Our readings this week are:Ephesians 1.11–23 and Luke 6.20–31.

It's taken me a little longer than usual to write this today.  My first draft was heading straight towards the old chestnut that always rears its head when the beatitudes come into sight: the suggestion that suffering can be received as a blessing, because it is an opportunity to receive the 'immeasurable riches' of God's grace that Paul harks on about in his letter to the Ephesians.

To some extent that I guess that might be true — I certainly know several people who will tell you that their times of suffering and sorrow have drawn them closer to God — but I struggle with the suggestion that it is universally true.  I know plenty of others who, through their sufferings, have felt themselves entirely disconnected from the love and presence of God and have walked away from Them feeling quite justified in doing so.

And, of course, on the other hand, I know plenty of people who are incredibly rich when judged against the standards of humanity's history, who don't seem to feel as though those riches interfere with their capacity to receive and enjoy the grace of God, and offer back thanks and gratitude in return.

Of course, I know that suffering can produce righteousness — we need only to look at the cross to see that.  But I am deeply allergic to any teaching that tells me that suffering is therefore in and of itself 'good', or even desirable.  After all, we don't have to look many hours before the cross to find Jesus asking if there were another way.

So how can we take these words of Jesus seriously?  

Well let's first start with being honest about the challenge.  Let's give in to the temptation to shout it out that suffering is wrong, and bad, and detestable, and let our scream echo with all those souls around us living through the worst that the world has to offer right now - from the consequences of man-made climate change (and yes, that is deliberately gendered), to genocidal regimes.  And let's not offer any patronising nonsense about martyrdom, or nobility, or silver-linings.  Let's just admit that sometimes life genuinely, utterly, and totally sucks - sometimes because of what we do to each other, and sometimes just because.

Isn't it precisely those people, those places, those moments that are most in need of being blessed? Isn't it precisely those people, those places, those moments that are most in need of the riches of the glorious inheritance of the saints, and the immeasurable greatness of the power of God — that can do literally anything, even raise the dead?

Could it be that God acts in and through suffering not because suffering is somehow magical or necessary to his activity, but because sometimes it is all there is — and even then it is powerless to stop him?

Can it be that ‘blessed are the poor’ isn’t a beatific description of some idolised, poverty-induced piety, but simply a statement of fact? That even this suffering doesn’t hide them from the presence or love of the God who creates and sustains them? Perhaps even further — that these are precisely the people and situations upon which God longs to pour blessing, because these are precisely the ones who need it most?

But what good is some idealistic conception of a blessing if it has no tangible or practical effect? You can’t eat a blessing, unless it comes in the form of a sandwich; and you can’t rebuild your house with a blessing, unless it’s manifest in bricks and mortar.

Maybe that’s where Jesus’ instructions to ‘do good’, ‘bless’, ‘pray for’, and ‘give’ to a whole variety of people in a whole variety of states of suffering and bad behaviour come in — as an invitation to us to help fulfil that prescription, and a reminder that so very often the power to make blessings real is in our hands.

God bless you — and if I can help make that manifest, let me know.