Matthew 5:1-12
Sometimes it’s hard to really hear things we have heard many times before.
- A familiar song comes on the radio and we know it so well we don’t pay attention to the words.
- We settle into the familiar cadence to The Night Before Christmas and feel the warmth of Christmases gone by…
- But we no longer hear the details of the story.
- We recite the Pledge of Allegiance or the Lord’s Prayer with comfort and ease…
- But the words are so familiar to us that they come out automatically and we do not hear the words we are saying.
- The Lord be with you. And also with you.
The passage we heard today is like this.
- Poetic. Sure.
- We have heard this list before of those called “blessed”:
- The meek…the peacemakers…the poor in spirit…those who hunger and thirst for justice.
- The words of our passage are a comfortable part of our tradition.
- They open the Sermon on the Mount…so we know they are important.
- But how are we to hear them?
I cannot help but scan the list of Beatitudes to see if I can find myself among the blessed.
- I wonder if I hunger and thirst for justice enough to find favor with God.
- I wonder if my grief counts as mourning and if I can be assured of joy.
- What if I cannot find myself in what is there?
So…instead of looking for myself in the text…I wonder what I can do better so that I might be assured of God’s blessing.
- So…I ask…what should be my next steps toward being a peacemaker?
- How can I cultivate my yearning for justice?
- What do I need to change within myself so that I might approach the world with more meekness and mercy?
Then I realize I am starting to wander down a path of works righteousness.
- I realize I am not responsible for my own salvation.
- Our salvation has been won for us by Christ…through grace.
So…then I look at the verses again…and consider…
- Jesus is not telling the crowds how they should be.
- Jesus is not issuing commands.
- Rather…Jesus is pointing out who has already received God’s blessing.
- And the list is a surprising one.
Here’s the thing: The Beatitudes are spoken to those groups whom God deems worthy…
- Not by virtue of their own achievements or status in society…
- But because God chooses to be on the side of the weak…the forgotten…the justice seekers…the peace makers…those persecuted because of their beliefs.
We count as blessed those whose material wealth or privileged status secures their well-being in the world.
- We count as blessed those who can retain power…safety…and wealth…when the world is filled with pain and hunger.
- We count as blessed those who have escaped the margins.
- We count as blessed those who are centered in society.
- And to be sure…we here in this sanctuary…are blessed indeed!
- Amen…Thanks be to God.
But this passage reminds us that God’s blessing originates at the margins.
- In Christ…God’s blessing begins with those who society has forgotten.
- God blesses the outcast.
- God blesses those who do not fit in.
- The Beatitudes invite us to look at the world around us…and even ourselves…from a different perspective.
- These 12 verses invite us to see the holiness in the world…because it is made by God.
- Because God made these things they share in God’s own holiness…
- Whether or not they meet our minimum requirements for a blessing.
These Beatitudes change us…these blessings recreate us.
- They stretch us and show us that God is found in surprising places.
- The Beatitudes remind us that God’s ways do not always reflect what we have come to see as normal or accepted in this world.
- A world that is bent on dividing us.
Atop that mount Jesus called those who were left out…alone or better off forgotten…blessed.
- He called those with debt and
doubts and distress in all forms…blessed.
- Jesus had all the powers of the universe at his disposal but he did not consider his equality with God something to be exploited…
- But instead came to us in the most vulnerable of ways…
- As a powerless…flesh and blood newborn. As though to say:
- You may admire strength and
Might…but I am blessing all human weakness.
- You may seek power…but I am
blessing all human vulnerability.
- This Jesus whom we follow cried at the tomb of his friend…and turned the other cheek and forgave those who hung him on a cross.
- Jesus was God’s Beatitude…God’s blessing to the weak in a world that
only admires the strong.
Here is a story I heard on NPR’s Fresh Air in an interview with Brian Stevenson.
- Stevenson told of a story of a woman participating in a project…
- Called the National Memorial for Peace and Justice…
- A memorial that contains soil from the site of lynchings.
- A woman at one of these sites digging this dirt with a trowel.
A white man in a truck slowed down and looked at her.
- He drove past…turned around and stopped.
- He asked her what she was doing.
- She said she felt compelled to tell him the truth…despite her fear.
- He got out of the truck and asked
if he could help her.
- She offered him the trowel.
- He declined and dug with his hands.
- Together they put the soil in the jar.
- She noticed tears streaming down his
face and she asked if he was OK.
- He said he feared his ancestors may have participated in the very lynching she was memorializing.
- She cried with him.
- They took pictures of each other…holding the jar…
- Memorializing a moment of
unexpected understanding…hope and reconciliation.
A moment of blessed mourning…mercy…hunger and thirst for righteousness…
- That came because of two people…each in their own way and time…in their ordinary lives…
- Haltingly trying to do justice…love kindness and walk humbly with their God.
Blessed are we…beloved children of God…hear this assurance…that we are blessed.
- But then hear this.
- We are not just blessed so that we might feel good and be able to fall asleep at night.
- We are blessed so that we can go out into the world and recognize the blessedness in others.
- The blessedness of those who have been outcast…
- The blessedness of those who have been put to the margins…
- The blessedness of those who are meek and who hunger and thirst for justice.
- The blessedness of those who dare
to tell the truth in an age in which lies are uplifted.
Know that you are blessed.
- But go forth into the world today to remind others that they too are a beloved child of God…
- That God’s blessing reaches wide and calls those from the outside in.
- That those who are struggling are not alone in their pain…that they matter too.
- Be blessings…blessed ones.