The Gospel of Matthew organizes Jesus’ teachings into five major lectures, and for the season of Epiphany, we will be working our way through the first and probably the most familiar of those lectures, the Sermon on the Mount. Before we get into the meat of the text we heard today, I want to set the stage a bit on what the Sermon on the Mount is, and where we’re going for the next four weeks.
I also want to start with this disclaimer. Sermons on sermons are not the easiest, because, really, how is one expected to preach on Jesus’ preaching. Things are going to get a bit heady and lecture-y this morning, as we break down some of the finer points of what Jesus was saying. There may even be some Greek. But, here’s the deal. I will end with one, super-simple, concrete thing you can do to put this into action. So, hang in there with me and I promise at the end you will have, if nothing else, one real-life application.
So, with that, let’s begin. Sermon on the Mount. At the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, the Gospel of Matthew describes Jesus as going up a mountain with his disciples, who at this point number four, and teaching them. The teaching follows a very tight organizational structure that seems to have been based on a well-known rabbinic teaching: “By three things the world is sustained: by the law, by Temple service, and by deeds of loving kindness.” Relatedly, the Sermon is organized into three sections, a section about the law, a section about worship and religious practice, and a section about how to be in relationship with others. Over the course of the next four weeks, we will only get through the section on the law, so you’ll be on your own for the rest of it.
Jesus’ teaching style in Matthew was to tell the disciples something, and then put it into practice. For the teachers in the room, I think you’d agree that Jesus’ pedagogy was pretty solid. Jesus taught them about the meaning of the law, worship, and how to be in relationship, and then he went out and healed the sick, prayed, and restored people to relationship. He taught his disciples about how to teach in chapter ten, and then he went out and taught. He told them about the challenges they would face in chapter eighteen, and then he went to Jerusalem to be crucified. He explained, then he demonstrated.
But why would Jesus go up a mountain for this teaching? Seems like not the most convenient place. And the Gospel of Luke also has a lecture by Jesus consisting of most of the same teachings, but in Luke, it happened on a plain. Plain as in flat place, not plane as in airplane. So was it a mountain or a plain? Doesn’t matter. The location tells us more about the theology of the writer than the geography of Jesus. Mountains in scripture are places of revelation, places where God reveals God’s truth. Most famous example of this was Moses going up Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments. Matthew remembered Jesus as going up a mountain because Matthew understood Jesus as being the fulfiller of the promises of Moses. Luke, on the other hand, remembered Jesus as preaching on a plain, because Luke understood Jesus as being the great leveler of the field, bringing down the mighty and lifting up the lowly. Where Jesus said it, really doesn’t matter. What we know, because it’s in both Gospels, is that Jesus said it.
Last thought on the overall sermon before we get into the beatitudes. One of the things that the writer of Matthew was trying to do in his Gospel was to set up a structure for the church as an institution that lives on after the resurrection of Jesus. So it is a narrative account of the ministry of Jesus while he was on earth, a specific story about a specific geographic location at a specific time. But it is also lessons for how the community of believers is to exist after the resurrection when Jesus is no longer present in the flesh. So the disciples were the four disciples we heard about last week, Andrew, Peter, James, and John, but they are also stand-ins for the community of believers, the church universal, which includes us. This may be why I find preaching on the Sermon on the Mount so difficult; Jesus is preaching a sermon to you, and I am trying to interrupt and interject side commentary.
At the beginning of the sermon, Jesus starts with nine short, strange statements about who is considered blessed. They are often referred to as the beatitudes, which is a Latin word that simply means, blessed. And beatitudes aren’t unique to Jesus, you can find them throughout the Bible, most commonly in wisdom literature, like the proverbs, and in the writings of the prophets.
Here’s the super cool thing about the beatitudes. The word translated “blessed” can also be translated as “fortunate,” “happy,” privileged,” etc. But the grammatical form really insists on blessed as the only correct translation. This is because the beatitudes declare an objective reality. This isn’t a description of a feeling; it is a declaration of fact. The opposite of blessed is not unhappy, it is cursed. So those poor in spirit, or mourning, or meek, or any of the other descriptors may not feel happy, they may not be privileges, they may not feel fortunate, but they are blessed. Full stop. They are blessed because the state of being blessed does not rest on their feelings about their situation, or the world’s reaction to them, or anything of earthly origin. The state of being blessed is totally and completely dependent on the will and the action of God. And God declares them blessed, so it is so.
And these are not individual realities, but communal ones. The beatitudes aren’t a list of nine types of good people or a checklist for conversion or suggestions for better living. They are marks of the church, the whole church. Remember how I mentioned the disciples are stand-ins for the church universal. At any given time, somewhere in the body of Christ, someone is poor in spirit, mourning, meek, making peace, being persecuted. We as individuals are never all of these things, but we are always some of these things. And so, like we heard in verse eleven, when we feel reviled, persecuted, judged, we can rejoice. Not in a weird martyr complex way, like someone kicked me while I’m down, so I’m going to put on a happy face. But rejoice more in the sense of we can take comfort in the powerful promise that we are a part of the beloved community whom God has called blessed, and since that reality is outside of worldly control, there is nothing that can change the truth of that promise. Rejoicing in the face of suffering is not a platitude or some weak suggestion that we should just be happy when things are tough, rather rejoicing in the face of suffering is about the unshakeable reality that God is here. It is a conviction to cling to, that clings to us, when everything else is crumbling.
