Filled

Yet another whirlwind week!

This time members of our community have spent three days studying, breaking bread, and sharing fellowship along the border wall both in El Paso and in our sister city of Ciudad Juarez. We have laughed, we have cried, we have learned (a lot), we have grown relationships new and old. And we have remembered that life in the borderlands is one that is shared across a wide variety of experiences from around the globe.

This weekend we will be looking at Jesus’s fourth Beatitude - “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”

What most of us cannot see is that the Greek word for righteousness comes from the word for equity and is therefore is inextricably bound up with God’s justice. In fact the same word that is often translated as righteousness can be translated as justice.

It is not about being right. Nor being pious. Nor moral. And most certainly not about a holier than thou, sanctimonious Pharisee.

The equivalent word in Hebrew invites us to live in right relationships with God and others. To reconcile when we have caused harm (as much as we can, for sometimes the harm is too great). To create equity in our own lives and in our communal systems. And to ensure that all people have enough to live a life with dignity and wholeness.

And this includes a special focus on God's beloved three who need our care: the orphan, the widow, and the foreigner. Again and again in the Scriptures these three appear together as those who God desires us to ensure are cared for - mainly because we humans tend to harm them the most.

Jesus then picks up the same thread. "Let the little children come to me." Raising the son of the widow who would be destitute. "Welcome the stranger." Healing Jairus's daughter. The parable of the Widow's Mite. The parable of the Good Samaritan (translate immigrant or foreigner). And beyond these three, Jesus goes on to say, all the "least of these" groups God has ever had - however you treat them, you treat God.

In other words, make equity your purpose. Dignity your purpose. Wholeness your purpose.

Not just for ourselves. For every single other human on this planet.

That is how we are filled with righteousness.

And if we need a place to start... the orphan. the widow. the foreigner. the poor. the grieving. the oppressed.

All the places God is already living and working.

Blessings,

Rev. Janie