Blessed are You

Matthew 5.1-12 (LIT Bible, translated by Brandon C. Vélez Johnson)

1Having seen the crowds, Jesus went up the hill, and after he had sat down, his students came to him, ² and he opened his mouth and began to teach. He said to them:

³ The poor who are with the Life-breath have reason for gratitude
because the Heavenly Reign is for them.
⁴ Those who are grieving have reason for gratitude
because they will be consoled.
⁵ Those who are gentle have reason for gratitude
because they will inherit the earth.
⁶ Those who hunger and thirst for justice have reason for gratitude
because their craving will be satisfied.
⁷ Those who are committed to compassion have reason for gratitude
because they will be shown committed compassion.
⁸ Those whose hearts are clean have reason for gratitude
because they will see God.
⁹ Those who make peace have reason for gratitude
because they will be named children of God.
¹⁰ Those who are harassed because of their justness have reason for gratitude
because the Heavenly Reign is for them.

¹¹ “When people verbally abuse you and harass you and falsely claim every harmful thing about you because of me, you have reason for gratitude. ¹² Rejoice and celebrate it because your payment in the Heavenly Reign will be large; before you, they harassed the prophets in the same way.

For most of my life, I’ve been on stage.

Not a literal Broadway stage or anything. But I’ve been dedicated to performing. As far back as I can remember, I was told I needed to be the kind of person that pleased God, the kind of person that followed Jesus, the kind of person who was righteous. I was told I needed to be a Christian.

And not just any Christian. No, I had to be a good Christian, the best kind of Christian.

I was told that to be a good Christian, there were certain things I had to do.

Read my Bible every day.

Pray all the time.

Not tell lies.

Be nice.

Keep clean.

Stay neat.

Dress well.

Go to church.

Go to Bible study.

Go to prayer meetings.

Evangelize.

The list goes on, and on, and on.

All of these things were a checklist to make sure that I was acting like a good Christian. These things were outward displays of the inner reality that I loved God more than anything else, that I had my theology right, that I was righteous. When I failed to do these things, I needed to repent, to ask for forgiveness, and to try harder to fulfill my life as a good Christian.

Among all the rules and regulations, the guides to being good, there was one rule that was paramount above all, one command you should never break.

Don’t sin.

Sin was defilement, dirtying yourself before God. It was contamination with the filth of the world. It was evil, and God couldn’t stand it.

Sin is a broad word. It needs specificity if I am going to be able to avoid it. But the only definitions of it that I ever received—or figured out—focused on this idea of going against the will of God. God was perfect, and what God wanted was perfect, so if I went against what God wanted (God’s will) I was imperfect, and that imperfection was sin.

To be a good Christian, I had to be perfect.

There was no way I could keep the standard that was set for me. I wasn’t perfect. I had trauma responses, triggers, needs, desires, all with a still-developing brain. There is no way I could meet all the marks on the checklist of being a good Christian.

So, I faked it.

I taught Sunday school, preached, led worship, hosted Bible studies, and did all the things a good Christian was supposed to do, all in hopes that no one would ever find out about my struggles, my shame, my imperfections.

I was ashamed of myself because I felt like a hypocrite. I felt like I was living two lives, but there was no way I could ever let the façade drop because to do so risked rejection and shunning from the other good Christians.

The weight of what was given to me has pressed into my bones something that gnaws at my soul. Ultimately, I learned to hate myself in the name of God.

I still carry some of that within my body. This shame when I mess up or when I disappoint someone or when I don’t meet my own standards haunts me, and part of me is still convinced that shame is the voice of God calling me to repent and try harder to be a good Christian.

This is why Jesus’ call to honesty greets me with liberation.

The Beatitudes are often seen as a ladder of Christian growth. We climb from one blessing to the next, seeking to form ourselves into their mold.

But these declarations are not the system by which we perform being a good Christian. Instead, they are the means by which the foundation of being a good Christian is dismantled and replaced with the freedom of honesty.

At the heart of all these reasons for gratitude lies something tender, something gentle, something true. At the center is the truth that these conditions—poor, gentle, grieving, etc.—are the truth of where we are right now. They are not some holier-than-thou points we have to master. Nor are they conditions by which we lay hold of blessing.

These reasons for gratitude are where we are.

We are the poor.

We are the grieving.

We are the hungry, the thirsty.

We are the beatitudes in reality because we are human.

