"Blessed is she ..."

(Please read Matthew 5:1-12 "The Beatitudes")

Ahhhh, the Sermon on the Mount. So many of us picture Jesus standing on the mountain, shouting down to the crowds of people who had begun to follow him from town to town. As I read the Scriptures, I’m sensing something different than what I had once envisioned. Could this be an intimate moment of teaching between Jesus and his disciples on the mountainside, with the crowds of people not yet hearing these words of hope? Could Jesus be telling his disciples of this kingdom-on-earth-and-in-heaven thinking that was being ushered into the world, even as they walked among the meek, the mourning, the peacemakers, the poor in spirit, those who hungered for righteousness as deeply as any starving person would hunger for a morsel of food? Jesus might have pointed to the crowds and whispered to his disciples, "Look into their eyes. These are the eyes of the blesseds.”

This week, as so many of us read the Scriptures that we have grown to know as The Beatitudes, as we read of Jesus teaching the disciples of this upside-down thinking (or is it a rightside-up thinking?) I overheard, "Blessed is she, for she has witnessed the holy.”

Allow me to share with you this holy moment that I witnessed on Tuesday …
The man's hair was grey and straggly. His shoulders looked as if they were carrying the weight of the world on them. Perhaps they were bearing the weight of HIS own world. He had tried to walk across the busy road with a garbage bag filled with crushed soda and beer cans. He didn't make it. His bag broke and out spilled his treasure of crushed cans. The traffic was rush-hour, going-home traffic. He stood on the curb, out of danger and watched car after car drive over the cans and around the cans. And then it happened. A car stopped. Emergency lights were turned on. A man in a dark suit stepped out of the car, held his hands up to stop the traffic and together a man with the grey straggly hair and a man in a dark suit picked up cans.

I shared this moment with a friend and he quoted Matthew 25:35-36 with a minor addition: “… for I was hungry, and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was a stranger, and you took me in. I was naked, and you clothed me. I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison, and you came to me. I was broke and you picked up crushed soda and beer cans.”

Blessed is she who witnessed Jesus in a dark suit ... or was it Jesus with grey straggly hair? Blessed is she, either way! Blessed is she, for she has witnessed the holy.

anna