God is Enough
Elaine Poproski Download: Audio
Sunday Scripture Reading: Matthew 5:1-12 (NRSV)
1 When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Read more…
Looking to Sunday: Preparing to Hear from God
by Elaine Poproski
One of Walmer’s people is someone most of us don’t know. She lives in a rooming house in the neighbourhood and for various reasons never leaves that rooming house. Her life consists of her bedroom and a shared kitchen and bathroom. Others in the house keep an eye on her. She has a few professionals who ensure her basic needs are met. And about once a month I spend an hour visiting her. We share communion, we pray together, and I read her favourite passages of Scripture to her. I always read from the King James Version and I always read the Beatitudes.
She loves the Beatitudes. Once I asked her why and she didn’t have an answer. But where the other favourites are read or not read based on her particular mood on a particular day, we always read the Beatitudes. This is something I have come to appreciate and to find particularly meaningful. Every time I read the words, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” I am struck by the knowledge that this woman sitting across from me is exactly who Jesus was talking about when He spoke these words to His disciples. This woman isn’t always easy to visit. Sometimes she gets really mad at me and there’s nothing I can do to appease her. Sometimes she’s weepy and forlorn and I have no comfort to give. Sometimes she’s harsh with me and convinced that I’m like the stupid sheep who wandered away from the flock and got its leg broken. And sometimes we laugh together at Jesus’ sense of humour in the story of the Wedding at Cana or we celebrate life’s little joys like the sweetness of mandarin oranges delivered by Meals on Wheels. I never know what a visit will bring, except that I know I’ll be reading the Beatitudes to a woman Jesus Himself declared blessed simply because of who she is.
On Sunday we’ll be reading the Beatitudes in church. These verses from the beginning of Matthew 5 will form the core of the sermon God is birthing in me to share. In particular, we’ll be invited to consider the strange truth that it is those who suffer and those who live on the margins of our neighbourhoods and communities that Jesus seems to be preferring over the rest of us. We say, “Blessed are those with money” or “Blessed are those with good health” or “Blessed are those with family and friends.” But Jesus seems to say the opposite, not just in the Beatitudes but throughout the gospels. On Sunday we’ll consider the suffering and loss represented by the Beatitudes and the seemingly paradoxical declaration of blessing in the midst of that suffering and loss (perhaps even because of that suffering and loss?).
As you prepare for Sunday, I invite you to read the Beatitudes a number of times. Where are you in the words? If these are the people who are blessed, what must blessing mean? Are you blessed? Are you blessed in the way Jesus talks about being blessed or are you blessed in the ways our world talks about being blessed? Given how Jesus talks about blessing, do you want to be blessed by God?