Text used – Isaiah 58:6-12

• Reminder of summer sermon series on Beatitudes
  • Dive deeper into one Beatitude each week
  • Interesting: the more we dive into these, the more we see just how challenging and countercultural Jesus’ blessings were/continue to be
• So this morning, we’re going to start our conversation about the 4^th Beatitude by talking about language. More specifically, we’re going to talk a little bit about the fluidity of language – about how language evolves and changes over time.
  • Indeed, there are new words being added to the English language all the time. I looked up the most recent additions to Dictionary.com[1] (from winter 2023), and they ranged from the serious to the silly.
    • Cakeage: the fee charged by a restaurant for serving a cake brought in from outside
    • Nearlywed: a person who lives with another in a life partnership, sometimes engaged with no planned wedding date, sometimes with no intention of ever marrying
    • Rage farming: the tactic of intentionally provoking political opponents, typically by posting inflammatory content on social media, in order to elicit angry responses and thus high engagement or widespread exposure for the original poster
    • Petfluencer: a person who gains a large following on social media by posting entertaining images or videos of their cat, dog, or other pet
    • All of these are words or terms that had absolutely no meaning just a few years ago. And yet, they’ve become accepted enough to be included in the dictionary.
  • Flipside = words that have fallen into disuse[2]
    • Beef-witted: slow-witted; stupid. According to the United Editors Encyclopedia and Dictionary, “beef-witted” implies “a heavy, ox-like intellect.” Other sources say it’s because back in the day, people believed that eating too much beef would make you dumb
    • Cockalorum: a braggart, a person with an overly high opinion of themselves
    • Fudgel: pretending to work when you’re really just goofing off
    • Growlery: The word “growlery” was created by Charles Dickens. It means “a place where you can retreat from the world when you’re in bad mood.”
  • And within the life of the church, I think we find ourselves in both an odd and privileged place when it comes to language. You see, the Church as an institution – as a wider body – has specific terms and phrases that carry particular meaning within the realm of faith and spirituality.
    • Words used outside the church world BUT words that carry particular weight and meaning within the church world
      • E.g. = grace → As Christians, we put a very strong emphasis on grace.
        • Definition on the PC(USA) website: Grace is defined as favor, blessing, or goodwill offered by one who does not need to do so. It is unearned and undeserved favor. In our sinful condition as humans, undeserving as we are of God’s love, it is God’s goodwill and favor reaching out to redeem us.[3] → If you go out into the world and use the word “grace” in a non-church context, people will know what grace is, but they may not be familiar with the nuances and particularities of the faith-based definition.
    • I said that the Church as an institution is in an odd and privileged place because the Church has also become sort of a museum for terms. To put it frankly, things don’t change quickly in the Church, and that includes language. So while the language outside the realm of the Church shifts quickly – adding new words to the dictionary every year while other words fall out of favor just as quickly – the Church has a tendency to hang onto words in a way that has actually become pretty exclusionary.
      • Exclusionary because they’re so foreign – so unfamiliar – to anyone who didn’t grow up in church → Sometimes, it can be like listening to a conversation among military personnel. No one loves a good acronym or abbreviation like the military … but the church comes close!
        • E.g. – I can tell you that my husband’s rank listed on his DD214 was an E4 PFC and his MOS was 11B, though the unit he was with at the time of his ETS was 12B unit.
        • Church e.g. – language in the bulletin → A number of years ago, we made the conscious choice to take a lot of the “churchy” language out of the bulletin to make it easier to decipher.
          • Assurance of Pardon → God’s Promise of Grace
          • Prayer for Illumination → Prayer to Open Minds and Hearts
          • Benediction → Blessing
• We’re diving deeply into language and meaning today because I think that’s one of the challenges that we face with this morning’s Beatitude: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.[4]
  • Challenge = “righteousness” → I think “righteousness” is one of those church words that has sort of left us at odds with the world around us.
    • “Righteous” isn’t really used in the wider world much anymore → And if it is, it’s used in a way that’s facetious – said sort of tongue-in-cheek or sarcastically, more in reference to someone who thinks they’re righteous than someone who actually is And yet here it is in many translations of this particular Beatitude: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
  • However, we have to remember that the Scripture we read is a translation, and anyone who’s ever learned or attempted to learn another language can tell you, translation is an imperfect thing because sometimes a word in one language either has no equivalent in the other language or has many equivalents!
    • E.g. – llunga in Kasai or Tshiluba language spoken in the Democratic Republic of Congo → meaning: the ability to forgive a person for an offence or abuse the first time, to tolerate it the second time, but never a third![5]
  • Taking a look at this Beatitude, then, how else can we translate that word “righteousness”?
