The Fourth Sunday After the Epiphany January 29, 2017 Nalcrest Chapel, Nalcrest FL ---- Micah 6.1-8 Psalm 15 1 Corinthians 1.18-31 Matthew 5.1-12* **** You Want Me to What?!? Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen Up to this point in Matthew s gospel, the only quote we have from what Jesus was preaching and teaching is a summary of his message: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. You may remember that was part of the gospel reading last week. But it is only a summary of what Jesus was preaching. Immediately following the call of the disciples, Matthew gives us 3 chapters of detail about what he was teaching. So, if the summary of his message is Repent (which means change your mind turn around ) for the kingdom of heaven has come near what we re getting now is the beginning of his spelling out of what the turned around life actually looks like. We are hearing Here s how to live now that the kingdom of heaven has come near. These three chapters are usually known as the Sermon on the Mount. Much of the Sermon on the Mount is indeed very practical guidance for how Jesus wants us to live and relate to one another, but it begins with this section that we heard tonight, traditionally known as the Beatitudes. The word Beatitude comes from the Latin word beatitudo which begins each of the verses in the Latin translation of the Bible the Vulgate. (I ll talk more about the translation difficulties in a little bit)
For now, let s consider that the Beatitudes are not a set of practical things to do they are not new law, nor are they prescriptions for things to do--but rather they a set of attitudes, or a description of a stance or a mind-set toward life and the world around you. And in many ways it would be fair to say that they describe the mindset that makes the rest of Jesus sermon, the practical how-to stuff we find in chapters 5, 6 & 7 of Matthew, possible and imaginable. All that difficult to do stuff that he lays on us is very doable if we have the attitudes of the Beatitudes. To put it another way, if the Beatitudes describe what you are like, then the what you do stuff will follow fairly naturally. What I want to particularly focus on tonight is what role the stance of the Beatitudes might play in our contribution to changing the world. If we, as followers of Jesus, are the beginning of a changed world, and we are to be agents of change in the world, how do the Beatitudes guide us in the ways and means of living out that mission? And in answering that question, I want to take Jesus as our model for the living of the Beatitudes, because he does not teach one thing and do another. If you want to see a living example of the Beatitudes look at Jesus. There is no hypocrisy or duplicity in Jesus. He is constantly and consistently the embodiment and the example of his own teaching. Before I launch into that, though, a quick comment about this Latin word beatitudo from which we get the translation beatitude which usually comes into English as either blessed are you or happy are you. The problem with the conventional translation, blessed are you, is that it leads us to we can make the mistake of thinking that all of the named things (poor in spirit, mourning, being persecuted and insulted) are blessings in themselves oh, really!, that seems rather unhealthy and masochistic. For example, being persecuted is not a blessing. And to say happy are you is just as nonsensical when I am mourning I am not happy I am sad and in mourning. Nor can I imagine feeling happy when someone is persecuting me.
The promise of the Scripture is that those who are persecuted for the sake of what is right will be blessed, not that the persecution is something they should count as a blessing. Are you with me? So, let s take a look at these and touch on what each might be saying to us. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. There is little doubt that Matthew the gospel writer has softened this one for his more middle class readers. Luke s account has Jesus simply say blessed are the poor. Period. But Matthew s change does more than just soften it. It makes it not about how much money we have it turns the focus onto who we are. It becomes less a matter of status or condition and makes it an attitude that finds expression in the way that we go about things. You see, sometimes those who are financially and materially poor are just as invested in trying to gain wealth and/or power and then to use it to impose their will on others, and so poor in spirit helps us to hear that being broke is not in itself any great virtue. This is not about the size of your bank account or the value of your portfolio this is about how greedy or grasping your heart is. In the world around us, wealth nearly always creates power, and so the opposite of poor in spirit should perhaps be thought of as a spirit of entitlement, or wealth and power. It is no surprise then, that Jesus describes the blessing for those who are poor in spirit as the kingdom of heaven. For in this world kingdoms are inevitably gained through wealth and power. While I do know people who have no money who nevertheless wield power as a weapon, usually in the form of physical intimidation, or domestic terrorism, it is those of us who are wealthier who are particularly prone to having a sense of entitlement, entitlement to being heard and to getting our way. If the opposite of poor in spirit is a spirit of entitlement ; a sense of entitlement that too many of us are prone to feel when we are educated or employed or just because we are who we are. We quickly begin to think we can remake the world, or at least our little parts of it, not by depending
