Sermon 7/14/13
Matthew 5:1-12
Sermon on the Mount: Blessed
If you’ve ever received an email from me, or a letter, or
seen my default signature on my newsletter articles, you’ll notice I usually
sign things, “Blessings, Beth.” I can’t remember exactly when I started doing
that. I don’t think I gave it any great thought at the time, other than wanting
a way to sign things that I could use consistently, that seemed to work for all
people in all situations, no matter who I was talking to, and blessings seemed
to fit. My grandmother used it almost as a nickname for me. “Beth, you are a
blessing” was something she said to me often, something special to me. What I
mean by it is, “I hope you find your day, your life, to be full of blessings.” But
what are blessings? What do we mean when we bless someone, or we ask God to
bless someone?
I’ve been thinking a lot about the word blessings this
week, and the practice of blessing one another. We have lots of them, actually,
practices of blessing. We say “God bless you,” or at least “Bless you,” when
someone sneezes. This specific practice actually developed during the Middle
Ages, when fear of the Bubonic Plague was rampant. Sneezing might be a first
sign of the plague, and so when you asked God’s blessings on someone who
sneezed, it was really a way of saying, “Gosh, I really hope you aren’t sick,
and please stay away from me.” When we say a prayer before a meal we usually
call it saying “grace” or saying “the blessing,” as we ask God to bless our
food and our mealtime and the people eating said food. Even though we are
asking God to bless things, we also consider the speaker of the prayer to be
“doing the blessing.” God blesses, but we bless by invoking God’s blessing. We
do lots of blessing in our worship life together. Usually we call the words
that conclude our worship service the benediction – literally “the good word,”
but sometimes this is also called a “blessing,” and often marriage ceremonies
or funeral liturgies or baptismal services are concluded with words that are
meant to be a blessing. When Pastor Aaron and I consecrate communion elements,
this practice is sometimes referred to as “blessing” the elements, and when we
pray over the baptismal waters someone is about to receive, the prayer is the
“blessing over the water.”
Of course, if we can give blessings, offer blessings, we
can also withhold them. Sometimes we talk about blessings in this way –
something we give almost as a permission, sometimes a permission we are
reluctant to give. Sometimes when a person wants to get married, that person
will ask for the parents’ blessing to make the proposal. Parents may willingly
give or be reluctant to give their blessing, their permission. I can’t help but
think of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof,
and his reluctant blessing of the marriages of his daughters.
The scriptures are full of blessings, and some of them
were formulaic, expected blessings, and many times people pointed to wealth and
success and material stability as signs of God’s favor and blessing. The
firstborn son in a family would receive special blessings and inheritance just
for being that – firstborn. We might not think that is a practice we continue
today, but I think we can compare it to handing down a particular heirloom
piece of jewelry or something similar. In some families, there is only one ring
that can be handed down, and it might go to the firstborn. Or we might name
someone after a parent – Johnny Jr., for example – and that name is typically
something handed to the firstborn. The most famous Bible story about blessings
and birth order is the story of twins Jacob and Esau. Esau is the elder twin –
every minute counts – but his younger brother Jacob, with the help of his
mother Rebekah, tricks his father Isaac into giving him the firstborn blessing.
You get the sense that there is only enough blessing for one, or only one
really “good” blessing – and Jacob uses it up. Maybe blessings aren’t as simple
as they seem.
We’re beginning a new sermon series today that will take
us through the summer, based on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the
Mount is a series of teachings that appear in the gospel of Matthew, chapters
5-7. It’s the longest chunk of uninterrupted teaching from Jesus in the
gospels. Pastor Aaron and I will hit most of the major sections this summer,
but we won’t be able to cover every verse, so I really encourage you, as we
start out, to spend a little time reading these three chapters. Jesus has been
interacting with the crowds, healing and teaching, when he withdraws up the
mountain with his disciples. When he begins teaching, it seems he is alone with
them, but by the end of these three chapters, it seems he is with crowds of
people again. I suspect, as usual, people were simply following after Jesus
whenever they could figure out where he was, and so what starts out as teaching
to his disciples expands quickly into teaching the crowds.
