30 January 2011

“Parallax”
4th Sunday in Ordinary Time / Season of Epiphany
1 Corinthians 1:18-31 / Matthew 5:1-12
30 January 2011


I often wonder if anyone … other than me … pays attention to the titles I give to the messages each week.
I realize we don’t have one of those reader board signs in front of the building … complete with little catchy sayings, or jokes, or the title of the weekly message … we can’t anyway, they violate the County zoning code … so the only place anyone might see one of these titles is on the enclosed board on the building next to the front door, or in the bulletin.
But I continue to title the messages, as a marker, a sign, an organizing tool for the proclaimed Word in a day and through a season of the liturgical year.
I know it’s only been two Sundays which I’ve preached during this winter helping of Ordinary Time which we also call the Season of Epiphany … but perhaps you’ve already figured out, through these two titles, what’s going on …
Beaming. Parallax.
And here are the titles to come:
Yellow. Prism. Photosynthesis. SonShine Mountain.
I feel a little like Dick Clark, giving out clues on the old “$25,000 Pyramid” game show.
Things having to do with light.
Things having to do with light.
That is, indeed, our focus, the point, of this time after the Epiphany of our Lord … we read the appointed Scriptures each Sunday … this year, we’re treated to as long a season of Epiphany as we can have, because Lent doesn’t start until early March … we see the Light of Christ through these stories of our Lord, beginning his ministry, and we ponder them together … we worship around and through them, we commune together in them, and then, we’re sent out, even as he sent out his first disciples, to Let the Son Shine into a dark world … dark, literally in these short days and long nights of winter … and figuratively … the darkness of suffering, separation from each other, separation from God … in the sometimes bleakness of human life, we bear the Light of Christ into this darkness so others can be warmed and grow into faith and service as Christ calls and intends for us.
And so today’s Gospel word shines brightly on what is a familiar landscape, both for those who have been steeped in God’s Word through their lives, as well as those who are just beginning to hear and study it.
It is the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ first big teaching moment; soon after he called his disciples to follow him, he went and sat down on a mountain, his disciples closest to him, the crowds who had begun to follow him, surrounding him … and Jesus began to speak, and teach …
We will be here, on the Mount with Jesus, for the next few weeks … but today we start with these words called the Beatitudes which are known even to those who don’t know Jesus.
“Beatitude” is the Latin word which we translate as “blessed” – now, of course Jesus didn’t speak Latin, his language was Aramaic which sounds a lot like Hebrew … and that language’s word for blessing, interestingly enough, is also a man’s name … Baruch, or Barak.
But the New Testament is recorded in Greek, and so the word that preachers get to wrestle around with here is not beatitude nor barak but  - makarios – which, like its Hebrew counterpart gets translated “blessed” but in reality it’s a far deeper word. Some scholars translate it as just reflecting emotion … witness one popular TV pastor’s not-so-recent book on the “Be-happy Attitudes“ … and the translation in some English Bibles of these words as “Happy are those …”
But “blessed” means far more than just an emotion. It’s also larger than just the “for me” in it … as in, “what’s in it for me, if I’m poor in spirit, or a peacemaker, or hungering and thirsting after righteousness.”
No, this “blessed” has more to do with, who, what, bears God’s good favor; in, of and through these human states of being, actions, situations.
This word from Matthew’s gospel is also a different Word than what we receive in Luke 6 … words which sound much like these … blessed are you who are poor, hungry, weeping … but also, with the flip side … woe to you who are rich, full, laughing … those words are much more concerned with the material here-and-now, as is all of Luke’s gospel, as it is the Gospel For The Poor …
However, what those words from Luke and these from Matthew have in common … is their sense of God’s reversal of how things really are, from how they appear to be in the here-and-now.
It is the Parallax View.
