The World Turned Upside Down? Or As It Already Is?

Psalm 15

Matthew 5: 1 - 12

Sometimes, it is hard to approach scripture that is printed on posters, cross-stitched on pillows and dropped into memes for social media with fresh eyes. We assign certain texts a special place and assume that they will be powerful as they stand alone.

Our gospel lesson today is one of those texts.

I think sometimes those texts sit in our souls like a fossil on a shelf of memories. We actually don’t think about the text much. We take comfort in it. We take it off the shelf from time to time to admire or to share with another. We assume we know what it means.

I think in this season we should revisit this text as part of a commitment in our own discipleship journey to living an examined life.  By that I mean it is NOT enough to assume that the way we’ve always understood something is the way it actually works.  Let’s spend some time with the beatitudes and see how they might speak to us today.

Our text from Matthew is commonly called “the beatitudes,” and these are the opening words of Jesus’ sermon on the Mount as it is captured in Matthew’s gospel.  This list of blessings begin Jesus’ first expanded teaching after the launch of his ministry.

Let’s start there.  In the chapters that precede this teaching, Jesus is promised, his heritage is established, he is born and venerated, whisked of to Egypt for safety, baptized and declared beloved, tempted by Satan, calls his disciples, and begins an attention-grabbing ministry of miraculous healing. His miracles attract attention and here as he begins the sermon on the Mount, this is the FIRST time his teaching is captured.  He went and did some things before he started talking about how things were or should be.

The people he healed and those who began to follow him were living a particular existence. They were living under the control of the Roman Empire and they were living in the tension of the Jewish religious establishment. Here is Jesus proclaiming judgment on the powers of BOTH in his first documented public teaching. He’s proclaiming the favor of the oppressed – those judged unworthy or incapable of inclusion by the Temple and those entrapped by economic and social discrimination, military might, and a prioritization of power and wealth by the political elite.

The notion of “blessedness” here means to be fully included God’s reign. The poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who seek righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted, the reviled….these are fully included in God’s reign.

In what other reign are they fully included? Certainly not Imperial Rome. Certainly not the rigid  and judgmental Temple rules and traditions.

In so many ways as Jesus begins to teach to this big crowd, he is turning the world upside down.

But is he? Or is he naming what already is?

We live in a world that preferences power and might.  We live in a world where success is measured by accomplishments like a paycheck or a degree or the size of our families, houses and cars.

We live in a world where a proclamation about the blessedness of the meek, the poor in spirit or the mourning is so far from the ideal we uphold.

From MY context of 2020 in the DMV, I found myself wrestling with the suggestion that these are not aspirational statements. 

Jesus is not claiming the way it will be one day, or the way it will be one day if only we will do the right things….No, he his proclaiming God’s favor in the here and now. 

OR at least in the there and then. 

To the meek, he is saying God favors YOU. To those who mourn, he is saying God favors you. To those who are poor in Spirit, God favors you.  Not one day. This is the way of God.

Many scholars of Matthew’s gospel point to the way Jesus is the “new Moses,” set to the work of liberation and bringing a new law to the people. At one point this week I pondered whether these blessings then were part of a new law code – a new way to behave in light of who God is.  Jesus’ climbing a “mount” to bring instruction harkens back to Moses on Sinai. Certainly as we get deeper into this teaching in weeks to come, we will hear Jesus wrestling with a code of law.

But then, I stumbled upon a commentary that helped me see that differently. …these blessings – this is a statement about who God is. And who we are in light of who God is.  In Exodus 20:2, the LORD says, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”  This immediately proceeds the first commandment that the people should have no other gods before the one who has liberated them.

In a similar way, Jesus, proclaiming the blessedness of the underdog is announcing that delivery has already happened because this is who God is. It is who God has been.  It is who God will be.  God is the one who includes the least and the lost.

In light of this then, the question that rattles my soul is what, then, does this mean for me? Is it my ideal to be meek, mourning, poor in spirit?

Or how am I to be a vessel for this blessedness that God offers?

How am I to live in light of this?

How might we live in light of this being who God blesses?

I think a huge piece of our work is to demonstrate blessedness to those named by Jesus but unknown to our societal standards.

Let me repeat that – our work is to demonstrate the blessings of God to those that Jesus names here in this teaching, because the society in which we operate does not call these blessed.

I wonder who we might meet along the way as we do that work?

After worship today we will have the opportunity to think creatively about how we will share love in tangible ways on behalf of our Faith community. Because of the generous commitments you have made as a congregation, we have work before us – work to share God’s love in ways that are felt by those touched.

This is an opportunity for us to think about ways that we might reach others with the good news that God’s blessing is for those that society often leaves behind. 

I hope that we will carry with us into this conversation the blessings that frame Jesus’ first teaching to a crowd. The blessings themselves embody humility, hopefulness and compassion. I pray that we will seek to embody humility, hopefulness and compassion as markers of God’s full inclusion.

May it be so.

Amen.

As often happens, I was moved this week by a poem received in my inbox. Perhaps it speaks to you as well. This is by Steve Garnaas – Holmes UM Clergy currently serving and writing in Massachusetts.

Yes, child, of course you are just a little one,
without power and status in this world.
Perfect.
This means nothing, excuses nothing.

God avoids armies and lightning bolts,
smartypants, strongmen and bullies,
avoids them like poop on the sidewalk.
For God is not a strongman, but a beckoning.
God is a wound, a weakness among us,
an emptiness, a leaning toward what must be filled,
a yearning that draws but does not coerce,
who, even creating, allows but does not demand.
God prefers little ones, despised ones, powerless ones,
impossible ones: a child in a cage, a girl crying out,
a black man shot, a crucified peasant.

Or you, little one, whom the world judges foolish,
endowed with love and therefore
with more power than a tyrant.
Fear not. Speak out. Live your light.
God has chosen it, and not some secret weapon,
to shame the strong, to heal the world,
to bring life out of death.
You, little one, go with courage.

(Steve Garnaas – Holmes: Unfolding Light, January 30, 2020)

Sources:

Charles James Cook and Marcia Riggs, Commentary on Matthew 5: 1 – 12, Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 1, Advent through Transfiguration

Steve Garnaas-Holmes, a daily poem from Unfolding Light, January 30, 2020

Sermon Brainwave #705, a podcast from Working Preacher