Preached Sunday, January 29, 2017 at First Presbyterian Church of Taos, NM.
Text: Matthew 5:1-12
The
Bible is a funny thing. Sometimes, we open it up to read, and it seems almost
alien to us, the time and the culture are so different from our own. The cast of characters contains eunuchs and
giants, and even talking donkeys! What are we to make of all this? And then
sometimes, we open up the Bible, and the words on that page ring so true, that
we wonder if they weren’t written for just such a time as this.
That’s
how I feel about our Scripture readings today, the lectionary texts for this
morning. Especially our Gospel lesson this morning, a list of blessings we
often hear called “the Beatitudes.” They are Jesus’ very first public teachings
in Matthew’s Gospel, and they serve as the introduction to Jesus’ famous
“Sermon on the Mount”, which we will continue to explore together in the coming
weeks. I imagine most if not all of you have heard these blessings before, that
you are familiar with this often-quoted, beloved passage of Scripture.
There’s
a beauty, a certain comfort in this sort of familiarity, but there’s also a
danger in it. A danger that passages like this will become what I like to call
“Needlepoint Scriptures.” Passages of the Bible that have become so familiar
that we’ve domesticated them. That they make more sense to us framed on the
wall of our kitchen, or cross-stitched onto a throw pillow, than coming out of
the mouth of a radical first-century Jew who was crucified by the Roman Empire
because teachings like these were perceived as a threat to their power.
The
problem with Needlepoint Scriptures is that we hear them, but we miss the full
impact of what they’re really saying. Perhaps it’d be easier for us to
appreciate the beatitudes for what they really are if we reframed them a bit, used
some new, perhaps less familiar, language to convey their meaning
What
might a ‘modern-day beatitude’ sound like? How about:
Blessed
are the unemployed.
Blessed
are the refugees.
Blessed
are you who receive food stamps, or who work for minimum wage.
Blessed
are the undocumented immigrants.
Blessed
are the single parents.
Blessed
are you who have AIDS.
Blessed
are the homeless; blessed are those recovering from a heroin addiction.
Blessed
are you who are transgender, when your families reject you, or put you out on
the street.
Sounding
a little more radical? Anyone want to cross stitch that onto a throw pillow?
When
Jesus preached these sermons, pronounced the blessings, he was not aiming for
Hallmark Card material. On the contrary, Presbyterian preaching professor Tom
Long describes the Sermon on the Mount as a sort of “Constitution” for the
Church of Jesus Christ. And if the Sermon on the Mount is the Constitution,
Long says, then the Beatitudes are its “Preamble.” These 9 blessings introduce Jesus’
teachings by defining the essence of the mission, vision, and values of the
Kingdom of Heaven – the way of living in the world that the Church – that’s us!
– is called to embody. These Beatitudes describe the traits and values of the citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven.
So, what do those citizens look
like? Jesus describes them as people who are poor in spirit, who mourn, who are
meek, merciful, pure in heart, the peacemakers, those who hunger and thirst and
are even persecuted for justice and
righteousness. But again, these words are so familiar, we’ve heard them so often that I fear they might have
lost some of their impact…
For example, some people have said
the first beatitude – blessed are the poor in spirit – might be better
translated “blessed are the spiritual beggars.”
Those who know that they can’t sustain themselves and look to God as their last
and only hope. Those who are poor, physically and economically, and those who
are outcast by society. Those people who are most vulnerable to sickness, who
are mentally ill, those who have given up all hope that life will get better.
And so, with no other options, they have given their lives and their hopes over
to God.
And when Jesus says, “Blessed are
those who mourn”, he’s not just promising comfort to those who are sad, or who
grieve the loss of a loved one, though God certainly does accompany us through our personal grief and heartbreak. But
what Jesus is talking about here is on a larger scale. Something more akin to,
“Blessed are those who recognize that the world we live in is not the world
that God intended. Blessed are those who see the brokenness of human life and
of Creation, and cry out in lament to God, “O God, do not let your world hurt
this way forever!”
Or how about “Blessed are the are
meek?” This isn’t Jesus’ shout-out to those who are shy. No Jesus is a Jewish
preacher, remember, and so he’s interpreting Scripture – Psalm 37 in this case,
which we read together in our call to worship. and proclaiming that those who
will inherit the earth – the “meek” are those who wait for God and trust that
God will act and will deliver them. And while they wait, the meek do not resort to
the violent ways of a violent world. They continue to hold fast to God’s
teachings, to pursue justice, and righteousness, and peace.
So Jesus looks at his disciples and
at the crowd gathered around, he says, “This,
my friends, is what the Kingdom of Heaven looks like. This is what it means to
be a citizen of God’s Kingdom. This is what I am about: the poor in spirit,
those who mourn and lament, the peacemakers, the meek, the merciful. Those who
are persecuted as they hunger and thirst for righteousness.”
