About 15 years ago, Bob and I were on semi-vacation in northern New Mexico.  I had gone to Ghost Ranch to take a week-long class on Biblical studies, and Bob was taking a class at the Taos Center for the Arts on weaving.  As it turned out, his class went a day longer than mine, so I decided to go for a short solo drive through that part of New Mexico, just to see what I might find.

            As I drove through one tiny little town, not much more than a dirt crossroads with a handful of little frame houses and a small general store, I noticed a little church off the road a short distance, so I parked and walked down to it.  It was a typical lovely New Mexican-style church – plain solid lines, walls of weathered adobe brick, a cross at the top of the modest steeple.  This church was smaller than most I had seen, and although it didn’t have anything particularly beautiful about it to recommend it to tourists, I was curious about it.  As I walked closer, I could see that it had a tiny little patch of tended ground in front, and a plain but handsome stout wooden door, and the color of the adobe had faded to a soft golden gray.

            When I tried the door, it opened with a loud, screaming creak, and let me into a sanctuary about the size of my office here at our church.  The very air smelled old … the floorboards were rough-hewn wood, worn smooth over the years; the six or eight pews were simple benches, all rough-carpentered together, and there was a simple table to serve as an altar, with a plain tin cross and a dozen melted burnt-out votive candles on top.  No stained-glass in the windows – nothing but rusty screens.  No fancy or beautiful rood-screen or reredos behind the altar.  Just dust … and quiet … a hushed quiet that felt like someone or something waiting.

I sat down on one of the rough benches, and said a prayer, and realized that I could almost feel other people sitting in the space with me … I could almost see their faces, almost hear their soft whispers, almost smell their sweat in that small confined space, mixed with the smell of burning candles and broken Communion bread.  It was immensely peaceful – and remarkably powerful – feeling part of a worshipping community I knew I would never see, never know, never know anything about … except that we were part of the same larger community of faith, gathered together by our love of God.

            The memory of that experience came to me as I was reflecting on our Scripture passage for today – and for the next three weeks.  Because in its own way, my experience was a concrete manifestation of what this passage – something we call the “Beatitudes” – the “blesseds” – is about – especially the first few verses that we’re going to reflect on today.

            Let’s begin our reflection by putting ourselves in the story itself.  In Matthew’s version of what happened (which is the one we heard today), Jesus has only recently called his disciples, and they have been traveling together for some unknown time, to small towns and large, some like that town I visited in New Mexico, others like the 1^st-century equivalent of Denver.  Jesus has been preaching and healing, and the word has gotten out about him so that people come in droves every day bringing with them the people they love who are ill, “those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, and he cured them (all)” (Mt. 4:24).  Enormous crowds gather everywhere they go, and on this day, maybe so that everyone can hear him better, Jesus has led his disciples – followed closely by the crowds – up to the top of a large hill, where he sits down, and begins to teach them all.

“Blessed,” he says … and that’s already an important point – “blessed are,” He says to them, not “happy are” as some contemporary translations would have it.  Blessed – touched by God … gifted by God … blessed are those who are struggling with all the terrible problems that life hands us.  Blessed – be filled with peace, with well-being, feel in your very bones and spirit God’s saving grace and love.

            And the reason that distinction – “blessed” vs. “happy” – is important is that it conveys the heart of Jesus’ message here – that these texts are not just about feeling good, or about being emotionally cheerful, but about our relationship with God – and about what that means about the kinds of relationships we should have with each other.  Jesus is talking about “how fulfilled it is possible to become, how complete, how close to God we can move when we live up to the calling of the Beatitudes[1].”

            And the very first blessing – “blessed are the poor in spirit” – is the key to understanding all the rest of what Jesus says in this Sermon on the Mount.  And it may also be the very hardest one of all those blessings to get our heads and our hearts around.  Because what Jesus is telling those early followers – and telling us – is that if we are going to know God – to experience the realm of God – the kingdom of Heaven – the first thing we have to do is become poor in spirit … or more accurately, to acknowledge our dependence – our dependence on one another, and our dependence on God.

            In Jesus’ time – and for 2,000 years or more before his time – to be “poor in spirit” meant to understand that we can’t do this life alone, that we need others, and that we need the Holy One for our lives to be truly full, and whole, and rich.  In fact, the New English Bible translates this passage like this:  “How blest are those who know their need of God; the kingdom of Heaven is theirs.”

And I said a minute ago that this passage is particularly hard for us to wrap our heads and hearts around in this time we live in, because we live in a culture where we don’t want to be dependent on anyone or anything – often, including God.  We want to be totally in control, totally in charge of our lives.  We want to be self-reliant and self-sufficient.  We don’t want to have to rely on other people.  We don’t really want to need anyone else – even – or especially – God.