So Jesus heads up the mountain, takes a seat, and starts
teaching. And the first thing out of his mouth are these blessings. Blessed are
the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who
mourn. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for
righteousness. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed
are the peacemakers. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’
sake. Blessed are those who are reviled and persecuted. Jesus goes on to say a
whole lot more, some hard teachings, challenging. Some new ways of thinking
about things. But he starts with blessings. And that word, blessings, is the
same word that can be translated as “happy” – “happy are those who are poor in
spirit,” or even a sense of “congratulations.” “Congratulations to you who are poor
in spirit.” In some ways, I think this passage seems almost too simple. It’s pretty, poetic
language, these blessings. Who wouldn’t want to receive a blessing, and from
Jesus? But slowly the questions come. Why does Jesus bless these particular
groups? For example, why are people blessed when they are mourning? We’ve
probably all experienced grief, and it doesn’t often feel like a blessing, does
it? And does this passage mean that we are supposed to try to be like the
groups listed, in order to get the blessings? Are we supposed to strive to be
meek and pure in heart and all that? Is this a list of goals for characteristics we should have?
The Christ we follow is a lover of reversals, of flipping
the picture we see upside down, of moving and acting in unexpected ways. When
Jesus describes this strange group of people – the meek, the poor in spirit,
the mourning, the persecuted, and calls them blessed, Jesus isn’t saying, by
any means, that these are the best things you can be. Instead, Jesus is
speaking into a culture, a world, that had, has
trouble in seeing happiness outside of health, wealth, and prosperity.
People long believed, and some still do, that troubled times, bad situations,
suffering and loss were signs of God’s punishment for sinful behavior. But
Jesus makes it clear – even in the midst of those things – not because of those situations, but in the midst of them – God is blessings us.
Most
importantly, I think that Jesus reminds us repeatedly
in this passage of something he knows we can’t quite believe: God wants to and will and is blessing us. In a couple of weeks, I’ll be attending
school for my final Doctor of Ministry class before I begin the project phase
of my program. One of the books I had to read for this next class was about
congregational trends, basically reporting on the results of a survey of
beliefs, practices, and attitudes of worshippers in the US. One question asked
about how worshippers view “God’s nature.” Survey participants could choose between
four responses: I view God as 1) an authoritarian God who is angry and involved
in worldly affairs 2) a benevolent God who is involved in the world but not
angry 3) a critical God who is angry but not involved in worldly affairs or 4)
a distant God who is not angry and not involved in worldly affairs. (1) I was
glad to see that most respondents chose one of the two options where God is
“involved” in the world, rather than distant, but I was surprised that over
half of respondents chose that they viewed God as “authoritarian and angry,” compared to just under a quarter who
viewed God as benevolent. What would you choose? How do you see God? Reflecting
on this passage, Rev. David Lose writes, “Maybe it's more that we have a hard
time believing God wants to bless us in the first place. It may be that our
picture of God is distorted, that we can only imagine God as a stern, demanding
law-giver, and so it seems out of character for God to bless without
requirement. This isn't the primary picture of God in the Bible, but it may be
the one that we were taught and have a hard time letting go.” (2) Maybe we look
at our lives and find it hard to believe that God wants to bless what we’ve
done with the life we’ve been given. But Jesus describes a God who is blessing
us left and right. God blesses you, wants to continue heaping blessings you,
always.
I think we look at the beatitudes and
start to read them as a to-do list, items we can check off so that we can claim God’s blessings. But we are reading something
in the text that isn’t there. I think we read them like this sometimes: “If you are meek, then God will let you inherit the earth because of your meekness.” “If
you hunger and thirst for righteousness, then God will fill you up, because
of your hungering and thirsting for righteousness.” But instead, the
beatitudes read as a state of already-existing blessings. You are blessed
already. Blessed are you. God is blessing you. I think, sometimes, rather
than a checklist to complete before God
will bless us, God blesses us into living
like the blessed people we are. Rev. Lose shares another story, writing, “When
I was in graduate school, one of my teachers . . . would regularly address me
as "Dr. Lose." Eventually it made me uncomfortable enough that I said
to him, "But Dr. LaRue, I haven't earned my doctorate yet. I don't think
you should call me that." "Dr. Lose," he patiently responded,
"in the African-American church we are not content to call you what you
are, but instead call you what we believe you will be!" God blesses us by
showing us and claiming us for what God knows we yet can be. That’s what we
celebrate in baptisms: we pray blessings on children for all that we know God
intends them to be, and we celebrate because we know with God it can be.
As God
blesses us so freely, let’s not hold back, and pray blessings on others only on
special occasions, at baptisms and weddings and other liturgical events. Jesus
blesses us. Let us bless others. What if you imagined a blessing on everyone
you met this week. What if, when you looked into the eyes of your children, or
your friends, or your neighbors, or your enemies, or those whose eyes you don’t
normally even meet – what if you looked at them this week, and imagined an
outpouring of God’s blessings into their lives. Friends, may God’s many
blessings be made manifest in your life, and may you be a blessing to everyone
you meet. Amen.
(1) Woolever, Cynthia, Field Guide to US Congregations.
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