Micah 6:1-8, Matthew 5:1-12
This warm weather sure is nice, isn’t it? Although I have to say, I could do without the wet roads. I took my car in to get new tires, and when they asked me what colour it was, I said, “Dirty green.” But I got a car wash, and then, of course, I cried as I drove down Deerfoot because all the spray just coated my car again. And then, when I was going to get another car wash on Friday, my mother said that she had spent an hour in line at the carwash. An hour! That’s ridiculous! But, I shouldn’t complain.
“I shouldn’t complain.” How many of you use that phrase? Or hear it on a regular basis from others? Or think it when others are talking, “You shouldn’t complain. . .” we might think in our head, or say out loud to our children. One of my sisters likes to say, “Suck it up, buttercup,” when I complain about something to her. We have this cultural belief, don’t we, that complaining is not good? It’s ungrateful, it’s pointless, it shows a lack of inner strength.
For several Lents in a row, I gave up complaining. Most people give up chocolate, but I decided to give up complaining. Although it makes me feel better in the short-term, in the long run, I thought it couldn’t be healthy, and so every year, for three years, I gave up complaining during Lent. And it was hard. The first year, I still complained, I just felt really awful every time I did it. The second year, I managed to actually not complain very much at all, and it felt really good. But the third year I noticed something really odd. I gave up complaining, but at the same time, I realized that I was unable to speak up about things that really were wrong or unfair. I had been treated unfairly by a professor that semester - along with some other students - but I didn’t know how to raise the issue without complaining. What had happened was legitimately unfair, but since it was Lent when it happened, I couldn’t go to the Dean’s office and register my complaint.
And it was in that third year that I realized that complaining can actually be a sign that we are seeing or experiencing some kind of injustice. When we complain, often times it’s because we are recognizing that the world is not as it should be. That the values that we think should guide society - equality and fairness - are being set aside for other interests. When a child complains that their sibling’s piece of pie is bigger than theirs, they’re pointing out that, in a world where everyone is supposed to be treated equally and receive the same thing, the distribution of pie is not equal. Or, to take a completely different example, when someone complains of chronic pain, they are pointing out that in God’s creation, which God called “very good,” it is not supposed to be that people are in constant pain. Or when someone complains that they are tired from taking care of a sick family member, they are highlighting that there is a failure in our society wherein caregivers are left to care for their loved ones on their own, without any meaningful support from anyone. When people who are unemployed complain that immigrants are coming in and taking all the jobs, they are telling us that in a society where we value hard work and self-sufficiency, there are not enough opportunities for everyone to do that.
Complaining is really a hungering and thirsting for righteousness, if we understand righteousness to mean God’s justice as a reality in this world. When we complain, it’s because we are dissatisfied with the imperfections of the world. We know that God provides enough for everyone to eat, and that God values the lives of each one of us equally, but we see that God’s reality is being thwarted. And so we cry out for justice. We complain. “I hurt in a world where there is supposed to be healing. I hunger in a world where there is supposed to be food for all. I experience death and loss in a world where we are supposed to have life.”
When we understand that complaining is a way of pointing to the injustices of the world and a cry for things to change, our readings for today are opened to us in new ways. In our Old Testament reading, the prophet Micah asks God how we are to worship God, and the response is, God “has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” The worship and gratefulness that God wants from us is to do justice. To first look and see the injustices in the world, to notice the ways others and ourselves are being treated unfairly, and then to do something about it. To say something. To complain. As an act of doing justice. As worship, even.
Or look at our Gospel reading today - what we call the Beatitudes - the blessings. If you look at “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” you see complainers. Those are the folks who are always out there marching and protesting for some issue or another, who yearn for the justice of God, for God’s righteousness, to be a reality in this world. The complainers are the thousands who protested yesterday at airports across the US because of the President’s order to ban entry to Muslims from certain countries. We call them social activists, if we agree with their cause, but complainers, if we don’t. Martin Luther, whose 95 Theses were really 95 complaints, was a saint to those who agreed with him and a heretic to those who didn’t. But no matter what we call these complainers, Jesus says that they are blessed, and that they will be filled. Their complaining will be answered, by God. Jesus even says, “blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Those who go out there and complain and protest and agitate for refugees, or for the environment, or for women, and get vilified by society or arrested and thrown in jail, theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Those complainers have God’s kingdom. Here. Today. God blesses those who are dissatisfied with the world the way it is. Our Scriptures today tell us that God blesses the complainers.
And lest you think that the complainers of the world are only those out there, let me tell you that we, too, are complainers. Every Sunday. You see, every Sunday, we pray what our Lord Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be they name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” When we pray this, we are praying that God would make this world the way it is supposed to be. We are praying that God’s will would be done here and now, just as it is in God’s kingdom because we recognize that the world is not the way it is supposed to be. We pray for daily bread because we, as a global community, do not each get enough for our daily bread; when we pray, “give us this day our daily bread,” we are complaining that we don’t all have daily bread, and we are praying for food justice––food security––for all. When we pray that God’s will be done on earth as in heaven we are recognizing that there is such injustice in this world that the only one who can fix it is God. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we are complaining. We are hungering and thirsting for righteousness. And God blesses us.
The next time you find yourself complaining, rather than just saying, “But, I shouldn’t complain,” see if you can figure out what your complaint is really about. What is the injustice that is really bothering you? How is your world different than the world God plans for us? How does the injustice of your situation help you to see the injustice in other people’s? And then, knowing that God blesses those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the complainers of the world, pray whole-heartedly, that God’s will be done on earth as in heaven, and remember that when you do so, Jesus proclaims that “the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Thanks be to God. Amen.
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