The beatitudes, as much as they are a firm declaration of current reality, are also an acknowledgement of the distance yet to go. The form of the beatitudes is “Blessed are, right here, right now, present tense X, for they will, in the future Y.” You are blessed now, and yet, there will be more. It is this tension we’ve talked about before of the already and not yet of the kingdom of God. Already the kingdom is here, in the person of Jesus. Already we meet Jesus in the water and the wine and the word. Already we know that God is with us. And yet, we look around the world and we see sickness and poverty and violence and we know that the kingdom of God has also not yet come. The beatitudes hold that tension, that uncomfortable reality that Christ is, and was, and still is yet to come.
Which means, and here’s where it gets great guys, which means there is work for us to do. Not work that is dependent on us, not work that we need to do in order to get right with God, but work we have been blessed to be a part of by the declaration of God’s word in our lives. God’s words bring into being the reality that they declare. So God’s declaration of us as blessed move us into action to live in the kingdom of God and bring the fulfillment of the kingdom on earth.
So here’s the promised “where do we go from here” piece. I could preach a whole other sermon on each of the beatitudes, but you’ve put up with a lot of theology already here today, so I’m just going to draw out one of them and let you extrapolate forward. Verse four: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” Remember, these are about communal realities. So this is certainly about us in our individual mourning, about the promise of comfort when we experience personal loss and grief. But it is also a statement about a characteristic of the people of God as those who mourn the ways in which the kingdom of God has not yet come into fullness, who mourn that we still live in broken, violent, and painful world. Which, that we still live in a broken, violent, and painful world is just about the only thing that we universally agree on as a nation these days. We disagree on the causes, we disagree on the solutions, we disagree on policies and politicians, and just about everything else. I even saw a Facebook post this week disagreeing with cat videos. True story friends, we are that divided; even cat videos are now controversial.
So the good news for us, in this divided time, is that we will be comforted. Which means: we can still have hope. No, not can have hope, but do have hope. Even if we do not feel it, because remember, being blessed is not about our feelings, it is an objective reality brought into being by God. We who mourn that God’s kingdom has not yet come are not resigned to our present condition, but are empowered to bring about the coming of the kingdom.
So, call to action, here’s one thing to do this week. Super simple, won’t take you more than three minutes. Call an elected official and tell them one thing you want them to focus on during the coming year. I’ve made it easy, I listed the numbers of our senators and representative in the announcements, but you can call anyone you like. Call them up, say, hi, my name is so and so, I am a constituent of whoever you’re calling, I live in Battle Creek, and I want to share my thoughts on whatever you’re interested in.
We’re a pretty politically aware congregation, but if you’re wondering about a sermon ending with an appeal to call politicians, let me offer this thought. The Gospel is not partisan, but it is political. The beatitudes don’t tell us which candidates to vote for or what positions to hold, but they do promise us that God is at work bringing justice and grace to all God’s people, and that we get to be a part of that work.
So be a part of the work. Need an example: one hotly contested issue that our politicians will be discussing is the Affordable Care Act. To hear the coverage of it, it is either the greatest thing that’s ever happened in the history of America or is single-handedly bringing down the free world. My thought, the truth is somewhere in the middle. There are things wrong with it, and things it gets right. And this isn’t my partisan ideals talking; no two different opinions than President Obama and President Trump think parts of it need fixing and other parts are OK. They mostly disagree on those parts, but even they have some areas of agreement. For example, they both agree that people with pre-existing conditions should not be denied access to health insurance. True story, I got it from Trump’s own website. Do you agree with Trump and Obama about this? Call an elected official and tell them. Do you think people with pre-existing health conditions would be better served under another system? Call and tell them that. Or maybe healthcare isn’t your big issue; maybe you’re more concerned about education. Soon-to-be Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is from Michigan, what do you want congress to ask her to focus on? If you can’t think of anything, just call one of them up and thank them for being a public servant. Whether we agree or disagree with their ideas, I think we can all agree that being a public servant is a hard job. Then you’ll have the beginning of a relationship, and when something does come up that you are excited or concerned about, you’ll already have some experience making a call.
One phone call, three minutes of your week. Seems small, right, what kind of difference could one phone call make? But here’s the cool thing. The Beatitudes are for the community. This isn’t about what you have to do; it is about what God did and what we do together. So after you make your one phone call, make one other phone call. Call me, and tell me who you called and how it went. Or email me, or stop by the office, whatever works. I’ll keep a running tally of who we called as a congregation, so we can really see how far our voices have spread.
In the person of Jesus Christ, the kingdom of God has come. And because God has declared us part of God’s beloved community, we get the awesome privilege of getting to be part of this unveiling. So, dear people of God, let us go out and be whom God has declared us to be. Amen.
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