            I’d be willing to bet you can ask just about anyone you know, “So, do you believe in God?” and they’ll usually say “yes.”  Then ask them, “so, do you trust in God?” and that’s where they may start to waffle a little.  And then ask them, “so, do you need God?” and that’s where a whole lot of people – including lots of good “church folks – really have a problem.  Believe in?  Sure.  Need to get through another day?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

            And yet, what is Jesus telling us here?  “Blessed are those who admit that they can’t do it all (themselves), for then they will begin to know the blessings and joy of the kingdom of God.”

            Friends, if we think we can do it all ourselves – whatever “it” may be – we are deluding ourselves!  It doesn’t matter what our North American – or our United States of American – or our Western part of the United States of American – ethos is supposed to be.  That whole rugged, do-it-yourself, spirit of independence idea is just an idea – it is not reality. 

If you want to hark back to our pioneer forebears, imagine trying to build a cabin – or a tiny church – in the middle of a desert wilderness.  No single individual could possibly do it alone.  You needed people – lots of people – to cut the trees (remember, there were no chain-saws in those days) … and then to strip the limbs and take off the bark … then move the logs to the building-site … or to grow the wheat or prairie-grass, then cut it into straw, and dig the clay (which is very hard work), and bring the water from a well, and mix it all to just the right consistency to make adobe brick … and then to fashion the wood or the bricks into just the right shapes to be attached to each other … and to lift them into position as walls and roof … and more.

            Or if you want to come a little farther forward in time, imagine that you’re driving down Patterson or North Avenue and your car dies on you.  Unless it’s a really little car, and you’re really fit, you need someone to help you move it out of the traffic onto the side of the road, and maybe loan you their cell-phone so you can call a tow-truck.

            Or imagine that you’ve just lost someone you loved very much.  You profoundly need to mourn their loss, and you need to do it in community.  So, you need people to plan the service, to play the music, to hand out the bulletins, to help people find their seats, and to prepare and serve food for them and you after the service is over.

            I was very much struck by that this last week, as I was leaving here late Tuesday evening.  I opened the refrigerator in the church kitchen to retrieve some leftovers from my lunch that I wanted to take home … and there sat our glass church punchbowl, which someone had come by and put in so it would be chilled for the next day … and some bags of rolls, so that people could come and make sandwiches the next day … and a cake on the counter, that someone had dropped off so it could be served the next day for the lunch we shared after Florence Hamel’s service.

Whether we like it or not (and hopefully, we can learn to appreciate it – to like it – even to love it) we are indeed dependent on each other, and we are dependent on our God.

            And what Jesus is telling us first-thing in the Beatitudes is that it’s okay to be dependent – on others, and on God.  In fact, it’s more than okay – it’s healthy.  We need each other.  It brings wholeness.  It’s life-giving – to others and to us.

And that’s even truer for our relationship with God than it is for our relationship with other human beings.  We call God our Creator – the One who made us.  If that is true, we are utterly dependent on that Creator.  We call God our Provider – the one who fills our lives with good things.  If that is true, we are utterly dependent on that Provider.  We call God our Sustainer – the one who gives us strength, who holds us up, who helps us get through when the very worst things imagineable are happening in our lives.  If that is true, we are utterly dependent on our Sustainer.  And that’s a good thing! 

            Because the one, single, compelling witness of our entire faith story is that God loves us, that God is with us, that God will never let us go.  As commentator Arthur McClanahan notes, “we (have never been) asked to do it all ourselves.  God has said, ‘I’ll be there to help!’  What a freeing realization[2]!”  And that, in part, is what Jesus meant by being in “the kingdom of Heaven.”

            And that’s Jesus’ point of this sermon called the Beatitudes.  That our dependence on others – and God – is not about weakness, but about strength.  That we don’t have to go it alone – and that we shouldn’t even try to go it alone.  And that we are blessed – truly blessed – when we realize that, and when we let ourselves acknowledge that God is in the picture – of our lives, of the cosmos – and we start to let God into our lives in a real way.  When we let ourselves say – in one way or another – yes, I depend on you, God.  When we let ourselves say – in one way or another – yes, I need you, God.

            Even Jesus did that – when he was struggling, when he was worried, when he was afraid, he acknowledged his dependence on God.  And if he can do it, certainly we can too.  And when we do, Jesus says – then we will find that peace – that comfort – that saving grace – that makes us whole.

            It’s part of what I sensed in that tiny church in New Mexico on a sunny summer morning a long time ago.  It’s part of what each of us can sense – in ordinary places – any time we’ll let ourselves do it.  “How blest are those who know their need of God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.”  “O the blessedness of our utter dependence on God, for that dependence ushers us into God’s heart[3].”  May it be so.  Amen.