1 Corinthians 1: Matthew 5 : 1-12 Sermon

Transcription

1 1 Corinthians 1: Matthew 5 : 1-12 Sermon The collection of sayings that we find in Matthew 5 have become known as the beatitudes, and they are offered to us a sort of summary of all that Jesus was teaching. Indeed the setting that the gospel writer describes already implies that these words are meant to carry a lot of significance. Just as Moses had once gone up a mountain and come down with the wise words of God that we know as the as the Ten Commandments, Matthew describes Jesus going up a mountain and offering his own wise words. To even imply that Jesus would bring a message to match that of the ancient law of God is making a massive claim, but that is what the gospel does. So we are meant to take these words very much to heart, to use them as the basis on which we will understand what Jesus does, and indeed to use them as the basis on which to understand how our lives measure up to what Jesus does. That is a big build up, isn t it, as if these sayings are introduced with a big fanfare. The problem is that when we come to the words we find that they don't sound very wise. In fact they don t sound very realistic at all. Let's face it, if we were to write the Beatitudes, if we were to try to sum up how life works in a few sayings. We would say: Blessed are the wealthy, because they can buy whatever they want. Blessed are the powerful, because they can always get their own way. Blessed are the beautiful, because everybody wants to be their friend. Blessed are the retired, because they don't have to get up for work every morning. No one would argue with any of that for it looks obvious enough. But Jesus very pointedly does not say that. He says things that we would never think of saying: Blessed are the poor in spirit Blessed are those who mourn Blessed are the meek Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness Blessed are the merciful Blessed are the pure in heart

2 Blessed are the peacemakers Blessed are those who are persecuted Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you Be honest now, if anyone other than Jesus had said that, we would think what nonsense, what foolishness. This contradicts everything we assume to be true, and indeed it contradicts many of the assumptions that our society is built upon. A few years ago there was a big political controversy in the United States about whether or not the Ten Commandments should be on display in public buildings. The chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court defied a federal order to remove a stone monument containing the commandments from the front of the state supreme court building. That sparked a huge debate about the role of Christianity in American public life, but it is interesting that no-one was suggesting that the Beatitudes should be one display at public buildings! I wonder why no one seemed to be promoting that idea? Perhaps it is just too radical for us to be reminded of too regularly. There are two essential problems that the beatitudes sayings create for us. Firstly it sets out a way of understanding life that might be just too challenging for us to take in. Jesus tells us that the world has got it all wrong, and if we believe him, then we must accept that we have generally got it wrong as well. His words would lead us to love things that we naturally hate and to seek things that we normally do our best to avoid. Meekness and mourning, persecution and purity, hunger and hatred, these are not on our list of goals and ambitions, and yet Jesus uses these words to describe people who are blessed. This is a hard teaching. Secondly, it is a message which doesn t appear to be true in any obvious way. The Beatitudes do not seem to fit with our experience. The meek do not usually inherit the earth, and unless they get good lawyers they may not be entitled to anything. Those who work for peace among angry people may be called many names which sound nothing like children of God. Those who mourn would do anything to change their situation, and do not feel or look blessed in any way. So if we are going to take this seriously, if we are going to make sense of this remarkable message, we need to understand that the Beatitudes are not intended to be blueprints for success

3 and happiness. Instead, they contain the promise of God's blessings when our circumstances are not those which we would choose. They contain the promise that God will be present in unexpected places and in unexpected ways. Actually that message is not only a summary of Jesus teaching, it is in line with what we find throughout the bible. The Beatitudes are just one of the many places in the Bible where God is shown to defy our logic and expectations, and prove that there is more going on the world that what we have yet understood. Remember the story of Goliath, the Philistine giant, who challenged God s people to send their best man against him. And while the men no doubt argued about which of their own fighters they should select, God sends David, David who is a Shepherd boy and not even a man never might a fighting man. He proved to be too small even to wield the soldier's sword. And yet we know the outcome, or if you don t I ll tell you later. It looks as if the whole story is designed to proclaim that faith and not human strength is the real power in the world. Remember the story of Gideon. He set out to fight the Midianites with his army of 32,000 soldiers, but God intervenes to say, "Your army is too big! If you win the battle now, your soldiers will think they won it. I want them to understand that I won it! So Gideon sent home 22,000 of his 32,000 soldiers. But God insisted that was still too many to make the point he wanted to make, so Gideon sent home all but 300 soldiers. The result of that battle has also been recorded for history, and of course it was the result which demonstrated that faith, and not human strategy, is the real power in the world. Again and again we get the message that there is more to this world than meets the eye, that there are forces at work in our world which we don't understand, that there is nothing greater in this world than the divine presence. It can shine through, and it can turn things round, and it can make a difference, even in the darkest of places and in the bleakest of moments and in the least likely of people.

4 Paul wrote about that as we heard this morning, when he wrote that, "God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength. God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God." In that context the Beatitudes are very much in line with what we should expect. The blessings of God are not going to be found hidden in the trappings of success and power, just as the Christ Child was not found by the wise men when they looked in the Royal Palace. The blessings of God are to be discovered when we our pride has developed a few cracks, and our arrogance has begun to crumble, and our dependence on the things of this world has been shown to be as solid as a house built on sand. Just as Christ himself touched the lepers and the outcasts and the sinners of his day, bringing transformation to their lives. The truth is that it in our weakness that we are likely to discover the strength of God, it is when we feel most foolish that we are most likely to discover some divine wisdom. There are those never discover that, those who are determined to continue the illusion of their own infallibility, and they will have to settle for a life in which they never understand or experience anything more than themselves. Perhaps that is why Jesus spoke about how hard it was for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. As long as we are determined to keep up with the expectations of those around us, perhaps even the expectations that we have been taught to carry within ourselves, as long as we settle for our definition of success, we will never gain anything greater than that. Perhaps that is why Jesus said that he had come to bring life, life in all its fullness. To those with no experience of the life of faith, the Beatitudes will look like a formula for an appallingly dull and sad life life. It will all sound incredibly foolish. Just as foolish as the claim that our lives are powerfully linked with the death of a man on a cross 2,000 years ago.

5 And if they want to limit their lives to maintaining material success for the short span of their days upon the earth, they are entitled to do that. The rest of us will go on discovering the blessing of God touching us when we need it most. We will go on rejoicing in the power of God that can redeem any situation. We will go on boasting of the wisdom of Lord, which is so much greater than any human wisdom.