Blessed are the poor in spirit: truly!

Matariki’s reflection on life is about the past, present and the future. I want to focus a bit this morning about the present because planning for the future needs a good assessment of where things are at and how things are. Good planning requires good data, and often these pauses help us sift through an accumulation of ideas, values and concerns that, in the scheme of things, seemed important as we took them on, but ultimately have nothing to offer us really except weigh us down and crowd out our core values.

There’s nothing like a religious paradigm to do this to us. There’s a burden to constantly change, be aware of so many things, feel like any misstep is a massive let-down, any mistake is a catastrophe.

There are so many legitimate concerns for us to be addressing in this world, the planet is burning, the injustices to minorities, the financial crisis, wars around the world, systemic racism and decolonising etc etc etc. But no one person is capable of taking them all on. We need to pause and the let the noise settle, and notice what is left in the peace. What’s at our core, and this morning, what is at the core of our faith?

I invite you to look this morning then at the beginning of one of the officially recognised retellings of the story of Jesus. It’s often helpful to remind ourselves that the access to the whole Second Testament was not in fact a reality for at least the first 200 years or so of Christianity—a tenth of our history actually. In that time a community could conceivably only have had access to this one account and that was it—and even then it might just be passing through as making copies of these by hand was not a trivial task. For many this would therefore be the totality of their understanding of Jesus’ story. The account we use this morning is the Gospel of St Matthew.

Compared to the heaviness of the holy code they were constantly being reminded of, these Gospels—gospel meaning good news—were welcome relief.

In Matthew, Jesus is baptised, then retreats for just shy of a month and a half to the desert to fast—where he is tempted by the Satan. He comes back from that to begin his ministry and soon crowds were following him. 

Why?

Simply I think, because he was addressing the regular people who were feeling the weight of failure to live up to what they were being taught they were required to do. A significant measurement for success was ultimately being freed from Roman occupation. And that wasn’t happening—no matter how they tried to please God. And some of the things they were needing to do to please God were pretty austere. For example, in the gospel of John, a man who was sick for 38 years was cured by Jesus and picked up his mat to walk home. And he got in trouble by the religious types for ‘working on the sabbath’. This was a great burden to carry. 

I have a feeling that these transgressions would add to the pool of ‘sin’ that meant God was not listening, was still angry and was still punishing them by leaving the Romans in charge. 

Being told that even the smallest of things makes God angry is a difficult paradigm for people to live in. Particularly if that God is meant to be an ever-loving and ever-faithful God. 

So, at the beginning of the book of Matthew,  the crowds that day were hearing and seeing something different in Jesus and he was grabbing their attention. 

They gathered, around him on the side of a hill thronging with excitement, taking time out of their daily life to listen, to see, to bear witness.

And to this mass of people, burdened by religion, expectation and struggle he opens with words that stopped their fears in their tracks.

“Blessed, blessed I say, are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven!”

—mic drop.

The promise of God’s highest reward was being bestowed on these, the voiceless multitude! 

These unholy, disobedient and insignificant people who bore responsibility for offending God, were actually the ones for whom the kingdom of heaven was being gifted?

Again, let’s pause to reflect on this. 

Those who were living under the narrative that they were spiritually not cutting it, were made to feel less than the powerful priestly sects, were told they were far from God. The ones who struggled then to see why faith made sense (because it didn’t in the way they were being taught it), those who weren’t allowed to worship God on their terms they understood, let alone even speak of God, these were the ones whom Jesus said the kingdom is built for and on.

This kingdom which they found out over the next few years, had love, grace, forgiveness and hope at the centre. Moral codes flowed out from these virtues or ethics, but as an expression not requirements.

It meant that those of us who stumble around at times are supported by those who are strong. And vice versa. It’s a paradigm that allows dignity to all of us, and levels the field. There’s no greater or lesser. 

To put it in more contemporary terms, in this simple phrasing Christ reinstates the fundamental reality that spirituality is inherent in all of us. And that if you feel you are impoverished in that space, then you’re on the right track.

The more you know, the more you know how little you know. It’s the ones who think they got it sorted that miss out. 

If you look around this room, we see how uncertainty characterises everyone’s spirituality here. In fact, it’s precisely that which means we see each other as spiritual people, though perhaps we wouldn’t use that phrase for fear it would work against us.

Being able to see the spirituality in others is a beautiful thing. Perhaps I need to give a framework for my understanding of spirituality.

Spirituality is the exercising of love. Love God, Love people, Love self. It’s the fundamental guideline that runs throughout a few millennia of faith.

Love is the key, because God is love. And if God is love, and we are able to love then we’re doing something divine.

Every act of putting self on hold, whether it be spending hours with someone, or simply txting someone when they’re down, holding people in prayer, buying someone a coffee, a plant or whatever, spending time with someone, humbly offering advice or being a listening ear, dignifying someone with conversation… this is love, some of it feels terribly insignificant really, but actually even that is a spiritual act.

I think this is why I get so frustrated with Christianity that asks us to abandon ourselves and lives at the door and enter in to an escape from life. Often this is to create a personal experience of the Holy Spirit which then individualises faith—separates it from the reality of how we are doing spirituality through love and makes the true work seem insignificant and unspectacular.

We need not seek those peak experiences, those adrenalised moments at the expense of the very beautiful reality that the Spirit is at work all around us, hovering over the chaos of the world like a dove and agitating the wind with its wings.

Each agitation, present in those little micro-moments of connection between people. 

Wherever love is present, God is there, and it is a spiritual experience—in fact, it’s the only spiritual experience that matters according to St Paul. I don’t want a spirituality that is devoid of love. And to that end, with my own incapacity to inhabit that space all the time, I am spiritually impoverished—and that’s ok, because when I do act with love, I accept that it’s a divine and beautifully spiritual act.

Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God.

Blessed are the ones who don’t think they’re very spiritual, because they naturally fit the paradigm of divine hope.