on what God is doing, but by drawing on and wielding our own resources to make things happen. We ll bring in a kingdom alright, but if it is built on the strength of our resources and our entitlements, it will be something other than the kingdom Jesus proclaimed. Over and over, the people urged Jesus to do what the devil had tempted him to do in the wilderness and become their king in the usual way, and again and again he refused. And when he did ride into Jerusalem with a cheering crowd proclaiming him king, he rode in on a donkey, a clear symbolic proclamation of his rejection of the spirit of wealth and power and his embodiment of the spirit of poverty. Blessed are the poor in spirit, because they will receive the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. What is so good about being grief-stricken? I ve buried my mother, my father, a brother and a wife. It s no fun, as most of you can also attest. Think of one of the times we see Jesus consumed with grief. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! (Matthew 23:37) Like many who have striven to turn around a self-destructive people, Jesus is running up against the people s stubborn refusal to change their ways. Ask anyone who has suffered by loving an addict or an alcoholic what that pain feels like and that is something else I share with some of you. And many other leaders have succumbed to bitterness and anger when their quests have similarly failed. They accuse and blame and sometimes even seek to be the agents of punishment on those they had originally sought to save. Love loses out to resentment and rage. But those who love as Jesus loves are instead brokenhearted and stricken with grief. Blessed are those who mourn over the injustice and selfdestruction of the world, for they will be comforted.
But let s consider the alternative. As I meditated on this Beatitude as I prepared this sermon I had to ask myself, What kind of a monster would I be if I was so hard hearted and so self-centered that I did not mourn my mother, my father, my brother and my wife? Indeed perhaps it is the ability to mourn that is the blessing for without that ability we would not be human. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. I sometimes wonder whether Jesus put this one in because he realized that when he promised the kingdom of heaven to the poor in spirit, some people were thinking of the kingdom of heaven as a place that you leave this world to get to, so he reworded poor in spirit as meek and promised them the earth as their inheritance. I m probably barking up the wrong speculative tree there, but the meekness that Jesus calls us to is not a call to become a Casper Milquetoast. Meek is not weak, but it is a strong voluntary stepping aside, standing down and allowing others to have first claim. Perhaps where it is something more than being poor in spirit is where the capacity to use force comes in. How often was Jesus in a position to pull rank and force his way on the world, but he does not. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? (Matthew 26:53) And of course such a show of power is the way territory is usually taken in this world, but that is not the Jesus way of handling things. Meekness would rather concede ground than harm anyone, even those who are threatening to crucify us. Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice (or righteousness, depending on your translation), for they will be filled. A lot hangs here on what we understand justice to mean, because that word has come to be used in two different ways: one way Jesus teaches us to hunger for, and the other way he urges us to the precise opposite. Sometimes when we say we want justice, what we are demanding is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. We want to see wrong doers brought to justice and made to pay. But just a few verses after our reading this evening, Jesus will quote the eye for an eye principle in order to reject it and urge us instead to not
resist evildoers, but to turn the other cheek when we are unjustly attacked. So the hungering and thirsting for justice that Jesus models and exhorts us to emulate is a hunger for something better, a thirst to see a world free of violence and injustice. I have had many object lessons on this in my life, but I ll share one this evening. If you don t already know then I will tell you that I have a history in the martial arts community up North. While in Philadelphia for a weekend of seminars, testing and workouts, a group of us went into town to get a late night snack. Not fully realizing the type of place we were going into we entered a bar which had been recommended to us for good pub food. As we paused just inside the door to decide where 5 of us could sit together, a drunken patron on his way out plowed into Master Morris, who was a smaller man than me, staggered back and said watch where you re going or at least that is as close to what he said as I can repeat here. The rest of us all took a step or two out of the way since we knew that Master Morris could take this guy out before the poor fool knew what was happening. To my surprise, Master Morris took a step back and aside, said, Excuse me and gestured with his hand for the offender to continue on his way. I was a newly minted Master Instructor and was a little confused at first, but after we sat down and placed our order for food, Sr. Master DeStolfo took the opportunity to teach us that Master Morris had just given us a living example of two of the Tenets of our art he exhibited Courtesy and Self-Control. That was a life changing moment for me. And as I reflected on this Beatitude for this sermon that moment came back to me. Whether we can vanquish our attacker or not, the object is to live in a world that is free of retaliation and violence and the only part of all that that we can control is our behavior. By yielding to this offensive drunk, Master Morris prevented further violence and lost absolutely nothing in the eyes of his peers. Who knows what the other drunks in the bar thought about it all, if they even noticed, and frankly, who cares? Such a world to which Jesus points us will be free of the vengeance and retaliation that so often masquerades as justice, but for which Jesus neither