Yes, I’m borrowing that phrase from the 1974 movie with Warren Beatty, which was filmed around these parts … but the larger concept behind the phrase, is about the property of light … in which what we see with our eyes doesn’t truly reflect the reality of what is … and sometimes, reality is the complete opposite of what we see. Depending on our perspective, where we are, in relation to what we’re looking at … two people at two different locations can see two different things, which may well be totally unrelated to the truth of the object or its action.
Here’s an example … some of us remember old style car speedometers with a needle and a field … the needle indicated the speed of the car … but depending on where you sat in the car, the needle could look like you were going a different speed. Dad, the speedometer right before him, saw himself driving right at the speed limit … let’s says 60 … but to you next to him, the speedometer appeared to read 50 … daddy, speed up, you’re going too slow… while to grandma in the back seat, right behind dad, peering over his shoulder, it looked like he was doing 70 … slow down! Do you want to kill us?
That’s Parallax.
Things are not as they appear. They may even be completely flipped, opposite, depending on how far away you are.
So what does this have to do with Jesus’ words here … of beatitude … barak … makarios … blessing?
Well, first of all, Jesus is laying out The Parallax View of things, isn’t he?
Let’s take a closer look.
Blessed … in God’s state of favor and grace … are the poor in spirit.
Blessed … in God’s state of favor and grace … are those who mourn.
Blessed … in God’s state of favor and grace … are the meek.
Blessed … in God’s state of favor and grace … are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.
Each of these “blessed” states … do not, on the surface, appear to be “blessed” … at least, not as we would consider them.
We would most likely say that they are “cursed” states … that’s the way they appear to us … and of those in them, we at the very least look on in pity, and at worst, with contempt.
The poor in spirit … in reality, beyond poor, deeper than poor, this is grinding poverty, so low that if you’re in it, you literally see no way out.
Mourning … more general than just missing a loved one who has died … but people who are truly miserable and unhappy.
Meek … it can mean humble or gentle, but also “walked on,” “doormats,” “the powerless,” “humiliated.”
Those who hunger and thirst after righteousness … people who seek a justice that has been continually denied them; people without reason for hope, no cause for joy, and no access to the resources of the world.
These four “blessed” states … and especially that last one, which sums up the previous three … no one in their right mind, no one of us, would dare say that people in these conditions, would be ones in God’s state of favor and grace.
And yet … the point of Jesus’ words … the one whose ministry begins with the words he utters just a few short verses prior to these, “Repent … turn around … for the kingdom of heaven has come near” … here, Jesus says, in the kingdom of heaven, in God’s reign on earth as it is in heaven, which is breaking into this dark, dark world here and now in his very being … in the kingdom of heaven … these cursed souls … cursed as the world gives … nothing they can do to change their predicament … nevertheless, Jesus says in the kingdom of heaven view of things, they are blessed. In me, Jesus, you get a little taste of this blessing, right here, right now … and when God reigns, God rules, fully, all this will change and things will be set right.
And this is what the next four “blessed” states are there to point out.
Blessed … in God’s state of favor and grace … are the merciful.
Blessed … in God’s state of favor and grace … are the pure in heart.
Blessed … in God’s state of favor and grace … are the peacemakers.
Blessed … in God’s state of favor and grace … are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.
Where the first four “blesseds” have to do with states of being no one wants to be in … but in which many found themselves … find themselves … even today … the second four have to do with actions no one readily chooses to do … but this is precisely where Jesus says the kingdom of heaven comes into being.
And the parallax view is in the assumption of reward.
The merciful … who generally receive ridicule for their mercifulness … they will in turn receive mercy.
The pure in heart … who generally see the worst side of human life in return for their single-hearted passion for God … they will see God.
The peacemakers … those who work for the healing and wholeness of society, God’s shalom … people full of meekness and mercy … they will be those closest to God.
And the persecuted for righteousness’ sake … those whose lives are often a hell on earth … theirs will be the kingdom of heaven … God’s reign of truth and justice, rightness and mercy and grace and peace.
