Sermon: "Who is Really Well Off?"

First in the "The Authentic Life" series.
Delivered October 9, 2005 by Rev. John Schmidt.
Other sermons in this series - 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7

Series: In this series on the Sermon on the Mount, we will look at Jesus' teaching on what it means to live life as it is meant to be lived. A God-centered life means that Christians will not be supporters of the status quo, but a Christian Counter Culture-- living a lifestyle that is radically different!

Theme: The beatitudes are not a "spiritual" to-do list that we need to conform to in order to please God. Quite the contrary this is a stunning declaration of grace. Grace for hopeless cases. Good news for people beaten down by life. Blessings for spiritual zeros.

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We are beginning a series on the authentic life, and so from now till Advent, till just a few weeks before Christmas, we are going to be looking at the Sermon on the Mount. It's an amazing section of scripture where it's compressed into a small space. There is so much that Jesus is saying about what the meaning of life is all about; what the really good life is all about, and what it means to be a righteous person; to live the right kind of life in God's eye. And so we are going to look week after week, George and I are going to switch hit on this. I will preach this week and he will be preaching next week, and we are going to do that all the way through to Advent.

Okay, I've got a microphone with me because I have one question to ask and that is, when you count your blessings, what is it that you count? What is it that comes to mind when you think about the fact that you have a blessed life? God has blessed you, what is it that comes to mind for you? And I've got the microphone here for you. Who wants to answer? Raise your hand. (Response from congregation) Family. Good health. Good friends, yes. Good church. Good pastor, yeah. Okay, I have paid these people to say these things, okay. The truth will come out later, okay. What else? Anything else come to mind when you think about blessings? Living in a blessed nation, okay. Freedom. Small group is a blessing. Literacy, that's a huge blessing. There are so many things that we think about when we are blessed and these are good things and things that we all aspire to or we are so glad that's a part of our lives. Things that have to do with our health, things that have to do with a certain amount of prosperity in our life so that our needs and even some of our wants are covered.

People of every nation, of every tribe, of every time in history have sought and experienced certain things and they have called it blessings. Some of those things are spiritual and some of those things you would just consider regular everyday things. We have our own particular American version of it as well. In other words, when we think of just the right amount of prosperity, just the right amount of family life and everything, we've got this picture of two cars, two children and a house in the suburbs, you know? And so many Americans think about that and say, "Ah, that's the blessed life." Or maybe we think of the Norman Rockwell painting of Thanksgiving. Do you know the picture that I am talking about? There is somebody carving a turkey at one end and there are all these people lined up at the table and it's such a happy picture. Here are 12 people or so in a family and they are all at a table and they are at peace and enjoying one another. What an amazing picture of the family. Maybe that's our idea, but the fact is no matter what our idea is, we've got to face that fact that sometimes we are not actually experiencing that idea of what we think of when we think of people being blessed.

Let's go back to that Norman Rockwell picture. We might think that that's what real blessings are all about, but when 12 people in our family get together at a Thanksgiving table, there might not be as much peace. There might be a few less smiles because there is some relational tension there. Certainly with my family it's going to be a louder experience than that picture of Norman Rockwell. And maybe there's not 12 people at the table in our own lives, maybe it's only one. And so we think of this picture of blessing, we think of what everybody notices and we feel left out; that we are outside that circle of blessing. And so we need to hear what Jesus says today, because what Jesus says in the beatitudes, in the passage we are going to read is good news even to people who feel far, far away from blessing. We are going to be looking at the Sermon on the Mount across the next few weeks and the Sermon on the Mount is a record of Jesus' teaching about what the good life is, about what a really good person looks like in God's eyes. And so it's a definition of the good life and good people in terms of what God is looking for in life, and not necessarily in terms what our culture talks about.

And Jesus begins with a section where he talks about people being blessed. That's why we call this section of scripture that I am going to read in a moment the beatitudes. That's because the Latin word for blessing is related to this word beatitude. So Jesus talks nine times in this section about blessing. Now this word blessed comes from the Greek word "makarios". It means to confer prosperity or happiness on someone. It's the highest kind of well-being possible for a human life. It's the same word that classical Greeks would have used to talk about the blissful existence of the gods. And so when people use this word blessed, about human life, it means that there is something about it that's so wonderful that it raises the quality of human life to a way that's almost like this picture that the Greeks had of their gods. Jesus uses this word that has been translated into the Greek, makarios. He uses it nine times and if I could find my Bible I would ...thank you, and actually read it to you. Chapter 5 of the Book of Matthew, I am going to begin at Verse 1 and I am going to go through Verse 12.

"Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down.
His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them saying:
"Blessed are the poor in spirit,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
    for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
    for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
    for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
    for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
    for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
    for they will be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
"Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
    Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven,
    for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

And I will end there. Let's pray. God we thank you for this your Word, and we pray that you will open our eyes to the things that we need to see, the things we need to believe and the things that we need to obey. For we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Jesus repeats this word blessed over and over again and the people listening to Jesus probably had the same idea of blessing that we have. In other words, they would have looked around and the people who were prosperous they would feel were blessed. The people who were healthy, "Ah you've got the blessing of health". The people who had good families, the people who had respect in the community; all these people would have been considered blessed. Now, the surprising thing about the beatitudes is that Jesus takes issues in life that seem to be thankless or empty or harsh and he takes them and he instead says to them, " Congratulations" because you are blessed. Let's think for a moment about what this word blessed means. I have mentioned the whole background of this idea that its such a good gift that it raises us up and people have struggled with what that actually means. How do you translate that in to English? And so some people have translated it, in some of the English translations to say how happy are those. So when Jesus is mentioning these different things in life and says, " Congratulations you are blessed" there is a sense that your life is being lifted up to the point where you would naturally be happy about the promise, about the experience that's there. So all that tension is inside of this word as we hear again and again Jesus say, "You are blessed."

Now what prepares us for what Jesus says in Chapter 5 is what he does at the end of Chapter 4. At the end of Chapter 4 beginning around Verse 23 Jesus is healing people. He is going throughout the countryside in Galilee preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness among the people. And so news spreads about him and even more sick people come, people with various diseases, people with severe pain, demon possessed, people having seizures, paralyzed, and Jesus is healing them over and over. And so larger crowds start assembling from Galilee and from areas around Galilee and so in Chapter 5 it says, "Now when Jesus sees these crowds, he goes up on a mountainside and sets up things so that he can begin to teach them." It's a show and tell session. Jesus has shown them something in the healings, and now he assembles them together to again explaine to them what these healings mean about God's relationship to them.

So as Jesus starts saying the beatitudes, he can walk through the crowd and on one side there is someone who is paralyzed and they can now walk; someone else who had a skin disease and was isolated from their family, and now after a time of ritual purification they can be reunited with their family and no longer have to live alone. There are other people there who had seizures and their lives were normal now. Others who were oppressed by evil spirits and now they are in their right minds and everything is coming together in their lives, and Jesus going around and he can point to people who have experienced this blessing from God. There were people who were ill and were blamed for being ill, because that's what people do when you think about health being a blessing. Well, if somebody doesn't have health, well, sometimes it's their fault. And Jesus could walk through the crowd and point to these people and point to the fact that God has radically changed that area in their lives and he begins by saying, going into the text, Chapter 5, Verse 3, "Blessed are the spiritual zeroes". Now that's not exactly what's in the text up on the screen. What's in the text is "poor in spirit", but after thousands of years of being the Christian church, for those of us who have grown up hearing things in the church or those of us who have been around for a while, we see this word "poor in spirit" and we think well, "wow what a wonderful spiritual qualification, they are humble." In other words, in our heads we translate it to say, people who know they are poor in spirit. In fact, this pressure is so big on trying to explain what Jesus is saying here, that some English translations say "blessed are those who know they are poor in spirit." The problem is, that's not what the text says. What is says is, blessed are the spiritual zeroes. Blessed are the people who really are poor in spirit. These are the people you wouldn't ask to lead a prayer meeting. These are not the spiritual folks. We like to think of these being uniquely humbled people, but they are spiritual zeroes, not spiritual heroes that Jesus is talking about. And so his opening words tell us that people who had no spiritual reason or worthiness to receive anything from God are nevertheless blessed to the point that he is saying congratulations.

