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11/4/2007
All Saints
Matthew 5:1-12
Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. May the words of my mouth and the ears of our hearts be open to the word of God this day. AMEN.
Today in our Gospel reading we go back to near the beginning of Jesus’ ministry to the time after Jesus baptism and when John the Baptist has been arrested. With John in Herod’s prison, Jesus begins his ministry in Galilee. He has just picked his inner group of disciples to follow him. And word is spreading about what this man is saying and doing. Crowds are coming to him to hear his words, to seek relief or healing, to look for hope and see the glory of God. Today we get Jesus retreating to the wilderness and the crowds following, so much so that Jesus upon seeing the crowds goes up a hillside and turns sitting down and he begins to teach them.
And we get the famous “sermon on the mount.” In Chapters 5, 6 and 7 of Matthew, Jesus lays out a way to live, guidelines on prayer, faith, the commandments, and salvation. And most of it makes perfect sense to the people and even to most of us - I am sure. Love your neighbor as yourself – that makes sense. Do not judge so that you will not be judged – makes sense. Ask and it will be given you, those who seek will find, knock and the door will be opened – makes sense.
But these words of the Blessings – really make no sense in our world. Yes you heard me read them just now and they sound familiar to you. But when you stop and think, really think about them these words have been around for 2000 years and yet our society still practices on the opposite basis. This section of the Bible would be in the top ten most familiar passages in the entire Bible and yet it is the section most disregarded section going.
Just look at the lectionary description the Augsburg Publishing house has given as the introduction to this reading: - “In the beatitudes, Jesus provides a unique description of those who are blessed by God.” Really these people are blessed – in unique ways. That seems a bit understated. Those who are poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who are meek, those who hunger and thirst, those who are reviled – that’s what it means to be blessed. If that is what it means to be blessed then why in the world would we want God to give us any more help. On the face of it, those words make no sense. God is blessing you if you are persecuted. Really couldn’t God bless me with a little fame or wealth, or riches instead. Why not bless me with prosperity, good health and peace for as long as I like – that would be a nice blessing – right. TV evangelists promise that false heresy and they are getting rich and filling stadiums full of people wanting to come and hear how God can bless them with riches and wealth.
But that is not what Jesus is saying, his words are “unique” – opposite of what our world would like. The world of the 1st century and the world of today, would both reverse these blessings if they could. Blessed are the Proud – don’t be poor in spirit, that is kinda negative, you have to show pride in your abilities, your gifts. Just look at the high paid athletes, rock musicians and even the political leaders who go around all the time talking how great they are while putting down others. These are the ones the media seem to focus on, because they know that people will watch and tune in to hear more about them and their exciting lives of power, riches and PRIDE.
Just look at blessed are the peacemakers – wouldn’t it make more sense to say blessed are the violent and forceful. Our society, our movies and tv shows, our action heros, our video games, our news teach us that the violent are held up more and talked about more. From men and women that shoot guns into crowds, or drive vehicles running over people, or blow buildings up– they are the ones getting famous on media over and over again. But peacemakers, those working endlessly to end the genocide of millions in Burma or the Sudan or the middle east you never hear anything about. How many of you know more about the personal life of the Las Vegas Shooter then you do about your fellow church member sitting in the other pew nearby.
Our society teaches blessings to the prideful. The violent. Those who prosper at any cost. The unscrupulous. The devious. And that is the reason these words of Jesus are not just a “unique” teaching, but a radical teaching. Radical, flipping the script, total opposite of what we expect. Jesus here at the beginning of his sermon on the mount lays the groundwork to a teaching the revolutionizes the entire understanding of our existence.
This being All Saints Sunday, lets just look at verse 4 – when Jesus says Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Today we remember 12 saints, children of God that have died in this past year. We also remember all those we can list in our hearts and minds, parents, children, siblings, friends and neighbors- people who have died and we are separated from by that shroud of death. And to hear that we are blessed is hard and difficult to understand.
I have translated that world blessed before as to be happy. I even preached on that a number of years ago. The word blessed when translated as happy, gives us a different image. It tells us that a person can be content, find joy, have the emotional comfort of peace. So that word can be translated Blessed as Happy. But recently I read another Biblical commentator who uses a different image. He was saying that the greek word here can not simply mean happy like it is an emotional contentment. It means more than just being filled with goodness and blessing. The problem he is stating is that in English we have no word to convey the meaning of the word blessed here. The closest he could come up with is to say that the word that is translated here as blessing means to be in a loving relationship. To be content, joy-filled, at peace in a relationship with God that means that we have no worries, no concerns, no fears. His proposition is that this meaning that Jesus is trying to convey to the people is not so much lucky are you if you mourn now, instead it is God is with you in fellowship more than any other time. God is with you in relationship, in a loving meaningful way, when you feel lose of loved ones, when you mourn, when you hunger when you are reviled, when you are persecuted, God comes to you and is with you in an embrace of love and caring, - that is the contentment, that is the joy, that is the happy blessing this word is to convey.
God bless you when you mourn, because God promises you a comfort that his own love, a love so great that he comes to be with you, to take you and surround you in peace. God shares your pain, and knows our sorrows. And that is why we have a victory that we turn to in God. Because God loves us so much we know that death is not the final word. God loves us so much that he comes to us in Jesus Christ to offer us life. A God who loves us so much that he comes to win for us a victory over that grave and will come and embrace us to take us into that peace.
Those early disciples who heard this sermon, knew mourning, and they knew sadness. The world teaches that in death is sadness and grief. But Jesus revolutionizes that meaning. He gives them a blessing of a promise of God with them. And even as they mourn his death, we know that suddenly the miracle of Easter took place, because these men and women who grieved in sadness, where filled with the life giving joy, that Jesus had appeared to them, the resurrected Lord come to them and was with them, promises them and us that he will never leave us. That even through death we have that connection with him. That is the blessing that we receive. That is the hope and joy and peace that is given in knowing God. Even on All Saints, we can read these words and see beyond the uniqueness of them, see beyond what the world would see. And see the great news of life everlasting. That God’s people, those who have entered into his kingdom, we today and those yet to come and with the Lord forever. That is the blessing I give to you today. Receive that word of God and his joy. Amen.
May the peace and grace of God be with you this day and throughout the week to come.