Sunday’s Sermon – #Blessed – Matthew 5:1-12, Micah 6:1-8

Almost 10 years ago, internet developer Chris Messina proposed a marker to be used on social media, specifically Twitter, to help users identify certain categories or groupings of comments. He offered placing the pound symbol (#) before the descriptive word, and the idea caught on. Quickly this symbol became known as a “Hashtag,” allowing users to connect with others posting about similar things around the country and even the world. They provide direction and connection, and also humor. Some, of course, are more popular than others, and different ones will “trend” and become more noticeable at certain moments depending on what is going on in the world. In light of this week’s gospel text, one of them came to mind. #blessed. This is one that pops up quite frequently, as posters make reference to their thanks to God for something, or acknowledge the things others have done that make their lives a little easier. The posts become a moment of reflection of things that are good in the world. Here are some examples:

• Thanks so much for all of the birthday wishes! I feel so special! #blessed
• A girl offered me a ride to my car for my parking spot, I was on the 4^th #blessed
• One day Liam and Eve will realize how lucky they are to have such an amazing dad. I’m thankful that I get a front row seat to this kind of love. #blessed
• Today is sunny and beautiful . . . in January! #blessed

Blessed. In the best circumstances, this word marks an awareness that all good gifts come not from our own doing, but from God. We are modeling that old instruction to “count our blessings,” to be thankful and appreciative for the basics that sometimes people take for granted.  Our passage for this morning is known as the Beatitudes, from the Latin root, in reference to the number of times the word “blessing” is used. Biblical scholars will note that blessing is a translation of the Greek word makarios. Some translations render it as “happy.” Given the prevalence of this word in our text, we need to understand more about how those in the first century might have heard it. Writer Robert Wilkens tells us that:

for us the term happiness has come to mean “feeling good” or enjoying certain pleasures, a transient state that arrives and departs as circumstances change or fortune intervenes. For the ancients, happiness was a possession of the soul, something one acquired and that, once acquired, could not easily be taken away. Happiness designated the supreme aim of human life . . . living in accord with nature, in harmony with our deepest aspirations as human beings.[i]

In other words, being “blessed” in this text is about a far bigger picture than having nice things happen that make for a better afternoon or even material possessions that indicate some level of superficial success. For first century Christians, it connected more closely to their sense of unity with God in an eternal sense, one that became present on earth through Christ as the kingdom of God drew near.

Going further, this list of blessings comes in a particular tone to help us understand it. Rather than being written in the imperative, which would be heard as direct instruction, the writer in Matthew uses the indicative tone, which is more often used to be descriptive. In this way, we get a clue that what Jesus was doing in his famous Sermon on the Mount might be less about getting believers in line to a certain list of moralities to follow and more about describing for the new believers the reality in which God’s kingdom would come to be; a reality in which even those who were on the outside or struggling would be embraced and also blessed. Jesus here is not just describing the world as it should be – he is describing the world as it is.

The Beatitudes present for us a big picture look at what God is about. Rather than a laundry list of tasks for us to accomplish as disciples, they should be more of a broad brushstroke for us to consider. Commentator James Cook suggests that we look at the Beatitudes as a collection of the whole, rather than individually. He writes:

Each is related to the others, and they build on one another. Those who are meek, meaning humble, are more likely to hunger and thirst for righteousness, because they remain open to continued knowledge of God. If we approach the Beatitudes this way, we see they invite us into a way of being in the world that leads to particular practices[ii].

This way of being is our model for discipleship. It is the picture that Jesus explained, taught, and demonstrated throughout his ministry, beginning in Matthew’s gospel on the hillside with those who would hear him. It is also a reflection of the same big picture and hopes that God has had for God’s people for ages before, like those described by the prophets.

Prophets had a way of painting the picture for God’s people about the world as it should be, often in the face of circumstances and situations that were far from it. This is the context for our verses from Micah. Although the final verse is often quoted, it is helpful to hear it in relationship to the preceding verses, which show a conflict between God and God’s people. Namely, the people of God have failed to live into their covenant relationship, their promise, that they have made with God. The verses read like a courtroom drama, in which God quickly presents a case and the people of God are rendered speechless, with God providing the rhetorical answer and sentence.

There’s a phrase that often comes in joking form when a simple task has gone wrong. It might be a picture of a simple highway with double yellow lines down the middle, but one of the lines is a squiggly mess. Or a box filled with plastic forks, sits in a store shelf in a box marked “spoons.” The situations are humorous, poking fun at simple errors with the caption “you had one job.” On a much grander scale, this is some of what our passage from Micah is saying. God doesn’t make an exhaustive list or demand copious amounts of sacrifices and burnt offerings. Instead, God replies to the people, “you had one job” – saying in verse 8 “what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Ok, so it’s three jobs, but all things considered, it’s a pretty succinct summary from God about what God wants.

The great theologian Walter Bruggemann offers that, in these instructions:

God wants and requires nothing less than the refocus of life in covenantal categories. The poet has God announce this great triad of covenantal possibilities:

• Do justice, to be actively engaged in the redistribution of power in the world, to correct the systemic inequalities that marginalize some for the excessive enhancement of others.

