Jesus' Wisdom
Scripture: Matthew 5:1-12, 1 Corinthians 1:18-24
Our gospel passage today is one that you may be familiar with. It is famous enough that it has its own name—the Beatitudes. If you were wondering what they all are, now you know--you’ve heard them here today. They are the opening to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. But before we get into the text too much, I want to point out that calling the beatitudes and the body of teachings that follow it “The Sermon on the Mount” could be a little misleading. This is not something that Jesus preached once, with Matthew the scribe jotting everything down. This is a compilation of what Jesus was teaching throughout his three years of public ministry. The Sermon on the Mount is what he was teaching on an ongoing basis. It is the heart, the meat of his teachings. And the Beatitudes are the opening flourishes, the beginning master strokes, the all important lead paragraph to this.
Which is why it’s so surprising to realize how weird they are. Or at least how counter-intuitive. The word translated as “blessed” in the NRSV is the same word often used in Jesus’ day to describe kings, nobility, and other powerful people. I’ve also seen it translated as “You’re blessed” and “Congratulations!” But when I think of someone being blessed or feeling blessed, I don’t think of what Jesus thinks of.
· Blessed are the poor in spirit. John Dominic Crossan, who studies the historical Jesus, suggests that Jesus’ original meaning was “Blessed are the poor, the homeless, the destitute.” I don’t know about you but when I see someone homeless my first thought isn’t: “How blessed that person must be!”
· Congratulations to people who are grieving! Huh?
· You’re blessed if you’re a gentle person
· Blessed are the people who are aching for justice
· Congratulations to people who show mercy
· You’re blessed if your heart is pure
· Blessed are those who work for peace – the peacemakers
· And finally the kicker—A big congratulations to you if you are suffering persecution for the sake of justice.
These are not the usual things our society associates with blessings. The way people normally talk about blessings, they usually consist of having enough to eat and a place to sleep, not of being destitute and homeless. Or they consist of having loving family and friends, not of grieving. They consist of having peace, mercy and justice, not of constantly working for it.
If I were going to come up with a list of modern-day beatitudes based on the values in our society, it might read something more like this:
· Blessed are the celebrities—they get all the attention
· Blessed are the rich—they can buy whatever they want
· Blessed are the powerful—the world is at their mercy
But this isn’t what Jesus is preaching. This isn’t Jesus’ wisdom. Jesus is preaching something radical and unexpected, and in the process telling us something about God—that God is constantly reversing our expectations. And Jesus doesn’t present them as what could be or what should be. These aren’t a set of Ten Commandments or even ten easy steps to a successful life/career/marriage whatever. Jesus is stating facts. Congratulations to the poor, to the grieving, the gentle. You are blessed. Congratulations to those who show mercy, who hunger and thirst for justice, whose hearts are pure, who work for peace. You are blessed. Congratulations to those persecuted for the sake of justice. You are blessed.
In our reading from Corinthians today, Paul is trying to justify the reason for an embarrassing fact about the developing Jesus movement—that the Roman state murdered its founder by crucifying him as a common criminal. How is it possible to consider Jesus specially blessed, when he died such a humiliating death? Paul’s answer applies to both his situation and Jesus’ own declarations of blessing. I’ll read it again:
“Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.”
In the movie I suggested for this week, Saved, Mary is a student at a conservative Christian high school. When she finds out that her boyfriend is gay, she tries to cure him of it, but winds up pregnant instead. Her best friend, Hilary Faye, is very good at using the language and the appearance of piety, but under the surface her real interest is controlling her friends and getting her parents to buy her a Lexus. In the realm of the high school world, Hillary Faye is influential and popular. By contrast another student, Cassandra, looks like a total mess. She smokes, she’s disrespectful, she refuses to commit her life to Jesus. But in this scene with Mary, Cassandra, not Hilary Faye, is the one who brings the blessing of friendship and understanding.
[Clip]
Here is a reversal of the expected order: the one who is an outcast, who refuses to participate in the hierarchy, becomes an agent of blessing. Did you notice the beatitudes playing over the beginning of the scene? Mary, too, who has departed from the rigid rules of her world is blessed anyway.
Here is the crux of the matter: for both Paul and Jesus, true wisdom at first appears foolish. But this is only to a world that does not recognize God’s active presence. God makes the difference between who appears to be blessed and who is really blessed.
