Bringing Blessings

Epiphany 4A, 2/2/14
Matthew 5:1-12

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, you are our rock and our redeemer.

We just heard the first few lines of the first public address that Jesus ever gave in the Gospel of Matthew. The Beatitudes are the opening lines of the Sermon on the Mount.

Beatitude just means “blessed.”

It’s obvious where the name for this passage comes from, with Jesus declaring blessings for all sorts of different groups of people.

These are statements of blessedness.

Contrary to popular belief, however, they are not statements of comfort.

It’s easy to hear beautiful words from Jesus and feel that they were intended precisely for us, because we like the way they sound. The beatitudes are so poetic. It can be comforting to hear that Jesus pronounces blessing on so many groups of people. At least, that is often how we hear them. But that is not how Jesus meant them to come across.

For the most part, ladies and gentlemen, the Beatitudes are not addressed to us.

Let’s listen carefully to the people Jesus addresses. Figure out whether you fit into any of these categories.

Blessed are the poor in spirit… those who mourn… the meek… those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Blessed are the merciful… the pure in heart… the peacemakers… those who are persecuted.

Yes, most of us have mourned at some point in our lives. We know what grief is. But very few of us are in a perpetual state of mourning.

Most of us are fans of peace and righteousness. But are you a peace maker? What have you done lately to create peace in the world? Do you really hunger and thirst for righteousness? That means, is righteousness as important to you as food and water?

One preacher puts it this way:

The Beatitudes themselves are easy to question. These “blessings” don’t feel particularly blessed, with their unappealing list of adjectives. Poor. Mourning. Meek. Hungry. Thirsty. Reviled. Persecuted. How are we supposed to understand such a list in a world that highly values happiness? Who wants to be fortunate or lucky if you end up: Poor. Mourning. Meek. Hungry. Thirsty. Reviled. Persecuted.

(Ruth Everhart http://www.questionthetext.org)

You gotta be in a pretty tough spot before the Beatitudes apply to you.

Either that, or you have to be an amazing human being who truly and honestly lives their life for the sake of others – and in that case, you’ll probably be humble enough that you won’t actually recognize yourself among the meek and the peacemakers who Jesus blesses here.

Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount specifically to discomfort his listeners, to get them out of their comfort zones, to give them a new and foreign understanding of God and the world.

This is the speech where Jesus says, over and over again, in different ways, you all have a lot to learn about the way that God works. Everything you think you know about God is misguided. People don’t get rich because God blesses them – in fact, God is with the people who are poor.

And so on, and so forth. For three whole chapters, Jesus speaks to the crowds, and the entire time he’s upending the assumptions they have always had about how the world works.

I wonder if the crowd was as big when he finished as it was when he started? Do you think some people might have snuck away when his teachings got too tough? Or maybe he was such as powerful orator that people kept coming to hear him speak, and the crowd grew.

I don’t know – all I can say is, whoever was listening to him preach the Sermon on the Mount would have been challenged, and surprised, and made to feel discomfort. Jesus wasn’t a feel-good preacher. He was a preacher who spoke the truth, no matter how unpopular it made him, even to the point of being executed for his teachings. But he didn’t back off, and he didn’t water down his message. He was on a mission from God, he had a message to share, and he was determined to fulfill his purpose.

Back to the Beatitudes.

Jesus pronounces a whole bunch of people blessed – people who tend to live on the margins of society, or people who are content to just fly below the radar.

Blessed means something like satisfied or fulfilled.

Some Bible translations substitute the word happy, but that doesn’t quite go deep enough. Blessed is more than an emotion, it’s a state of being. It’s not something you can achieve for yourself, but it’s something that can come with the assistance of God, sometimes working through other people.

And that’s a really important point for us to note today. Many of us are not the ones who Jesus calls “blessed” in the Beatitudes.

But we may be the ones who have the ability to show God’s blessing to others.

Let’s listen to the lines again.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

If you are poor in spirit – lonely, depressed, unmotivated, impoverished – you certainly do not feel blessed. But Jesus promises you the kingdom of heaven.

So let’s consider the flip side of that coin. If you have experienced any traces of the kingdom of heaven in your life – could you share that experience with people who are poor in spirit? Could you help people experience God in new and personal ways? Is there something you could do to show them the kingdom of heaven?

Could you take the time to comfort someone who is mourning?

Could you show appreciation to a gentle, soft-spoken, hangs-out-in-the-shadows sort of meek person in your life?

Could you do something to satisfy the burning desires of those who hunger or thirst for righteousness? Could you change something about your lifestyle to make the world a more equitable place? Is there something you could do to try to be more righteous in the way you interact with society, with other people, with creation? Helping to make the world a more righteous place will help to fill those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Being blessed isn’t something that you can do on your own. It is something that God does for you, but sometimes God uses other people to do that work.

Most of us are not in the first half of each of the Beatitudes – we are not, generally speaking, the outcasts and marginalized in society.

But we might be the people addressed by the second half of each line.

Are we willing to let God use us in those ways?

Doing God’s work means putting ourselves second.

It means focusing on others’ needs above our own.

It means looking at the world with eyes attuned to the people and the things that Jesus wants us to see.

Another article that I read recently stated that, “The gospel is not about making bad people moral, but about making dead people alive.”

(Barrett Johnson, http://infoforfamilies.com/blog/2013/11/13/how-to-raise-a-pagan-kid-in-a-christian-home#.UuxA2BZak6F)

Our job as Christians isn’t simply to live good, moral lives. Our calling is to bring life to places where it is faltering.

That’s what today’s Gospel is all about.

Jesus roots for the underdog.

That is clear throughout the Sermon on the Mount, and we’ll be hearing more about it in the weeks to come as we work our way through these chapters.

We like to think that when Jesus roots for the underdog, it’s good news for us. After all, who doesn’t love a good the underdog wins! story?

The difficult truth for us today is that   we   are not   the underdog that Jesus is talking about.

These words are meant, almost exclusively, for people other than us.

One seminary professor of mine says,

Who will be made content and gratified by participating in what Jesus offers now and in the future? The kinds of people who suffer brokenness and grief. The people taken advantage of by friends and strangers. The people who always come out on the losing side, whether the field of play involves their economic well-being, their social respectability, or their physical health. Jesus announces he intends to invert our taken-for-granted expectations about where happiness and achievement can be found.

(Matthew Skinner, http://odysseynetworks.org/news/2014/01/24/enjoy-the-super-bowl-be-suspicious-of-its-values-matthew-51-12)

So, if we are not the underdog here, if we are not the ones who can expect blessing, where is the good news for us?

Ultimately, of course, the good news is that God brings life to all people.

That’s what makes Christianity more than just a set of moral guidelines.

Jesus is the life-giving, saving, redeeming, creating, fulfilling God who can make our lives complete – and without whom, our lives will never be complete.

More specifically, though, this passage does have some good news for us.

Jesus still needs us.
If we are blessed because of our misfortunes, well then, that’s our good news.

But for most of us, who are excluded by these blessings, the good news for us is that we have already experienced something of the life that God has to offer, and Jesus can use us to bring this life to other people.

It means putting our own needs and desires on the back burner and living our life completely for others.

But if we are able to do that, then God’s purposes can be fulfilled through us.

Now that is truly a life-changing piece of good news.

I pray that each one of us would find a way to show God’s blessings to people who are truly poor in spirit, mourning, meek, peacemakers and so on. What a blessing to be used by God to bring life to the world.

Amen.