Matthew 5: 1-12
Hebrew 13:2 says, “Do not neglect to
show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels
unawares.” Two traveling angels stopped to spend the night in the home of a
wealthy family. The family was rude and refused to let the angels stay in the
mansion's guest room. Instead the angels were given a corner of the cold
basement to sleep in. As they made their bed on the hard floor, the senior
angel saw a hole in the wall and repaired it. When the junior angel asked why,
the senior angel replied, "Things aren't always what they seem."
The next night the pair came the
house of a very poor, but very hospitable farmer and his wife. After sharing
what little food they had the couple let the angels sleep in their own bed
where they could have a good night's rest. When the sun came up the next
morning the farmer and his wife were in tears. Their only cow, whose milk had
been their sole income, lay dead in the field. The junior angel was infuriated
and asked the senior angel: "How could you let this happen? It isn’t fair.
The first family had everything, yet you helped them," he accused.
"The second family had little but was willing to share everything, and yet
you let their cow die." "Things aren't always what they seem,"
the senior angel replied.
"When we stayed in the basement
of the mansion, I noticed there was gold stored in that hole in the wall,
hidden there by the previous owner of the house. Since the owner was so
obsessed with greed and unwilling to share his good fortune, I thought it best
to seal the wall so he wouldn't find it. Then last night as we slept in the
farmer's bed, the angel of death came into the bedroom for his wife. I convinced
him to take the cow instead. Things aren't always what they seem."
The Kingdom of God is not what it
seems to be. Religious people think we have it figured out – who is good and
who is bad, who is in and who is out, who is going to heaven and who is not, who
is right and who is wrong, what is true and what is false. Jesus came on the
scene and turned everything upside down, telling us and showing us that things
are not always as they seem.
The first sermon of Jesus recorded
for us in the Gospel of Matthew is the famous Sermon on the Mount. The
beginning of this most famous sermon is the Beatitudes. The beatitudes define
who is in the Kingdom of God and what it means to live as part of the Kingdom
of God. There are eight brief statements which we are going to be looking at
today. Because there are eight I will do
them briefly.
I. The first four beatitudes tell us
who is in the kingdom of heaven.
1. "Blessed are the poor in
spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The world tells us what wealth
is. It says that those with money, power , fame, beauty and position are rich -
the celebrities, the world leaders, the billionaires. They have got it all.
Those of us who consider ourselves to be above such crass materialism say that
the truly rich are those with friends, family, and health, meaning and purpose.
We religious people say that the truly wealthy are those who are spiritually
rich. Therefore that is what we expect Jesus to say. But that does not seem to
be saying. He says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, For
theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” What
does this mean?
I think he is challenging the
conventional wisdom of all people, including those who would say they are
spiritual but not religious. He is saying that it is not those who think they
are rich by any standards who are the truly rich, but those who see themselves
as poor, even spiritually poor. I don’t understand this completely. Jesus is
too profound for me, but I try not to make Jesus words fit my beliefs. I think
he is challenging me and all of us to a life of spiritual humility. He is
urging us to be very careful about our views of who is in and who is out of the
Kingdom of Heaven.
2. “Blessed are those
who mourn, For they shall be comforted,” says Jesus in the second beatitude.
Grief is one of the most difficult emotions. It is a psychological response to
loss. It can be any type of loss. Most powerful is the loss of a person we
love. But it can be the loss of a pet we love, the loss of a home, the loss of
a job, the loss of our health or reputation. And it is the loss of our own lives
as we approach our own death. All types of losses prompt us to mourn.
Jesus says, “Blessed are those
who mourn.” There is a spiritual blessing in grief. That is hard to hear. We
would rather not have the grief and therefore forgo such a blessing. But the
fact is that we cannot avoid loss in our lives. We will have it no matter how
much we try to protect ourselves. How will we approach it? I think that Jesus
is saying that loss brings us in contact with something fundamental in life. It
shows us life in stark true terms. It brings us face to face with ourselves,
and the spiritual reality of life. Loss brings us face to face with the Eternal
God. Somehow in that grief and loss, comfort is found.
3. “Blessed are the
meek, For they shall inherit the earth.” I think this addresses the modern cult
of the self. We are obsessed with the self. We make a religion of self-help, self-esteem,
self-fulfillment and self-realization. Self, self, self. Meekness, as I
understand it, is anti-self. Jesus instructed us to deny our self. This is not
beating ourselves up or putting ourselves down. It is not even low self-esteem.
It is seeing that the self is not who we really are.
I talk about this regularly because
it is an important aspect of my own spiritual experience. I see a major
spiritual problem of human beings as being lost in our selves. Spiritual
liberation is being freed from our selves, freed from the tyranny of the self,
from the illusion of the self, to live openly and freely as children of God.
When that happens, suddenly we can live life fully here on earth. Not waiting
for a better tomorrow if this or that happens, nor waiting for heaven to
compensate us for a tough life here on earth, but living the Kingdom of Heaven
here and now. I think that is what Jesus means when he says that the meek shall
inherit the earth.
