Festival of All Saints, 11/02/2008

Sermon on Matthew 5:1-12, by Luke Bouman

"Blessed Are You"

Prologue

Blessed are, if blessed be, but those named by Jesus did not seem blessed to me. These sayings disconnected, pious sounding, and idealistic to me, meant less before a trip I took. It is rare when we are in the presence of a living saint, rarer still to notice it when it happens, humbling altogether to realize it after. Yet in that hospital room, in that place, real and vivid in my memory as the day it happened those many years ago, I was in the presence of just such a one. In him dwelt my Lord, and therein lies the blessing. Come listen to this story. Memory fades. Yet the images are burned into me and they happened, as best I can recall, just as I will tell you.

Embodied Blessings

I visited John from time to time as his pastor. Once he had been strong, athletic even, with a sharp wit and tongue to match. Now he was reduced to a shadow of a man. His lungs had failed him. It was not by cancer, no, for that can be cut out, nuked with radiation, or fried with chemicals. No, it was a disease more pernicious by far, and deadlier. His lungs were calcifying, turning to stone as he worked, and lived and slept, all the while drawing the breath out of him until none remained. Well, cut out the diseased part, you might say, but that would have helped, not hindered, its spread, and hastened the day of his passing. No, there was but one option for John, to keep the rest of his body healthy enough that when the time came they might transplant new lungs, new breath, into his failing body and thus give John a second chance at life.

John's body may be failing, but his wit was intact. At times he turned this wit on the world, as those who have the clarity of a death sentence are wont to do. He would pronounce the stupidity of the daily news, of the worries of people who had the luxury of oblivion towards their own mortality to waste time on such petty things. John would not be bothered. It was his way of embracing his illness, and as his pastor I was in no mood to talk him out of it. John would also turn his wit on himself, calling his own wasted youth into question and inspiring others to use their own youth more wisely. John's sarcasm masked his pain, and grief and loss to the world. To me, his pastor, he wore these emotions, raw and unfettered by convention, openly, without pretense.

Then, in the middle of the night came a phone call from John's wife. There had been an accident. A matching transplant donor had died, and John was rushed to a nearby city for his operation. This went without a hitch, though it was a complicated all day affair. I went to pray and stayed for a while that day, then went home to hear the news that all was well. On my way to a conference later in the week, when recovery was supposed to be on its way, I stopped by the hospital again expecting to see John doing better. I found that things were not. His wife intercepted me in the hallway and informed me that the lungs were not working as they were supposed to. Another transplant would happen. In the meantime, John was alert, on a respirator, unable to speak, but able to write with a marker on a white board. His whole family had been there, mother, siblings, children, wife. They could only hope and pray.

I entered the room expecting gloom. Following my hospital training, I scrubbed, looked at the monitors in an instant for signs of well being, before coming around the curtain to see John. There he was, white board in hand, ready, no eager, for a visit. For a moment I was taken aback. He was covered in tubes, some of which must have been very uncomfortable. The respirator was pushing air in and out of his lungs, which were clearly not doing well. John's face was pallid, almost an ashen gray. But his eyes flashed all the same. Even with assistance he struggled for every breath. It was only later that I realized that this breath is the same word in Greek that we translate as Spirit. Pneuma, it is. If ever there was a person who is poor in Spirit, poor in pneuma, it was John. Amazingly this troubled his body, but not his demeanor. It was in these first few seconds that I realized this would be no ordinary visit. I was there to minister to John, but it was clear that he would give and I would receive.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

John began a strange conversation. He would write, or start to write and we would guess what he meant, until he nodded yes and we would respond. John talked mostly about Jesus, no longer sardonic or even sarcastic, still witty but hope filled. The topic of that conversation turned, though, as John began to talk of his likely death. He waved away our rejections, asking us to let him feel what he felt and at that moment tears started to flow. They were the tears of a man who mourns not things as they are, but mourns the loss of things that may not be: the inability to see grandchildren as yet unborn; the inability to walk a daughter down the aisle; the inability to make good on promises made to his wife. All of these things and many more washed down his cheeks in a torrent of tears. And I thought:

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted."

John's tears wore him out and he drifted into an unsettled sleep. In sleep he did not labor against the respirator. With his eyes closed his countenance drifted. His wife spoke of a change in his personality over the course of the many years of his illness: how he had gradually learned to accept the gifts of others, especially when they wanted to help him. It had brought a calm to their household and to their lives. John woke and he wrote again on the small white "dry erase" board. He communicated his journey had taught him what was important, and it wasn't about the things that he owned or had, it was about relationships and family, and friends. All that he needed was in his room, he said, and glanced at his family around him. His whole world was gathered in that hospital room.

