Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany (Contemporary)
In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Jesus is often described as a good teacher. The sermon on the mount is full of word pictures that help people understand what he's trying to communicate, clever illustrations, and beautiful poetic language. Remember back to your speech classes. The Sermon on the Mount has ethos, pathos, and logos.
Speaker 1:Jesus would get a good grade for his form, for his method of teaching. But good rhetoric always requires both good form and good content. So what about his content? What about the message itself? It is one thing to deliver a message well, but is Jesus' message sound here in the Beatitudes?
Speaker 1:Does it make sense? Look in your bulletins or Bibles at the Beatitudes again. But this time look at this passage from the gospel of Matthew with the eyes of a first century Judean. Put yourself in the place of someone standing in the crowd to hear Jesus preach these words for the first time. Let's set the stage a little bit.
Speaker 1:You are living in an occupied land. 2,500 miles away from where you live, Caesar taxes you and your people heavily in return for peace. Pax Romana, the peace of Rome. What does peace look like in the Roman Empire? And perhaps as a young adult standing at the bottom of a hill listening to Jesus deliver the Sermon on the Mount, you know all too well about Pax Romana.
Speaker 1:In the year July, about twenty three years before Jesus preached this sermon, your uncle had participated in a rebellion against Rome. He traveled across Judea speaking out against the Romans. He amassed a small following and then convinced his followers to attack Roman guards throughout Judea. It did not go well. Rome was very good at crushing rebellions.
Speaker 1:Your own father joined the uprising and survived the battle, but he wished he hadn't. In response to this uprising, we know through history that the Romans crucified 2,000 Jews, Both of your parents, if you were there to listen to Jesus, perhaps were crucified. And then the Romans lined the roads of Jerusalem with 2,000 crosses leaving the bodies on them for months as a reminder of Rome's power over its people. So this is peace according to Rome. And this is simply the way the world is.
Speaker 1:And so there you are on the shores of the Sea Of Galilee listening to another traveling teacher and he speaks the words printed in your bulletin. And as you're listening and in the context of your life, you begin to question him immediately. Do the poor in spirit have any kingdom to call their own? Do those who show mercy receive any mercy in return? Are those who mourn ever comforted?
Speaker 1:And do the meek inherit anything? The answer to these questions as you look around the crowd and think about your own life is a resounding no. So what is our assessment then? The beatitudes are beautiful, but do they mean anything? Are the beatitudes just the first century equivalent of John Lennon's Imagine.
Speaker 1:A beautiful song but ultimately empty. Since we're only a few minutes into the sermon, you can probably guess that the answer is no. Right? We're still gathered here reflecting on these words two thousand years after this sermon was preached, so there must be something more to the beatitudes than what we see on the surface. In fact, in order to understand the message of the beatitudes, we may need to move Jesus in our mind.
Speaker 1:If Jesus lives in the same category as motivational speakers or self help gurus, the beatitudes make no sense. If we sometimes fall into the trap of thinking about Jesus the same way we think about our favorite op ed columnist, right, someone who helps us understand the world, then we're going to miss what he's trying to say. In other words, if Jesus is saying try hard to live like this and your life will work out in this world the way you want it, then Jesus is wrong. And for very good reasons you can't wear a collar and say that Jesus is wrong and mean it. So if that is the picture we have of Jesus, if he lives in this category of sage or wise teacher, we need to move him.
Speaker 1:We need to think of him rightly so that we can understand what it is that he said and did. Jesus is the son of God. We'll say in a moment that he was eternally begotten of the father. There was not a time in which he did not exist. He's the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.
Speaker 1:When God said, let there be light, he was those words. All things were made through him. This universe was created and is held together physically and spiritually by his very existence. And in his plan to restore creation, to restore humanity, he emptied himself and took on flesh. He was conceived and he was born and he grew up just like us and he was baptized just like us.
