In today’s Gospel Jesus is blessing people who are, like him, oppressed. They are oppressed into poverty; oppressed into mourning; oppressed into alienation; into submission; into cruelty; into heartlessness, into warmaking; into persecution.
What does a blessing matter to people oppressed by the master class? Does it give them hope to endure their oppression, maybe overcome it? If hope is the message, American environmental activist Derrick Jenson doesn’t want it. Jensen proposes that hope is an enslaving element in life. Hope is presented as the “reason we persevere,” our “protection against despair,” our “refuge in present sorrow.” Jensen recalls the story of Pandora. She is given a box and told not to open it. But she does open it, and flying out to cause chaos across the world is all that is evil; with only one element remaining: hope. Hope is presented as all we can hold onto amidst the world’s oppression. But hope is a device of the master class to disempower we the people from action here and now. Jensen uses two scenarios to clarify our thinking. In the first scenario, we do not hope we’ll get a sandwich for lunch. We get up from the table and we make the sandwich. In the second scenario, we do indeed get on a plane and hope we’ll arrive safely. We have no agency on the plane. We are not robbed of agency but lack skill in a particular and unusual ability of piloting a plane. But our life is not a plane ride and we are not passengers on it. We have been made so by a master class that denies us agency and skill in general and usual abilities across society. Ruling politicians deny us agency in social cooperation by letting us vote every couple of years. Capitalists deny us agency in economics by establishing a financial system based on debt. Militarists deny us agency in being healers in life by extoling human sacrifice in death. To hope such oppression changes has us “longing for a future condition but over which we have no agency.” Hope is the equivalent of heaven: we who are made miserable in this world living under the control of oppressors must be patient and our reward will come. According to Jensen, no longer are we to hope the fish and the waters and birds and our own species survive. It is time to take action that ensures we do. No longer are we to hope the domination system ends. It is time to take action to ensure it does. “When we realize the degree of agency we actually do have, we no longer have to ‘hope’ at all.” “We simply do the work.”
In part, in the Beatitudes, Jesus is offering oppressed people the virtue of hope that Derrick Jensen considers enslaving. It may be that Mr. Jensen is both wise about hope but foolish about his privileged status that proposes obliterating it. We who have been oppressed into the dirt do indeed hope. However, our hope is not in the master class, nor in them changing its system of enslavement. Our hope is in each other. For us, hope is not wishful thinking. It is trust, trust in our common power. It is a power that is beyond us and yet within us to Inspire us. Jesus’ blessings offer us Inspiration, spiritus, the power of our shared Spirit. Jesus is letting us know the agency of the Spirit is our agency. Jesus thus obliterates the master class’ theology of blessing the rich, the cruel, the evil doers…. It is we who are poor, who mourn, are meek, hunger and thirst for goodness, forgive, are kind of heart, are peacemakers, and are persecuted – who are blessed with Ultimate agency. We are empowered for action together here and now in the Community of God.
Prayer: Spirit of Action, inspire us to work together for a truly Blessed world.
Question: How would I describe my agency in this world?
February 1,2026 Gospel Matthew 5:1-12 Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time