I find it really hard to find an entry point here for a number of reasons.
First of all, a sermon on the beatitudes is a “sermon on a sermon.” That is maybe obvious, but let me tell you what I mean by that. Jesus said what he wanted to say here, and doing a sermon on it feels a bit like what we have ad-nausea at a sporting event. You know, all that analysis and color commentary on what we just saw take place. “Let me walk you through the instant re-play here Joe, see the half back moves around…..”
Yeah, we just watched got it, Troy… .Yawn…..
Secondly, preaching on the Beatitudes always seems to break down into an endless explication of each and every “blessed,” what it means, what it could mean, what might be behind Jesus’ comments. Who were the “poor in spirit? What was the situation of mourners in the first century? Etc. You start working on this and you can get lost in trying to comment on everything in here, succumb to the endless “side-tracks” of scholarship. It’s interesting, informative, it opens up nuance and meaning, but it really doesn’t transform or inspire. It short, it isn’t proclamation. It isn’t making the “good news” come alive with what it means for you.
So what is a person to do when confronted with this? Let it stand on its own? Choose another scripture to preach on? Take a vacation Sunday and let a guest preacher sort it out? Dear God, help!
As I stared at Jesus’ words here once again, there were two things that jumped out at me as being important for it to have some impact on us.
The first is almost a matter of envy, and it’s found in this observation.
Jesus has something to say.
Now, admittedly, that doesn’t sound terribly profound, until you take note of who it is that Jesus has assembled around him. He’s got both his disciples, and he’s got this mixed assembly, a crowd which seems to include people that you and I often have a difficult time talking to, or maybe more accurately, people with whom we have a hard time figuring out just what to say. The poor, or poor in spirit. Those who are mourning. The meek. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness… or in other words the people who have gotten the short stick in life, the downtrodden, the oppressed, the folks who get crap in this world.
Just the fact that Jesus has something to say to them is utterly amazing! I often don’t have words to speak.
The people who wander into my church looking for someone to help them with their gas bill, or who can’t pay their utilities, or who tell me their stories of how much is going wrong for them right now. I don’t have words for them really. I give them a few groceries, a referral if that is warranted, maybe a tank of gas, or a listening ear, but really that’s about all I’ve got. They still have to go back to the same world that has left them in this situation.
In my less kind moments, the words that I might speak may be far from blessing. If I feel like I’m being played or scammed or someone is working the system on me. Oh, I might have words I want to speak, but they are not “blessed are…” I often have no words for those whose spirits are so beaten down they exist in the only way this world makes a way for them so to do.
I certainly don’t have words that encourage the meek, or the powerless, or those who hunger and thirst for justice and righteousness. And even if I have words I want to speak, they are seldom heard. It’s clear that politics are broken. My own experience with trying to help with a Ballot Initiatives on payday lending taught me that you cannot make your way through the hurdles thrown up by wealthy interest groups. Rallying legislators is difficult in the gerrymandered districts that tend to carve up constituent groups. Organizing people is hard when those who can afford little more than posterboard come up against the public media machine that can afford air time and slick television and radio ads.
It can get depressing.
I have no words to say to the meek, those thirsty for justice, or caught in the machinations of this realm.
But the Sermon on the mount tells us that Jesus does have words for them. “Blessed are …..”Blessed are those who find themselves in these very situations!
In the Kingdom that Jesus comes to proclaim there will be a radical re-ordering of who gets what, and who is important, and who gets the final say in things. It won’t follow the pattern of this world, where those who “have” get to keep it, and those who “have not” lose out all the more.
No, “Blessed” are those who find themselves in these very situations of being broken now, in grief now, powerless now, hungering and thirsting for righteousness now… for in this coming Kingdom they will receive something, and it isn’t what they usually get!
Matt Skinner, a New Testament scholar, remarks that the Beatitudes are important to understanding the Gospel of Matthew because they help make sense of the trajectory of the Gospel later on. When Jesus begins to talk about judgment, and separating the sheep and the goats, and how there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, you have to remember what Jesus had to say to those who we living in a bad place back in the Sermon on the Mount!
As God’s Kingdom gets nearer, the overturning of “business as usual” of this world begins to happen, and those who were previously “left out” begin to see the Blessing that is theirs in the emerging Kingdom.
So first foremost, the Beatitudes remind us that Jesus has something to say to those with whom we quite off feel quite at a loss for words .
It’s not so much that we don’t want to say something, it’s that we just don’t have it within us. And that curiously enough gets us to the second thing that jumped out at me, and that was the shift in direction of Jesus’ words.
While Jesus speaks a blessing to those who are usually far from blessed, the voice and direction shifts from “Blessed are the” and “Blessed are those” to Blessed are YOU.
In my mind I imagine Jesus directing these words not to the crowd, but to the disciples, and that would mean they are now directed to you and to me.
I have scratched my head over these words, because on their face, even though they are from Jesus and seem to be directed at us, I surely don’t hear them as good news. They seem more an invitation to suffering, and hardship, and if that’s what it takes to get “blessed”… to have all these things fall upon me, then “no thank you Jesus.” Why would I want to go there? I don’t think we would willingly want to go there, and certainly Jesus’ words are not an invitation to go seeking out persecution or revulsion, as if suffering was somehow redemptive for us.
No, I think the key lies again in this coming Kingdom.
Listen, the world is changing as this Kingdom comes in, and those who are on the short end of the stick will soon find themselves in a new and better place. Jesus has thrown his lot in with the poor and the oppressed and the mourners and those thirsting for Justice and Righteousness, and is proclaiming the Kingdom to them.
Do you want to be part of that?
If so, you will experience and receive in this present age the things that those whom Jesus declares as “blessed.”
Hey, this isn’t rocket science. If you throw your lot in the with those who mourn, you will find yourself shedding tears with them. Blessed are you for willing to go there.
Throw your lot in with those working for justice and righteousness, and as this dying world tries to hold on to its own power, you will be persecuted and reviled for your efforts!
Stand up for those who cannot stand on their own, and you will get push back, and pushed over, and you will find yourself on the short end of the stick of this world as well, just as they do.
This is what Jesus has to say to those us of who sometimes are far more comfortable standing on the sidelines than in the fray of things.
You don’t really have a neutral place in this coming Kingdom.
You will either find yourself left out of the blessings coming because you preferred the life you have now, or you will find yourself on the receiving end of some of the resistance this world puts up as God’s Kingdom breaks in.
And if you are feeling the receiving end of that… well blessed are YOU! They did that to the prophets who came before you.
They, (that is this perishing world,) will do that to you again and again until the Kingdom comes in full, and the sheep and goats are sorted, and the overturning of the “business as usual” of this world is complete.
That’s what Jesus has to say in the Sermon on the Mount. It is good news, and it does have something to say to you.
This Kingdom will change everything, and turn the world will be turned upside down.
Are you in for that?
RevMerle 