Now it's important to notice that they are not blessed because they are spiritual zeroes, they are blessed despite the fact they are spiritual zeroes. In other words, there is a strong word of grace here that despite the fact that we are not ready for it, God reaches out and gives us everything. And so every beatitude shares this same characteristic. This is not a because-of list. So often we look at the beatitudes and we look at it as a spiritual to-do list. So the first thing is is that I have to be poor in spirit, which we translate to mean I need to be humble. And then we go to the next one and we say I've got to be this way. And all the time looking at it as a way to earn God's blessing. Now when we get to something like "Blessed are they who mourn" we say well, that does not make sense, so I will translate it to mean "Blessed are those who mourn over spiritual things." It's not what it says. It says, "Blessed are those who mourn." And so this is not a because-of list. This is not something people in history have looked at this as a spiritual to-do list and have actually sought opportunities to mourn and have sought opportunities to be persecuted because somehow they wanted to be inside of this picture of blessing, but that's a misunderstanding. Each thing here in this list is that we are blessed despite the situation. It's for unfulfilled and broken people. So it begins by saying, despite the fact that you have nothing going for you spiritually people, congratulations because God loves you enough to break through that. You don't deserve it, but you got it. And then he goes to the next and says despite the fact that you are mourning, yes tragedies in your life, the loss you feel is real and when people look at you right now when you are mourning, no they are not thinking you are blessed, because you are the one that lost it, but hear me congratulations, because God will make sure that you are comforted.

We go to the next beatitude, the meek. Here are the people who do not assert themselves now and seemed to lose out on what the world has to offer. They are always getting a smaller piece of the pie. They are the powerless. They are the victims. And Jesus looks at them and says "You are blessed. You are to be congratulated, because the world that you just don't have what it takes to grab more of, that very world is going to be given to you by God." So, you are blessed. There are people who long for justice in this world full of injustice, and people who really long for righteousness and justice are people who are always living at attention with the world around us, because it's not a just place. The good people don't get all of what they deserve and the bad people don't get what they deserve. And people like Martin Luther King who sought justice died without ever seeing that justice come about. This world is not a kind place for people who really seek righteousness and justice. And so these beaten up people who long for something more Jesus says, "Congratulations, because righteousness and justice will come and that longing in your heart will be filled."

He talks to the merciful. Now this seems so spiritual and natural for a list of because of things. You know naturally merciful people are going to get mercy. Remember we talked about grace. Nothing in us deserves God's favor, not even mercy, but let's think about what it really looks like to be merciful anyway. In this world merciful people don't always come out on top either. When mercy is shown and everything is said and done, it sometimes does not always balance out, not by the world's standards. I think of my wife's grandfather who was an insurance salesman at the beginning of the Great Depression. And as people's businesses failed they couldn't pay their insurance premiums, and so at the very time of life that they needed insurance they couldn't pay for it, so what did he do? He paid their insurance premiums for all of his customers that couldn't pay. Now, he showed them mercy and what did it get him? He lost his business. He lost his home and he ended up being an auto mechanic. So he didn't win, by human picture, by being merciful. But, Jesus points to these people who are in a hard place because they do show mercy, and he congratulates them because when the really important moment of life before God, they will be shown mercy. It's a free gift from God.

There are other hard places in life; the pure in heart. If anybody is going to be brokenhearted in this world, it's going to be somebody who desires purity in themselves and desires purity in the world around them, because it's just not there. And he says to these people, idealistic may be a little naïve, whatever words the world puts on them, he tells these people that long for that purity, that hunger, or that desire is going to be filled, because you are going to see God, and that will make all the difference. He talks to people who are peacemakers. Again this is one of those ones we loved to think all of the peacemakers, this is a great and noble thing, but peacemaking in reality is a very difficult thing to do, and you don't get a whole lot of thanks for it.

