Contradictions and the Beatitudes: Homily for February 3, 2008

Father Tom’s Homily
4th Sunday
February 3, 2008

Jesus’ life and teachings had many puzzling contradictions.
He was himself a contradiction. The gospel story we read on the Feast of the Presentation (Feb 2) tells of the old man Simeon holding Mary’s infant in his arms and prophesying, “He will be a sign that will be contradicted (he will set up a standard that many will attack)” (Luke 2:34)

The most obvious contradiction was that Jesus was a Messiah who scandalized the religious leaders and many who eagerly looked forward to the Messiah promised by the ancient prophets.
Jesus was the Son of God, yet what people saw was an itinerant, homeless preacher/healer – eventually a tortured, executed criminal.
He kept upsetting the popular expectations about the Messiah. The temple hierarchy, so concerned about ritual purity, considered him to be a dangerous heretic because of his affinity with unclean people, the tax collectors, the common rabble who were slack in keeping the law of Moses. They summed up their objections about Jesus “…he eats with them.”

The “good news” that Jesus preached did not seem to be such good news to the people of his time and in our day. It is a misconception that the “good news” was/is welcomed everywhere as news that is truly good.
The Beatitudes given in today’s gospel present some puzzling contradictions of Jesus’ message. What blessing, for example, can there possibly be in being poor, in sorrowing, in hunger. These are unwanted burdens to be avoided.

In today’s second reading, St. Paul speaks about the contradiction of a poor crucified Messiah. The Christians of ancient Corinth must have been puzzled and maybe upset by the way Paul presents this contradiction in the letter that he sent to be read at their Sunday Masses.
He says, look at yourselves. “Not many of you are wise by human standards, not many are powerful nor of noble birth.”
What is Paul’s purpose for this observation. He goes on, “God chooses the foolish to shame the wise, he chooses the lowly and despised to challenge the proud and the arrogant.”
Jesus’ beatitudes describe the heart of God. They are about God’s foolishness, and God’s weakness – puzzling contradictions that trip up the wise and the strong.

Three years ago, Sister Dorothy Stang, an American missionary working with the poor in Brazil, was confronted by two men threatening her with guns. They represented the wealthy landowners who resented her efforts to empower the poor who were being driven off their small plots of land.
She sensed the danger. She pulled the Bible from her shoulder bag, and opened to the words of Jesus we have heard in today’s gospel.
When she began to read, “Blessed are the…” one of the men pulled the trigger. A bullet struck her Bible and glanced off to hit her in the stomach. She fell to the ground.
The men stood over her and fired five more times, hitting her shoulder, back, neck, head and hand as she lay on a muddy foot path.

What was so threatening in the words of the Beatitudes? They described the ministry of Sister Dorothy, her solidarity with the poor she served.
The beatitudes express the contradictions of our puzzling God – who has a wisdom that seems foolish to us, a strength that seems like weakness to us.

“Blessed are the poor…” God is presented to us in the poor, like the tiny infant son of Mary, born in a stable.
“Blessed are the sorrowing.” God is discovered in those who mourn, like Rufina Amaya, the single survivor of the massacre of El Mozote who heard her six children crying for mercy as they were being slaughterd while she hid under a bush.
“Blessed are they who hunger for justice.” We encounter God in those who hunger for justice, like Sister Dorothy Hennessey, who at age 88 was sentenced to six months in a federal prison for her solidarity with the victims of injustice in Central America. Sister Dorothy died last week.

“Blessed are they who show mercy.” We become aware of God in those who show mercy, like Mother Teresa, who picked up the dying from the streets of Calcutta to bring back to her small dispensary where she could wash them and let them die with dignity.

“Blessed are the peacemakers.” We learn of God in peacemakers in the Christian Peacemaker Teams who live with those threatened by violence in places of great danger.
“Blessed are they who are persecuted for justice.” And we come to know God in those persecuted for justice, like Sister Dorothy Stang, who was killed as she began to read the words of the Beatitudes.

These are blessed ones because they introduce us to a strange God who chooses the weak and the lowly to contradict the proud and the strong.