    • Gr. charity, justice, equity → element of salvation to this word
      • Shares same root as the word for deacon – ordained office in the church charged with the ministry of “compassion, witness, and service, sharing in the redeeming love of Jesus Christ for the poor, the hungry, the sick, the lost, the friendless, the oppressed, those burdened by unjust policies or structures, or anyone in distress.”[6]
  • So when we add that translation – that level of understanding – to this fourth blessing that Jesus laid out, we can see why Casey Cole paired this particular Beatitude with our centering prayer word this morning: longing.
    • Hungering and thirsting … longing … desire … desperation → Nowhere will we find greater longing or deeper desire than those suffering injustice … those hungering and thirsting for equity, for inclusion, for freedom, for their rights and their very existence.
• Reason I chose this particular Scripture passage from Is this morning → outright call for justice in all its forms
  • Speaks of injustices
  • Simultaneous speaks of ways that we can work against those injustices AND the blessing that comes from that work – text: Isn’t it sharing your bread with the hungry and bringing the homeless poor into your house, covering the naked when you see them, and not hiding from your own family? Then your light will break out like the dawn, and you will be healed quickly. … If you remove the yoke from among you, the finger-pointing, the wicked speech; if you open your heart to the hungry, and provide abundantly for those who are afflicted, your light will shine in the darkness, and your gloom will be like the noon.[7]
    • Heb. “afflicted” basically covers anything and everything that weighs down a person’s heart and soul
      • Things that suppress
      • Things that overpower
      • Things that violate
      • Things that humiliate
• Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be filled. Truly, friends, we find ourselves in a time in history in which there is deep, desperate hungering and thirsting for justice.
  • Read portion from Cole’s The Way of Beatitude[8]
  • Friends, we live in a world in which so many of our friends, family members, neighbors, co-workers, and fellow human beings are not just denied their rights but denied their very selves. They are told over and over again in a thousand different ways that they cannot be who they are – that there is something wrong with who they are, that they must change, that they must adapt, that they must simply “deal with it because this is how it is.”
    • Injustice based on …
      • Color of their skin
      • Citizenship status
      • Gender identity
      • Sexual orientation
      • Religious affiliation
      • Ethnic background
    • Laws passed against them
    • Violence perpetuated against them
    • Hate speech ringing out from some of the highest halls of government (and the church!) and blasted from news outlets against them
      • To be honest, friends, it’s hearing these injustices perpetuated in the name of God that I find the most infuriating, the most sacrilegious. We are told in Scripture that all humanity is created in God’s image. We are told to love one another. We are told that it is God’s job alone to judge while it is our job to care for each other. And yet there are pulpits all around the country today spewing words of hate; words of exclusion; words of judgment and hypocrisy and shame; words that draw a thick, jagged, ugly line between “us” and “them,” between a very small group of people supposedly loved by God and everyone else.
• Through it all, we hear God’s call:
  • Jesus: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be filled.
  • Today’s text: Isn’t this the fast I choose: releasing wicked restraints, untying the ropes of a yoke, setting free the mistreated, and breaking every yoke?[9]
  • You see, even in the midst of blessing, Jesus promises justice. Even when we broken and imperfect humans can’t seem to get it right, Jesus promises justice. And yet even when we broken and imperfect humans can’t seem to get it right, God still calls us to do better. – text: If you remove the yoke from among you, the finger-pointing, the wicked speech; if you open your heart to the hungry, and provide abundantly for those who are afflicted, your light will shine in the darkness, and your gloom will be like the noon.
    • Cole: This is what it means to hunger and thirst for righteousness. To be a disciple of Christ, we need not die of starvation or dehydration, but we must know what it feels like to be desperate. … As Christians, we are called to sit in the discomfort of our present age, to let the dissatisfaction of the way things are drive us to want something more. We mustn’t hide from it, and we mustn’t grow weary. Let the yearning in our hearts grow so painful that we cannot bear the thought of living another day in this day, and let that sense of urgency, guided by the light of faith, pour over into the life of the world. When we refuse to accept anything less than the kingdom of heaven, we are on the way of Beatitude.[10]
  • Truly, friends, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be filled.” Amen.

[1] https://www.dictionary.com/e/new-dictionary-words-winter-2023/.

[2] https://www.k-international.com/blog/obsolete-english-words/.

[3] https://www.presbyterianmission.org/what-we-believe/grace/.

[4] Mt 5:6 (NRSV).

[5] https://www.getblend.com/blog/difficult-words-translate/.

[6] Book of Order, G-2.0201.

[7] Is 58:7-8a, 9b-10.

[8] Casey Cole. The Way of Beatitude: Living Radical Hope in a World of Division and Despair. (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 2022), 45-46.

[9] Is 58:6.

[10] Cole, 55.