Where To Start

It can be a harrowing experience trying to follow the news. There’s a lot going on and a lot of it isn’t good and that can be overwhelming. So what can you do when you’re overwhelmed by all the conflict, the hate, the abuse of power, the death and destruction?

Some people simply stop reading or watching it. They disengage and disconnect from the world. Okay, that’s reasonable for a short break, a vacation or rest from it, sure. But you can’t really disconnect from the world completely. It’s coming for you, first of all, because you live in it. And, just as importantly, we’re built for it. 

You might be familiar with the African term “ubuntu.” It has a variety of related meanings, but essentially says “I am because we are.” It means we’re connected, relational, meant to be together, our uniquenesses meant to be complimenting each other in community.

Or how about “all my relations,” the indigenous phrase that highlights our connectedness to each other and all of creation.

Yeah, an occasional holiday might help, but you can’t just ignore the world around you and have a life that’s whole and full. That’s not to say that any life is free from struggle, hurt or hardship, of course, but engaging the world around you is how we live.

So you’re feeling overwhelmed. Read the first part of chapter 5 in the Gospel of Matthew. It’s the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, a lengthy collection of some of the most important sayings of Jesus, things that teach us how to live well, build relationships, build a world that’s good, with kindness, compassion and love. The good stuff.

But before Jesus gets to any of that, he lays the foundation on which it has to be built. He begins with looking at the crowd around him and seeing those who seem to have lost hope, the broken, the poor, the homeless, the oppressed and abused, the overwhelmed. He tells us we’re blessed. Just as we are, whatever our place or condition in life, we are blessed simply to be. We’re all children of God, created in love. These are the Beatitudes, recognizing that wherever and however people find themselves in life, that we are all blessed.

He doesn’t stop there. He says we are salt of the earth. We season and flavour the world around us, bringing our essential uniqueness to impact it. We are light, too, to shine in the world, to show the world who we are, enlighten the world and shine on a path to good. Remember how, in the creation story, we are made of the earth and of the divine spirit of God? Salt and Light.

Here’s the most important part: in all of that, Jesus never says we will be blessed if we do this or do that, we will be salt and light if we behave this way or that. He says we already are. We are blessed. We are salt and light. Now: use it.

That’s the point. We already are these things, it’s about putting that to work in the world. That’s what brings the wholeness, the fullness, what Jesus describes in himself as the fulfilment of the law. What Jesus teaches about being true to the essential good that is in each of us, about living that into the world and how we do that, isn’t about behaviour, it’s about being.

All that Jesus teaches in this Sermon on the Mount and in his own living is built on this. We begin in knowing we are blessed, just as we are, and that we are of the earth and the divine spirit and we are connected to each other by that. And now, back to the news: what can we do?