Pardes with the Beatitudes

 At the end of a ecumenical trip to Sweden in 2016, Pope Francis offered six new Beatitudes:

""Blessed are those who remain faithful while enduring evils inflicted on them by others and forgive them from their heart.

"Blessed are those who look into the eyes of the abandoned and marginalized and show them their closeness.

"Blessed are those who see God in every person and strive to make others also discover him.

"Blessed are those who protect and care for our common home.

"Blessed are those who renounce their own comfort in order to help others.

"Blessed are those who pray and work for full communion between Christians."

"All these are messengers of God's mercy and tenderness," Pope Francis said.  "Surely they will receive from him their merited reward."

The Beatitudes are so well known

that even people in secular situations will occasionally use the format

to offer their own blessings or to make their own poetic commentary on who is the underdog in a situation.

Since that is what they are known as.

Blessings on the underdogs

They are happy announcements

of a upside down world.

Jesus is proclaiming good news to people who are mourning

who are poor

who are persecuted

who are meek

Jesus is sharing with us the new world which is coming into existence because of his ministry

and it is very different than the world of the first century

and its still very different than the world of today.

Just as an aside, the last line of the passage mentions the prophets

The people would have been familiar with the ways in which the prophets were treated

Jeremiah thrown into a cistern

Elijah wandering in the desert afraid for his life

Daniel thrown to the lions, and him and his companions thrown in a fiery furnace

I totally see the people listening to Jesus being encouraged by thinking of the treatment of the prophets.

This passage has been interpreted in many different ways.

It doesn't matter how we translate these words

they are always a turning upside down of the way our society is currently structured

we do not give preference to those who are poor or poor in spirit

we do not give preference to those who are mourning

or those who are humble and meek

or the peacemakers,

it is always the people seeking war who claim the headlines.

It is a tendency in the church to nod along for the Beatitudes

yes, we agree,

wouldn't it be nice for the world to look like this

but it doesn't.

And we think we know what these are,

They have a comfortable label, so we don't have to think more about them.

you know, The Beatitudes.

Usually when I think I already know what something is,

its a sign for me to go deeper

to get curious about it.

So for our well known Beatitudes

we are going to use a sacred reading practice

and see if we can hear something new in their words.

I'm going to talk us through the practice of Pardes.

Pardes is a Jewish rabbinical reading practice

designed to see the text as something new things can grow out of.

I will admit, I originally learned about the sacred reading practice of Pardes from the podcast, Harry Potter and the Sacred Text

which uses many different spiritual practices on the text of the Harry Potter books to learn about values and talk about society today.

Pardes is a Biblical Hebrew word meaning "orchard" or "garden"

"In early rabbinic works, the "orchard" is used as a metaphor for divine secrets or Torah study."

Pardes itself is a acronym, so we have four words that make up the consonants of the word Pardes

    Peshat (פְּשָׁט‎) – "surface" or the literal meaning.

    Remez (רֶמֶז‎) – "hints" or the deep, hidden or symbolic meaning beyond just the literal sense.

    Derash (דְּרַשׁ‎) – "inquire" or the comparative meaning, as given through looking at similar occurrences.

    Sod (סוֹד‎)  – "secret" or the esoteric/mystical meaning, as given through inspiration or revelation.

Through these four steps we will look deeper into the words and meaning of the passage.

The Peshat or direct meaning of this the Beatitudes is that Jesus is blessing people

he is offering blessing probably to those who are sitting and standing in front of him

his disciples, those who are listening in.

I wonder if this passage is simply what it is on the surface

A blessing.

A grace given to the people who were sitting there listening to him.

Profound in its simplicity and beauty

A reminder of the grace and love of God

because the people sitting there probably weren't the religious favorites

they were the poor and humble

those trying to make a living and trying to get ahead but struggling

To consider the Remez, the allegorical sense,

Lets look at the larger context

In the Gospel of Matthew, the first chapter is Matthew's attempt to put Jesus into the important genealogy of the time and the physical birth of Jesus

The second chapter is the whole series about Joseph and the dreams and King Herod and the Magi and the slaughter of the Innocents.

