Matthew 5:1-11
The Beatitudes begin our sermon series on the Sermon on the Mount, chapters 5-7 in the Gospel of Matthew. They are a microcosm of all of Jesus’ teachings, and his sermon is like the greatest hits of his ministry. We will be exploring its wisdom and what it has to teach us from today through March 2.
When I was in seminary studying preaching, some of the most fascinating sermons came about when the preacher took the scripture, stood it on its head, shook it really hard to see what fell out, and then preached on that. But in today’s scripture, the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus already did that for us. Because Christians have been reading these verses now for 2,000 years, we may not recognize how upside-down and radical they sounded to the listeners surrounding Jesus when he sat down to preach to them.
Those listeners might have been familiar with the blessings—and curses—in Deuteronomy chapters 27 and 28. [Deuteronomy 27:15-26 (curses) and 28:1-14 (blessings).] The curses basically say, Do not cheat your neighbor, do not kill your neighbor, do not have sex with animals or close relatives who are not your spouse. If you do these things, you will be cursed. Notice the if/then format: If you take these actions, then here’s what will happen.
The blessings are also set up in an if/then format: If you obey God’s commandments, then “all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you.”
You will be blessed in the city and in the field.
Blessed will be the fruit of your womb, your ground, and your livestock—fecundity everywhere.
Blessed will be your basket and kneading bowl—meaning you will always have food.
You will be blessed when you come in, and when you go out.
Your enemies will be defeated.
All the peoples of the earth shall see that you are God’s chosen people, and they shall fear you.
You will abound in prosperity. The rain will fall on your crops.
You will lend to many nations but never need to borrow.
You shall only be at the top, never the bottom.
So if you’re not feeling blessed, it’s your own fault; you must have screwed up. Being blessed is all about prosperity, superiority, power, and the good life. It’s about the choices you make and the consequences. It’s about a bargain set up with God, and if you do these things, God will bless you. To a certain extent, this is true. Our choices have consequences, and sometimes they are blessings.
Well, here comes Jesus, who grew up poor in an occupied land, whose father appears to have died somewhere along the way, whose people were being taxed right off their land. Was any of this his fault? No. He understands that people struggle and it’s not always because they made bad choices or didn’t follow God’s commandments. Sometimes bad things just happen to good people. So he’s singing a very different tune about blessings. Blessed are the poor in spirit? Those who mourn? The meek? The pure in heart? The persecuted? What kind of blessings are these? What does he even mean? Why would it be a blessing to mourn? Where’s the prosperity, the fecundity, the rain falling on your crops? Where’s the opportunity to be on the top of the heap—to be powerful?
Consider, first of all, Jesus’ audience. He is not talking to those who are on the top of the heap. He’s talking to those who are on the bottom and have perhaps been told all their lives that it’s their own fault that they’re there. They can’t have a good crop because they no longer even have any land. But he has a different message. He says God loves them, just as they are, and God blesses them, even in their struggles. So let’s unpack these “blessings.”
They are not about prosperity. That is not the goal of these blessings. These blessings are talking about who is most open to connection with God. That’s the goal here.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the realm of heaven. I have wondered for years what “poor in spirit” means. Does it mean to be depressed? In the version of this sermon that appears in Luke, the text just says, “Blessed are the poor.” That’s very different. But “poor in spirit.”
I think it’s about the times in our lives when ego gets out of the way and we are open to God’s presence and God’s love. Maybe it’s when we hit bottom with an addiction, or when the house burns down, or our retirement money evaporates in some scam. Or we’re dealing with a diagnosis that doesn’t look good. Or we’re in a foxhole with bullets flying. All pretense that everything is fine, that we’ve got this under control, that we don’t need God because we’re powerful enough on our own—all that pretense and self-importance is gone. Blessed are the poor in spirit, because they are ready to connect.
Kathy Escobar writes,
I continue to learn how most of Jesus’ teachings have a wild, paradoxical twist: in the kingdom of God, somehow, down means up. Much of my previous Christian experience was focused on rising up to be closer to God; now, I’m learning that downward is what draws me nearer to God. When I am with my friends in the darkness and pain, I am acutely aware of God’s presence more than in my comfortable places….
In fact, the more we read the Gospels, allowing the Beatitudes to sink into our bones and be sewn into our skin, the more we realize that there’s really nowhere else to go but down.
Down into the mess of real life.
Down into the ugly places of the human experience.
Down into the places where real people in need of God’s hope live.
[Following the Call: Living the Sermon on the Mount Together, ed. Charles E. Moore (Walden, NY: Plough, 2021), 25.]