But it doesn’t feel true. It doesn’t feel right to say that we are makers of peace when we violently judge others, exude dominance over family and friends, and let ourselves fall into the rhythm of fear and suffering that the empire wields so sharply.

It doesn’t feel true to say we have clean hearts when we jealously work to achieve what we are sold as success at the expense of ourselves and our loved ones.

It doesn’t feel true to say that I am harassed for my justness when I’m the asshole in so many situations.

How can these conditions be true when everything I do and participate in seems so counter, antithetical, and opposed to their very core?

Here’s the hidden liberation: I do belong to these categories, but I can only see it when my house of cards of being a good Christian burns down and I salt the ashes.

Let’s be clear: honesty isn’t about fixing anything. It’s not about “laying down your burden” at the altar or renouncing the works of Satan. There is no prerequisite to honesty.

And there’s the rub. Honesty—real honesty—means showing up wholly ourselves: wounded, dirty, stardust, and glory. When we are honest, all our goodness and all we are ashamed of stand out in the light of day for all to see.

This is hard.

We become exposed with nothing left to hide behind, no self-justification to camouflage our raw selves. It’s not being real about the hard parts. It’s telling the truth about all that is good and all that we wish wasn’t there. This isn’t vulnerability as a shield. This is a revelation with no intent of pulling another curtain over what everyone can see.

This feels like death.

We are wired to avoid death. Our brains have evolved to keep us alive. Anything that threatens us, we do everything we can to fight and flee from it. It doesn’t matter that this death isn’t from some large beast hunting us. Our brain interprets all pain the same, all vulnerability the same, all anxiety the same.

Added to that, we are socialized to create a façade for the comfort of others. We want to fit in, so we keep other people at ease around us by hiding, masking, and toning down what we are. We won’t be too proud of what instills pride in us, and we defiantly won’t be too forward with the places that harbor trauma, both given and received.

Since we are hard-wired to avoid death, in a very real way we have a biological imperative to flee from the honesty that kills our ego.

So how do we find this liberation?

Simply put, we stop looking for honesty to liberate us.

Honesty will not set us free because it’s not a virtue, it’s not a goal, it’s not another performance we have to put on.

Honesty is seeing what we are, what Jesus says we are, as he tells us that we have reason for gratitude.

This mirror of the beatitudes is a tool by which we can begin to see ourselves as we really are, unadorned and unfiltered. The liberation comes when this tool reveals to us the reality that we are not the system that tells us we need to hide.

The true self that we are is free, is not enmeshed, is liberated from these systems of power and domination that violently oppress us.

You are not white supremacy.

You are not patriarchy.

You are not capitalism.

What you are is accepted as you are right now, even caught in and tangled up in this system and its powers and principalities. You are embraced and loved by divinity, blessed, given reason for thanksgiving right now.

The reign of heaven, the kingdom of God, is for you.

This is the liberatory truth that enables us to be honest in the face of a world that tells us we have to hide.

There’s nothing I am ashamed of that is too much for the fire of divine love. There is no way I am too much for God to embrace. There is nothing, no glory and no shame, that can separate me from the love that first sung me into existence, knitting me in the womb to be this person that I am.

The beatitudes strip us of pretense and performance. We are set free to love ourselves as we are.

Honesty will not set us free.

Freedom will help us be honest.

Where can we be honest now? It won’t come all at once; our bodies fight death too hard for that. But we can begin to be honest in the small things, beginning to peek at the mirror set before us, beginning to lean into the liberation we have been given.

Yes, it feels like death. But you are allowed to die.

To ego.

To performance.

To external validation.

To our co-dependencies.

To everything that keeps us tied to this system of violence and oppression, of shame and fear. We are free to die to it all; we are free to be honest; we are free to be free.

I am in the process of becoming a community chaplain with The Order of Hildegard. This program is designed to help form people into spiritual leaders that lead and serve from the margins. It’s for the people who don’t quite fit with the traditional church because of trauma, disability, or identity. If you, as my community, would like to help me fulfill the financial obligation this chaplaincy program has, you can give at the link below. Thank you for the myriad ways you support me.

If you’re aching to listen for God in the real stuff of life—grief, wonder, doubt, desire—I offer spiritual direction as a space to breathe and be heard. We listen together for the Spirit moving in the ordinary, the hidden, the in-between. No fixing. No formulas. Just presence, honesty, and room to be fully human before God.

If that sounds like what your soul needs, I’d love to walk with you