One of the peacemakers in our culture is the policeman who goes into a domestic dispute and tries to settle something between a husband and a wife. Does that police get thanked for that? Not usually. And in fact, they are almost in danger, often in danger when they go and put themselves into that place of trying to reestablish peace. If somebody is really trying to hear Israel and hear Palestine and understand where they have been wronged, and where they are justified, if somebody really tries to hear both, do they win? Now they are considered traders by both sides. Peacemaking is a hard thing, but Jesus says to them, "If you are a peacemaker you have a great family resemblance to someone else who shows grace and mercy to the good and to the evil and you will be called children of God." He speaks to the persecuted. People, who are insulted, lied about and attacked because they are trying to do what's right, because they are trying to follow Jesus, but when somebody is being persecuted, they don't have halos around them. We don't look at them and say, "Oh how blessed they are." When people are actually being persecuted they look desperate. They look forsaken and so people who are feeling like that, Jesus comes to them and says, "Congratulations because heaven belongs to you and you will have a reward."

So the beatitudes are a list of things despite the weakness, despite the struggle, despite the unfulfilled state of each of these things, God's blessing comes to you and none of these things are valued by the world. None of these things are going to show up on a TV commercial. They are lost causes and it's the people in these lost causes that Jesus says, "Congratulations, God's mercy, God's whole kingdom future comes to you and its here right now through me." And so we would point to the people who had been healed, point to the people whose lives had been changed because right there God was beginning to push in to the world his undeserved favor. God really is that good and that merciful. Merciful beyond our imagination. So there is good news here in the beatitudes. Instead of being a spiritual to do list that makes us feel guilty because we all fall short of some spiritual quality we see there, quite the contrary the beatitudes are a stunning declaration of grace. It's grace for hopeless cases. It's grace good news for people beaten down by life. It's hope for people who have always seemed to be on the short end of the stick.

Now maybe we are at a point where we feel blessed, that things are coming together in our lives, and praise God for that. It's something we can enjoy. It's part of the goodness of what happens in our lives. But maybe, we are one of those people who are not feeling blessed right now. Life's not going as we expected. We don't feel blessed at all and when people look at us they don't see somebody that they think is blessed, they see somebody that they think is broken. Either way we can hear some good news here. Because circumstances aren't the ultimate blessing. No matter how much we feel left out, God can still reach us no matter where we are. That's what we hear in the beatitudes.

So it doesn't matter what makes us feel beaten down. It might be our weight, or our looks, or our age, because there is so much in our culture that pushes away people for those reasons. It might be the way that people have treated us in the past or maybe the way people treat us now. We might be that single parent that's mourning the loss of what could have been. Maybe we are feeling left out of that circle of blessing because we are a peacemaker that's trying to keep our family together right now and we just don't seem to be doing it. It doesn't seem to be happening. Maybe we are the ones who have tried to see justice happen and it failed. Maybe we are those who are having a hard time with friends and family because of our faith. Whatever it is in life that reminds us that we don't have what it takes to be altogether, no matter how beaten down, how hopeless, how much people overlook us or despise us, no matter how worthless we feel, in the beatitudes we hear some good news from Jesus, "Congratulations, God's kingdom, God's promises, all of what God can do he will do for you."

Let's pray. I would like to lead us for a few moments in prayer that's based on the beatitudes again, but this time not a prayer of confession, but a prayer of thanksgiving that in each of these places of life we hear the good news from God. So I will go through these verses and just leave a few moments of silence for us to kind of wrap our arms around that and pray about that in our own lives.

Let's pray. Jesus we remember your words, words that have come to us through scripture where you tell us blessed are the spiritual zeroes, the poor in spirit because even to people like that who have no reason to receive mercy, to people like that you have given the whole kingdom of heaven. Thank you. Lord Jesus, we thank you for those who despite the fact that they mourn right now, hear words from you that you promise that they will be comforted. Lord Jesus, we thank you that the meek will inherit the earth. Lord, we thank you that those who hunger in thirst for righteousness and justice and feel the pressures of this world, we thank you that the day will come that that hunger and thirst will be filled fully. We are thankful Lord that those who pay the cost of being merciful have the promise that you out of your free grace will show mercy, that you will pay the cost. We thank you that the pure in heart will see God. We thank you that their day will come that those who have worked hard to be peacemakers will hear from you and from others that they are children are God. And then we pray and thank you that those who are persecuted right now for your name and for righteousness, who are paying such a cost throughout the world because of the name of Jesus, that the Kingdom of God will be certainly given to them, that their suffering is not in vain and that their reward is full, for this good news Lord Jesus we give you thanks. Amen.

© 2005, Rev. John Schmidt
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org