The Beatitudes of Jesus are eight wisdom sayings that stand at the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. They are not moral teachings as much as they are soulful riddles that invite the hearer into a new way of being human. They are an invitation to see, from the inside of our lives—from our souls—what it could mean to be truly human. At this time of such a massive reassessment of human life on this planet, the Beatitudes, what I call, "Novel Attitudes," could point the way to a better way of life for our communities and our world.
1.
We are, despite the troubling realities of our world right now, in the season of Easter. Easter usually fills us with a sense of vitality, newness, and progress. In the northern hemisphere, it comes during the spring, when life in all its forms is bursting from the earth. It is the annual renewal of our lives in the light of the annual renewal of life.
But this year, Easter’s muted, if not suppressed entirely by the realities of this global pandemic that’s shut just about everything down, and made life challenging for just about everyone.
On Easter I said that Easter is a matter of consciousness; it’s about seeing with new eyes and embracing a vision for our lives and our world that can change everything.
Easter reveals Christ to us as the glory of Life. Easter envisions us with the sign of Christ as the divine energy of creation; Christ as God’s anointing of the humus of our otherwise inert bodies with the irrepressible, indomitable, creative life-force of the cosmos.
Easter reveals to us that all things are imbued with the light and life of God. Easter opens our eyes to the divinization of all things. All things precious, all things radiant with the divine, all things, therefore, as holy.
This vision could change everything, but changing everything will require that we let go of old ways of seeing; to gain the greater you have to let go of the lesser.
Easter symbolizes the truth that you can’t have Easter without Good Friday, new life without death, new sight without acknowledging that you can’t see. We’ll not get the world we all need until we’re courageous enough to relinquish the attitudes and behaviors that are killing us.
2.
Today we begin a series on the Beatitudes of Jesus. Ancient wisdom for modern lives. These eight Beatitudes, what I’m calling, eight “Novel Attitudes,” begin with letting go, with acknowledging that all we’ve accumulated could stand in the way of what we need most. The lesser can’t eclipse the greater.
The Beatitudes are eight wise sayings that stand at the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Saint Matthew’s Gospel. They’re soulful riddles that invite us into a new way of being human. Like Easter, they’re an invitation to see, from a spiritual vantage point, what it means to be human the way our Maker intended.
They’re at odds not only with the social and political realities we know and often value, but they challenge conventional religion as well.
Jesus, on behalf of God, wanted to turn the world upside down.
His sayings are like Zen koans. They challenge us with a radical transformation of our consciousness and from that transformation of consciousness, the transformation of our lives. His sayings take us inside, they make us listen from our souls, they want us to go past so much of what we’ve learned along life’s way, things that get in the way of true Life.
The Beatitudes, these “Novel Attitudes” want to turn our egoic minds on end and push through to the soul of things, to truths the human race has too long ignored about the way the universe truly works when things are in harmony with their source and fullness—when we are consciously in God and God is in us.
Maybe right now, when all things seem topsy turvy, we have the chance to let the radical truths of Jesus slip in, past our defenses, awaken our souls and therefore change our lives. And if our lives change, so will our world.
3.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
This is the first Beatitude, the first Novel Attitude, the first soul-truth that can help us rebuild our world.
It’s vintage Jesus. The way up is down. The first shall be last. The last shall be first. If you want to be great, you need to serve. Poverty not riches is the way to get what matters most.
A Zen master received a university professor who wanted to learn about Zen Buddhism. The Zen master, as is the custom, served her tea. But when the cup was full, the master kept pouring until it overflowed onto the table. Alarmed the professor said, “That’s enough, thank you very much!” The master nodded and said, “Like this cup, you come with your learning and opinions and questions. I cannot show you the way of Zen if you are full. You must first empty your cup.”
That’s not a Zen koan. But it is a Zen teaching story. And it gets at what Jesus is after—
The way up is down. Those who think they know, don’t. Those who believe they’re winning, are losing. Those whose cup is full, cannot receive. Letting go of what you know can teach you what matters most.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
4.
