Heaven begins now, for any saints willing to sign up.
—Barbara Brown Taylor, Always a Guest
Spiritual writer Barbara Brown Taylor considers the promise of “blessing” that is central to Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount:
We don’t have to wonder what a blessed life looks like. Jesus laid that out right at the beginning of his most famous sermon, though his description is so far from what some of us had hoped that we would rather discuss the teaching than act on it…. In this life, most of us pedal pretty hard to avoid going in the direction of Jesus’ Beatitudes. We read books that promise to enrich our spirits. We find all kinds of ways to sedate our mournfulness.
According to Jesus, the blessings of the kingdom are available here and now—and later:
The first words out of Jesus’ mouth are not “Blessed shall be” but “Blessed are.” “Blessed are the poor in spirit”—not because of something that will happen to them later but because of what their poverty opens up in them right now. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”—not because God is going to fill them up later but because their appetites are so fine-tuned right now….
When people who can’t stop crying hear Jesus call them blessed right in the basement of their grief, they realize this isn’t something they are supposed to get over soon. This is what it looks like to have a blessed and broken heart….
When people who are getting beat up for doing the right thing hear Jesus call them blessed while the blows are still coming, they are freed to feel the pain in a different way. The bruises won’t hurt any less, but the new meaning in them can make them easier to bear. Who knows? They may even change the hearts of those landing the blows, while they bring the black-and-blue into communion with each other like almost nothing else can.
This is what the Beatitudes have to do with real life. They describe a view of reality in which the least likely candidates are revealed to be extremely fortunate in the divine economy of things, not only later but right now. They are Jesus’ truth claims for all time, the basis of everything that follows, which everyone who hears them is free to accept, reject, or neglect. Whatever you believe about him, believe this about you: the things that seem to be going most wrong for you may in fact be the things that are going most right. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to fix them. It just means they may need blessing as much as they need fixing, since the blessing is already right there.
If you can breathe into it—well, that’s when heaven comes to earth, because earth is where heaven starts, for all who are willing to live into it right now.
Reference:
Barbara Brown Taylor, Always a Guest: Speaking of Faith Far from Home (Westminster John Knox Press, 2020), 199, 200, 202–203.
Image credit and inspiration: Rachel Spina, untitled (detail), 2023, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. The woman watches the child marvel at the flowers—each of them practicing the Beatitudes by noticing and honoring what is small and vulnerable.
Story from Our Community:
Thank you, Carlos Rodríguez, for your beautiful and poignant reflection on “Being Salt and Light”. In speaking of your work with Don Héctor as he approached death, and of your struggle to be true to that calling, you witnessed to the challenge and the beauty of responding faithfully to our calling. Unselfish and loving service to the marginalized of our communities surely is an expression of the unconditional love and goodness of God.
—John Q.
