Don't Run (Sermon 1-30-11)

Matthew 5:1-12

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” That’s probably on the top-ten list of things little kids get asked on a regular basis. It’s right up there with “what did you do in school today?” and “can’t you just sit still for a minute?” It’s a cutesy type thing to ask a kid. It’s a fun way of finding out who there current set of heroes are.

Like, when I was a kid, after I gave up on being Superman (too complicated of a process), I wanted to be (in order) a fighter pilot, followed by a short stint as a lawyer, rounded off by concluding my life as a writer. If none of those worked out, I’d settle for being either Indiana Jones, or Sherlock Holmes.

Think about your own list for a moment. What qualified a choice as a good one? Adventure? Respect? Money? All those great and exciting things which are meant to go along with being the “good guy.”



Now, I want you to think about that passage we just read; think of the list that’s given there. How many of those qualifications were a part of the screening process? Maybe one or two could make it if they were translated into hero language.

Purity of heart might not need much adjustment. Seeking and hungering after righteousness, though, that could be translated to seeking “Truth, Justice, and the…” any Superman fans? “…the American way.” Peacemaker, well, maybe the Colt Peacemaker, famed gun of the West.

Either way, poverty, persecution, and meekness certainly didn’t make the list. I mean, poverty was okay, so long as you overcame it and died rich. Persecution was fine, so long as you were eventually vindicated and able to exact justice on the persecutor. And meekness, well that’s all just a part of your alter-ego, your cover, hiding your true strength. But when it came down to the things themselves, real poverty, real persecution, and real meekness, well, that’s the sort of thing you run away from. We’ll talk more about that in a minute.

As many of you know, since the beginning of Advent, I’ve been following the lectionary when it comes to the texts for Sunday. And, of course, like we talked about as we worked through First John, sometimes this can be a good thing, other times it can make the preaching seem detached, disjointed. This, however, is one of those times when I find it to be a great thing. From now until the week before the end of Epiphany we will be working through one of the most memorable passages of the New Testament, the Sermon on the Mount.

I’ll be honest with you though, the Sermon on the Mount is one of those places in the Bible that I’ve wrestled with a lot over the years. Despite it’s seemingly forward and direct nature, it’s not exactly an easy section of Scripture to interpret. This is evident by the theological back and forth which has surrounded it over the years.

In the writings of the Church Fathers, this one section is quoted more than any other in the entire New Testament. John Donne, famous priest and poet, said all good sermons have their origin somehow in the teachings of this one sermon. Of course, my oft mentioned personal favorite, Martin Luther, is often misunderstood as believing the Sermon to be irrelevant simply because he believed it was impossible to achieve. Dietrich Bonhoeffer set out to correct this misunderstanding by representing the Sermon as the only possible response to the work of grace offered to us in the Cross. Our own John Wesley believed that God wouldn’t not command something which He would not simultaneously enable us to achieve. There is a wide diversity of opinions.

Theologians have identified numerous ways of interpreting and misinterpreting our portion for today, the Beatitudes. But, I think the first difficulty we run into when reading these words is a misunderstanding of the mood of the passage. What I mean is the passage is often interpreted in the “imperative” mood, rather than the “indicative” mood in which it is given. That is, these are often read as commandments, rather than promises.

Almost anyone can point to an example of this in their own experience. More often than not, when a sermon is preached on the Beatitudes, the logic of the Sermon flows in a fairly simple direction, something like this: “Jesus tells us the meek shall inherit the Earth, now let’s get out there and get our meekness on!”

This stems, I think, from that little word “blessed.” You see, in most traditions, but particularly in protestant traditions with some sort of evangelical roots (essentially all protestant traditions), there is a tendency to do two things when a word like “blessed” is thrown into the mix.

First, it’s taken in an absolutist, either/or sort of sense. Either your poor and blessed, or your rich and unblessed. That’s enough to make anyone uncomfortable and start getting ready to do whatever they had to, ensuring that they wouldn’t be numbered amongst the “unblessed.”

The second is like the first; it has to do with our tendency to have a singular interpretation of words like blessed. People have a tendency to wrap words like salvation, blessedness, and justification all into one concept. Maybe I am the only one who’s ever been guilty of this, but I think we, perhaps subconsciously, relate them all back to the one question we’ve all been asked by some well-meaning evangelist at some point in our life: “if you died tonight, are you sure you’d go to Heaven?”

We hear these words of Christ, and our first instinct is to hear them as Law demand, rather than Gospel promise. We want to tie them all into our desire to be “in” and avoid being “out” when we die. The biggest problem with being able to interpret this section of Scripture is that we often have too-limited a view of what salvation means.

But, by the way this passage is written, I think Matthew wants us to see something more, something different, something new in God and what He is doing in and through Jesus Christ. I think this section of the Sermon is not primarily detailing what we need to do to be “in” the Kingdom, but is describing what the Kingdom is, it is the act of God which runs counter to the acts of the world.

Now, we’re coming into Matthew’s story only a few verses after where we left off last week. As you may remember, John the Baptist was thrown in prison, then Jesus begins His own ministry of preaching and healing. He then called His first disciples, Andrew, Simon/Peter, James, and John, where after He continued to preach in the synagogues and heal all sorts of diseases. The verses which we’ll be skipping over describe Jesus’ fame spreading throughout all of Syria. Matthew describes it similarly to how He described the reaction to John; he says “all” of Syria came out and brought to Him their sick and afflicted. So He’s gathering pretty large crowds.