hungers nor thirsts. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. I could easily spend all night on this one, but perhaps I need say almost nothing about it. If you were to sum up Jesus s whole gospel in one word, that would be it, mercy: mercy, compassion, treating others as though they deserve the best, even when they deserve nothing of the sort; even when they are the perpetrators of all that is wrong with the world. To be so merciful that even as they nail you to a cross, you pray Father, forgive them. Jesus lives it to the full, even in death, and he calls us to follow him. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive God s extravagant mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. On the one hand, this seems obvious, because only the pure in heart want to see God the rest would hide from his sight just as Adam and Eve did. On the other hand, this is a tough one because it goes directly to motive. Because, you see, it doesn t matter if you exhibit all of the other attitudes even if your behavior is exemplary what matters is your motive why are you behaving that way? If you refrain from retaliation because you know that will get you a reward and will bring God s justice down on your offender you are not pure in heart. If you refrain from retaliation out of love for the Christ in the person who attacks you, then maybe you are pure in heart. It isn t easy, I know. And even though we outwardly maintain our composure and a reasonably gracious demeanor, God sees the heart. The pure of heart do not pollute their behaviors with toxic motives. Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. It would be nice to think that this one might also be self-explanatory, but we live in a world where peace-making or peace-keeping is too often seen as a task that is undertaken by people with guns who impose a solution. The peace-making to which Jesus calls us requires us to remember that the goal isn't to win an argument or struggle, or to intimidate those who would do violence so they do not act out--but rather to forge a peace in which everyone wins.
When someone came to Jesus asking for help to sort out a family fight over an inheritance, Jesus said, Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you? (Luke 12.14) and went on to urge him not to value the inheritance more than making peace with his brother. Blessed are those who forge peace and reconciliation in places of hostility, because they will be known as God s own children. I m now seriously running out of time as we get to the final lines, which are either two more Beatitudes, or, I believe one more and an explanation of what he means. And I haven t left myself enough time to even begin to give them the attention they deserve. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. What does he mean by that? He means, Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. That is the persecution. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. You will receive the kingdom of heaven is there any greater reward than to simply be allowed to be in heaven? I m going to limit myself to just a couple of brief comments and commend the matter to your prayerful consideration. Jesus praises the willingness to be persecuted. You see, we can not act for justice or make peace if we do not confront the one who has attacked us. Let s say you insult me, I can let it go, or I can confront you about it clearly understand that the confrontation is not a show of force, but a show of love (hey, what did I do to deserve that, that hurt). And when I confront you in that manner, I risk that you will insult me again. But that is the only way to make peace or to show mercy. Jesus calls us to rejoice when we are treated with hatred and hostility that s a toughy. May I suggest that perhaps the message is rejoice even though you are treated with hatred. And if that is true then what Jesus is commending is the ability to be happy regardless of the wrongdoing of others, so that our behavior or happiness isn't dependent upon what others
do. That may be, but I suspect there is even something more in this message. We ve already mentioned the call to resist the urge to retaliate and seek vengeance, and be clear that when we do retaliate we have stopped modelling ourselves on Jesus and begun modelling ourselves on our enemies--which of course just results in turning ourselves into the same kind of people as our enemies we ve allowed them to drag us down to their own level. I had a teacher once who used to say Never wrestle with a pig you only get dirty and the pig enjoys it. And when that happens, the only change we have then made in the world is to make it a place even more full of hatred and hostile enemies. Jesus, on the other hand, continues to love us. Even as we pump our fists in the air and chant Crucify him! he prays for our forgiveness and reaches out to us in love. So if we would join Jesus in changing the world in his image, then let s model ourselves on these Beatitudes, or should I say these be-jesus-likeattitudes, and with him, become the change we hunger and thirst for in the world. In the face of all that is wrong in the world, these changes of attitude will often seem too small to make a difference. But didn t he also say something about small as a mustard seed? (Matthew 13.31-32) Amen