Poor in Spirit

Of all the people Jesus could have opened with, he chose the empty-handed. Blessed are the poor in spirit — not the accomplished, not the spiritually mature, not the ones who have finally gotten their act together, but those who have arrived at the end of themselves and found nothing there. This is not a virtue. You cannot practice spiritual poverty the way you practice patience. It is a confession — an honest reckoning with what you actually have to bring before God, which is nothing. And into that nothing, Jesus speaks first. Before any command, before any call to righteousness or mercy or peacemaking, the kingdom is handed to the ones with empty hands. That is not where most of us would start a sermon. It is exactly where Jesus does.