We are blessed with God’s kingdom, that sacred connection, not when we have it all together, but when we admit that we’re not in control, when we open ourselves to the authentic pain, when we stop pretending.
Some of you may recall that my mom had a stroke in 2022 and passed away a week later. As I sat at her bedside in the hospital during that week, a steady stream of people came to say their goodbyes, to tell her how much they loved her and what she had meant in their lives. I don’t wish that kind of vigil on anyone. And yet it was such sacred space. Blessed are the poor in spirit, because God is right there with you in the pain and the mess and the suffering. God isn’t telling you it’s your fault. God is holding you and loving you in that space.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Who wishes mourning on anyone? And yet those who mourn have a perspective on life that is richer in their joy because they understand what it means to experience loss. Mourning means you have known love.
Mourning can also motivate us to be open to change. For example, we mourn with the orca Tahlequah the death of another baby orca calf that she is currently carrying around Puget Sound on her head. In 2018 she carried her dead baby for 17 days and 1,000 miles. And we all grieved with her. She pointed out to us that too many orca calves are dying, that her orca pod is dying. Too much sound pollution, too many toxic chemicals in the water, too many boats, too few fish. Her grief—and our grief with her—can prompt us to do better. Every environmental advocate loves creation, loves this planet, and grieves what is being lost. Every Palestinian baby that dies—we need to pay attention and mourn. This is so broken.
Imagine if we did not mourn. We would have to have hearts of stone. That is not a place for connecting with God. But when we mourn, we connect to love, to support, to all that matters. We learn that everything is temporary, and we must love fiercely those whom we do have. Mourning arises out of love and connection. May we never lose that.
Nicholas Wolterstorff writes,
Who are the mourners? The mourners are those who have caught a glimpse of God’s new day, who ache with all their being for that day’s coming, and who break out into tears when confronted with its absence…. The mourners are aching visionaries. [Ibid., 34-35.]
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Meekness is again about setting aside ego, being humble enough to learn, being open.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. The word used here for righteousness can mean justice, or right living, or justification. This is at the heart of what it means to follow Jesus: to hunger and thirst for righteousness—for justice and the chance for right living for everyone—and to throw ourselves into that work until our hunger and thirst are completely satiated. [Thanks to William Barclay in ibid., 51, for these definitions.]
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Set aside the ego, the pretense, the motive for self-aggrandizement and gain. The pure in heart can let go of the result and just do the work for love of God.
Thomas Merton calls the pure in heart those who work with simple intention. He writes,
The man of simple intention works in an atmosphere of prayer: that is to say he is recollected. His spiritual reserves are not all poured out into his work, but stored where they belong, in the depths of his being, with his God. He is detached from his work and from its results. Only a person who works purely for God can at the same time do a very good job and leave the results of the job to God alone. [Ibid., 61.]
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Jesus was nonviolent up to the end. On the night of Jesus’ arrest, when one of his disciples pulled out a sword to defend him, Jesus told him to put it away. In our nation of guns and mass murders, of children being shot in their schools, we are called to be peacemakers. This nation creates arms that are big business supplying wars all over the globe. What a reputation. This supposedly Christian nation is expert at making war. It is US arms that supply Israel so that Netanyahu can blow up Palestinian babies. We, as peacemakers, must speak out. We must live nonviolently, practice peace in our hearts, peace in our relationships, and peace in the world.
And we must be the prophetic voices, even at the risk of being persecuted for Jesus’ sake. Gene L. Davenport says, “To ignore the call to bear witness in the midst of the darkness is to allow the darkness to go unchallenged, unresisted.” [Ibid., 69.]
Kathy Escobar writes,
Jesus told us his ways were harder. He said that to follow him meant we were going to have to give up everything familiar, that people would think we were crazy, that we’d be poor, persecuted, and rejected, and that we’d lose our security and so many other things we held dear. At the same time, he told us we’d also find life. [Ibid., 26.]
This is the blessing of the Beatitudes. Not to be prosperous, to have ample food, abundant crops, many healthy children, to be at the top of the heap. The Beatitudes are about the power of the poor, the forgotten, the marginalized, to tap into God’s love with pure hearts and a complete lack of ego, to speak out for justice, to wage peace, even at the risk of persecution. Jesus sets the bar impossibly high—so high that some see this Sermon on the Mount as aspirational but not achievable, as if he didn’t really mean it. He meant it.
So as we explore the Sermon on the Mount over the next two months, I invite you to wrestle with the question, “How am I called to respond to Jesus’ teachings? How can I live them out?” Because as much as Jesus invites us to change, he also invites us to life full of blessings. Amen.