The third chapter is the introduction of John the Baptist and Jesus' baptism.

The fourth chapter is Jesus' forty days in the desert and the calling of the first disciples

So for Matthew, chapter 5 is the beginning of all of Jesus' ministry

this is his first teaching

this is his big entrance

He starts by blessing the people...

he is buttering up his audience.... blessing them before teaching and preaching to them.

But really,

We don't have much of the Sermon on the Mount in today's passage

in Matthew's gospel, this is the main big teaching, three chapters of the most important things

Jesus hits on all his points

If we were going to look at this passage as if it was a letter from Paul or a five paragraph topic paper,

the Beatitudes is the summary before the explanation.

Jesus is starting a ministry of blessing and sharing good news about God.

The third step of the process, D'rash

can be done by looking at the similarities of this passage to others

Many do so by choosing one word and thinking about where it shows up in other parts of the scriptures

for instance, the mountain, which sets the scene.

well, mountains are important for Moses and Elijah and now Jesus...

and we will later, not too much further in the lectionary, see Moses, Elijah and Jesus together on a mountain

Jerusalem is on a mountain

holy things are thought to be on mountains

However when I think about the Beatitudes, what really stands out is the 'Blessed' word

In Greek it is makarioi which is blessed, fortunate, happy

What comes to mind for me is the Hebrew equivalent, ashrei

and that is used in, well, I counted eight different Psalms in this pattern.

Psalm 1:1

Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked, * nor lingered in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seats of the scornful!

89:15

Happy are the people who know the festal shout! * they walk, O LORD, in the light of your presence.

112:1

Hallelujah! Happy are they who fear the Lord * and have great delight in his commandments!

119:1-2

Happy are they whose way is blameless, * who walk in the law of the LORD!

Happy are they who observe his decrees * and seek him with all their hearts!

128:1

Happy are they all who fear the LORD, * and who follow in his ways!

137:9

Happy shall he be who takes your little ones, *and dashes them against the rock!

(This one is a whole sermon on its own)

145:15

Happy are the people of whom this is so! * happy are the people whose God is the LORD!

146:4

Happy are they who have the God of Jacob for their help! *whose hope is in the LORD their God;

Jewish practice has been to sing the Psalms, especially as part of liturgies

Ritualistic sharing and praying of the words.

Jesus was almost giving them a new Psalm

one for his new community.

In this way, it almost sounds like the start of something liturgical, ritualistic

Jesus is starting a worship service for his disciples singing a new psalm to them.

No matter what the people thought Jesus was going to do before they heard him start speaking

(it was a crowd, who knows what they thought he was going to do)

they now know.

Jesus is here to talk about God

Jesus is offering them a blessing singing a psalm in a way they would recognize.

The last part of Pardes, this spiritual practice and way of reading scripture is sod

and the sod is the mystery or revelation, the secret meaning of this passage

and the practice is to take some time in silence to listen to the passage and God

and see if anything is revealed.

Now the thing about the sod is that it isn't always revealed

sometimes it is personal or it doesn't come until later

So, we are going to take a minute of silence to listen for the sod

I have my watch here

and we will see if something is revealed.

If it is, you are welcome to share.

If not, I'll finish up the sermon

with some blessings and we will continue with our worship.

Let's listen for the revelation of God.

Did anyone hear anything they want to share?

Thank you.

In the spirit of Jesus this day

Blessed are the troubled for justice's sake, for they will find God's justice

Blessed are the refugees, for they will find their home in God

Blessed are the peacemakers, the repairers of the breaches, for they work with God.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will find comfort.

Blessed are those who recognize their own sins, for they will grow in the way of God.

Blessed are those who stand up in integrity, for they will find rest for their souls.