Sermon preached 2/22/15 at United Presbyterian Church in Lonetree, Iowa.
Blessed.
We have our own notions of those who
are truly blessed. Our culture, through television, sports,
politicians, celebrities, even our TV preachers, all tell us the
sorts of people who are truly blessed.
The sermon about who is blessed which
we hear from our culture goes something a bit like this:
Blessed are those with great prospects
for marriage and work, because they will be successful.
Blessed are those whose loved ones
enjoy health and who have big 401Ks, because they will not have to
worry.
Blessed are those who sit in seats of
power, because they will be in charge.
Blessed are those who can afford the
good things in life, because they can do whatever makes them feel
good.
Blessed are those who can run down
their opponent by whatever means necessary, because they will see
victory.
Blessed are those who are bold enough
to make war, because they get all the spoils.
Blessed are those who are popular,
because they will have a great reputation.
That's the kind of sermon we typically
hear from our culture.
It's all about: Success. Winning.
Freedom. Ambition. Exercising our Rights. Health. Beauty. Prosperity.
Security. Those who have those things are truly blessed.
In contrast, Jesus preaches a different
kind of sermon from the one we normally hear from our culture.
This sermon which we will study
together over the next several months, known as the sermon on the
Mount, is a challenging, demanding sermon. It's a sermon that offers
a totally different message than the types of sermons preached by our
culture.
And it's the center of all that Jesus
teaches. It's the center of who Jesus is. It's the center of what
Jesus calls us to do and calls us to be.
And as Jesus begins his sermon, he lays
down a foundation.
Jesus goes right to the heart of things
in this list of blessings or beatitudes. He directly challenges the
heart of what we believe, of what we hear preached in our culture
each and every day, of the reality that most of us live in our day to
day world.
And Jesus says, “No way...It's not
like that. Not at all.”
Jesus turns our world upside down.
Step back with me a couple of thousands
of years.
Imagine the scene in Galilee, on a
windswept hillside near a little fishing town called Capernaum.
Flocks of birds circle and land. The Sea of Galilee glistens blue
below reflecting the brightness of the shining sun.
A small group of disciples circles
around a young man who appears to be about thirty. He sits as
teachers in his time and culture normally do.
The huge crowd – the mass of humanity
- extends down the hill well beyond the inner circle of disciples.
The crowds come in the hope of being
healed of their sicknesses. They come to hear him teach. They come
because they hear he has the power to cure them.
Among the crowd must be some suspicious
religious leaders and others who want to check in and see what sort
of suspect things this guy preaches.
Everyone leans in to listen as this man
begins to teach. Jesus points the attention of his disciples toward
the crowd and says:
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.
Wait. Did he just bless the crowd? How
are these people blessed?
And that's the question we ask too. I
mean these are not the sort of people we usually think of as blessed.
These are not the people our culture has told us are blessed.
And if we're honest, these are not even
the sort of people we really want to be.
I mean who wants to be impoverished,
either spiritually or economically? Who wants to deal with more grief
in their live? Who wants to be reviled and persecuted? Who wants to
be so oppressed they hunger and thirst after righteousness?
If that's what I got to do. It that's
how I've got to be, to get into the kingdom of heaven, well you can
forget about ever seeing me there.
And yet, the way the Beatitudes have
more often than not been read, taught, preached, and understood for
centuries in the church is that Jesus is saying exactly that.
Typically we say Jesus is laying out
the terms and conditions we must meet to receive God's blessings.
This is a set of ideals we are to strive for. These are entrance
requirements for anyone who wants to enter God's kingdom.
I even took that approach with the
words I selected for our prayer of confession.
The prayer listed each of the first
three beatitudes, and we repented of the ways we failed to live up to
the conditions or ideals listed there. We confessed the ways we've
failed to be poor in Spirit, for how we've failed to mourn over our
sin, for the ways we've not been gentle and lowly.
And we asked God to forgive us - maybe
even in the hope that God might somehow bless us.
It's so easy to do. It's so easy to see
these beatitudes as entrance requirements, as the ticket to God's
blessing, and thus to feel so hopelessly unable to meet them. Or to
feel so proud of ourselves when we somehow think we have met them.
But that's not it at all.
Once again Jesus is turning our world
upside down.
The most well worn book on my bookshelf
of any book I own is called, “The Divine Conspiracy” by Dallas
Willard. This book, is in my opinion, the best book ever written
about the spiritual life.
It is also one of the best books about
the Sermon on the Mount.
In it, Willard writes that the term
“poor in spirit” is not a positive term. It is not a state we
somehow work our way towards. It is not a requirement we can achieve
for entrance into the kingdom.
Rather...
To be poor in spirit is to be down and
out. It is to be a spiritual zero, spiritually bankrupt, deprived and
deficient. He says we're talking here about the spiritual beggars,
those without a wisp of religion.
You might say those in the crowd
gathered around Jesus and his disciples, and even the disciples
really, had absolutely no spiritual qualifications or abilities.
There was nothing about them to suggest
that the breath of God might move through their lives. They didn't
know their scriptures particularly well. No one would call on them to
lead the worship service.
They can't make heads or tails out of
religion. They are the last ones to have any claim on God.
It is to these that Jesus points and
simply says to this disciples, “Blessed.”
These are the “blessed ones.” These
are the ones for whom the Kingdom of God has come. These are the ones
upon which the grace of God descends.
These are the ones God meets wherever
they are. These are the ones who will encounter God in the nitty
gritty of life.
As we move further through the list of
the blessed...
God meets the crushed ones. The flunk
outs, the drop-outs, the burned-outs. The over-employed, the
underemployed, the unemployable. The parents with children living on
the street, the children with parents still hanging on in the “rest”
home. You name it. God's favor will be upon them.
But that's not all. We have to go even
a step farther...
God even meets the moral disasters.
Yes, even they will be received by God as they come to rely on Jesus.
The murderers, the brutal and bigoted, the terrorists, the perverted,
the filthy and the filthy rich.
It is to these, yes even these, Jesus
points and simply says, to his disciples, “Blessed.”
Again Jesus is turning our world upside
down.
That's the foundation of the Kingdom of
God as it comes in our midst. That's the foundation which you and I
are invited to build our lives upon.
For those of us who wish to be
disciples of Jesus, the demands of the Sermon on the Mount are not
easy.
Jesus calls us to love, he calls us to
turn the other cheek, to forgive continually, to live without greed,
lust, or jealousy, to love as Jesus loved us, to “be perfect” as
God is perfect.
The list goes on.
It is not easy, and as we try to put
into practice those things Jesus teaches, we might very well find
ourselves to be poor in spirit, in deed. And so, we will continually
be driven back to this first blessing, which is the live blood for
the living of the Sermon on the Mount.
We will be reminded as biblical scholar
Dale Bruner tells us,
“Jesus blesses before he commands. He
helps before he orders.”
It's pure grace. And it always goes
before us.
So friends this morning, I hope you
will receive these words of blessings from Jesus as your own. I hope
you will continually fall back upon these blessings. It's my prayer
you would come to know and trust that no matter where you find
yourself in life:
Blessed are you. God's favor is upon
you.
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