Jesus starts the sermon here for a reason. The religious scene in Jesus world was - 3 -

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1 RICH IN STUFF, POOR IN SPIRIT January 30, 2011, The Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time Matthew 5: 1-12 Michael L. Lindvall, The Brick Presbyterian Church in the City of New York Theme: To be poor in spirit is to remember our deep need for God. Your word, O God, even when sharp, can be worn smooth by familiarity. May the well-loved words we heard from Scripture ring fresh in our ears this morning. By your spirit, quicken them that they be indeed as sharp as any two-edged sword. And now may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen. You ve figured out by now that your preacher has a deep appreciation for irony. The richest humor is often ironic. The deepest truth is frequently ironic. The reason is simple enough life is really complicated; reality is tumultuously strange; facts sit next to each other in the oddest juxtaposition. We think one thing is the case, but the real truth is something like the opposite. Jesus often preached ironically, as when he said, The first shall be last and the last shall be first. He often prefaced his words by saying, You have heard it said, but I say unto you His Sermon on the Mount from which we just heard is laden with irony. The title of my sermon today is ironic. So, irony in hand, I m shaping this sermon around irony, actually three ironies. As my wife likes to say, It s so ironic you could press your pants with it. Irony number one. This is a little historical curiosity of an irony, but dark and awkward. About ten years ago I traveled to the very mountain where some people think Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount. Actually, nobody knows for sure, but it s a good enough guess a high, sloping hill, a rather modest mountain actually, just west of the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel. It inclines gently east toward that large, round body of fresh water offering lovely views. This pastoral rusticity is rather marred by a building a church. The Church of the Beatitudes it s called. Now, my first irony, little but grim, is that this church was built in

2 by none other than Benito Mussolini, the Fascist dictator on Italy. And Benito Mussolini is just about the most un-sermon on the Mount human being I can imagine. Blessed are the poor in spirit, that sermon begins. Mussolini, strutting in his jackboots, back arched, chin raised and sticking forward in supreme arrogance, was anything but poor in spirit. How awkwardly ironic that such a man should have financed The Church of the Beatitudes. Irony number two is more important, not at all dark, just nettlesome. The three chapters that form the Sermon on the Mount are perhaps the most beloved passage in all the Bible. Their only rival is probably the 23 rd Psalm. The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want You might argue that the Lord s Prayer is pretty well known, but the Lord s Prayer, remember, is in the Sermon on the Mount, the next chapter, Chapter 6. As Debbie noted a moment ago, the Sermon on the Mount begins with twelve especially famous verses called the Beatitudes, each beginning with the word, blessed. My second, slightly larger irony for this sermon of three ironies is the fact that the English word blessed is quite the wrong translation. The Greek word in the New Testament actually means something like happy or at ease or content. Someone once told me that an old translation in French Bibles is debonair, as in debonair are the poor in spirit. Archaic French is closer to the mark on this one. So how ironic that this most popular, most loved, of Bible passages should be known to us in an off-target translation. My third irony for the morning is the big one, the one that matters. Simply put, the sermon itself is deeply ironic. In it, Jesus turns regnant assumptions about how the world works on their heads. The sermon is an inversion of the generally accepted value system both then and now. The world says, The one who dies with the most toys wins. Jesus says, Happy are the meek. The world says, Might makes right. Jesus says, Debonair are the peacemakers. The world says, Tit for tat. Jesus says, Felicitous are the merciful

3 None of the Beatitudes are more patently ironic, more puzzlingly profound, more koan-like, than the first. The world says, Happy are the spiritually rich. But Jesus says, Happy are the poor in spirit. What does that mean? How could it be that the poor in spirit, the spiritually poor, are happy, debonair, at ease in their skin? The answer is really not so very obscure, but before I unfold the folded paper, I need to offer a side bar. The last few years have seen an explosion of serious academic research into what s called, believe it or not, happiness studies. You know this is for real when the former president of Harvard and his wife both publish books on happiness studies back-to-back. Derek Bok s is entitled The Politics of Happiness; Sissela Bok s is called Exploring Happiness, from Aristotle to Brain Science. There s even an academic periodical called the Journal of Happiness Studies. This flurry of academic work has discovered that the truth about happiness is surprise, surprise laced with irony. Examples: Happiness does not rise when a nation s gross national product, its wealth, rises. The research has generally concluded that financially secure people are indeed somewhat happier than the very poor, but, ironically, the very rich are not a bit happier than the merely comfortable. One researcher discovered that poor Nigerians are actually much happier than the wealthy Japanese. Some of you will love this one: Republicans are measurably happier than Democrats. This next discovery is my second favorite: lottery winners are no happier after the big win than they were before. For obvious reasons this discovery is my very favorite: people who go to church are much happier than people who don t. Two thousand years before anybody did any happiness research, Jesus said, Happy are the poor in spirit? These first words of his most important sermon are so counter-intuitive. I m not sure that there s another verse in the Bible that ministers get more questions about than this one. And I suspect that for every person who asks, there are ten who scratch their heads but never inquire, figuring that everybody else must get it except for me. Jesus starts the sermon here for a reason. The religious scene in Jesus world was - 3 -

