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Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Abnormal Ethics
 Psalm 15; Matthew 5:1-16
"In the beauty of the lilies" says the line in "Battle Hymn of the Republic." And this beautiful stained glass window features Easter lilies on either side of Jesus, as he stands there with arms outstretched in benediction.
It's no realistic picture of the Risen Christ. For one thing, he has no nail wounds in his hands or naked feet. And the scenery is all wrong, for off in the distance is a lake with a town on its far shore. The resurrection happened in Jerusalem.
So what we've got is an idealized image of the Risen Christ, and most likely of the spirit of Christianity. For one of the dominant images of the church is the Body of Christ (as in Paul's letters to the Ephesians and the Colossians) -- his mystical body on earth in the absence of his physical body now in heaven.
From the beginning, Christians have been called to represent Christ as if he were present with us, present in our midst, even present by his Spirit within each one of us and all of us together.
The outstretched hands of blessing remind me of the way Jesus began his "sermon on the mount" (Gospel of Matthew, chapters 5-7). We call the first several verses "beatitudes," from the Latin word for happiness or blessing. And Jesus' blessings there catch us absolutely by surprise.
One by one, he turns the spiritual tables on our normal expectations. Common sense says happiness comes when good things are happening -- same root word. And bad happenings bring unhappiness. It's as simple as that. But now he insists that we're blessed when circumstances make us poor, weigh us down with grief, strip away our power, and leave us so much out of touch with God that we crave the taste of grace.
"When life puts you in that kind of space," says Jesus, "God bless you!" Benediction guaranteed.
Just try building your religious empire on that foundation.
Jesus did. The rest of his three-chapter sermon is his manifesto of the Kingdom of God. Or call it his ordination charge to the ministers-in-training that we call the twelve disciples. Either way, he lays out here a system of ethics that is anything but normal. No, we're talking abnormal ethics here, extraordinary principles of spiritual health and transcendent happiness.
It's sadly ironic that Christ's followers down through the centuries tend on one hand towards complacent spiritual sleepwalking, or on the other hand flail about in frustrated failure to live up to lofty expectations.
There's never a bad time, then, to go back to the basics embodied in the beatitudes, these paradoxical promises of blessing by surprise.
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posted by Jack Buckley at
5:17 PM
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