Speaker 1:And now he's ready to declare the very purpose of all these things, the very reason he took on flesh and dwelled amongst us, and he makes this announcement in the form of the beatitudes. These blessings are not saying try hard to live like this. They are pronouncements that people who are already like this are in good shape. They should be happy and celebrate. Not because they will do well in the world as it is, but because the world as it will be is now beginning to dawn.
Speaker 1:Blessed are you, or another perfectly viable translation, you should be happy and celebrate if you are poor in spirit. Because while being poor in spirit gets you nowhere in this world as it is, it is what matters most in the world to come. You should be happy and celebrate if you mourn in this life. This is a sign that you are longing for something more than this world can offer. You should be happy and celebrate if you are meek, not because meekness will get you anything in the world as it is, but because meekness is the posture of those who thrive in the world to come.
Speaker 1:Now this is only good news in this life because in his incarnation Jesus is inaugurating the world as it should be. The world as it will be is breaking in to the world that is. The beatitudes are the announcement of the dawn of a new creation, an entirely new way of being human in the world. So Jesus is not teaching a new set of maxims hoping that people will adopt them, he is announcing a new world. And in this world, things are different.
Speaker 1:Those who have themselves become merciful receive mercy. Those who are meek have everything they need in life. Those who are pure in heart will see everything more clearly than those who are corrupt. Those who seek to make things right will reflect the very image of God to everyone around them. This world is cruel but the world as it is is not the world as it will be once all is set right.
Speaker 1:And while you exist now in the world that is, blessed are you if you are reflecting now the way of the life of the world to come. Jesus is in some ways like the many other Jew young Jewish messianic leaders of his day, he did challenge the world as it is. But in the beatitudes, he sends his followers a different message entirely. You will not overcome this world by playing the games of this world. You will overcome this world by living in it without allowing it to live in you.
Speaker 1:In a world of power plays, seek to be meek. In a world where might beats right, seek to be just. The interesting thing about Jesus' new message is that it's not a new message at all. It's one that Jesus' audience would have recognized even if they had forgotten why. Our Old Testament reading comes from the book of Micah, one of the last books of the Old Testament, the final prophetic words for the people of God at the end of the Old Testament before Rome took over the world.
Speaker 1:And look at the last words of that passage as we close. What does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God. Not because these things will help you climb up the ladder of the world that is, but because this is the way of life in the life of the world to come. The world that begins to arrive in Jesus' announcement of the beatitudes and the one that will one day fully arrive on a day that scripture simply calls that day. Now in his goodness, God does not simply tell us to grin and bear it until that day comes.
Speaker 1:If that was the case, Jesus would have said something like put your head down, pull up your bootstraps, and seek to be merciful in a cruel world. But that's not what he said. He said, blessed are the merciful. By living a different way now, by refusing to play the games of the world as it is, you are not only prepared for the life of the world to come, but you will find slowly over time that what the Lord requires of his people turns out to be nothing less than a life that makes this life worth living. You will find that peace, not Pax Romana, but true peace slowly but surely becomes your own posture towards life.
Speaker 1:Not because things will go well for you, but because you are finally being made whole. In our opening prayer this morning, listen again to what we asked God to do today through the scriptures and through the sacraments as we gather. We asked God in our time, grant us your peace. In our time. As beings who live between two worlds, grant us your peace.
Speaker 1:Not by changing our circumstances, but by changing us. So where do you go from here? Perhaps this morning and this week you could reflect on the beatitudes. Find one to focus on. You can skim the passage while waiting to come forward to communion or maybe one has already jumped out at you.
Speaker 1:But think this week about what it would look like if a year from now you have grown in your strength to be merciful or meek or hungry for righteousness. You've grown in your ability to be pure in heart, to mourn well, to be poor in spirit. And over time watch what happens. Look for signs that by growing in one of the beatitudes you are both more at peace in our time and yet somehow also more prepared for the life to come. Amen?
Speaker 1:Amen.
