I have been thinking and meditating on the Vision of Isaiah, the Hebrew prophet of the eighth century BC who saw God, surrounded by his angles, the six-winged seraphim. Isaiah, completely overwhelmed by the sense of God's presence, holiness and majesty, cried out "Woe unto me, for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips!" Then, one of the angels took a live coal from the altar and touched Isaiah's lips with it, purging him of his sin. Then, he was sent forth to proclaim the divine message to the people of Israel.
This is what happens in our lives when in our poverty of spirit we are mourning for our own sins and deficiencies and those of the people around us. Which brings us to the third Beatitude:
Dichosos los que tienen hambre y sed de justicia, porque serán saciados.
in English:
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
I think that is the stage I am in right now, concerning the order of the beatitudes. I have been faced with my poverty of spirit. I have mourned. And now I hunger and thirst for righteousness. I am still aware of my spiritual poverty. I am still in mourning. And now, for true justice, for true righteousness to come flowing down and welling up and filling and flooding our earth. But the real challenge is moving from platitudes to reality.
For the desperately poor begging in Colombia, those whom I encountered, and whom I still remember, of course I desire justice, just as I desire, and long have desired justice for our own homeless here in Vancouver. And for every vulnerable person who has been hurt and is at risk of being hurt. It isn't that this is all going to happen. It is never going to happen. But we have to still set it in motion, by ourselves being set in motion by the Holy Spirit.
This is all going to be rather different from the virtue signalling and the public breast-beating for which the Anglican Church has become notorious. If you are queer, if you our First Nations, they will uphold you while making public their crocodile tears over all the historic injustices and wrongs done to our queer and aboriginal brethren. Yes, crocodile tears, because outside of practising tokenism and selective cultural appropriation, Anglicans in general still remain impervious to the work of the Holy Spirit. Queers and First Nations people are always going to be othered, and for one simple reason: outside of culturally appropriating indigenous symbols on liturgical vestments and solemnly proclaiming at the beginning of every Eucharist that we are living on stolen land; and outside of electing token gay persons and transgender persons as clergy and deacons, The Anglican Church of Canada is, always has been and always will be the church of white middle class Anglophones.
For any of this to significantly change, then Anglicans are going to have to begin opening their lives to complete change and transformation. This means opening themselves to the work of the Holy Spirit, opening their hearts and their lives, opening their homes, and also selling their sumptuous houses and living more simply, and becoming a true community that doesn't exist merely within the church building. It means each person encountering personally Jesus Christ as their saviour and Lord, and living each day in prayer and sacred reading and acts of giving and generosity to others. It means opening our lives to one another and to the stranger. It means not othering people, but embracing all as icons of Christ. It means giving ourselves entirely to the love of Gold and living in love towards others, the outsiders as well as those who are close to us. It means a complete revolutionary transformation of our lives.
This is still not happening, and until it begins to really happen, the Anglican Church is going to continue dying until it no longer exists. Christian discipleship is costly, the costliest thing on earth. And Anglicans tend to so love their comforts and social privilege that they are less than likely to rise to the occasion. They really are very selfish people. That needs to change, and we need to change. Not in the future, but now. Not now, but yesterday!
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