On the wall by La Siesta hotel in Olas Altas is a plaque commemorating the place where, in 1952, Jack Kerouac, stopped roaming for a bit. In long winding sentences he wrote about his time in Mazatlan, in his epic rollicking novel On the Road. He drank beer, hung out with the locals, and dreamed of the proletariat overcoming.
Kerouac is credited with coining the term the beat generation. Beat, originally meaning weary, also came to carry the idea of the beat of music, and also the beatific experience of spirituality, sought in that time through the heightened sensory awareness induced by drugs, jazz, sex or meditation. The Beatniks sought beatitude, a blessed state, rejecting what they saw as the joylessness and purposelessness of modern society. They looked for happiness, for beatitude.
Even if we aren’t following Kerouac’s self-destructive lifestyle, we can understand why he was here, by the water, drinking beer with limes, listening to music, watching the bathing-suited bodies dancing in the surf, and listening to fishermen spinning stories of great marlin battles. Many of us have come here for beatitude, too, the happiness of the Mexican people and culture, the joy of community, the blessedness of sunshine and salt air.
Our texts all today can be called beatitudes—poems about blessedness, although they are quite different in style and content from Jack Kerouac’s beatitudes. My grandma Rustad was about as different from Kerouac as it is possible to be. She loved poetry, though and had me and my sister memorize Psalm 1 on our walks in the Northwoods of Minnesota,
Blessed are they who walk not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stand in the way of sinners,
nor sit in the seat of scoffers;
but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on the law meditates day and night.
like a tree planted by streams of water,
that yields its fruit in its season,
whose leaf does not wither.
As with most poetry, we are left with an image to hold onto here—to be blessed is to be like a fruitful tree, planted by the water, with shiny healthy leaves.
At the end of worship today I will once again invite you to receive the benediction. I will raise my hands like this, and I will use scriptural words to pronounce God’s blessing on this congregation. Today those words will come from two of our appointed texts, Jeremiah 17: 8 and Psalm 1: 1 and 6
May you be like trees planted by water who yield your fruit in its season, watched over and protected by God.
I have lived nearly all my life in Minnesota—our trees are oaks, maples, elms, birches, tamaracks, white pines. Right now, the landscape there is monochromatic—whites and greys, hints of blue. The trees stand bare against the vast grey skyline, waiting for spring. Even the trees planted by the streams are just stark reminders of the light and warmth that will return.
The trees here are certainly different, probably more like the trees the psalmist referred to. The evergreens of this climate are the palms and cacti. I noticed the other day a Guanacaste tree’s new season’s leaves emerging and the elephant ear shaped pods growing shiny and strong on the huge arching branches. Soon the Jacaranda trees will reach over the buildings with their glorious purple flowers.
Trees are indicators of life. Their seasonal changes mimic our own patterns. They lift their leafy arms up; they send roots down deep into the soil. They are both grounded and growing, stationary and on the move. They stretch, they reach, they seek what gives them life—water, soil, and sun. Nature teaches us. It is the first expression of God, remember—let there be light and life, and fruit bearing trees. All of creation is connected in the Creator in ways we’re still learning about. Scientists recently discovered how trees are connected to each other and can communicate and transmit chemicals between them through the web of fungal connections called mycelium. Wow!
The love of God is revealed in all that God has infused with life. So, it should not surprise us that images of trees, shrubs, water, and earth appear throughout our scriptures. These images are of God and of God’s blessed relationship with us.
In our Gospel, Jesus preaches of blessing in his Sermon on the Plain. For each present reality—poverty, hunger, weeping, hatred—Jesus offers a promise that is to come. The poor will reap the kingdom, the hungry will be filled, the ones who weep will laugh, and the ones who are excluded will leap for joy.
Jeremiah 17 paints a similar picture. The green, fruit-bearing tree shall be our hope and future. That tree shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green. Even in darkness and drought, the tree shall grow. Even when everything around it tries to take away its life, be that desert heat or bitter cold, the tree shall not die. In the Lord’s care, the tree will live.
