In the Name of God:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Oh my, my, my, my . . . what a reading to preach on!  The beatitudes . . . one of the most famous passages in the Gospels . . . you know, all those "blessed are the 'so-and-so's' . . . the meek, the peacemakers, the pure in heart . . . ."  I've had more than one person tell me that the beatitudes are their favorite part of the Bible.  What a terrific opportunity, eh?

Well . . . actually . . . no.  Because, truthfully, it's hard to speak freshly about something we all think we know pretty well.  And there's an even deeper challenge to preaching on texts like the beatitudes. . .  because some of these passages that, on the one hand are so familiar, are also passages that - truthfully - we'd really rather not have to deal with . . . not deeply . . . not truly. 

Take the beatitudes, for example.  (I feel like that old comic, Henny Youngman:  "Take the beatitudes . . . please!")  The preacher Barbara Brown Taylor says,[1] very rightly I think, that most of us don't know what to do with the beatitudes.  Some of us have heard them for so long that they have lost their shock value.  They just sound sort of sweet and familiar - a Christian poem - something to needlepoint and hang over the piano . . . not something to really pay attention to.  Others of us hear them like commandments, and worry that we are not meek enough, or pure enough, or persecuted enough . . . and worry that we should begin a regime of psychological self-torture.

Yet others of us, when we hear the beatitudes read, translate them into more contemporary language that sounds something like:  Blessed are the stupid, the timid, the weak; blessed are the losers, the chumps, the idealists;  blessed are the naive, the foolish, the weak; blessed are the cowards; blessed are the beaten, the tortured, the hated.  THESE are the children of God? . . . the one's who will inherit the earth . . . AND the kingdom of heaven?  Come on!  "I don't want anything to do with that stuff . . . there's gotta be another way."

Well, first I'll point out to you that there are no "shoulds" or "oughts" here.  The language of the beatitudes is not transactional language . . . do this and you will receive this; do that and you will receive that.  The language of the beatitudes is descriptive language . . . it's saying, simply, that this is who these people are now, and this is what the future holds for them.  It is not the language of law but of the Gospel, the language of hope and promise that the way things are now is not the way that they will always be, and that those who find themselves at the bottom of society's pecking order will eventually find themselves at the top of the heap.

Today, this Gospel is being preached not just here at Grace Church, but throughout the world . . . in the ruined churches of Haiti where people may be sitting in the dirt to hear this good news; in the beleaguered churches of Baghdad where Christians gather despite the threat of bombs to hear this good news; and right across the street at Our Lady of Sorrows where some of our Spanish-speaking neighbors, clients of our food pantry, will gather to hear this good news in their own language.

Much of the power of the beatitudes depends on where you are sitting when you hear them.  They sound different from on top than they do from underneath.  They sound different up front than they do in the back.  If you're on top and up front, religiously self-satisfied and self-assured, the beatitudes can sound pretty confrontational.  Where is your hunger and thirst, you well-fed Christians?  Where is your spiritual poverty?  Where are the bones of your soul showing through your clothes, and why aren't your handkerchiefs soaked with tears?

But on the bottom, way in the back, with the victims, the dreamers, the pushovers, and the fools, the beatitudes sound completely different.  "Shhh, dry your tears, little ones.  The whole earth belongs to you, even though someone else holds the keys at the moment.  It won't be long now.  Heaven's gates are opening wide for you, and the first face you will see will be the face of God."

The words are the same everywhere, of course.  It's just the ears that change.  We each hear Jesus' description of the good life through our own filters . . . as something foreign or something familiar; as something to be sought or something to be feared.  I guess you can do anything you want with the beatitudes . . . people always have.  Some have ignored them.  Some have admired them . . . and then walked away from them.  Some have used them as a yardstick to measure their own blessedness.  And some have used them to declare revolution.  The simplest thing to do with them perhaps, is simply to take them in . . . let them seep into you and let them turn what the world tells us is true and real upside down.  If you do that you'll never be so sure anymore exactly who are the winners and who are the losers.

In fact, if you're one of those people who have it pretty good at the moment, you may discover some of your comfort turning into DIScomfort.  And that's not such a bad thing.  If you let the beatitudes seep into you, if you let them turn things upside down, if you begin to see that the way the world says things are isn't really the way they are at all . . . well, that's all to the good.

That preacher I mentioned earlier, Barbara Brown Taylor, says that when she was a little girl she liked to stand on her head.  She was short, and everything in the world was taller than she was . . . taller and very boring.  But she could liven things up a little when she stood on her head.  Grass hung like a fringe in front of her eyes.  Trees grew down and not up, and the sky was a blue lawn.  She says she liked standing on her head because it made her see old things in a new way.  It made life seem exciting and unpredictable.  In a world where trees grew down and houses might fall up, anything seemed possible.

Upside down, you begin to see God's blessed ones in places it would never have occurred to you to look.  You begin to see that the poor in spirit, the meek and those who mourn are not just people you can help but people who can help you, if you will let them.  And that their hunger and thirst for God are not voids to be filled but appetites to be envied.

Upside down, you begin to see that the peacemakers are not flower children but physicians, prescribing God's own tranquility, and that the pure in heart have just never gotten the knack of locking their doors.  Upside down, you begin to see that those who have been bruised for their faith are not the sad ones but the happy ones because they have found something worth being bruised for, and that those who are merciful are just handing out what they have already received in abundance.

The world looks funny upside down, but maybe that is exactly how it looks when you have your feet planted in heaven.  Jesus did it all the time and seemed to think that we could do it too.  So . . . blessed are those who find the world turned upside down, for they shall see the world as God sees it.  They shall also find themselves in good company, turned upside down by the only one who really knows which way is up.

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