Are we the church Jesus began? Homily on the 4th Sunday of Ordinary Time

The door of the Church of the Beatitudes in Israel

We are all so familiar with the Beatitudes that for me personally I really did not hear what Jesus was calling us all to. He is calling us to be light, salt, and leaven and transform the world. Our values can never be the values of the society in which we live no matter that century we are live. Our vocation is to live the values of the Kingdom of Heaven and offer the world a new way to live. The Beatitudes are our job description. As one commentator wrote: they are facets or sides of the jewel of God’s Kingdom.

To be poor in spirit is to bow humbly before God and proclaim him God. As we are told in the first commandment: “You shall have no other god before me.”  In joy and praise and in sorry and struggle, we must acknowledge our poverty. This is the reason I decided to use a formula for the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday, I have never used: Remember you are dust and unto dust we shall return. We have forgotten who God is in our contemporary society and we worship at the golden calves of our own creation.

To be meek means we trust in God, no matter what. We are creations of the loving Creator. Again, we need to face our false idols. Our idols may not made of stone and metal, but they are just as real. Our egos, people in our country, stuff…there is only one Messiah, and this is the God we worship. He alone.

To mourn is more than our own grief. We must mourn the pain and sorrow of the world. We must stand in solidarity with the mother of a child whose child is hungry because Catholic Relief Services does not have enough funding; the person whose job is taken over by AI, a 5-year-old separated from his father and sent to Texas because of what his father did.

To work for justice and mercy is to work for a world where everyone is given a fair chance, be safe from violence and retribution and everyone is treated with God’s mercy, where the resources of the world belong to every person and not just a small group who become rich on the backs of those who have not.  Mercy is how God treats each of use when we fall short. We are told to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” We pray “forgive us our sins and we forgive others.”  We are not God, but we are to treat each other as he treats us. To be pure of heart is to search for God for no other reason than to love him. It is not to make objects of another person for our own gratification.

We are to be peacemakers. We can only be a true peacemaker when our hearts are filled with the peace of God. This is why a life a prayer is essential. There is so much violence in the world. What is happening in Minnesota could be here. You cannot tell me that problems need to be solved by killing someone. A peacemaker gets angry and frustrated but does not contribute to the violence and hatred. In the martial arts, the goal is to walk away from the conflict and not engage the other only to disarm. I know this because I used to do them. People have gotten angry at my supposed silence about all this: I say to you now: I condemn all the violence being done in this country and world. But that also means the violence we do to each other. The harsh email, the angry words, the spouse who hits the another with a fist or word, the bullying done to someone who is gay, another creed or color, poor or rich, the stupidity of Facebook comments or someone who disagrees with violent words. We are a Christian community, and we cannot allow it among us. Disagree but do it in peaceful ways. I repeat, I condemn all the violence of the world.

If we truly strive to live these values of the Kingdom be prepared to be persecuted. Not just by the world but by those in the Christian world who have chosen the values of our society to be God. We will not be perfect living in the Kingdom, but our path will lead to God and life, not to death and dust.

As we prepare for Lent in a few weeks, we must ask ourselves and as a church, what do we want to be? A community about us? A community of the world? Or do we want to live values of the Kingdom?