The Way God Wants Us To Be

This liturgical year we have anticipated the coming of the long awaited Messiah.  We have celebrated the birth of the Christ child.  We have seen the outside world recognize Jesus in the coming of the Magi.  We have seen Jesus baptized and acknowledged as the Son of God.  We have seen Jesus call his first disciples. 
Now we are getting to know Jesus.  We are seeing Jesus teach and preach to the people he came to save.  In today’s gospel, Jesus taught through the beatitudes to show what is expected of us.  Jesus tells us that if we prioritize what we do in His name, in this present life, then we just might be rewarded in our futures.
Being poor in spirit means more than being financially insecure.  It means that we are totally dependent on God.  We know that we cannot make it completely on our own.  Our lives must be a living testimony to how much we need God in our lives.  If we can do that, then the kingdom of heaven could be ours.
When we think of being in mourning, we think of someone who has lost a loved one who has died.  There is also another way to mourn.  We can mourn the state of the world around us that can seem lost and in the midst of chaos.  We may long for a world that operates closer to what God has intended for us than what we see now.  We may not have experienced the world we mourn for.  We just know that there is a better way.  Thankfully, Jesus tells us we will be comforted.
The meekness that is talked about should not be mistaken for weakness.  Moses was thought of as being meek.  Jesus was thought of as being meek.  No one should ever think of Moses or Jesus as weak.  Being meek may mean that we go about our lives quietly and deliberately.  We get things done without a whole lot of noise and drama.  We are told that these type of people will inherit the earth.  They will be good caretakers of what has been entrusted to them.
While we may usually think of hunger and thirst as needing to satisfy purely physical needs, it can mean something else.  To hunger and thirst for righteousness is to want to see the will of God being done here on earth.  As Christian’s, we know what Scripture says about doing the will of God.  Our mission in life to do God’s will.  We want to follow God’s plan ourselves and want to see others doing it also.  Imagine our families, our communities, our state, our country and the world operating according to God’s plan.  We are all taking care of each other in such a way where no one feels alone, left out, taken advantage of, or abused.  We can hunger and thirst for that kind of life and actively work towards it.  If we can do that, we are told that our hunger and thirst will be satisfied.
In regards to the beatitude citing mercy, we are talking about an active form of mercy rather than a feeling.  If we can decide to forgive and not punish when punishment may be called for, this is an active form of mercy.  Restorative Justice is an example of mercy where people who have committed a crime are given a chance to give back to the community they may have wronged.  This may be hard to do in our culture when showing mercy may be considered a weakness.  Yet God calls us to show mercy anyway.  In turn, God will show us mercy on the Day of Judgement.
Being pure of heart means that our focus is solely on God.  There are no more important idols or priorities than serving God.  Money or possessions may be nice, but they no longer have power over us.  God and the kingdom of heaven are to be our focus.  Our reward is that we will see God.
We seem to know more about keeping the peace and being peace keepers than we do about being peacemakers.  In the world we live in today, there should be no greater honor than to be peacemakers.  If we go out of our way to make sure things are right in the first place, we are taking our role as peacemakers seriously and we will have fewer reasons to have peacekeepers on hand.  Peacekeepers will be the loneliest people in town like the Maytag Repair Men and Women.  We have so many peacekeepers because so few people want to do the upfront and necessary work of peacemaking.  If we do take our roles as peacemakers seriously, we are told that we will be considered children of God.
We know that those who follow the will of God may be persecuted at some point in their lives or sadly through most of their lives.  We know this to be the cost of discipleship.  Following in the footsteps of Jesus is not an easy road.  The hardships can be many.  Some who walk this path may be considered losers, suckers, and failures by the rules of today’s materialistic culture.  But God says of these people that theirs will be the kingdom of heaven, like the poor in spirit.  Whose path do we chose, God’s will or the world’s?
Jesus seems to have been talking to his disciples when He gave us the Beatitudes.  He seems to repeat Himself at the end when he says that those who suffer persecution, being hated, and called everything but a child of God because of following Him.  But Jesus tells us to rejoice and be happy because of the choice we make to follow God.  We are reminded that the same thing happened to the prophets of old.  
The good news of today’s gospel is that Jesus took the time to tell us the attributes that we should all aspire to, and then told us the rewards that can be  had.  I hope and pray that we see these rewards are worth our efforts.
St. James family, we have heard about the Beatitudes many times throughout our church lives.  I hope that today something may have prompted us to understand them in a different way.  We are reminded that the attributes that are important to God often run counter to how our materialistic and individualistic world works.  So we can expect hardships and repercussions for being followers of the message of Jesus Christ.  My prayer for all of us is that of thanksgiving for the gift of Jesus Christ. We are given another chance to get it right.  We are given another chance to show our love of God and our neighbor.  We should not do it just for the rewards, but because it is the right thing to do.  It will help our fellow man and woman.  It will help us to make the kind of world that God wants for us.  What we do, we should remember to do for the glory of God.  God bless us all.  Amen.