4. “Blessed are those
who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled.” This
beatitude hinges on what the word righteousness means. I have also defined this
on a number of occasions. Righteousness is not a state of moral correctness or perfection.
Righteous means to be in right relationship - right relationship with God, with
our selves, and with others. To be in right relationship we have to know who we
are. Scripture says we are made in the image of God. That is who we really are.
When we look at our true selves as God made us, then we see God reflected as in
a mirror. That mirror can get pretty dirty. That is how I understand sin. Sin
obscures the image of God in us. The purpose of the spiritual life is to clean
the mirror so that when God looks at us, he sees himself reflected in our lives.
And when others look at us, they also see God reflected in our lives.
We should hunger and thirst for this
righteousness, this right relationship. Most people don’t. They hunger and
thirst for things which will not satisfy. People look for love in all the wrong
places, and we are never satisfied with life. But those who hunger and thirst
for righteousness will be satisfied.
II. The second half of the beatitudes
move from our identity in the kingdom to how we are to live as part of the
Kingdom of God.
1. “Blessed are the
merciful, For they shall obtain mercy.” Be merciful. Another word for this might
be love. But it is good to use different words than love. Love can be so overused
that it is good to use different vocabulary – like merciful. This means to be
gracious to people. Be forgiving to people. Be accepting of people. Not to be
judgmental of people. I see this as open-heartedness.
We can either open our hearts and
lives to people or we can close our hearts to people. We close our hearts
because we do not want to get hurt by people. We especially do not want to get
hurt again after being hurt once. “Once bitten, twice shy” as the saying goes. But
God calls us to be vulnerable, to take risks, to take chances. This is scary
emotionally. It feels so much safer to put up the walls and protect ourselves.
To be merciful is to let go of prejudices, to forsake retaliation, to treat
others the way we would want God to treat us. The golden rule is to do unto
others the way we would have others to do unto us. But the platinum rule is to
do to others are we would have God do to us. We hope that God will be gracious
to us, to overlook our faults and sins. If we expect that from God, we are to
give that mercy to others. When we do, we find the mercy we desire.
2. “Blessed are the
pure in heart, For they shall see God.” This brings us even deeper into
this movement into our true selves. I don’t know about you, but my mind and
heart is filled with all sorts of thoughts and emotions all the time. I have a
continual inner dialogue going on. No matter what I am going, I tend to be
thinking of something else. My brain will go off on some tangent even while my
mouth is speaking the words of a sermon. I am double-minded. And double
hearted. My emotions are the same way.
Jesus is calling us to simplicity of
thought and intention. Peace of mind, if we want to call it that. Most of our
emotional suffering is of our own making. It is not caused by something that
happens to us. We cause it to ourselves. It is our response to what we imagine
might happen to us. In other words, most of our problems are in our heads. We
need purity of mind and heart. Calmness, peace. We are to relate to people and
events as they happen without all the inner drama. When we do this, it opens up
space for God. God is always present, but we are not present. We are always
somewhere else or somewhen else. We are in the future or in the past or in some
hypothetical scenario. No wonder so many people’s lives are inner turmoil.
Jesus calls us to purity of heart. When we dwell in that purity of heart, we
suddenly are aware that God is present. God is always present waiting for us to
be present to Him. When we have some degree of this purity of heart, then we see
God, and we find ourselves living in the Kingdom of Heaven here and now.
3. “Blessed are the
peacemakers, For they shall be called sons of God.” We live in the Kingdom
as peacemakers. There are so many different dimensions of peacemaking. Some
people bring conflict, disagreement and trouble with them wherever they go.
Others seem to bring peace. As residents of the Kingdom we are to bring peace.
This is talking about interpersonal peace, international peace, national peace.
I think this has something to say to the political bickering that seems to have
settled into Washington DC. And it is even talking about bringing inner peace
to others, which can only come about if there is inner peace in our lives.
Peace is contagious. We cannot make peace unless we have peace. If we have
peace, then we can bring peace into every aspect of our lives.
4. “Blessed are those
who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, For theirs is the kingdom of
heaven.” Jesus goes on to expound on this final beatitude. “Blessed are you
when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you
falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your
reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” In
short Christ is saying that this path of the beatitudes is not easy. It will
not be accepted by people. It will not be accepted by the political
establishment or by the religious establishment. In fact Jesus is saying that a
life lived by the standards of the Kingdom of God will be persecuted. He says,
“Don’t be discouraged by this. Expect it to happen.” He even says to rejoice in
it, which doesn’t sound easy to do to me. He says that this opposition is
evidence that we are on the right track, because people have always opposed the
Kingdom of Heaven. Why do you think they crucified Jesus? It was because He was
the embodiment of the kingdom of Heaven. So the political and religious leaders
felt they had to get rid of him. We should not expect it to be any different for
the followers of Christ.
The beatitudes communicate for us
profound teachings about the Kingdom of God. Let us take them to heart.
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