At the Cathedral

Wednesdays were my day.

I was working in Hartford at one of the insurance companies downtown and frankly I wasn’t very good at it.

I suppose my head wasn’t very much in the game.

Work felt tedious.

Humdrum.

Somedays, even boring.

The pay was good though and I would go through the motions on most days.

But Wednesdays were my day.

Wednesdays were the day I’d leave early for lunch, the days when I’d walk the few blocks over to this place.

On good days, the gates would be open and I would pass through the front garden, open the doors and sit for a few moments before we’d say the Eucharist in the chapel.

There weren’t many of us always, but the time to leave my desk and focus on God was so important, so instrumental to my formation.

Because I wasn’t always…

This.

I wasn’t always Christian and for a good part of my life I was an atheist.

Yet, after a while of being away from the church I felt a certain nudge, a call even.

And I began making steps to return.

I went to my local parish on Sundays, I listened to Morning Prayer on the way into work and I was just soaking everything up that I could.

It was a period of discovery after having been away for so long.

And it was a time of returning to the fold as I had grown up Episcopalian.

A time of newness, a time of nostalgia.

I was blessed for blessed are those who worship at the Cathedral on Wednesdays for they will be filled with the word and sacraments.

And yet, there were some Wednesdays when the gates were locked, I would not be able to pass through the doors, that time of quiet would elude me.

Just to be dramatic, overly so perhaps, I like to remember those were drizzly days in March, the cold air mixed with misty rain; cold shivers tried to warm my bones.

But really, that’s just me being a little dramatic.

This morning’s gospel reading might be familiar to some of you, many of us, in fact.

It is the Beatitudes, part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

We hear how those perhaps most in need of God are blessed by God.

Those who mourn are blessed.

Those who are poor in spirit are blessed.

The ones who yearn for righteousness are blessed and so on.

The folks who struggle now will be blessed, seemingly later on when they reach the Kingdom of Heaven.

Seemingly, folks who suffer through this life will be rewarded in the next.

And yet, there is perhaps another point of view.

In his book “Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes”, Kenneth Bailey tells us that there are two words in Greek used for the word blessed.

The first applies to the word used in prayer: “Dear Lord, bless this congregation for they are searching after you.”

The second word means more of a state of being.

This state of being is a descriptive term for a person.

Just as someone can be happy or sad or glad or mad, they can be blessed.

Mr. Bailey gives us the imagery of an inheritance to explain his point.

“Blessed is the happy daughter of Mr. Jones because she will inherit Mr. Jones’ farm.”

See the daughter of Mr. Jones is happy, she will after all inherit a piece of land, but she does not have to work to earn that farm.

She is happy already.

And so, Bailey asks us to consider the word blessed.

The person who mourns does not have to experience mourning in order to be blessed.

Yes, because the mourn they will be comforted by God, but they are already blessed.

Their essence, their default way of being is blessedness.

Bailey asks us to consider that suffering, that mourning and meekness, hunger and thirst, do not have be experienced for us to be blessed.

There are rewards for sufferings, certainly, comfort to the mourners, inheritance of the earth for the meek, righteousness for those who seek it.

But they who experience such things are already blessed.

Friends, we are already blessed.

And that is important, because so much of the Beatitudes can be used to fuel complacency or worse, further suffering.

We can, if we choose to interpret the words a certain way, tell folks that their current suffering is worthwhile because their reward is going to be paid back ten-fold.

You are sad now? Well, suffer through so that you will be comforted by God later on.

Feeling persecuted? No worries, eventually you will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.

But not now.

Now you must suffer.

Your lot in life is to suffer until you can reap your reward in the next life.

In this life though, you must make do by navigating racist systems that might deny you a loan.

In this life, you must wade through economic systems that favor somebody other than you and your class.

Later on, you will be reunited with God who will make all things new and right every wrong.

Now, just suffer through.

You’ll get yours eventually.

And that does not sound like a great plan.

No, we are blessed now.

At this moment.

We do not need to wait for our reward, our reward is God’s blessing.

God’s blessing is now.

You are blessed now.

You are loved by God now.

And that means we do not wait in our stew of upset and sadness; we move forward with God’s blessing.

 We do not wait for the Kingdom to arrive, we build up as much as we can the human approximation of God’s Kingdom here.

Friends, this place, this Cathedral is a blessing and we have been blessed by it.

And when those gates are closed, when Wednesday services are not held, does our status change?

Are we no longer blessed because we can’t participate in worship on a weekday?

No.

I am blessed by this place and I remain blessed by this place, that does not change.

And likewise, though you experience troubles, your blessings are not removed.

In fact, they stay.

It is your being.

Now.

Because, again, we are blessed now.

Because, again, you are blessed now.

Because, again, you are loved by God now.

This is not hope or folly.

This is not wait and see.

This is immediacy.

In this moment, in all your life that is off, in tears and in loneliness and in silence and in persecutions, you are blessed.

Now, I’m saying the word blessed a lot!

And if I have convinced you that you are indeed blessed through repetition, great!

But if haven’t then, well, just trust me I guess…

For knowing we are blessed, knowing we are so loved by God completely, if our hearts are indeed filled with God’s glory, then ours is the Kingdom full stop.

And the kingdom, folks, the kingdom is not meant for us to experience someday, it is not somewhere down the road, it is a product of our blessing.

It is a product of God’s love.

It is meant to be lived in.

I tend to believe that God wants us to experience the Kingdom in the here and now.

For the Kingdom is a thing that will arrive.

N.T. Wright calls it an intertwining of God’s Kingdom and the human condition.

It is God in the present tense and present among us.

And until that kingdom arrives, until we can experience the kingdom ourselves, we are blessed.

The mourners are comforted by a God who blesses them.

The peacemakers are already children of God.

The pure of heart see God, now.

As Bailey writes, “We live in the interim between the inauguration of the rule (kingdom) of God in the coming of Jesus Christ and its completion at the end of history. Our struggle for peace and justice is part of our discipleship as we work for and await the coming of that kingdom on earth as a gift of God.

That gift is a gift to be realized and experienced just as the kingdom is to be realized and experienced.

That gift can be realized too in our work for justice, our seeking of peace, blessed are we who share in the work of the Lord.

Blessed are we.

Amen.