What Is and What Ought to Be
Epiphany 4
Fr. Tim Nunez
January 29, 2023
May my spoken word be true to God’s written word and bring us all closer to the living word, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Some years ago a roadside memorial popped up on the main road outside our neighborhood. Clearly there had been an accident and someone had died on that spot. There was a cross, lots of flowers, a few pictures and a few notes left for the decedent.
One evening I was driving by and noticed that two young men and a young woman were standing there. I stopped, identified myself as a pastor and asked about their friend. They told me he was a great guy, lots of life, with a great sense of humor.
I had read about the accident in the paper. He had been riding his motorcycle and someone turned in front of him. In a moment, he was gone. That was the hard fact and they were trying to come to grips with their sense of loss at the spot where he had died. This young man had been a vibrant part of their lives. He ought to be there now. They ought to, had to, make this pilgrimage to this spot to remember him and grieve together.
People live with an awareness of what is, as far as we understand things in a given moment. I say that because we are continually gathering data from all our senses and reasoning. We can always learn more about really anything.
We are driven by a sense of what ought to be.
That sense of “ought” drives growth. A baby decides that he or she ought to move, and starts the army crawl. Then comes crawling on their hands and knees. I ought to stand. I ought to walk. I need to pull everything off this shelf. It isn’t stimulus-response, we are stimulated by what may be, what may happen.
Once grown up, so to speak, that includes and involves everything from the simplest things. I’m here and I ought to go there, so I start walking. These chores need to be done, so I ought to get busy but first I need to brush my teeth.
As one’s horizons expand, as we grow, one gains a sense of what ought to be in every aspect of life, in our relationships, our work, our recreation. We set goals and make plans, our reactions are tempered and guided by those long term visions.
We have a sense that wrong ought to be set right. Families, workplaces, schools, government – all of our social structures and systems ought to work right, ought to be better. Extend that all the way out. Because we know there is a God who is the ultimate good, the ultimate truth, and we know he is Lord of all things, our hope rests in Him and He shapes our whole notion of progress as being toward Him.
It’s often said that Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount,” which begins with today’s Beatitudes and continues through Chapter 7, is the “Constitution of Christianity.” It’s all teaching, all instruction, about how we are to think and live. In other words it is a concise summary of what it means to follow God’s will, to follow Jesus Christ, to be a Christian, to make things better as we go. Jesus meets the people, he meets us where we are and he helps develop our sense of what truly ought to be.
These nine Beatitudes serve as a preamble to all of that teaching. It’s typically noted that Jesus flips our expectations upside down. We expect the poor in spirit to live in misery, not in the Kingdom of God. We expect mourners to live in sorrow. We expect the meek to get run over, and so forth. But Jesus holds forth a promise of blessing for each of those categories, including the last one involving personal persecution for our faith.
So yes, those are all great contrasts, opposites and in effect turned upside down from the way the world is, or would be if left to cause and effect and the laws of nature. But it seems to me that these words touch our hearts so very deeply because he’s also answering each circumstance that is with a promise that touches most pointedly our sense of what ought to be.
You will not always be in misery. You will not always be broken-hearted. You will not always be overrun by the powerful. Your hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied. Your efforts to show mercy, to live a godly life, and to make peace will honor God and honor you. The persecuted for His sake, including you if it comes to that, will be greatly rewarded. Things ought to be better and Jesus promises they will be. And we know in our hearts he is telling the truth.
The Jews in Jesus’ time could hear these promises and remember how God had fulfilled each of them in their past. They were very much defined by their history as a people once in slavery in Egypt, poor in spirit, mourning, hungering and thirsting for righteousness. Heroes like King David had shown and received mercy.
Each of these promises are secured by God and underlie the instructions that Jesus will give throughout the rest of the Sermon on the Mount. They underlie his miracles and healings. They underlie his clashes with religious leaders and his engagement with gentiles. What ought to be will drive him all the way to the cross, where he will secure them with his own body and blood.
As we are drawn forward, then, by what ought to be, we find this is not a passive venture. Jesus didn’t wave his hand and make it so. He called his disciples and taught the crowds that we are to join God in making these blessing a reality, to make what ought to be into what is and shall be, to continue Jesus’ work of revealing the Kingdom of God in ourselves and for those around us.
When I met with those young adults by that roadside memorial that evening, I listened as they shared about their friend, about their sense of loss and about their hope that he was “in a better place.” They were expressing the same thoughts and feelings we all suffer in the wake of death.
But they were groping around because they were completely unfamiliar with our witness to Jesus, who he is and what he has done and is doing for God’s people. Death is hard, very hard on us. We have this whole structure in place to enact Jesus’ promise that those who mourn will be comforted. We communicate God’s promise through scripture, the liturgy including the music and prayers, often eulogies and a sermon proclaiming God’s promise. We have places set aside, be it our memorial garden or a cemetery.
These young people were disconnected from all of that. All of it.
I offered to pray with them about all of that, to comfort those who mourn. And I shared with them that their hope for that better place for him, for others they love and for themselves rested in God and was symbolized by that cross in front of us.
I encouraged them to not take that for granted, to pursue those visions and seek after the One who makes them true. The Church exists to bear this Word forward and to enact blessing for the poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the pure in heart, the peacemakers and the persecuted, step by step.
AMEN