Sermon:  “Blessings”

You can learn a lot about a story from how it begins, and how it might be different from what you’d expect from other stories like it. And since today we read the famous “Sermon on the Mount” of Jesus, “the Beatitudes” of Matthew’s chapter 5, we are still at the beginning of Matthew, let’s look back again at Chapter 1 – the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham, and then the angel reveals to Joseph the child’s name, Jesus.  That’s a variation on Yeshua, or Joshua, the hero who “fit the battle of Jericho,” and it means the one who would “save his people.”  But unlike the great warrior Joshua, Jesus does not take up the sword like an ordinary leader or king – he comes to “save his people …from their sins.”  The angel also tells Joseph Jesus will fulfill Isaiah’s prophesy to be “Emmanuel, or ‘God with us.’”

That’s great and all – very Christmasy, very Bible-y – it sounds pretty in our songs.  But think about your own suffering – when your life is a mess, when you’re in real pain, do you want God to come be with you like gentle Jesus, meek and mild?  Do you want comfort from a kind friend – or do you want an all-powerful God of justice to just wave a magic wand (or axe, maybe – like John the Baptist) and make it all go away?  Most of us, when we’re in real trouble, pray for God to take action – we do not pray for God to come with love and save us from our sins.  We don’t pray that God would come to us, in our hardship, and ask us to actually do something harder either.  We forget that Jesus recruits the first four disciples right after John is arrested.  Really?  When things are going from bad to worse, when times are tough, did it really make kind of any sense for those disciples to quit perfectly good jobs – as Jesus asks the disciples to do in chapter 4 – and follow him into the wilderness on a fishing mission for lost souls?  Not very practical.

Not everyone would have done that – wiser heads might have suggested going into hiding for a while longer, at least until they could find out what Herod would do to John.  But, as Paul says in his First Letter to the Corinthians, the fearless practice of a faithful life never has made a lot of sense to “the debater of this age” – that is, ANY age.  There’s never been a time in history when people of just basic common sense (never mind a wise national leader) would suggest a person stand up to a tyrant and trust God to help in doing what is right – as David takes up his little sling against Goliath.  See why Matthew first introduces Jesus as son of David?  As Paul says, “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?”  David’s big brothers in the army didn’t know how that story would end – they laughed at his foolishness, his recklessness, his innocent faith.

That’s what our Christian faith, ultimately, is about – a complete reversal of the world’s wisdom.  Chapter 1 – a messiah born to save us homeless, to poor and unmarried parents.  Then, chapter 2, instead of being anointed king, he is almost killed – this refugee family has to flee to Egypt to survive.  Seriously, God, was this the wisest plan?  Then in chapter 3, he is baptized by a raging wilderness prophet and anointed not by the expected fire and brimstone, but by the gentle Holy Spirit, descending upon him like a dove.  Then, instead of starting work immediately in chapter 4, he flees to the wilderness to be tempted by Satan – he undergoes a spiritual test.  He waits until the most dangerous moment, when John gets himself arrested, and then he calls his disciples to round up more recruits.

So here’s where we find ourselves with today’s scripture lesson, as chapter 5 begins with the “Sermon on the Mount.”  His big preaching moment – his inaugural address.  Who would he want to hear the big speech?  Think about it.  The world is on the brink of change for the better.  The long-promised messiah has come.  God’s love and justice has broken in to the world – Jesus is just looking for a few good men to make that vision possible.  You’d expect him to want to round up some influential allies – people with money and power, wisdom and political expertise.  Here’s what Matthew says happened in at the very end of chapter 4:

²³Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. ²⁴So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, and he cured them. ²⁵And great crowds followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.

John’s followers were probably strong young men with a passion for change.  Matthew chapter 3 says “the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, from all of Judea.”   John’s followers lived with him like mountain men out there in the wilderness.  They were tough guys ready to overthrow Herod’s government.  But who does John’s cousin Jesus recruit?  People who were sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics.  They’re not even all Jews like the ones with John, but Syrians, foreigners. 

