Reflections for Vespers Sunday, March 7, 2010 by Sister Patricia Crowley, Prioress

This morning we heard of Moses standing with no shoes, asking what he was to do – experiencing a kind of emptiness?

The gospel selection, from Luke, presented the parable of a fig tree that was not bearing fruit. Jesus introduces the parable with “…if you do not repent…you will perish.” The gardener speaks up for patience, caring, action. This latter is comforting as we try to “bear fruit”, especially when our own emptiness is felt.

Emptiness in Christian scriptures is not an end in itself. Emptiness might be seen as a means to the experience of blessing – a way to prepare to experience “….the visible, perceptive, effective presence of God…” (Bonhoefer) in our lives.

Luke’s beatitudes in Chapter 6 verses 20-23 come right after the selection of the twelve apostles. They serve as a sort of core guidance for the apostles’ work. In the Jerusalem Bible, they are subtitled “The inaugural discourse”. Jesus gives this discourse (not on a mount) but on level ground, eye to eye with his listeners. These four beatitudes speak of how we as followers of Christ might move toward happiness, how that empty cup of ours might become a cup full of blessing.

Luke’s beatitudes are only four. The first two speak to emptiness:

How happy are you who are poor. Yours is the kingdom of God.
Happy are you who are hungry now. You shall be satisfied.

Neither poverty nor hunger are appealing realities to us. In fact, our images of both evoke pity and compassion. Our sense of justice prompts desire to eliminate both of them from our world. Poverty and hunger are little praised outside the Bible and the Bible not only speaks the good news to those who are poor and hungry, it also challenges the rest of us to rid the world of these conditions. That can be confusing. This passage acknowledges that people in poverty and hunger (world conditions that are not going to evaporate in the near future….) might be the best people to teach us about God. The gospel recognizes our own reluctance to come near to people who are poor and hungry.

According to scholars, Luke is talking about real poverty (destitution) and real hunger. Luke’s Jesus suggests that if we want to experience the reign of God, we need to try to know people in poverty and know people who are truly hungry. According to Mary Jo Tully, this condition is…. not a matter of economics…rather (it is a matter) of being free to embrace the reign of God. Jesus spent a lot of time, according to the gospels, reaching out to people on the edges of society, those who were poor, those who were hungry. These beatitudes in Luke confirm that gospel reality as a conscious thing. We can learn this lesson other ways but knowing poverty and hunger is definitely one way.

I want to share one experience I had. (You undoubtedly have your own memories to feed into this gospel reality.)

I remember volunteering one night at Deborah’s Place overnight shelter when I was not able to sleep on the mat on the floor and got up for a bit. One of the women sat down at the table with me as I was drinking a little water. I spent most of the night listening to her talk about her life and about God. It was a time in our own community’s history, when my perception was that we were just not comfortable talking to one another about our experiences of God.

As the morning dawned and the shelter came alive and noisy, I recall feeling very lucky to have been witness to her experience of God. She carried her belongings in a bag by day. She lived on the streets during the day. She had little. She was poor in Luke’s sense of poverty. She recognized God’s presence and spoke easily about that sacredness. I felt blessed to have been in the right place at the right time that night.

Megan McKenna (p. 19) says that the beatitudes “shout” to us…..”that the center of gravity in this world has shifted.”

If we really listen to this passage, we might feel some resistance. We don’t really want to be poor, or even hungry. Right?

Think about what these words might feel like if I were really poor and / were very hungry….Those who are poor, those who are hungry, according to this, have room for God. They can experience the proximity of God in ways that we who are full cannot as easily do.

Sometimes that is really hard for us to believe – it is not the picture of poverty and hunger we know. It is, however, the gospel message as I read it and as the documents of our Church proclaim.

Those who are poor and hungry, according to Jesus, have a clear capacity for the kingdom – the full reign of God - that the rich and satiated do not have. Therefore, Jesus calls them blessed (happy…. fortunate….).

This is a hard message – a message that echoes our reflections this Lent on the value of emptiness and the amazing reality of God (in the phenomenon of “blessing”) filling that emptiness.

Blessed are those/Happy are those….who have nothing to lock up (Jim Forest) ……who cherish the food they receive from others because they have known hunger. The empty cup we are using in prayer to help us explore this is a means not an end. The fullness of God in the reign of God is the end.

The beatitudes are indispensable and at the same time, they are a sword thrust straight to our heart….for they are so strange to our culture….they leave us uneasy for they (point) to a God whose concerns do not mirror ours. (McKenna, page 49)

If we don’t know emptiness or poverty or hunger, how will we ever come to know the fullness of God?

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