Our passage then begins:

1Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.

Now, that may not seem significant, but it gives us the setting for our story today. Jesus has gathered a large crowd, so He needs some room to speak, thus He goes up the side of the mountain. Now, several significant things happen on mountains throughout the Scriptures. The two from the Old Testament which come most readily to mind, perhaps, are the story of Abraham leading Isaac up Mount Moriah and the story of Moses on Mount Sinai where he receives the Ten Commandments.

In the New Testament, we have this story, the Sermon on the Mount, and the story which we will be concluding the Epiphany Season with, the story of the Transfiguration. The Season of Epiphany, being extended in our tradition instead of treated as “ordinary time” in some other traditions, is meant to be a season which focuses on the Revelation of God in Christ, until the Season of Lent in which we focus on and prepare for the actual act of God in Christ through the Crucifixion and Resurrection. So I’d like to think of this section, from this mountain to the next, as being bookends of our understanding of the coming Kingdom of God.

So, Jesus has gone up the mountain to get some room, and then He sits down. A seemingly insignificant bit of information, one of two in this passage, but which is meant, in fact to convey something. I don’t know how many of you have done a lot of public speaking, but when I preach out at Gibault, often the kids are pretty rowdy when they’re filing in and waiting for the service to begin. Once it’s time, I often walk up to the podium, and if they continue to be loud, I’ll stand there and stare for a few moments until everyone gets the idea. Then I’ll open us up with a prayer, which serves also as a “last call to get focused” in a way. And then I begin to teach.

In Jesus’ time, Rabbis sat when they taught. So Jesus has this large crowd that’s been following Him around, wondering what He’s going to do, what He’s going to say. There’s probably a lot of commotion. And so He sits down; it’s a cue, He’s telling them “it’s time to focus, listen up.”

2And he opened his mouth and taught them

Here’s the other seemingly useless bit of information. In fact, it’s so seeming useless that none of the commentaries I read this week had anything to say on the subject. But I think it’s a good lead in. You see, prior to this point, though Jesus has spoken to individuals and we’re told that He’s been proclaiming the message of repentance, this is the first time we see Jesus actually “teach” in the rabbinical sort of way. This, essentially, is one of those moments the world had been waiting for, the Word of God from God Himself in human form. He sits down, and He opens His mouth; the Revelation of God is heard in His own voice.

So He begins:

3"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

So, He sets up from the outset the fact that this sermon is going to be about the Kingdom.

Now, the “poor in spirit” has always struck me as a confusing choice of words. I don’t know if it’s the scholarly consensus, but I’ve heard some scholars make a comparison between Matthew’s “poor in spirit” and Luke’s simple “poor” in the Sermon on the Plain, making the case that Luke’s version is the earlier of the two, because it is broad and concrete; with Matthew’s being a latter development because it is more narrow and spiritualized.

I think that’s a bit silly. First of all, we know that, really, when you come right down to it, there isn’t anything particularly virtuous about being poor. You’ve known poor people, I’ve known poor people, I’ve been poor in fact, I imagine one or two of you may have been at one point as well. And the truth about poor people is the same as the truth about rich people: some are great, some are awful, and most are in-between.

In talking about people who are “poor in Spirit,” that opens up the application of the passage not to people who are merely financially poor, but rather to all people who recognize their utter dependence upon God for all things. A person can be financially poor, but still believe themselves to be completely self-reliant and having no need for God.
The difference, however, the point which Christ is trying to make, I think, is the contrast between how the world looks at being poor and how it looks within the Kingdom, within the act of God in our world.

Look at the news. We’re currently in the worst economic crisis in decades. For the past two years, every other special interest story on NPR has been about somebody losing their house or losing their job. For decades, at least since Lyndon Johnson in the 60’s, we’ve been told again and again that being poor is the worst of all possible situations.

I’m not in any way belittling the serious and terrifying nature of poverty. It is a horrible, horrible state for anyone to be found in; which is why much of Jesus’ teaching focuses on alleviating the suffering of the poor. However, given it’s terrifying nature, the general wisdom of the world is to say “run away, stay as far away from that situation as you can, by whatever means you can.”

I think, in the heart of every believer, though, there is a desire to not be materialistic, to not be obsessed with our bankroll. But, we’re scared; we’re scared that the world may be right, and that if we trust in God, we will end up in the worst of all possible situations. To this, Christ says “do not be afraid, don’t run away, when you are poor in the eyes of the world, you have what the world cannot see.”

Christ then goes through the rest of the list, telling us:

4"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

 5"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

 6"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

 7"Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

 8"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

 9"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

 10"Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

 11 "Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.


We don’t go running towards these things, they aren’t imperatives, they aren‘t commands. The fact is, we don’t need to run towards them. If you’re breathing, you won’t go long before you run into each of these situations. Each of us will suffer in life; each of us will have the opportunity to be meek, to hold our tongues and not seek vengeance; each of us will have the opportunity to be peacemakers; and each of us will say to ourselves “where is righteousness?” And in each of those situations, destitute though they may look through the eyes of the world, God will meet us with the act of the Kingdom.

Each of us, in some way or another, will have the opportunity to either enter into the persecution of the world because of the grace of God in our lives, or to run away from it. You don’t have to want to be poor, or mourning, or persecuted when you grow up; those things will happen all on their own. But the word of Christ is “don’t be afraid, don’t run away, I will be there.”