Blessed are the just

 On 11^th February 1858, in a small, fairly uninteresting country town in the south-west of France, a young girl gathering firewood was met by a vision of a tiny maiden, in white robe and blue sash. Over weeks and months, this apparition appeared again and again to her, and is now known as the apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes. Now a slightly terrifying ecclesiastical Disney world, Lourdes is nonetheless striking for being a place where those that society has forgotten – the sick, the disabled, those so often hidden away by the modern world – are placed at the fore. Anyone who has been there cannot fail to be moved by the processions before the international mass – led, right at the front, not by the dignitaries of this world, or the high and mighty – not led, even in the heart of France, by a gathering of mayors – led, instead, in a great winding line, by those that Lourdes has, ever since those apparitions, sought to place at the centre – the sick and the disabled. It is a striking symbol of defiance to the mores and prejudices of our world. It celebrates dependency – on God, on others – right at the heart of the Christian faith. We may not like to feel dependent – most particularly when we are sick or disabled – but this is so often because of the lie that society tells us, that we are all independent with no need of one another. The mark of modern success is having no need for the other. To be dependent is weak.

 

One of the sayings that Our Lady is reported as speaking to St Bernadette, was this – ‘I do not promise you happiness in this world but in the next’. This seems somewhat to chime in with today’s reading – the future leaning, next worldly nature of the ‘you wills’ that we find promised to the hungry, and those who weep. Yet it appears that these words of Mary were mistranslated. 

 

For, in fact, the French dialect should have been translated slightly differently. Not, ‘I do not promise you happiness in this world but in the next’, but rather ‘I do not promise you the happiness of this world, but of the next’. And in that translation, everything changes – and our Gospel takes on its true significance. ‘Rejoice on that day and leap for joy’ the Gospel tells us – the day of the Kingdom of God. That day, my brothers and sisters, has arrived in the resurrection of Christ from the dead – the first fruits of those who have died. Yes, there are more glories to come in the heavenly places, but God’s Kingdom of Jubilee has already begun here on earth too. Christ raised signifies the new creation, which we live in whether we recognise it or not. The whole of creation has been transformed because of the resurrection of Christ that we celebrate today.

 

Yet this great resurrection event – the life changing, life shattering reality at the centre of our faith, requires something of us. It is no good for Christians to spend their time gazing up at the sky expecting God to smite others or to intervene in history so they can just get on with their lives as they did before. Nor is it enough to cultivate a personal relationship with God whilst ignoring our fellow creation. Being a Christian – being a witness to the new life that Christ brings – means recognising that we are living in that new creation here and now. Of course, all is not yet fulfilled, yet we must not claim to be the change-makers ourselves. Those who face woe in our Gospel today do so out of a false sense of self-sufficiency – of trusting in themselves and not God. Instead God calls us to participate in the Christ event – in His plan for the whole created order. We are called to ask God for His Kingdom to come here on Earth as it is in heaven – and we are called to live as though it is already inaugurated, for inaugurated it is – however, imperfectly. We are called to rely on – to trust in – the Lord, and in doing so, to live our lives according to his purposes and will. We are called to be dependent.

 

Those who continue to choose the place at the top of the table whilst putting down others, whether in church or in society, are getting the Christ event wrong. Those who dine at great feasts and yet ignore the hungry and homeless; those who earn money off the backs of others and who sponsor forms of modern slavery through institutions or through refusal to play a full part in supporting the common good; those who laugh at injustice, those who seek worldly plaudits through unjust means, those who cheat, lie, steal – none of these are living in the blessedness of the Kingdom of Heaven. Their ‘I’ has no need of the ‘we’ of God’s people.

 

And if we are honest, those people sometimes include us. How easy it is to judge others, yet how difficult it is to look into our own hearts, and wills, and lives. In his sermon on the plain, Jesus is not separating people off into fully good, and fully bad – he is shining his refining light right into our hearts. He is calling us to look far more deeply at our own motivations and behaviours – he is calling us to open ourselves up to His transformation and to participate in His vision for our world. Acts of justice do not bring in the Christ event – they reflect it. Acts of prejudice and self-interest reflect a world that simply is not – a world that has not been transformed, that has not met with the Christ event. The more we try to live in that world that is not, the more hollow and wrongheaded our self-reliance appears. My brothers and sisters, we are not our own masters – and nor are we the masters of others. We are dependent on each other as fellow citizens of the Kingdom. The only master is our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ, on whom – ultimately – we all rely.

 

Yet however often we – as a church, as a world – hear these words, just as often we seem to close our ears to them. Across the church, today is being commemorated as racial justice Sunday. It is a scandal – a scandal – that in the twenty-first century world we continue to need to remind ourselves – in some places, as though hearing it for the first time – of the importance of racial justice. It is a scandal that the Church of England continues to embody racism and injustice. It is a scandal that God’s children continue to be judged on the colour of their skin, or the country they or they ancestors have come from. It is a scandal when white people refuse to listen. 

 

My brothers and sisters, let me be clear, there will be no peace without justice in the Kingdom of God. My brothers and sisters, there should be no peace without justice. As long as our society is one that allows prejudice to rule in hearts and minds, then it is a society that refuses to listen to the words of Jesus, or to live in His Kingdom. The message of today’s Gospel – the message of Our Lady in that grotto in France – is clear. The Kingdom of Heaven is here, and it will prevail. We are promised the happiness of the next world – of the life of God. Yet that ‘we’ does not only include the privileged, or the rich, or the haughty, or those adored and preferred by the world – it includes each of the children of God. We are called to that abundant life – and to share it with the whole creation. We are called to recognise our dependence on God – and on the other. And we are called, in this place, to embody that giving, loving, dependent Kingdom too.

 

The Kingdom of God is not something we create, or something we sit around waiting for in endless committees ad infinitum. It is something here, now. It is something, here, now, in which we are called to participate – urgently and without hesitation. 

 

The reign of God has begun. It requires of us – it demands our all. Christ doth call, one and all – ye who follow shall not fall.

 

Amen.