Lent 5
Text: Blessed
are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:3)
“their cry goes up, ‘How long?’”
We have been singing this song for
several weeks now – this third verse of the familiar hymn, The Church’s One Foundation, in which Samuel John Stone, an English pastor and hymnwriter in the
mid-1800’s lamented the doctrinal and pastoral controversies that were tearing
the church apart from within, and blunting its witness without. Anguished, deeply concerned, but ultimately
hopeful he wrote the words we have heard thus far:
Though with a scornful wonder
The world sees us oppressed,
By schisms rent asunder,
By heresies distressed.
Yet saints their watch are keeping,
Their cry goes up, “how long?”
How long? It is the query born of pain. The wounded spouse asks, “How long has this
been going on?” The despondent captive
asks, “How long will this continue?” In
scripture, even God feels at wit’s end, asking first of Moses, “How long will you refuse to keep my commandments and
instructions?” (Exodus
It is the cry
of the faithful, as when they beg of the heavens, “How long,
O Lord? Will you forget me for ever?
How long will you hide your face
from me?” (Psalm 13:1)
And again, “How long must I bear pain in my soul,
and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?” (Psalms
13:2)
Or still more
selflessly, “How long, O God, is the foe to
scoff?
Is the enemy to revile your name for ever?” (Psalms 74:10).
It is the cry
of weariness; of anguished, frightened gripping just a knot or two from the end
of the rope. It is the venting of
frustration and disappointment and maybe even disgust. It is the voice of pained confusion, as in
“How long will the wicked prosper, and how long will the righteous suffer?” And it is the intercessory prayer of deep
concern.
Yet saints their watch are keeping,
Their cry goes up, “how
long?”
In every case, it is the act of
putting into words the presence of an absence:
something is not right – with you, with me, with the world, or the
expected order of life. It is the
vigorous vocalization of the disconnect between the way things are and the way
they ought to be. It is at one and the
same time defiant and broken; assertive and plaintive; protective, and
helpless. “How long, O Lord? How long?”
Finally, it is the confessional recognition of need – the desperation
for that which I – we – cannot accomplish ourselves.
For all its sometime impertinence;
for all its presumptuous, righteous tone, it is, at the same time blessed. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven.”
Clarence Jordan was the southern
preacher and PhD Bible scholar who bought 440 acres near
What does Jesus mean by
“poor in spirit?” In Luke’s account it
is simply “you poor.” What kind of
poverty is he talking about? If you have a lot of money, you’ll probably say
spiritual poverty. If you have little or
no money, you’ll probably say physical poverty.
The rich will thank God for Matthew; the poor will thank God for
Luke. Both will say, “God blessed me!” Well, then, who really did get the blessing?
Chances
are, neither one. For it is exactly this
attitude of self-praise and self-justification and self-satisfaction that robs
people of a sense of great need for the kingdom and its blessings
The poor in spirit are
not the proud in spirit. They know that
in themselves – in all humankind – there are few, if any, spiritual
resources. They must have help from
above. They desperately need the kingdom
of heaven. And feeling their great need
for the kingdom, they get it. For theirs
is the kingdom of heaven. [1]
The deep awareness of need – of what
is missing that you or we cannot, ourselves, accomplish or fulfill. “How long, O Lord; how long?”
Old Testament scholar Walter
Brueggemann suggests that transformative hope begins with the “public
processing of pain.” By that, he means
the “intentional and communal act of expressing grievance.” Reflecting on the experience of
The ones who hope, in other words,
are the ones who “enter their grief, suffering, and oppression, who bring it to
speech, who publicly process it and move through it and beyond. They are the ones who are surprised to find,
again and again, that hope and new social possibility come in the midst of such
grief.” [3]
The first enemy of hope, in
other words, is stoic silence. [4] The gift of the saints’ lament, then, is
revolutionary and powerful. “How long,”
they cry out; “how long?”
A couple of years ago, we spent some
time responding to Jewish scholar Abraham Heschel’s assertion to President
Kennedy that what was needed from both political and religious leaders in that
time of deep racial tensions was “high moral grandeur and spiritual
audacity.” I suggest that laments, the
outcry of the saints in the face of that which is broken, missing, and needed,
is precisely the kind of spiritual audacity for which Heschel called. And as saints of the church today, where
might we raise our cry?
How long, for example, will we as a
world continue to feed our greed at the expense of others’ need? How long will we continue to lock more and
more people up instead of wondering why the culture we have created seems to
create so many criminals? How long will
we pity the poor but punish their every effort to change their lot? How long will we strum our songs of love with
the same hands that strangle with virulent hate? How long will we keep bringing canned goods
on Food Pantry Sunday before we ask why more and more are needing them? How long?
The blessed, says Jesus, are the meek
who recognize their need. The powerfully
hopeful are those who name it and give it voice – who refuse to let brokenness
and emptiness carry on silently beneath the radar of human and heavenly
attention. The saints of God not only
notice, they cry out, “how long?” In
solidarity, in anguished dissatisfaction, and in the tenacious, abiding faith
that, while their words may be the
first, God’s healing, redeeming grace will be the last.
Thanks be to God. Amen.