What If

4^th Sunday of Ordinary Time; Matthew 5: 1-12

Blessed are those who are poor in spirit; the reign of heaven is theirs.

One of the great “what ifs” in my life is what would I have done if I were old enough to have been able to participate in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. As a middle school aged kid in white suburbia, there were no opportunities to speak my mind. Fortunately, my mother kept me apprised of what was happening and allowed me to watch the evening news with her. She would explain why this was important to people of color, to our nation, and to me. She understood the great import of the times, and she saw my interest and questioning.

I could never wrap my head around why people of color were treated differently. I would go to church and hear that God created all people equally, but then watched as churchgoers behaved as if they had never heard the words. (I would struggle with that hypocrisy for many decades before it finally drove me from the institutional church.) When I went away to college I had a roommate who was black (and gay) and we got along superbly. Sherman was able to further open the eyes of this white-boy on the discriminations he had endured all his life, and how he survived. While I will never fully be able to comprehend how one lives under that kind of oppression on a daily basis, my awareness went from theoretical to a deeper compassion.

In the Gospel of Matthew’s version of The Beatitudes, Jesus presents his followers a list of eight principles for gaining spiritual depth. Blessed are those who are poor in spirit, who mourn, who are gentle, who yearn for justice, who show mercy, whose hearts are clean, who work for peace, and those who are persecuted because of their struggle for justice. Jesus did not lay out a list of “do this and not this” type of rules. There are those who wish he did, because it can be so much easier to just check a box. No, Jesus understood that conversion takes time and it takes effort.

The Beatitudes show us how to live. The Nicene Creed, for example, tells us what we are to believe. That’s a big difference. The later is written in concrete, while the former is written on our hearts. It is easy to hear The Beatitudes and think they apply to somebody else. If that is the case, then why does my heart beat a little faster whenever I hear or read them?

In the news recently, we have heard of many instances of people who are living the Beatitudes in front of TV cameras across the country. They are working for peace, as they are persecuted for their search for justice. They are mourning even as their gentle voices are being silenced. They are living what they believe, and a few have paid a deadly price because of it.

As an aware adult, I now see the injustices that abound across the world, in our country and in my own city. I can no longer sit and watch as events transpire. I must act in ways that I am able. I write letters to my congress-people, make posts on social media, place signs in my yard, and participate in rallies as they occur. Most importantly I do not do these things with a sense of privilege or even anger (although there are things going on that make me angry). In all I do I work hard to do everything with a sense of prayer.

I mourn, because I have individuals who want to persecute me because of this struggle for justice. I continue to work for justice and peace with, I pray, a gentle and clean heart. And in doing all these things, I pray I will maintain a sense of being poor in spirit and not prideful.

Every Day.

© 2026 by Timothy J. Doppel

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