Epiphany IV - Why bother?

The heart of the spiritual path on which we follow Jesus, and in which we join with the ancestors and all those of every time and place who seek truth: this week we read the prophet Micah's famous words — do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.

Amen.  In the Gospel reading, we hear Jesus address this, via paradox, in his great teaching in Matthew known as the Sermon on the Mount.  The Beatitudes. (Beata... beatus…  blessed are...)  We will read much of this teaching, ritually, over the coming weeks.  But, this week, it is paired with the Micah pithiness: do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with God.

Or, as Jesus puts it: the poor in spirit, those who are in mourning, those who are pushovers, the vulnerable, the foolishly merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers -- these all are responding in some way to the command (the impulse?) to do just acts, a love of kindness, and basic existential humility before the mystery of the cosmos and of being, itself.  They have chosen to serve God-who-is-love, and God alone (turning from all other things we might align our lives with and which might be more tangible...).

They may not appear successful.  Or powerful.  Or, really, not always very bright.  Following Jesus on the road-of-humbling-one's-self may appear as 'foolishness' - as Paul puts it - to those whose lives are aligned elsewhere and elsewise.

Why bother?  

Jesus seems to offer some incentives, in a paradoxical way.  He offers, without proof or offering a methodology, that we will receive mercy.  That we will be comforted, and filled. That we will inherit something he calls the kingdom of heaven.  That we will be called children of God. That we will inherit the earth (like it or not!).  

That we will, in fact, see God.