Disruptive Blessing

This is the sermon preached on March 1, 2026, the second Sunday of Lent, adapted for our blog.

Imagine You Are a Disciple

Imagine you are a new disciple who has decided to study under Jesus. You are on the Galilean plain outside Capernaum in early spring. There is a huge crowd gathered to hear Jesus. Sometimes you feel like you are understanding his teachings, and sometimes you get totally lost. Jesus often turns things upside down.

You had heard about blessings before. When Jesus begins speaking about them, you remember something from Proverbs… “happy are those who keep my ways. Hear instruction and be wise, and do not neglect it. Happy is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors. For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord.” (¡Dichosa la gente que siguen mis caminos! Sean sabios y préstenme atención; no dejen de lado la disciplina. Dichosa la gente que me escucha y todo el tiempo se mantiene vigilante a las puertas de mi casa. Quien me halla, ha encontrado la vida y obtiene el favor del Señor.)

But Jesus speaks about blessings in a different way. When he looks at the crowd, he says things that do not sound like God’s favor. “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” («Bienaventurados ustedes los pobres, porque el reino de Dios les pertenece. Bienaventurados ustedes los que ahora tienen hambre, porque serán saciados. Bienaventurados ustedes los que ahora lloran, porque reirán».)

And you imagine yourself thinking, “Well then, I’m not so sure I want to be blessed!”

Jesus keeps talking and then shifts from describing those who are blessed to commanding you and the others to bless: “Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you.” (Amen a sus enemigos, hagan bien a quienes los odian, bendigan a quienes los maldicen, y oren por quienes los calumnian.)

“What?” you say out loud—so loudly that people stare at you. “Bless those who curse you? You mean… like Rome? The same Rome that taxed our land, our goods, our fish—up to half our income? The same ones who punish people whenever they can’t pay or who rebel, and crucify them? How can I love people like that?”

Then Jesus ends his teaching for the day: “Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” (Grande será entonces el galardón que recibirán, y serán hijos del Altísimo. Porque él es benigno con los ingratos y con los malvados. Por lo tanto, sean compasivos, como también su Padre es compasivo.)

And you think… “He is speaking about God… and God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. God knows how many times I have done things that are not pleasing. God knows all the times I have strayed from God’s ways. And still, God has been merciful… and I need to be merciful as my Father is merciful. Complicated. Hard as heck! But where would I be without God’s love and mercy?”

Mercy sometimes is wild and unreasonable, and it can change everything.

Blessed Are the Merciful

I was watching the movie Invictus the other day, and I noticed a scene I had not paid attention to before.

Nelson Mandela had become the president of South Africa and was watching a game played by the South African rugby team. They lost badly—and they were not very good to begin with. All of the players except one were white. The Black spectators at the game were cheering for the opposing team.

The South African Sports Committee, now dominated by Mandela’s party, wanted to disband the team. They had voted to do so, but Mandela showed up at their meeting to ask them to change their minds. He told them they should restore the team’s name, emblem, and colors. And then he explained why:

“In Pollsmoor Prison, all of my jailers were Afrikaners. For 27 years, I studied them. I had to know my enemy before I could prevail against him. And we DID prevail, did we not? All of us here… we prevailed. Our enemy is no longer the Afrikaner. They are our fellow South Africans, our partners in democracy. And they treasure rugby. If we take that away, we lose them. We prove that we are what they feared we would be. We have to be better than that. We have to surprise them with compassion, with restraint and generosity; I know, all of the things they denied us. But this is no time to celebrate petty revenge. This is the time to build our nation using every single brick available to us,”

Mandela, to me—although not perfect—is an example of the wildness of mercy and forgiveness. Mercy can be unexpected. It can be disruptive. It can be difficult. It can be challenging. South Africa would not be what it is today without his commitment to reconciliation and forgiveness. We may have heard other versions of the story, but at least to my knowledge, the country continues trying to live with a deeply traumatizing and recent past while building a better future.