But that’s not the end of the passages. At the end of the Sermon on the Plain, Jesus continues to speak of a future—but this time, a future of woe for those who are rich, who are full, who are laughing now. Their promised future shall be filled with sorrow and emptiness. It’s an uncomfortable, even scathing warning. In Jeremiah, those whose hearts turn away from the Lord “shall be like a shrub in the desert,” parched and alone in the wilderness. The other side of the blessing is woe. The other side of promised hope is the reality of lived suffering and despair.
We inevitably live in both conditions—trusting in God or trusting in ourselves. Jesus reminds us that when we are full, we can be sure that we will one day be empty again, and that the only true fullness that endures is from God. When we are weeping, we can be sure that we will one day laugh and rejoice, and that our joy is from God. For every part of life, there is another time that God holds before us, ensuring that we do not forget God’s presence and power infused in everything we do and through everything we live.
The beatitudes are not instructions on how to live in order to get a blessing. They are not in the imperative tense—Be blessed. These are indicative statements—You are blessed. Jesus is pronouncing a blessing on the people who have gathered as he begins to teach. He pronounces a blessing to all the people who have come to hear him. His blessing invites them to think differently about the way the world works because of what he says.
This was a new teaching. In the ancient world, just like today, many people believed strongly in cause and effect. They believed that if they were good people who followed God’s commandments, worked hard, and tried to do their best in all circumstances, then God would reward them with good health, food to eat, stable jobs, happy families, and prosperity. Likewise, they believed that God punished the sinful with illness, poverty, imprisonment, blindness, divorce, and other personal tragedy. Many believed that God even punished entire sinful populations through war, famine, droughts, and other disasters.
If a man was sick, or mourning, or poor in spirit, or starving, or persecuted, it was his own fault for sinning. A woman who suffered did so as the consequence of her own bad behavior because suffering was understood as punishment for sin.
But Jesus flips things on their head. It doesn’t work like that in the kingdom of God. Jesus blesses everyone who had gathered, no matter who they were and no matter what they had done. God’s blessing in Christ is not just for the righteous ones. God’s blessing is not just for certain groups. God’s blessing is not just for those who are pure, who go to church and give to charities and treat people with kindness. And God’s blessing is not evidenced by a big bank account or a fancy title or a luxury home.
In this new kingdom that Jesus is showing us, God blesses the saints and sinners alike. Jesus offers a blessing on the poor. God blesses the blind, the lame, the imprisoned, the outcast. God blesses the leper and the prostitute. God blesses the murderer and the thief and the adulterer. God blesses the Jews and the Gentiles. Today who would God bless? the Muslims and the Hindus, the Buddhists and the Ba’hai, the Israelis, Syrians and the Russians, the people of Ghana and Brazil. In Christ, God’s blessing does not discriminate. God’s blessing is for all. God’s blessing is for you. God’s blessing is for me.
That’s good news, don’t you think? It means that no matter who you are or what you have done, you are blessed and you are welcomed into God’s family, and there is nothing you can do, ever, to lose God’s love, affirmation, and blessing. Blessed is our identity, blessed is our condition, blessed is who we are because of God’s saving love shown in Jesus Christ.
So in this first teaching for his followers, his disciples, in his first teaching for you and for me, Jesus is telling us as clearly as he can that these people—”look around you,” he says to his disciples—these people in the crowd that gathered that day near the shores of the Galilean lake—these people who live around the corner and let their car alarms honk night and day, these people who whose political views differ from ours, these people who are in jail for dealing drugs, these people who got pregnant and now want an abortion, these people who are members of a gang, these people who are members of a white supremacist group, these people who are immigrants, these people who sit in judgment, these people who pray to Allah, these people who carry guns, these people who are crazy feminists, these people who are pro-life, these people who are pro-choice. . .well, you get the idea. Jesus his telling his disciples that ALL THESE PEOPLE are blessed.
And we who call ourselves disciples, followers of Jesus Christ, get to not just understand this, but we get to live it out by our words and our actions. We are blessed and we can be a blessing to others. So do you hear him? Can you hear him speaking to you? Can you hear him saying, “YOU ARE BLESSED”?