In 2009 I thought I was on the verge of losing everything I treasured. My marriage of twenty three years had fallen apart. I was left to father two teenage boys alone and I didn’t know how they’d handle the trauma. I wasn’t sure how my congregation would deal with a divorced and obviously wounded pastor; I didn’t know if I still would have a job and everything that job provided. Then, not long after that, my best friend took his life.
I was in a tail spin. I went to my therapist. I had a legal pad on my lap. On it I’d mapped a timeline—all the steps I thought I needed to salvage my life. We talked for a bit. And then I said, pointing to my plan, “So I don’t need this?” He shook his head. “This is a disaster. A disaster by definition is beyond your ability to control.”
Loss became my teacher. Emptiness became my friend. I remember the sense of falling into a pit that seemed to have no bottom. It was excruciating. Completely disorienting. I felt like a failure and that I’d never recover. I was broken in so many ways. There were days I felt I had nothing to give. I had to let go. In many ways I had no choice.
What I didn’t realize at the time is that loss would become one of my greatest teachers. Losing was the way to finding. Many of the things I’d thought I couldn’t live without, I realized I could live without. I was breathing; my heart was beating. At least I was still alive and life is what mattered most. It was the beginning of the most spiritually transformative decades of my life. I was religious before, but didn’t know my soul. I was living a life, but I wasn’t in love with Life.
Empty, I was finally able to receive what matters most. When I was full, I had no room for what I really needed.
I learned first hand the truth of Jesus’ words, “Blessed are you when you’re busted and flat on your face, not knowing how you’ll ever get up again; all you thought you couldn’t live without, you can live without. And with nothing to block the way, you’ll find the divine nature of your soul, the very Fire of Life.”
5.
We’re living through trying times. The times we’re living through could end up being the hardest thing we’ve ever done. Some of us don’t know how we’ll make ends meet. Some of us are out of work. Some of us can’t touch or visit those we most love and need. Some of us have had to cancel cherished plans. Some of us feel cooped up, controlled, like a resentful teenager who’s been grounded. There are graduating seniors who thought they knew where they were headed next, but not now; the future is up for grabs. There are business persons who don’t know how to keep folks employed. There are frontline workers and their families who feel the threat every day. And there’s a disease out there, an invisible enemy, we know next to nothing about. Some of us are bored, but underneath we’re all scared stiff.
Like it or not, we’re being emptied of what we thought we couldn’t live without, and we’re finding that maybe we can.
If we let go, we’ll break out of the old attitudes that have gotten us here; we’ll liberate ourselves from the consumptive, exploitive capitalism that’s destroying lives and ruining the planet; we’ll disentangle ourselves from the disparities and privileges that make some obscenely rich, while half the world’s population—over three billion people—live on less than $2.50 a day; we’ll move beyond the prejudice that holds us all in a death grip. If we let go of what, ultimately, we cannot keep, we’ll find our way to what we can never lose: the reverence for Life; we’ll find our way into a new and holy humanity.
When we make ourselves an empty cup, when we’re humbled and are willing to let go of what we know in order to find another way, we can be filled with something new.
This Novel Attitude, which could help us rebuild the world, might be novel to many of us, but it’s not new to those who know the most about the transformation of their lives.
The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous works for millions of people because it begins with this “Novel Attitude”—
Step One: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol (or whatever holds us captive)—and that our lives had become unmanageable.
What if we did that now, in this crisis, collectively and individually?
What if we admitted that we are powerless, that we cannot keep living the way we’ve been living—that our lives and the life of the world is unmanageable?
Step Two: We came to believe that only a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
What if we did that now, in this crisis?
What if we were to confess that we have come to believe that if we do not find our souls, we will lose our minds?
Step Three: We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over the care of God as we understood God.
What if we did that now?
What if we were to make a decision now to let go of what we cannot keep so we can gain what we can never lose?
This is the way new lives are born. This is the way a new world is born.
Only an empty cup can be filled.