4 one of ambitious spiritual competitiveness. Rival pieties vied for spiritual power and influence Pharisees and Sadducees, Essenes and Zealots and they all worked to outdo each other in the God business. They all said that to be really, really spiritual, you had to be the one who did the God thing best. You had to know the most about God. You had to be the most pious. You had to be rich in Spirit, you might say. But, Jesus says, ironically that when you get so rich in spirit, when you get so religious, when you get so smart about God, when you get rich in spirit, you are so full of it that you really don t need God. You have it all in you. There s no emptiness in you, no longing, no need, no room for the living God. So Jesus begins by reminding us of the one great truth so obvious we miss it: Real faith always begins with an honest and acute sense of spiritual poverty. Faith begins in an awareness of a need for that which is beyond me. Faith begins when you know that you are, in this sense, spiritually poor. So this awareness of your need, this certain emptiness, this longing for lasting meaning, this hunger for transcendent purpose, this ache for God, is, ironically, happy, simply because it what carves out space in you that God can fill. Here are some examples of what I mean. St. Augustine, the great fifth century Christian theologian from North Africa, came to faith after years of intellectual and spiritual wandering. He had lived a life that he had tried to fill with everything from rigorous scholarship to serious partying. Eventually, he would come to pray our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee. Others have imagined a God-shaped void inside every human being. Because Augustine confessed his spiritual void, it worked to Augustine s fulfillment. Happy indeed are the poor in spirit. Not long before his early death, the French existentialist novelist Albert Camus frequently attended the American Church in Paris. He even discussed the possibility of baptism with the pastor, saying: The reason I have been coming to church is because I am seeking. I m almost on a pilgrimage seeking something - 4 -

5 to fill the void that I am experiencing no one else knows. Certainly the public and the readers of my novels, while they see that void, are not finding the answers in what they are reading. But deep down you are right, Camus said, I am searching for something that the world is not giving me. Debonair, indeed, are the poor in spirit. A few years ago, the British newspaper columnist, Bernard Levin, wrote an op-ed piece in which he said this: Countries like ours are full of people who have all the material comforts they desire, together with such non-material blessings as a happy family, and yet lead lives of quiet, and at times noisy, desperation, understanding nothing but the fact that there is a hole inside them that however much food and drink they pour into it, however may motor cars and television sets they stuff into it, however many well-balanced children and loyal friends they parade around the edges of it... it aches. Happy, indeed, are those who ache for more, for they shall be filled. Walker Percy, that fine southern novelist, had battled a cynicism and depression that nearly pulled him under in his twenties. He ached for more, and at the age of 31, came to Christian faith. He was baptized and confirmed on the same day as 300 school children. Walker Percy, great man of letters, towered over that procession of 12-year-olds, not minding a bit being led into the church by children. Happy are the poor in spirit, who know that even success cannot finally fill the emptiness. This eventual spiritual come-uppance is what Jesus means by poor in spirit. It s happy, oddly enough, because it s what opens a person up to God. It s what liberates you to move toward a living relationship with the One who gives life lasting meaning, the One who gives life a true direction, the One who offers a life shaped not by our every merest whim and want and lust, but a life shaped by God for God, a life shaped in eternity for eternity. There s an old Southern preacher story I love that tells of an adult candidate presenting himself for baptism, baptism by immersion, at some river in Georgia or Alabama. The preacher suspects for good reason that this candidate s motivations do not run deep. So when he dunks him in the river, the preacher - 5 -

6 holds him there, holds him under for a long time. When he finally lets the man up, the guy s gasping for air and furious. At this teachable moment, the preacher says to him, Son, remember, faith begins when you need God like you need air. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen