November 1, 2024, All Saints Day

Matthew 5:1-12a

These are the Beatitudes that are key to Jesus’ teachings, and they are the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount.  When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain and when his disciples had come to him, he began to teach.  Seeing before him the condition of the crowds, among whom were the poor, the mournful, and the meek, Jesus talked about them first. None of these conditions – poverty, mourning, or not thinking much of oneself – are comfortable conditions. They are uncomfortable but Jesus calls them blessed or fortunate because they are characterized by open heartedness; having nothing to lose, they are open to God’s blessing. They are not self-satisfied or thinking they are better than others, that is the key. And they are a clue to our spiritual approach to the Kingdom of Heaven.

The list shifts to openly spiritual matters. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are also not comfortable, because they feel that they have not yet achieved righteousness and they are aware of their own shortcomings.  Thus they too are open hearted and do not think of themselves as having achieved righteousness.  They yearn to belong to the Lord. 

Here at the center is the key to the beatitudes: blessed or favored are the clean of heart, for they will see God.  As the medieval mystics all tell us over and over, the path of purification through the practice of virtue is the essential ground for further spiritual progress, the means by which we can encounter God.  Clean of heart means sincere in our intentions to love God and our neighbor and to stick to that path.  It means we are not plotting and scheming with manipulative or corrupt intentions towards others.  Let us all practice to be clean of heart, and it will be its own reward in making it easier to be in the presence of God.

Next Jesus names the merciful, who are not comfortable either, because their empathy for others moves their heart and causes them to act.  The merciful care for others’ pain and discomfort because it moves them too to feel compassion and act on it.

Then, the peacemakers work to resolve conflicts because the discord pains them and moves their hearts. They are moved at the heart level and cannot be comfortable until they try to help others in need. They maintain peace in their relationships, even if it is difficult.  And blessed are they for this and in fact “they will be called children of God,” part of God’s family, representing Jesus in the world.

Finally, the ultimate discomfort is for those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness.  These are, for example, the disciples who will be persecuted and even martyred in the early church.  Despite the dangers, they hold to what they know from Jesus, and thus they are blessed.

These Beatitudes are a roadmap of how we should be as spiritual human beings with open hearts. The Beatitudes also comfort those who are in discomfort due to the human condition – those who are poor, mourning, unsure of themselves, seeking God, feeling empathy for others’ pain, trying to do the right thing, trying to make peace out of conflict, or even persecuted for following God.

We are comforted that these conditions do not mean we are out of favor with God, as the ancient Israelites may have once thought, but rather we are blessed for our vulnerability and openness, and for not being bound up in closed-in, inward-turning ideas about our own importance and superiority.  It is paradoxical – take comfort in our discomfort knowing we are blessed, and keep our hearts tuned to God.