We see them just about every day, those people wearing sweatshirts and t-shirts that proclaim the wearer to be "too blessed to be stressed". Really? Stress is normal, it is a sign of life, it helps us recognize the ups and downs that can interrupt the usual flow of our lives.

They have no bad stress? No family issues, bills to pay, disappointment to overcome? They really have no good stress? No plans with a beloved, no new adventures to enjoy, no children to launch into adulthood, no empty nest to enjoy? No stress? What kind of world do these folks live in? Too blessed to be stressed? God is amazing, but everyone knows stress and of course we all respond to it in different ways.

We eat too much, drink too much, spend too much, do things we regret later. Or, we seek comfort and hope in prayer, in tears and laughter, in conversations with trusted friends. We seek solitude and read a book, watch TV, see a movie, listen to music, glory in the sunrise, or rejoice in the sunset.

Too blessed to be stressed. I do not believe that the people who talk about being blessed and not stressed are in denial about the positive and negative pressures of life. Instead, they are making a bold declaration. They are saying, come what may, God is with me.

To be blessed is to declare that God is good…and all the time God is good. It is to be hope-filled in the face of soul-shaking obstacles. Have you every been laid low in mind, body and spirit? Have you had an illness, an accident, a heartbreak, something that happened to you that knocked you down, and threatened to keep you down? But you got up, and you were unable to stay down; you got up and you began to act, to heal, to recover because God had blessed you. You had the favor of God.

"Standing before God, the poor in spirit are like that…We come in our poverty hoping for sustenance. We come in our sin hoping to receive forgiveness. We come in our brokenness hoping to be comforted. We come in our illness, hoping to be healed. We do not come bargaining, because we have nothing to offer. It is precisely our humility – our openness – that makes us fertile soil to receive God’s blessing" (www.lectionary.org/English/matthew, p.4). Our poverty of spirit makes room in our hearts for the spiritual blessings God wants to give us.

We are blessed when we mourn, the prophet Isaiah says that God will comfort those who mourn in Zion, who know the loss of place and the loss of dreams (60.10). Most of us have known the bittersweet blessing of our own grief and blessing when friends and family surround us with food, hugs, care, and most importantly, their blessings. And we will know that peace and comfort that only God can give.

There is a blessing for us when we live meekly. Now this one is troubling for us. Meekness sounds too much like weakness, and none of us wants to be thought of as weak. But meekness is really about being humble before God, it is about listening and responding to the love of God. We are blessed when in our humility we long for God’s righteousness as we hunger and thirst for food and water.

There is a blessing when we respond to God’s mercy and compassion toward us by acting mercifully and compassionately toward others. There are blessings for us when we are pure in heart, when we are open to what God is doing in us. We are blessed when we act as peacemakers. To seek peace is to not be embrace cowardice, it is not to appease those who would abuse, it is not to run and hide at the first sign of trouble.

When Jesus talks about peacemakers, he is talking about "those who devote themselves to the hard work of reconciling hostile individuals, families, groups, and nations. Remember that Jesus blesses peacemakers during the time of the Roman occupation.

"By virtue of their military superiority, the Romans had put an end to small wars between competing states…there was an absence of war except on the empire’s frontiers. But peace in the Hebrew sense, shalom, the cooperation aimed at the welfare of all, could not be established by Roman legions" (Interpretation series. Matthew. Douglas RA Hare, 1993. Louisville, John Knox Press, p.42).

Jesus is talking about the peace that passes all understanding, it is the kind of peace embraced by people who hold out the hope for shalom, for God’s wholeness in a broken world. That is why we can claim the blessings of God when we face difficulty for doing the right thing. Think of those movements in this city and nation, and all around the world when people have worked hard for civil rights, and human rights. Think of anyone you know who risks their deaths in order to bring respect and dignity to others and to themselves.

God’s favor is with us when we suffer for the sake of the gospel like Dietrich Bonhoeffer did when he opposed Hitler in Nazi Germany. He went to the gallows knowing that he was faithful to his God. It is what happened in the 1980’s when people in Latin America living with few resources other than their faith gathered in their communities to read the freedom stories in the Bible and to seek their own liberation. It is what people do everywhere when they yield themselves to God, even when doing so is dangerous.

We are blessed enough to hear from Jesus the word, that as we stand faithfully, especially when standing is hard, when we stand like the prophets did, like Ezekiel and Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Micah God will stand with us.

Every one of the blessings of God comes with a promise. We are blessed and we are promised that as we listen to and lean on and depend upon God, our spirit’s hunger and thirst will be satisfied. Our longing for God will be justified, our desire to bring a bit of shalom to our part of the world will not be denied.

We are blessed by God, and we are equipped by God. Jesus declares that we are salt and light. Salt gives our food flavor. Without salt, food is bland, it will fill us up, but it will not be fun. Light makes it possible for us to see in the possible for us to see more clearly, to see farther and higher and deeper than we can when it is dark. Our lives as disciples of Jesus are meant to give the church and the world flavor and light. Take care not to live a washed out, watered down salt-less, tasteless dim faith. Be alive in Jesus Christ, be alive for the church and its people.

Flavor and light the world. We do not live in blessing and promise so we can bask in God’s love just for ourselves. We are blessed and we live in this promise so that the church can shine.

I read a sermon the other day, I do not know who wrote it, but it helps us understand what it means for us to light the world. It begins with a story about how three-way light bulbs work. The preacher says: "I used to think that there were three separate components in a three-way bulb – either three filaments, (that thin piece of wire which lights up when an electrical current is run across it. It is the part of the light that makes the bulb shine. When the filament breaks, the bulb is called, ‘burned out’), or a regulator which determined how bright the single filament would burn.

"My discovery was that there are really only two filaments in a three way bulb. One uses a low power setting, and one uses a higher power setting, and they switch on in series. First the low, then the high. When you turn the third time, they both come on, so the total power is the sum of the two. That is why the three way bulb package will say, for instance, 50-100-150; it is fifty plus one hundred equaling 150.’

The preacher goes on to say, "Our world is a world filled with light. We have more kinds of light sources, more types of light bulbs, more availability of power than ever has existed before in the history of humanity. And yet, somehow, as our ability to produce artificial light increases, we are able to see only more clearly how much light is lacking in the way humans use the gifts of God. We see war, child slavery, violence in the name of religion, diseases thought to be eradicated making a return. In our own communities we can see children and families that are underemployed, poorly housed, poorly fed, and poorly educated.

"But Jesus says, ‘you are the light of the world. We have come to understand that in our hearts, we possess a flickering fire of the holy spirit – burning somehow in a way we don’t understand, with a power we cannot control. We are the filament of God’s light – God powers us each up with the power that we can handle. We work best when we take the power that God gives and burn with our brightest capacity. The best part is when the filament breaks, and we get burned out, God offers us the opportunity to recover and heal" (sermon from 1999, found in an internet sermon search on Matthew 5. 13-16).

We receive God’s favor and promise, and if we have it today, we can begin to live in the promise today. We may know stress, but we know greater blessing. God is faithful and will keep the promise to be with us, to ride the rough waters with us, to get us through, and we promise our faithfulness in return. With all that is in us, we are blessed right now to be salt and light, lifted up for the world to see by the love of God. May we flavor our world with our salt, and banish the world’s long night with our light. May we know that God will love and guide us. God has promised to be our God, we have promised to be God’s , and God’s promises to bless our stress can be trusted. Thanks be to God. Amen.