I imagine it goes without saying
that this was not what the crowd, or
perhaps even the disciples, expected to hear. It goes completely against
conventional wisdom – in Jesus’ time and
in ours! “Blessed are the peacemakers? Good luck with that!” say the
powerbrokers, the political leaders who know that ‘might makes right’. “Blessed
are the meek? Blessed are the poor in spirit? Good luck with that one – I’m a
self-made man right here, and I know you have to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps
if you want to get anywhere in this world!”
Jesus’ teachings, the Kingdom of
Heaven, turns the world’s values completely upside down. These Kingdom values don’t
square up too well with the values of Jesus’ society – or ours, for that matter.
In the beatitudes, Jesus pronounces that God is on the side of those considered
weak, or despised, or somehow “less” by society. That these are the people closest to God’s heart, the citizens of God’s
Kingdom. And we who would be followers of this Jesus, citizens of this Kingdom
and even ambassadors of the Kingdom
into the world, would do well to see where our lives align with these kingdom
values…and where, perhaps, they don’t.
Of
course, pursuing these Kingdom values is not without its cost. Tom Long, the
preacher who calls the Beatitudes Jesus’ “preamble,” goes on say, “Righteousness is not a ‘sweet’ virtue that
everybody in the world desires. Those who take advantage of others for their
own gain don’t want the world to be fair and just. Those who benefit from the
weakness of others don’t want the world to be compassionate. Much money and
power are invested, in fact, in maintaining injustice. If every wage
were fair, if every person were honored as a child of God, if every human being
were safe from exploitation, many would lose their grip on status,
self-gratification, and affluence. Seeking the right does not win universal
approval; it stirs up the snakes, and the last two beatitudes are realistic enough
to admit it.”
This is the world we live in, is it not? We can see
it in the streets or hear it on the news. One person goes hungry, while another
feasts. We can find 3.8 billion dollars to construct an oil pipeline, but can’t
come up with 55 million dollars to fix the pipes that continue to poison
children in Flint, Michigan. And yet into this world, Jesus has the audacity to
say that those who are left hungry and that those who seek and long for another
way…are blessed.
Are blessed. Not
will be blessed. We’re talking about the present tense, right now. Friends, if
there is any good news I can bring you this morning, it is this: the beatitudes
look forward to a future in which God’s will will be done, yes, but that future
has already begun. That Kingdom of Heaven is already breaking in, and it will keep
breaking into this broken world we know. And therefore Jesus says, you are
blessed. You are blessed because you know that the Kingdom of God is at hand,
and you are living accordingly. You are being merciful in a culture that has no
time for mercy. You are pursuing justice and right relations with your neighbor
in a world that values profit over people. You recognize that nothing – no
race, religion, nationality – keeps anyone from being your neighbor.
This is how the citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven
live. How the Church is called to lived. Despite all evidence to the contrary.
Why? Because of our conviction that love wins, that God and goodness ultimately
triumph over evil and oppression and hatred. Because of, as our own Presbyterian
Confession of 1967 puts it, our “confidence that God’s purposes, rather than
human schemes, will finally prevail.”
In just a few minutes, we will receive
new members into our church community and together we will all reaffirm the
Baptismal Covenant through which each of us becomes part of the family of faith.
We
use this language of “family” when talking about the church, because it speaks
to that closeness, that intimacy that we share with one another. When we gather
for communion or a potluck, we all eat from one table. When we lift up our
prayers in worship, we become vulnerable with one another, as we share our greatest
joys and deepest grief.
Yes,
the family metaphor is a good one for the church. But you know, I’m starting to
really like this “citizen” metaphor that comes out of our text today. I think
that it holds a power and a call that is especially important for people of
faith in this particular time. Much
the same power it held for the early Christians, for the community for whom
Matthew wrote his Gospel and those who would inherit his work. In the context
of the Roman empire, it mattered pretty profoundly of what “Kingdom” you were a
citizen, to whom you swore ultimate loyalty. It’s why so many of the first
Christians ended up in jail or martyred. Because to proclaim “Jesus is Lord,”
is to proclaim that Caesar – that Rome – is not. That the powers that rule our
world and our lives do not have our ultimate authority. In the end, they are
not the ones to whom we pledge our final allegiance.
So I invite you, today, as we
welcome our newest members of this particular community of faith, and as we
remember the vows made in baptism, to reflect on what it means to be baptized
into citizenship in the Kingdom of
God. Many of us grew up pledging allegiance to a flag, and flags are well and
good, but the cross is bigger. Because that cross, friends, witnesses to the
truth that goodness is stronger than
evil, and love is stronger than death.
“Blessed are you who hunger and
thirst for righteousness, for you will
be filled. Thanks be to God. Amen.