Can you imagine risking your life to follow Jesus, helping him begin to gather followers, and then after a few days looking down the mountain and seeing nothing but multitudes of sick and crazy people wanting your help?  Makes me tired.  Would make me want to go home to my dad’s fishing boat and not continue on a fool’s errand that was most likely to end in disaster.  How could ministry to the world’s most helpless and desperate outcasts possibly be successful?  If you were there, what would you think when Jesus didn’t preach to a good crowd but instead escaped to the mountains on retreat? You might think the whole thing kind of futile, or even foolish.  That’s why Paul, I think, writes to the Corinthians about the apparent foolishness of the Christian faith, why he says, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,” and make “foolish the wisdom of the world.”

Jesus was turning the world’s conventional wisdom upside down by sharing with the disciples his “beatitudes,” these words of blessing.  It was a way of encouraging his followers about all that lay before them – literally seeing the crowds of people in need far below them but also knowing the difficult and dangerous future that lay before them on their mission.  Jesus goes to the mountaintop, as Moses did before him, and he gives them not more law to follow – not 10 commandments – but 8 blessings.  He proclaims that help from God will come not when we are strong and confident but when we are poor in spirit, grieving, weak and afraid, hungry and thirsty, guilty and desperate, when we are surrounded by violence and temptation, hardship and persecution – when we have no more of our own strength, that’s when we will know God’s strength coming to save us.

As Paul says, God chooses the weak to shame the strong.  Those who mourn count themselves blessed, because they receive comfort.  Our hardest times are when Jesus promises true blessing will come – not when we most believe in ourselves – but when we have no other choice than to finally place our belief where it belongs, in God alone.  Many of us have experienced the truth of this in our own lives – at those times we’ve found God in our own suffering, our own defeat.  Miracles don’t come when we’re doing great, but when we’re in pain – when we’re driven to our knees in despair.

I got Bonnie and Grant Highlanders’ permission to share a little bit of the story of their new daughter, Gigi.  You wouldn’t know it from seeing her here today, but it’s been a long struggle for Gigi, and one that we at Thursday Morning Prayers have been privileged to share over these past couple of years.  First, we got a prayer request from the Highlanders in China that we pray for this little 2-year-old girl in foster care who had a very bad cancer.  They didn’t give her very good chances to survive, but she had captured Bonnie’s heart, as she was doing volunteer work at the hospital.  And so we prayed for her for over a year, until we got the very good news that she was in remission.  But with that news came a second request, that we pray that her adoption might go smoothly and that the Highlanders might be able to bring her home to the United States, to meet us.

Now Bonnie will tell you that not everyone who heard about their plans to adopt Gigi thought it was the wisest decision in the world.  Some people came right out and said they thought they were crazy.  But now, no one would deny that God’s hand was at work making this whole thing possible.  And the Highlanders, as well as those in our prayer group, have had our faith strengthened by Gigi’s courageous fight for life.  I can’t begin to tell you what joy I felt earlier this week when I saw Bonnie coming toward me down the hall of our church, holding this cute little almost-4-year-old girl by her pink-mittened hand.  It brought tears to my eyes to hear Bonnie telling Gigi, “Look at this mural, Gigi! Isn’t it beautiful?  Look, here, here’s your Sunday School classroom! This is your new church!”

It may not make a lot of sense, but struggles do bring us closer to God’s great heart of love – a heart that, we learn through Jesus, breaks open with compassion when we are hurting.  That’s when God rushes in to fill it with the Holy Spirit, and real miracles of hope and healing do happen. 

Thanks be to God for this Good News.  Amen.

 

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1 Corinthians 1:18-31

¹⁸For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹For it is written,
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” ²⁰Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
²¹For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. ²²For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, ²³but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. ²⁶Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise
by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. ²⁷But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise;
God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong;
²⁸God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not,
to reduce to nothing things that are, ²⁹so that no one might boast
in the presence of God. ³⁰He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus,
who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, ³¹in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

 

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Matthew 5:1-12

5When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. ²Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

³“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
⁴“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
⁵“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
⁶“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
⁷“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
⁸“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
⁹“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
¹⁰“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
¹¹“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you
and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.
¹²Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven,
for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.