This is just one example of the choices and intentionality we must possess and exercise if we are to live according to the values of the Beatitudes—the values of Jesus’ teaching.

As I’ve mentioned before, some people hear this passage and think pastors are being too political when they preach on it. They say this is not the Jesus we need—that a Jesus who calls us to love our enemies or bless those who curse us is too weak. But there is no denying that this is Jesus’ teaching in this passage. And there is no denying that this teaching “upends assumptions about blessings and assumptions about who to love and why we love.”

In the Theological Summary we are using, it says that “turning the other cheek, giving without expectation, and blessing enemies are not invitations to passivity.” I would also suggest they are not signs of weakness or apathy. It continues: “they are acts of holy resistance that refuse to mirror empire’s violence.”

We are not to behave like Rome. We are not to use power like Rome, because “such love exposes injustice, unmasks coercive power, and embodies a different ordering of the world”—an ordering that could be possible if we do not fall into frustration, fear, hate, revenge, or a punishing discipline that does not lead to restorative justice.

Generational Seeds of Violence

Every time I hear news of wars, my heart breaks. I believe that every bomb that falls, every innocent life extinguished, every school destroyed, every act of violence is a seed of generational bloodshed. Such seeds guarantee that the world will continue to resort to war in pursuit of a false sense of peace.

The Dalai Lama said it more plainly: Through violence, you may “solve” one problem, but you sow the seeds for another.

And I imagine… I imagine a world that uses words instead of weapons. I imagine a world that looks to peacemakers instead of generals. I imagine governments blessing those who are poor, those who are hungry, and those who weep.

If you think imagination is passive or merely daydreaming—imagination is reception. It allows us to pay attention to the world around us, noticing what is blessing and what is woe, what is real peace and what is injustice.

Imagination is participation. It allows us to see God’s kingdom, to discern what faithfulness to Jesus looks like in the situations we face as followers of Christ. Imagination participates in understanding, hope, discernment, and faithful response to God’s grace.

That is why imagination is disruptive. It exposes injustice that has been normalized. It challenges inherited assumptions. It disturbs shallow faith. It questions decisions and traditions that contradict Jesus’ gospel.

Imagining—and reimagining—is what Jesus does when he teaches about blessings and about loving those who hate you. He dares to show us another way of being. And examples of that way are everywhere, if we would only take the time to look.

Reimagining Disruptiveness

As some of you know, I’ve been participating in events for Re-Imagining Hispanic Latino Ministry. For six months, Hispanic/Latino/a leaders traveled to different parts of the United States and Puerto Rico to challenge communities to reimagine the possibilities for ministry in their contexts.

In some way, we were saying:

Blessed are those who are persecuted, for they will have the wisdom to dream new dreams.

Blessed are those who have little, because they will find ways to do more with less.

Blessed are those who feel unheard, because they will lift their voices with greater intention and power than before.

Blessed are those who are hopeless, because God will fill them with hope.

Reimagining is a word that evokes others such as revising, reframing, and redefining. To engage in such a process—especially amid the chaos and fear surrounding Hispanic/Latino/Brazilian communities at this historical moment—may seem untimely or even out of place. Yet precisely for that reason, this is the right time.

Reimagining becomes an act of resistance and protest against systems that seek to strip away the dignity and hope of a hardworking people who persevere with or without resources, who rise in the face of threats, and who cling firmly to God as their guide of love and grace in every challenge.

I have learned that wisdom must be accompanied by shrewdness; that people have the capacity to open themselves to new possibilities; and that the work of redefining—and continuing to exercise the imagination to envision new paths—can move forward even in the face of cynicism, discouragement, or apathy.

Knowing that God blesses the poor makes us abundant in hope.

Knowing that God blesses the hungry fills our hearts with purpose.

Knowing that God blesses those who weep grants our lives peace and mercy.

And all that knowledge… I believe… can disrupt wars, hate, and fear.