes all our ideas about what we know to be re-evaluated.

In our church today, there appears to be a profound struggle over a theology of the cross. Historically the cross has been at the very -- if not the very heart of our story of faith, but increasingly this foundational part of doctrine is becoming obscured.

Reinhold Niebuhr once commented on an increasing discomfort in some churches with the cross in this way. There appears to be:
A view that insists on a God without wrath bringing men and women without sin into a kingdom without judgment through a Christ without a cross.

In my estimation, Niebuhr's concerns are well founded, and we as a church appear to be moving in that direction at a rapid speed.

I wonder? Is the cross to be seen as simply another metaphor in our theological language? Is the cross some lost icon of a church who has domesticated it to the point that we only address it because of its utility to our various theologies? I wonder indeed!

In both of these texts we've been given a great gift. We've been afforded the opportunity to have our bearings shaken…to see the world from a new vantage point…to be turned upside down and right side up again. We've heard stories of the God who goes beyond all our reason (in order -- to bring order) to the chaotic world in which we live. A God who always seems to do the unexpected -- just when we thought we had it all figured out.

In both the Gospel and Epistle readings for this day, we were given a glimpse of those who struggled to understand the dawning reign of God. From the disciples and the crowds straining to hear Jesus' pronouncements of those unlikely blessed, to the folks at Corinth who need to hear about the origins of true wisdom.

May we too listen for the word and words of God, even in the most unlikely places!

Amen