"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth."

Later in the day, after John had rested, he resumed his conversation. John had been busy, in the hospital. He wanted to set things right within his family. He had spent time with each of his loved ones, settling old arguments and apologizing for many hurts. John lavished grace on others just as he had received it from them. All the family present nodded in agreement. John intended, it seems, that his time would be spent pursuing the task of putting his relationships in order, so much that it had become a passion, as he had called people to his bedside.

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

When, later in the day, we were alone for a moment, John spoke to me in whispered tones, lest anyone hear and think him crazy. He told me that he had seen Jesus. I wondered if he had a near death experience, but he shook his head no. He had seen Jesus in his room, watching over him. He explained that he had been praying, not for himself, but for his family, especially his son and daughter, and that was when he thought for sure he had seen Jesus, in the room with him. He asked me if I thought this was crazy. I responded that I did not have any reason to think that Jesus was ever absent, so why would his seeing Jesus be crazy, not knowing what to say. It was only later that I thought about this differently:

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. "

When John's family returned, John turned the conversation back to them. He was especially proud of the ones who were there together for the first time in many years. There had been a family dispute and some had vowed never to talk to one another again. But John's illness, and fragility had brought them together. He courage to open up his own life and sinfulness had melted their anger and stubbornness. Not only did they reconcile with John, they began to reconcile with one another.

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

The doctor and nurses came in for a moment and asked all of us to step out of the ICU while they did some procedure with John. John wrote a single word on his white board as we left: HELP! I thought it was a joke until his wife said that John had a love/hate relationship with his caregivers. They poked him and prodded him so often that their very presence caused a noticeable rise in John's blood pressure. John had even joked that they were hurting him on purpose so that he would keep on going until the next transplant just to spite him. It certainly was true that John had been through a lot, with the original illness, the first transplant and now facing a second one. Yet he laughed at and with his caregivers. He bore no real resentment.

"Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

When my visit was over and it was time for me to drive on to my conference, I bid John and the family farewell. My intern, who had traveled with me and had been in the room and in the conversation for the whole time turned to me and said, "Wow!" She acknowledged the intensity of the conversation, but also the energy in the room. Both of us knew that something had happened to us, but we were not sure what. It was only later that I realized that we had been in the presence of Jesus. John was not seeing things at all, Jesus was in the room, but he was in and with John. He clearly was there. Through his cross Jesus had taken John's pain, his loneliness, his fear, his whole life and now would be there with John to live through it all again. Jesus did not spare John's feelings, but he certainly did share them. Where John appeared most vulnerable he was most blessed. I turned to my intern and mentioned that we had been with one of God's saints and she agreed that had been the case. John was indeed the living embodiment of the beatitudes.

Had I not understood these sayings of Jesus? That was because I had not seen them. Jesus was with John, in John, and it was clear that my understanding of blessing was not adequate for God's presence and work. But now, now that I had seen John's blessings, it is as if I have been opened. John taught me what blessings look like, and they don't look like the "victorious life" described by an arena preacher in the same city in southeast Texas where John was in the hospital. John's blessings looked as the did because they accompanied the presence of Jesus. Of course there are other ways to understand these beatitudes of Jesus. But all of them include the notion that Jesus is present in the lives of the blessed, just as he was present for all of humanity in his own suffering and death. Thus, I have never been able to read the Beatitudes since that day without John coming to my mind. Blessed are you, Saint John, poor in spirit, but rich in Christ.

Epilogue

John did not get two more lungs. But he did get one, and it worked then as it works now, six years later. John saw his son graduate from Medical school; he walked his daughter down the aisle; and has seen two grandchildren and one more on the way. John's life is still blessed. But I have since come to understand that John is no more blessed, as one of God's saints, than you or me. He was just able to see it for a moment, and once you have seen it, you don't lose sight of it. On this All Saints Day, see how blessed you are, not only when you are strong and happy, but also, maybe even chiefly, when you are weak and vulnerable. For Jesus is with the weak and needy, if we but recognize that we, too, struggle to breathe, as life closes in on us; we, too, mourn with anticipatory grief; we, too, long for mercy and righteousness; we, too, long for peace; we, too, are persecuted; we, too, long for the Kingdom of God. We are all God's saints. We are all washed and claimed. And look, don't call me crazy, but Jesus is here, with us. Do you see him?

Rev. Dr. Luke Bouman
Valparaiso University
E-Mail: luke.bouman@valpo.edu

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