Inspired by Revelation 7:13-17, 1John 3:1-3, Matthew 5:1-12
Earlier this week I officiated my first funeral of this calendar year. The friend whose memorial service was this week was a remarkable man. He was devout without being “preachy” or “holier than thou”, he genuinely loved all people and sought to be in relationship with them, and he put his faith to work every day. Bob was a man who over the last 15 months was filled up with cancer, and yet he spent every day at Dogwood Village visiting people and spreading joy. No matter what happened with his body or how much pain he was in, he gave thanks to God for the blessing of every day of his long life.
I have to tell you that I’m not good at giving thanks to God in all things. This is a work-in-progress for me – and I suspect for many of you as well. Afterall, it is easy to find blessings and give thanks to God when the sun is out, the body’s working right, the family is behaving and are healthy, the job’s going well, the boat works and the house or car don’t require immediate or costly repairs. It is challenging to identify blessings and give thanks to God when life is hard. I have had many struggles during my two careers; during seasons as a parent; as an adult child of parents living with dementia; as a sibling, spouse and friend. I resonate with Jacob on the shores of the river Jabbok, wrestling with God to discover a blessing during an otherwise miserable or challenging season in my life. Eventually, many (but not all) of those struggles have yielded a blessing, but like Jacob, a lot of those challenges left marks on me as well.
Our scriptures today are all about how we will all be blessed through our faith in God and in Jesus the Christ, but that those blessings may be hard won and delayed. In the Book of Revelation, we have heard about the “great multitude”…”from every nation, tribe, people and language” who were standing before the throne and before the Lamb of God. They were worshiping and praising God. An elder asked the author who the white robed multitude were, and the answer was “these are those who have come out of the great tribulation and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb”. These who have lived and died in great hardships are blessed by being forever sheltered by God and having all of their tears wiped away through their faith in Jesus.
The author of 1John is writing to believers who were going through a difficult season marked by division in their congregations and false teachers in their midst. The writer of this letter is trying to calm their fears and renew their faith. He wrote, “…Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is….” This is a forward-looking promise for all of us who suffer in this life while we await the blessing of the triumphal return of Jesus.
Early in Matthew, Jesus is beginning to attract a following. The followers are from Jerusalem and the surrounding countryside, including the Gentile regions. The crowds got so large that Jesus went up a hillside to speak with his Disciples. He began to teach them and the people in the crowd how his followers should act so that they lived in the kingdom of heaven while in the world. We know this teaching as the “Beatitudes” and it is our reading for today. Jesus teaches that those who are humble and meek, who mourn, who seek righteousness with all their strength, who are merciful, pure in heart, who work for peace, who are persecuted because of their righteousness and because of their faith in Jesus, are and will be forever blessed by his Father in heaven. These are hard-won blessings because they will cost us the most, and like the great multitudes, might be delayed until after we die.
The Bible can teach us many things. One of the most important things it teaches is that no matter what hard things happen in our lives, God is with us. God’s transformative and unconditional love surrounds us and at times carries us. It also speaks to us, across the whole of the narrative, about how difficult it is to be a follower of God. Think about any of our spiritual ancestors from Genesis to Revelation…can you think of any who had it easy? Neither can I. This should help to normalize the fact that we really shouldn’t expect a life devoid of pain and suffering, or of blessings from God.
To help us deal with that pain and suffering, we need to invest time and effort in developing a relationship with God and with our neighbors, so that we have a place to turn when life gets hard. Think about the most challenging times in your life…what was it that got you through? I suspect that your answer is the people in your life and your faith in God – not the things you acquired, your social status or the amount of money in your bank accounts. Time and again across the Bible we see that the people who find blessings in their great tribulations are those who have a well-developed faith in God. This is why Jesus teaches us that the deeper our relationship with God and each other is, the more blessed we will be as we weather the storms of life.
Hard-won blessings come when we learn to trust our Almighty God to help us through the challenges that come in life. Hard-won blessings come, but they often don’t come quickly or in ways that we easily recognize. We sometimes make poor choices, follow the gods of the world and our own making, forget or deny that there is an Almighty God who is seeking to be in relationship with us – who is seeking to help us live abundant lives even in the midst of trials and tribulations. A God who forgives us our short comings and welcomes us back from our wayward wanderings. A God who is all loving and who can and will heal all our wounds.
In a moment we will speak the names of those who we have loved and who have transitioned into the promises of Jesus over the last year. In the midst of our grief, it is often hard to hear what a blessing it is that those we have loved are now among the great cloud of witnesses before the Lamb and the Throne. Yet this is the good news of our faith – we who follow the Christ in life will also follow him in death. He has gone to prepare a place for each of us and will come again to take us to him; there is no finer blessing than that. Therefore, let us give our thanks to God for all our hard-won blessings, amen!