Jesus has a different view of blessing than we hear from prosperity preachers and the kitchen table wisdom of things always working out and happening for a reason. A view that is troubling to the idea that we get what we deserve and that goodness is rewarded and that present comfort is a gift from God and not the project of wealth creation, say, or the fortune of being born into a particular family in a particular time, with all the privilege and none of the guilt.
This, remember, is a familiar, if not broken theological conviction so popular in the social media era. When people proclaim on Instagram that they are #blessed, like performative humility, gratitude, prayer even. Proof to the world that we are, in fact, good people.
This is not entirely untraditional, mind you. It remains a common view of God’s vision for the world: that we are in a transactional relationship with the almighty and if we do good stuff, we get rewarded for it. But the timetable is what gets confused. Because we read in Job about blessing and curse in life, so maybe we are blessed with goodness. But Jesus is fairly consistently arguing the opposite. That benefits to a good life don’t fall in the living side of it.
His words, particularly in the Beatitudes remain resoundingly radical given our world of hierarchies and violence; all the ways we separate and condemn.
Money, power, ability, gender, expression, race, community of origin, nationality, experience. . .
And the powerful barricade their “blessing” from the world and it is in this relational poverty, between those at the top and everyone else, that exposes the lie. It is a revealing that Jesus invites with simple relational wording, of participating in an unjust world. One which defies the command to love God and all that God loves — to love one another, this creation — everything — with the same ferocity of as our selfishness.
So, we are blessed in suffering, in longing for change, in knowing that other people are struggling, and even when we step in and take the lashes for others. And we’re long past knowing by this point that this isn’t reward. It isn’t a proclamation of what is just — all of this brokenness isn’t justice — but we can be the blessing in our neighborhoods.
And we can literally save lives.
We can stop the evil. With our bodies, our solidarity, our love.
This is how it works. How we live to see the reconciliation. Being the change, right? Being the children of God. Loving our neighbors.