In the Name..
"Let us praise famous men, and our ancestors in their generation." The New Revised Standard Version of the Scriptures titles the 44th chapter of the book Ecclesiasticus, "The Hymn in Honor of our Ancestors." What a hymn it is, and what ancestors they are! And how different they are from all the saints!
The first 14 verses list categories of ancestors. The remainder of the chapter, which is not part of today's reading, lists five prophets.
The categories of ancestors are: firstly, "Those who ruled in their kingdoms, and made a name for themselves by their valor." That is, the first category includes kings who were not merely rulers, but also were brave, presumably in war. Those rulers, in other words, unlike our own, actually fought in their own wars.
The next category: "Those who gave counsel because they were intelligent." (I appreciate the connection here between advice and intelligence -- quite unlike our own society, in which we hear of all sorts of counsellors, who are manifestly not intelligent, "advising" the people and the leaders.)
The third category: "Those who spoke in prophetic oracles." (We have oracles in our world too, warning us of our folly.)
The fourth category: "Those who led the people by their counsels and by their knowledge of the peoples' lore." These are people who remember history, custom, and law, and so we can call them lawyers and historians.
The fifth: "Those who composed musical tunes."
The sixth category: "Those who put verses in writing" -- poets, and perhaps writers in general -- storytellers.
The seventh category, and the last in this list: "rich men."
So, the honored ancestors of the writer of Ecclesiasticus are: kings, counselors, oracles, lawyers, historians, composers, poets, and rich men. The list apparently excludes women.
Then this chapter takes an interesting turn. It says, "But of others there is no memory, they have perished as though they never existed." These others were not in the listed groups of famous men. They had no power, no special knowledge, no talent, no insight, and, worst of all perhaps, no money. The list, after all, begins with kings, and ends with rich men, and, in between, lists those who helped the kings and rich men rule their societies. Not unlike society today, it seems to me. This arrangement is not accidental. But as for the unnamed others, they are extinct.
Then our writer resumes his hymn of praise for the great ancestors: their "righteous deeds have not been forgotten;" their wealth will remain;" "their descendants stand by the covenants;" their offspring will continue forever;" "their name lives on."
But that's all that lives on. Verse 14 says, "their bodies are buried in peace, but their name lives on generation after generation." The names of the famous ancestors are all that live on.
The reading stops here, at verse 14, but I think that it should include verse 15, which divides that chapter between the general list of ancestors, and the named prophets that follow. Verse 15 says, "the assembly declares their wisdom, and the congregation proclaims their praise." Ecclesiasticus is telling us here what wisdom is, in his view, and what is important: power, talent, creativity, knowledge, insight, wealth, being remembered in history. Our writer knows that this is wisdom, because the assembly says so. And we, in our world, admire and value these things too, and we tell each other all the time, in our assemblies and outside our assemblies, how important they are.
But Jesus, in today's Gospel, has a very different list of who, and what, are important."Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven." Very different from the brave kings in Ecclesiasticus, and a very different idea of the Kingdom. Jesus does not casually place the "poor in spirit" at the beginning of his list, the list we call 'The Beatitudes.' The kings in Ecclesiasticus are full of their own power and strength, and evidently don't need anything but the approval of other important people. But the "poor in spirit" are open instead to God's power, and can enter his Kingdom, which includes not merely this world but the next, not merely earthly prosperity and success, but also the transformation of this world into the new heaven and the new earth which John speaks of in the Revelation.
We can sort the Beatitudes into two groups. The first group lists those who lack: the poor in spirit lack God, or at least, lack any idea of themselves as especially favored by God. Those who mourn have lost loved ones to death. The meek lack earthly status. Those who hunger and thirst after righteousness lack the accomplishment of their desire for justice in this world. The next three Beatitudes are very different: blessed are the merciful, the pure in heart, and the peacemakers. They appear not to lack, as the first group does, but have attained spiritual awareness and maturity.
The contrast between the Beatitudes and the list of famous men in Ecclesiasticus is striking. The famous men are admired for their power, wealth, and so on, and their posterity in this world. The blessed of the Beatitudes have none of this worldly success.
It seems to me that the blessed of the Beatitudes are the unremembered dead of Ecclesiasticus. The unremembered dead have nothing and are nothing that the famous men would know or care about. The unremembered dead are the meek of the Beatitudes. They are those who mourn, who lost their children and so have no posterity in this world. Those who hunger and thirst after righteousness are those who are exploited by the kings and the rich, and manipulated by the counselors and the lawyers and others who work for the powerful. Jesus is including all these in the Kingdom.
There is nothing in the Beatitudes to exclude those in the list in Ecclesiasticus. In the end, Jesus does not distinguish between the famous and the unknown, between powerful people and powerless, between those with posterity and those without it. But he is reminding us, and his hearers, that there is more to the Kingdom than the rather meager list of worthies in Ecclesiasticus.
"Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven." "Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account." These last two Beatitudes are about persecution, reminders of what can happen, what does happen and has happened, when Jesus's hearers live according to his teachings. Persecution is possible, even likely, when people begin to live in such a way that the comfortable rulers of this world feel threatened by the coming of the new Kingdom, in which the unremembered dead, the blessed, are just as important as they are, or more important.
Notice the turn here. The two lists talk about people in the third person, about someone else, somewhere else. But Jesus, in the last Beatitude, says "Blessed are you!" "Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you!" He moves from the third person to the second person, addressing his hearers, and us, directly. And he follows this with a command: "Rejoice, and be glad, for great is your reward in Heaven!" Jesus is telling his hearers, and us, that we are in good company, for "in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you!" Notice whose company we are NOT in: the famous men and ancestors of Ecclesiasticus. Their satisfaction with their worldly success is not the blessedness, the happiness, which Jesus is telling us is our true happiness.
Today's reading from the 7th chapter of the Revelation to John shows us where this teaching is leading us. There is even an list of people in this reading, not clearly stated, but it is there. The people in this story are, firstly, God's servants, among whom are, secondly, the 144,000 who are sealed on their foreheads -- they are sealed with the unpronounceable name of God, YHWH, which we call the Tetragrammaton, and, thirdly, the vast throng from every nation, all the saints. All of them, however, belong to one group, as verse 14 says: "These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." This is the great vision of our destiny, to worship before the throne of God, in the new heaven and the new earth. Jesus in the Beatitudes, and John in the Revelation, are leading us, and all the saints, to the Lamb and to the throne, to the springs of the water of life.
In the Name etc.. Amen.
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