Matthew 5: 1-12
Fourth Sunday in Epiphany/ 2nd
February 2014/ Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper
“For some reason,” the novelist Kurt
Vonnegut (1922-2007) once remarked, “the most vocal Christians among us never
mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5).” He’s probably right. But why? Time and
again, in various locations across the United States, we hear of demands, requests
from a segment of the Church asking for the Ten Commandments to be placed in
every courthouse. Time and again we hear
of protests in places where people want the Ten Commandments removed from
courthouses. There was one such incident
in Florida just last summer.
The
controversy over the Ten Commandments is viewed, by some, as a sign of the
increasing secularization of American society, as a liberal attack on religion
or on Christianity specifically. But why the emphasis on the Ten Commandments
or Decalogue? Sure, we as Christians are
called to be guided the Decalogue. But
isn’t it odd that so much stress is placed on these ten laws, when, from a Christian
perspective, there are plenty of other Bible verses and teachings they could turn
to, be inspired by, such as the Beatitudes? Shouldn’t the Beatitudes be given a
prominent place in our communities? What
about them? I’ve never seen the Beatitudes
carved in bronze on a courthouse wall.
There might be, but I’ve never seen one.
Perhaps you have.
Maybe the Decalogue is better suited
to the running of society, whether one is Jewish or Christian or Muslim. Take away the references to God and graven
images, they’re pretty good rules to follow. What about the Beatitudes, then?
The same might be said of them. Here we
have Jesus’ teaching on mercy and peacemaking, good teaching for any
society.
The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5,
6, 7) is often viewed as the Constitution of the Church of Jesus Christ. This is the core teaching of Jesus and his
followers; this is what the work of
the Church entails. If the Sermon on the
Mount is the Constitution, then the Beatitudes make up the Preamble.[1] It’s through these verses that the rest of
the sermon must be viewed; indeed, it’s through the sermon that we find Jesus’
core message of what it means to be involved with the Kingdom of God.
So why aren’t the most vocal
Christians eager to promote the Beatitudes? Why aren’t we? Maybe because we sense at some level that
what Jesus is talking about here is just too blasted difficult. Maybe because what we think Jesus said about
being blessed is just too tough, too demanding an ethic, an ideal that is
simply unrealistic.
My allusion
to Moses and the Decalogue is intentional here because that’s what Matthew is
doing. Matthew compares the teaching
Jesus gives through the Sermon on the Mount with the teaching Moses received on
Mt. Sinai, and Law he later shared with the people. Jesus is a new Moses who
teaches with authority. But there’s a difference. What we have here in Matthew,
in Jesus’ teaching, is not more laws to follow, more demands, indeed higher demands placed upon
believers in God and followers of Jesus. Instead, what Jesus gives us here is
something else.
You see, it’s easy to misread these
verses when we view them only as commands.
They’re not. They’re not
laws. And it’s easy to misread these
verses if we view them as an ethic,
in other words, things we must do. We
misread these verses when we view them as some kind of ideal toward which we
should all aspire. Because if we hear
them as command or ethic or ideal, and treat them as such, we will very quickly come up against
the fact that what Jesus is talking about here is impossible for us to
attain. They will break us every time. They will defeat us every time. It’s
then easy to believe that we’ll never know what blessing is like because
getting there is just too difficult. So
what is one to do?
The wise theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer
(1906-1945) once said: “Action in accord with Christ does not originate in some
ethical principal, but in the very person
of Jesus Christ.”[2]
In other words, Christian action is not
dependent upon an ethical principal, that is, it’s not dependent upon our
capacity to do good or our desire to be good.
It
might come as a surprise to many that being a Christian has very little to do
with acting or trying to be good. It’s not
a heroic ethic. It’s not an ideal. The Christian life is more than an ethic; it’s
more than an ideal. To be a Christian
means that we are following in the steps of a person who gives us a particular
vision of what it means to be human, who shows us what it means to be children
of God, and what it means to be alive—now—
in the kingdom of God. Following Jesus, walking in his steps, will lead us to behave
in in ways that the right of society might consider as the opposite of good, or
at least strange or odd. Flannery O’Connor
(1925-1964) once said, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you
odd.”[3] She’s right.
