Lectionary
readings: Revelation 7:9-17 and Matthew 5:1-12
I
am a parent. Not everyone is, of course, by any means, but many people are, and
I often hear parents say things like, “I don’t really mind what my children do in
life,” – that is, what their gifts or passions might be, or how they might put
those to work – “as long as they are happy.” And I think that this bears
some consideration. They clearly cannot mean, ‘I want my children to experience
an unbroken state of happiness,” because the state of happiness is
always a temporary condition, in response to pleasant circumstances. We surely
want our children to have such experiences; but we also know that they will
also experience anger – and in the face of injustice, rightly so – and grief
and a host of other responses to life that make us human; and we will want them
to become the kind of adult who can feel and recognise and regulate and respond
well to the whole spectrum of emotions. So, when we say that we want our
children to be happy, I think – I hope – we are talking about trait
happiness, or the predisposition of personality towards happiness; possessing
the kind of character that faces adversity with the underlying belief that all
shall be well, at least in time.
Another
way of putting this, then, might be to say, “as long as they are secure.”
And the question arises, if we want our children to be happy, to be secure, how
best can we equip them for that?
Jesus
spoke about how we can nurture the enviable personality trait of happiness – in
Greek, makarios – often translated as blessèd.
The
kind of people whom he identifies as being happy people might surprise you: those
who are poor in spirit, who mourn, who are meek, who hunger and thirst for
righteousness, who are merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, persecuted for
righteousness’ sake, reviled, and slandered. We might want our children to be
some of those things – peacemakers, for example – but we probably shy away from
hoping that our children will be reviled. And what does ‘poor in spirit’ or
‘meek’ even mean?
I
think that Jesus is describing what today is called operating from a secure
attachment to God as our caregiver, enabling us to feel secure in the face the losses
and threats we all experience in life, whether bereavement or conflict or
injustice or malicious false report.
Now,
there is a large body of research into happiness that suggests that our default
underlying level of happiness or unhappiness in life is fairly stable and significantly
shaped by hereditary factors, by the underlying happiness or unhappiness of our
parents and our early childhood experience. There are good neurological reasons
behind this. Children are remarkably resourceful. We seek happiness, or
security, from our caregivers. If they are able to provide us with a secure base,
from which we can explore the world and to which we can return to receive
comfort when we experience distress, then we learn the right balance of
self-reliance and reliance on others. If, for whatever reason, our caregivers
are unable to provide us with a secure base, we find the strategies that
provide us with some form of connection, that meet our need for comfort or recognition.
Again, research shows two main strategies, anxiety, and avoidance:
that is, overly reliant on others to manage our emotions, or overly self-reliant.
We work out what works – for example, in some families, keeping rules results
in reward while breaking rules results in punishment, and so we learn to keep
the rules; in other families, we learn to pay attention to social cues, to micro
changes in someone’s facial expression – and our brains train themselves to prioritise
these things and ignore other things. And later in life, we find ourselves reacting
to other people in ways that follow these scripts.
So,
we might relate to God as someone whom we can coexist with if we keep the
rules; or as someone whose response to us is unpredictable, and we are never
sure whether we are acceptable or if we are a nuisance.
How
we view God will, in turn, affect how we view trouble. If we believe that, as
long as we keep the rules, we will avoid getting into trouble, and yet trouble
comes looking for us, we may be predisposed to blaming ourselves: somehow,
perhaps even in a way we aren’t aware of, we have offended God and rightly
brought down his wrath against us. Or perhaps, if you were raised in a
legalistic household in which you never felt approval, you have come to believe
that no matter how hard you try to keep the rules, you can never be acceptable to
God. Or, then again, perhaps you rebel against God, because breaking the rules
will at least result in attention, even if that attention is harsh, and
attention is better than being ignored.
If,
on the other hand, we grew up in an unpredictable environment, say with an
alcoholic father or a drug-addicted mother, when trouble finds us, we may be
predisposed to blaming God, who we perceive as unpredictable, capable of love
but also of outbursts of anger. Our survival tactics kick in, and we stay away
from God until he has sobered up, fend for ourselves, or try to appease.
Perhaps we see ourselves as a martyr, that as long as God is punishing us,
however unjustly, someone else we love is spared.
But
what served us well, or kept us safe, in the past does not necessarily serve us
well today. Moreover, it might not align well with the freedom God desires for
us to live in. For example, we might withdraw from people because (so we
believe) doing so protects us from the pain of losing them; but God wants us to
know love, and to experience being comforted – or, consoled – when we
inevitably experience loss.
The
good news is that our underlying level of happiness is fairly stable,
but not fixed: it really is possible to experience change and growth
throughout the whole of our lives. If you are, by personality, an anxious or an
avoidant person, you don’t have to stay that way. Jesus calls us to follow him,
to take responsibility to respond to him, to learn from him, to repent – which
means a change of mind – and believe – which means to walk out a new way of
being in the world.
Which
brings us back to the Beatitudes, the list of those who are blessed, or happy,
or secure. Except that now I want to draw our attention from the word makarios,
blessed, to the word hoti, translated ‘for,’ or, ‘Why? Because…’
These people are not secure because of their circumstances; they can be secure,
in the face of disturbing or unsettling circumstances, because of God’s dependable
character. God, who rules over the skies and the earth and the realm of the
dead, who holds together past, present, and future, who is the very source of life,
of consolation, of strength-under-control, of justice, of compassion, of innocence,
of peace, who catches us up into this glorious goodness that makes all things
well.
One
of the disciples sitting on the mountainside listening to Jesus speak is a
young boy called John, who has only recently started out on learning from
Jesus. Decades later, as an old man, exiled from his community by the Roman
empire, this same John has another apocalypse, or revelation of what is really
going on behind the scenes, behind the way in which the world appears to run.
He sees a multitude, all of whom have come out from tribulation, from
circumstances in which they were without options, who have been rescued from
destruction into God’s safety, preservation, welfare. Whose needs are met, and
whose tears are erased. Our reading from The Revelation to John and our
reading from The Gospel According to Matthew are the same revelation, seen
from two different points – childhood, and old age – with a lifetime of
experience between. Everything John has known has proven the Beatitudes to be
true; nothing he has seen has invalidated their claims. And that, of course, is
what they are: an invitation to discover what God is like, how truly good God
is.
November
begins with All Saints’ Day, when we remember the many children, women and men
who have discovered these things to be true in challenging circumstances down
through the centuries; followed by All Souls’ Day, when we remember those sisters
and brothers in the faith who demonstrated these truths to us, personally, in
and through their living and dying. Today we are invited to repent and believe,
to unlearn the false ideas we have held about God and to lean into a fuller
knowledge, whether for the first time or the seventy-seventh. Come and see,
that the Lord is good! ‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving
and honour and power and might be to our God for ever and ever! Amen.’
