Sunday 16th February 2025
Luke 6 17-26
I’d like to share with you this morning some insights on what it is to be blessed from the Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams from a talk that he gave in Tallin in 2023.
The Beatitudes delivered by Jesus in the gospels of Matthew and Luke list what kinds of people might be described as ‘blessed’ or ‘fortunate’ and they are people – we could say - who are not the prisoners of their own stories. Those who are not anxious about stockpiling their resources but acknowledge their dependence on mercy and gift; those who are hungry not for more security for themselves, but for a justice that is shared with all; those who are compassionate and without aggression, who are not afraid to be wounded, who labour for reconciliation – all these are people who have left behind the passion to be the possessors and managers of their destiny, people who know that it is only in relation to God, and to their brothers and sisters under God, that they will be fully human. Instead of an obsessive longing to define their world and secure their control, they listen for the call of God and look for the gift of God in the needs of the world, and they find the courage to embrace the risks that this looking and listening can bring.
Most of us are, to a greater or lesser extent, prisoners of our own stories. I have a plaque in my studio in London that my sister-in-law gave me that says ‘Everyday when I wake up I thank the Lord I’m Welsh’, words from a song sung by Cerys Matthews. It’s an object that I simultaneously quite like and also feel a little uneasy about, not because it’s kitsch but rather that playing with nationalist sentiment, even one’s own, feels risky territory. It can so easily operate as something of a trojan horse for negative and destructive impulses.
The problem arises, Rowan observes when our national inheritance is seen to confirm righteousness upon us and we find ourselves unable to move on to any new and challenging relations because we are afraid of losing this rooting.
This dynamic greatly complicates current debates about the post-colonial legacy in our world. Former imperial powers resist the full acknowledgment of the immense and lasting damage inflicted by their colonial adventures; former colonies are vulnerable to a political rhetoric that deflects attention from contemporary internal stresses and injustices by a constant reversion to their history of oppression.
One of the most striking aspects of the current appalling situation in Ukraine is the way in which it has revived a long-standing Russian tradition of identifying itself as the victim of consistent historical aggression from elsewhere, so that its own aggressions can be presented as necessary protective action. Yet it is not as though Russia has a monopoly on this kind of moral mythology. Most national narratives have elements of the same attempt to secure their sense of worth by histories of both triumph and suffering and of course we are seeing much of this laid bare as the new president and his appointees seek to reframe the place and action of the US in the world. It has been notable that this reframing has even stretched to Christian theology as we’ve seen in a social media disagreement between JD Vance the Vice President and Rory Stewart.
The Hebrew Scripture offer a significantly different paradigm. For example, when Moses addresses the Israelites his constant refrain is that the people must never forget that they are a community simply because of the call of God and that their success or security is not the result of their capacity and resources. The narrative of the chosen people is one in which what provides stability is faithfulness to a vision in which the loving gift of God is the foundation of a community’s worth.
This is the background to the Beatitudes: we have to learn that our worth does not have to be created by our effort, and that our identity does not consist in what we can make and preserve for ourselves or in the conviction of our innocence or goodness.
The story that we are invited to make our own rests on another kind of shared identity, in which a community finds its solidity in the knowledge that each one is faithfully present for the sake of all others; where mutual assurance of attention and acceptance creates the foundation for trust. And the cornerstone of this is simply the recognition that this community exists in a state of ‘blessing’, alignment with the act of God, whose love is not apportioned as a reward.
To be part of such a community is to be released from our stories; not that they are simply cancelled, but they are seen afresh in the context of the story of God with God’s people, a story of gratuitous invitation, welcome and fidelity. The central identifying action of the community is the giving of thanks for this invitation, and the re-enactment of the invitation in the corporate drama of worship.
The life of faith is counter cultural and it displaces the usual narratives about our value and purpose in the world. The Beatitudes of Jesus are all in their several ways about this displacement, about the imperative to make room here and now for the Kingdom by renouncing sufficiency and complacency, by keeping alive the passionate hunger for the neighbour’s life; by the simplicity and single-heartedness of a desire for a reconciled world, by willingness to forgive; and by not being surprised if all this brings struggle, suffering and opposition.
What we leave behind is the passion to be in charge of our destiny. We learn to act in love not because we are confident that love will bring us the results we desire, but because love is the appropriate response to the world that God has made.
To him be all glory, now and to the ages of ages.
Amen.