Parallax, once again. Things are not, will not, be as they now appear.
Now maybe … despite all of what’s gone before … we still might just say “OK” to all that … as the disciples, the crowd surrounding Jesus, might have said, as they, we hear him utter these words of parallax view to us.
Because there’s a certain amount of distance we can keep from these words, as they’re given to us, isn’t there …
I mean, it’s all “Blessed are” and “blessed are” … which can make it easy for us to hear, to receive these words as for anyone else other than us.
What do I mean by that?
Well, let’s look at the first four, which sound undesirably low to us. “Blessed are the poor in spirit … meek … merciful … peacemakers.”
Why, I’m not poor in spirit. He’s talking about somebody else.
Blessed are the meek.
Well, I’m not a doormat. He’s talking about somebody else.
And, conversely, the last four which sound unattainably high to us.
Blessed are the merciful.
Tried that once. I sure didn’t feel blessed. Forget that.
Blessed are the pure in heart … those who hunger and thirst for God.
Who has time? I mean, I go to church, but that’s all I can fit into my schedule.
But then … but then … Jesus brings his words home TO ALL OF US.
“Blessed are YOU … YOU … WHEN … when, not if … WHEN people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.”
The point of the Beatitudes … these baraks … these blessings … these words about being in God’s state of grace and favor … is right there in that little word YOU.
As YOU follow me … Jesus is saying … it’s not going to be an easy road. Oh, people may say that it is, that it will be, that the walk of faith is all so beautiful and wonderful, just me and Jesus and ain’t it all grand.
But watch out when you see who I, Jesus, call as my friends. And call you to live with as friends, as family, as fellow disciples, as companions on this journey.
It’s not the great and glorious. The “beautiful people.” Those who we might think. The popular ones, the rich and famous, the ones who supposedly have it “all together” ...
NO … It’s … the miserable. The helpless. The hopeless. The downtrodden.
It’s … YOU … Jesus says … if you would pull off your masks of phoniness and deceit toward God and one another, look at yourselves in the mirror and face the truth. Great and glorious, “beautiful people,” popular, rich, famous … despised … gutter low … and everyone in between … when the masks of phoniness and posturing come off, we’re all the same.
And all those others … the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted … those are the ones who are simply being authentic … who have already removed their masks … who, Jesus says, have heard my call to repent … to turn around … to confess … to same-say what and who they really are … not the parallax view of humanity but the truth …. not, as Paul puts it in our reading from 1st Corinthians, not human wisdom but God’s foolishness … that we are people so separated from God and each other we need God himself to come and show this kingdom of heaven life, to break into our life with his kingdom of heaven life … to live, to give, to die on a cross for that truth and to rise again to set that truth as the light and love of God for us forever.
The blessings which Jesus speaks in these Beatitudes are not fully realized, that’s true. They weren’t 2000 years ago and they are not now, not yet. But the Word of the Light of God revealed in them is that, in their words, in the states of life which are our living described and reflected in them … in the words of action which are called forth from you and me in them … in that “Blessed Are YOU” … hear that the Kingdom of Heaven has come near, in Jesus …
The Kingdom of Heaven does come near, as we whose lives are in these very words are blessed, in this and other communities, gatherings of Christ-followers, gathered around God’s Word of forgiveness and grace, peace and healing, proclamation and service …
And the Kingdom of Heaven will not just come near, but Be Here, in the little bursts of Parallax – Cross-Shaped – living into which we’re all called … not as the world may, would see “good” and “blessed” but which Christ certainly says are “good” and “blessed” …
And … one day … will be for us all, when Christ returns to reign, as we pray, “on earth as it is in heaven,” that day of light and life for which we wait, and work, and anticipate.
YOU are blessed, Jesus says.
May we live into that blessing, this week, in the prayers and breaking of the bread … and as we are sent out to Let the Son Shine, in each and every place we will find ourselves …
… Christ is there.
And YOU are blessed!
Amen.