For Sunday
Proper 10A
Collect
O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
Reading
Reflection
One of the lessons of the Beatitudes (Matt. 5:1-12) is that Jesus isn’t describing kinds of people, but postures and behaviors anyone can take. That passage has made me allergic to seeing this as Jesus speaking in platitudes about all people or as if he sees people as static and permanently formed blocks of concrete.
When reading this teaching, we might be tempted to think of ourselves and our neighbors with such concrete convictions. After all, we are examining how hospitable our soil is. But the point is not to evaluate the person, but to improve the soil that is our character. And our community’s character.
Notice that it isn’t about talent or personality that Jesus speaks to, but how one combines the good news with one’s approach to their environment. If it is only about joy, then one’s joy can be stolen. If one makes joy into a mantra, it’ll break when life gets difficult. But then, if we are super rational, then the junk of the world will consume us.
It seems that, for Jesus, by contrast, the good soil is defined by integration and intention. It requires self-examination, what we might call discernment, so that we might form a more integrated approach. That we might be joyful and realistic and hopeful. This, he argues, is the most hospitable soil for growth. Spiritual growth for ourselves, sure, but also for the community and all of the people around us.