HELLO!

Wednesday, December 3^rd at 11 am in the Sams Room will be the second and final session of our Advent conversation focused on the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12). The book I will be referencing in this session is, “What Jesus Meant; The Beatitudes and a Meaningful Life” by Erik Kolbell. You don’t need to have read the book to participate, I will summarize the chapters at the outset of our session. Kolbell believes the “Sermon on the Mount”/Beatitudes are probably the most authentic quotes attributed to Jesus. Kolbell reminds us that Jesus spoke to Jews living under Roman occupation. They were largely poor people, living off the land and sea, who relied on rabbis to teach them how to apply Scriptures to their everyday lives. Their life expectancy was shorter than the money class. Their living conditions were more crowded and dangerous. The Jews were also governed by a king, Pontius Pilate, whose primary allegiance was to Rome, and they were counseled by a high priest who was paid well to serve at the pleasure of a pagan emperor.

To this audience Jesus says, if you want to live a blessed life take the world as you know it and turn it on its head. Imagine it free of the tyranny, poverty, loneliness, and greed that now hold it in thrall. Imagine it loosed of the unholy trinity of ignorance, arrogance, and indifference that conspire to suffocate all remnants of hope.

What did the author of Matthew mean when he wrote, “Blessed are the Poor or Poor in Spirit?”  Kolbell writes, “spiritual poverty is liberation from the authority I assign to these and other things to serve as a measure of my worth, and the faith and willingness to look elsewhere for it.” The Beatitudes move us from divine possibility to human enactment, first by painting a picture of what a blessed life is to look like and then giving us a sense of how to nurse it into being. True blessedness, Jesus tell us, includes being more righteous than the Pharisees and more humble than the silent saints, letting your light shine before others, and offering your prayers in humble solitude. To paraphrase Paul, blessedness means being not conformed to the world, but rather transformed by the power and knowledge and love of God. If we are blessed with being poor in spirit, we are hungry for something more than food, we care about others, we mourn the loss of our friends, we are merciful, we are humble, and we will be peacemakers. If we are blessed with being poor in spirit, we share that spirit with others, they will see our light shine.

Peace, Kevin