That’s what happens when we follow him. Don’t get me wrong, following him will yield
an ethic, but we don’t start there because we
have no ethic void of him. To have
an ethic apart from Christ means we’re not following him. And there’s no way anyone or any church can
even begin to know what Jesus is talking about here apart from him. Apart from him we can do nothing (John 15:5). We can’t do any of this on our own. Because what Jesus offers here is demanding
and, that, too, is the point, “The demands of the sermon [on the mount] are
designed to make us depend on God and one another.”[4]
The sermon “is not a list of
requirements, but rather a description of the life of a people gathered by and
around Jesus.”[5] When we gather around him, then we will live
in a different way. “To be saved is to be so gathered.”[6] The Beatitudes become the interpretative key
to the entire sermon. Jesus is actually describing
his own life, his way. This is a description of his life. He’s describing what happens when we, like
him, seek and live in the Kingdom of God.
“No one is asked to go out and try to be poor in spirit or to mourn or
to be meek.” Rather, Jesus is indicating
that given the reality of [God’s] Kingdom breaking into the world in Jesus,
those who follow him are those who are poor in spirit, those who mourn, those
who are meek.
For
it’s those who are poor in spirit—meaning,
when we’re spiritual beggars, when we have nothing left in us to give or to
trust or believe, when we’re at the end of our resources and have nowhere else
to turn, when we’re completely dependent upon God and have to trust in God,
when we live this way, then we will
discover what it means to be blessed.
And
when we mourn because we have seen a
glimpse of the Kingdom—when we really know what God’s love and mercy and grace
feel like and then look at the world and see how broken and screwed up the
world is, when we see how starved people are for love and mercy and grace, and
then you begin to cry for the world, begin to lament over the hurt of the
world, when you can grieve for the world, then
you will know what it means to be blessed.
It’s
the meek and gentle soul who has no malice or a desire for revenge, who
hungers, like Jesus, for righteousness, which means justice, who knows what it
means to be blessed. When we hunger for
healing and thirst for wholeness, like Jesus, and allows these passions to
drive us, then we will know what it means to be blessed.
When,
through Christ, you know personally
just how merciful God has been toward you, then (and only then!) can you be
free to be merciful to your neighbor or stranger or enemy or even oneself, when
you live from God’s mercy, then you know what it means to be blessed—to receive
mercy and then to share mercy.
When
we know personally the kindness of
God toward us, within—in our inner hearts—and then live from it, share it,
become generous with our lives, then we will know what it means to be
blessed.
And
when we know the shalom, the deep
peace of God in Christ, then we will work for that shalom, share that shalom,
we will work to end violence and war and not stand in the way of shalom, when
we work to mend shattered, broken relationships, then we will know what it
means to be blessed.
Now
here comes the especially tough part…when we are persecuted, mocked, ridiculed,
excluded, shamed, and judged by the world for being troublemakers because we’re
following an alternative vision of the world, because we’re serving the Kingdom
and walking with Jesus, and there persecuted for pursuing righteousness, God’s
justice, then, we, too will know what it means to be blessed. Rejoice and be glad, Jesus said, for you’re
in good company. This was the life of the prophets. They, too, knew what it
means to be blessed.
This is what it means for a life to
be blessed in the eyes of God. Not in some
far off future, says Jesus, but right now.
We don’t have to have all of these blessings occurring in our lives at
once in order to be blessed. Just to
know one or two or several is all it takes.
To be called into God’s Kingdom, to work for the Kingdom, to seek after
God’s Kingdom, with Jesus, for Jesus, in Jesus, through Jesus,
this is what it means to be makarios,
blessed. Some translate this word as
“happy.” But it’s more than happiness.
It means “exceedingly happy.” Or,
the better word is “joyful,” deeply joyful, profound joy. This
is what Jesus’ life calls us to experience, deep, profound joy. “The poor in spirit know profound joy for
theirs in the kingdom….”
This is what he calls us to when he
invites us to follow him into the kingdom of God, which is all around us. And this table is the joyful feast of the
people of God, people will come from north and south and east and west to sit
at table in the kingdom of God (Luke 13:29).
Here is bread and wine to strengthen us for the journey, for the work
God calls us toward. Here in bread and
wine we remember his presence within us and among us. Apart from him we can do nothing. With him, in him, through him, and for him,
we are blessed, with joy too deep for words.