• Love covenant loyalty, . . . to reorder life into a community of enduring relations of fidelity.

• Walk humbly with God, to abandon all self-sufficiency, to acknowledge in daily attitude and act that life is indeed derived from the reality of God[iii].

These three concepts are not just some far-fetched dreams that God has when a genie pops out of a bottle. They are very real ideals that God hopes will be reflected in the lives of God’s people.These are the real fruits of our discipleship, and find parallels in what Christ reveals in the Beatitudes.

First, Jesus describes several situations in which people are left powerless and perhaps hopeless. Ronald Allen reminds us that:

Today’s naïve reader is likely to hear “Blessed are those who mourn” in reference to the sadness that accompanies the death of loved ones. By contrast, Matthew has in mind the mourning of the faithful who recognize that the present condition of the world is far from God’s purposes. They see idolatry, injustice, exploitation, and violence, and they mourn[iv].

The Beatitudes bring hope to those who are dejected, grieving, or are too scared or shell-shocked by the harsh realities of the world to take action with the promise that God is near. Living into discipleship hear means embracing Micah’s call to “walk humbly.” To walk humbly with God means we admit that we don’t have all of the answers and are instead seeking to walk alongside the one who does, searching for the ways in which the answers might be revealed to us. In faith, we allow God to move us from the places where we are stuck or scared, and into God’s picture of wholeness, with Jesus walking by our side. Discipleship is about movement, with God at the helm.

Second, the Beatitudes illustrate great compassion God showed the people of Israel from the very beginning, and calls us to pursue this kind of care for all of God’s creation. The Hebrew word for this is hesed, and is mostly used to refer to the kind of love God has for us, and God’s love is always wrapped tightly around grace. This is what Micah identifies as “love kindness,” a lifestyle that calls for forgiveness and mercy, and for hearts that are brimming with compassion. Our understanding of compassion in this context runs far deeper than just being nice and kind to others. It speaks to a greater sense of empathy that brings us into relationship with others as children of God. Compassion is not about having pity or sympathy for those “poor people” – whether in possession or spirit – it is about something more.

The late Henri Nouwen offers an insightful description, [saying]:

compassion “grows with the inner recognition that your neighbor shares your humanity with you. This partnership cuts through all walls which might have kept you separate. Across all barriers of land and language, wealth and poverty, knowledge and ignorance, we are one, created from the same dust, subject to the same laws, destined for the same end[v].”

It is only when we are able to come to this common ground that we can truly find empathy and compassion for each other. It is here where we are able to embark on the hard work of peacemaking, seeking reconciliation with one another until we find the places where we can rejoice and be glad together.

Finally, Jesus’ teaching, particularly in the Beatitudes, presents a hopeful image for a world marked by wholeness and restoration. After hopeful yearning and enduring hardships, righteousness is realized. It involves the purest of intentions and perspectives that set eyes on God’s reality. This is the work of justice that Micah calls God’s people to do, even in the face of chaos and seemingly insurmountable obstacles. James Cook writes that, more often than not, the mantra that dominates our view of the world is:

“Do not worry about it. That is just the way things are. You will get used to it.” The Beatitudes invite us to the opposite point of view, which is hopefulness. We place our hope on Christ, who offered hope to the hopeless. Thus we are able to approach the world with a spirit of hope, even when the outward signs indicate otherwise.[vi]

The Beatitudes give us the audacity to hope that words like mercy, peace, and love will be descriptive of our world. It is our hope that allows us to take steps forward, little by little, as those who hunger for a better world[vii]; it is hope that gives us the motivation to do justice, and the Beatitudes help illustrate some of what that looks like in the world.

 

Fellow disciples of Christ: we have three jobs: Do justice, Love Kindness, Walk Humbly. Living into these ideals will help us get a glimpse of the kind of world Jesus was talking about – the world as the way God sees it – the view seen from the top of the Sermon on the Mount. And once we see such a vision, we cannot help but want to be a part of it. This, in the end, is the true goal of our discipleship – to be a part of the vision for the world that Christ already sees as a reality. And when we do, the words that we say, the things that we do, our very lives and beings, become a part of that picture. We will become living depictions of what God’s presence in the world looks like. And it is then, when we become reflections of God’s intentions for the world, that we can truly be described as #blessed. Not because of anything we have done, but because we have humbled ourselves to follow the one who can and will do anything. What a blessing, indeed.

Amen.

 

~Rev. Elizabeth Lovell Milford

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[i] Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 278), as quoted in James C. Howell, The Beatitudes for Today, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006).

[ii] Charles James Cook, “Pastoral Perspective: Matthew 5:1-12,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 1, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010).

[iii] Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV – Year A, Walter Brueggemann, Charles B. Cousar, Beverly R. Gaventa, and James D. Newsome, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995)

[iv] Ronald J. Allen, “Homiletical Perspective: Matthew 5:1-12,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 1, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010).

[v] Henri Nouwen, With Open Hands (New York: Ballantine, 1972), 86. As quoted in Charles James Cook, “Pastoral Perspective: Matthew 5:1-12,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 1, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010).

[vi] Charles James Cook.

[vii] Stay tuned for more on what this hunger looks like in next week’s sermon.