Someone suggested last week that I put a very brief thumbnail version of my Sunday sermon on Monday’s blog. I obviously forgot to do that, but want to give it a try, so here goes:
The Beatitudes are an attempt to reshape our idea of happiness with eight paradoxical sayings. To describe how mercy leads to a deeper kind of happiness, I looked at two events from current events. I looked at the lesbian woman who was refused communion at her mother’s funeral by a Catholic priest. I also looked at the Treyvon Martin killing and Giraldo’s comment that the hoody was as guilty as the gunman.
So justice would be advocating and protecting the victims of injustice, mercy would be understanding what makes good people do bad things. For example, Giraldo has a teenage kid who is into hip hop. So the source of his completely inappropriate comment could have been the understandable fear of an overprotective parent. So justice would be pointing out his comment was blaming the victim, mercy would be understanding why Giraldo might have said such a stupid thing and still not be stupid himself.
My points were that the horrible events described were the expressions of deeper wounds. I mentioned that the wounds were a lot larger than the people mentioned, they are a world wound. Final point was that we cannot heal a wound with punishment alone.
So the thimble version of the sermon is this: When we see evil in the world we must see it as a wound, and say to ourselves, “The world needs me to be a healer.”
http://staopen.com/podcast/2012/rigby3_25_2012.mp3