How can we apply this to our lives today? I don’t think the intention of Jesus’ teaching is necessarily to convince us to go out and become the people he declares blessed, although that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing —the world is severely in need of mercy, humility, peace, and justice. I think what Jesus is looking for here, rather, is a conversion to seeing things the way God sees them, and then to act accordingly. A total soul makeover. And this is why I think these beatitudes are so central to Jesus’ core teachings. Because to be a Christian—to live out that life of following Jesus—means exchanging the world’s priorities for God’s priorities. And Jesus’ wisdom is in showing us what those priorities are: the poor, the grieving, the helpless, and for all people mercy, justice, peace.
What would living this out look like? Rather than praying like it all depends on God and then working like it all depends on us, we could work like it all depends on God, too, which is to say, by dreaming big. By expecting more than what at first appears possible. By counting on God when counting our resources. This applies to our personal lives, and to our community life—a good reminder for Annual Meeting. Second, by setting our sights on God’s priorities: justice, peace, mercy, the poor and the suffering. What we do with our time, our mental and physical energy, our financial resources, these can be directed toward God’s priorities or toward our own. Good stewardship is making the choice to live for God’s desires so that they will become our own.
This is, of course, a life-long project. But I heard something this week that I found very encouraging and I’d like to share it with you: Don’t strive for perfection—strive for progress. Make improvement your goal. And we can expect in our journeys unexpected blessings. Because God is present, God is active, and God’s grand project is worth our effort, our strength and our devotion.
May we all be blessed in the journey. Amen
Our gospel passage today is one that you may be familiar with. It is famous enough that it has its own name—the Beatitudes. If you were wondering what they all are, now you know--you’ve heard them here today. They are the opening to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. But before we get into the text too much, I want to point out that calling the beatitudes and the body of teachings that follow it “The Sermon on the Mount” could be a little misleading. This is not something that Jesus preached once, with Matthew the scribe jotting everything down. This is a compilation of what Jesus was teaching throughout his three years of public ministry. The Sermon on the Mount is what he was teaching on an ongoing basis. It is the heart, the meat of his teachings. And the Beatitudes are the opening flourishes, the beginning master strokes, the all important lead paragraph to this.
Which is why it’s so surprising to realize how weird they are. Or at least how counter-intuitive. The word translated as “blessed” in the NRSV is the same word often used in Jesus’ day to describe kings, nobility, and other powerful people. I’ve also seen it translated as “You’re blessed” and “Congratulations!” But when I think of someone being blessed or feeling blessed, I don’t think of what Jesus thinks of.
· Blessed are the poor in spirit. John Dominic Crossan, who studies the historical Jesus, suggests that Jesus’ original meaning was “Blessed are the poor, the homeless, the destitute.” I don’t know about you but when I see someone homeless my first thought isn’t: “How blessed that person must be!”
· Congratulations to people who are grieving! Huh?
· You’re blessed if you’re a gentle person
· Blessed are the people who are aching for justice
· Congratulations to people who show mercy
· You’re blessed if your heart is pure
· Blessed are those who work for peace – the peacemakers
· And finally the kicker—A big congratulations to you if you are suffering persecution for the sake of justice.
These are not the usual things our society associates with blessings. The way people normally talk about blessings, they usually consist of having enough to eat and a place to sleep, not of being destitute and homeless. Or they consist of having loving family and friends, not of grieving. They consist of having peace, mercy and justice, not of constantly working for it.
If I were going to come up with a list of modern-day beatitudes based on the values in our society, it might read something more like this:
· Blessed are the celebrities—they get all the attention
· Blessed are the rich—they can buy whatever they want
· Blessed are the powerful—the world is at their mercy
But this isn’t what Jesus is preaching. This isn’t Jesus’ wisdom. Jesus is preaching something radical and unexpected, and in the process telling us something about God—that God is constantly reversing our expectations. And Jesus doesn’t present them as what could be or what should be. These aren’t a set of Ten Commandments or even ten easy steps to a successful life/career/marriage whatever. Jesus is stating facts. Congratulations to the poor, to the grieving, the gentle. You are blessed. Congratulations to those who show mercy, who hunger and thirst for justice, whose hearts are pure, who work for peace. You are blessed. Congratulations to those persecuted for the sake of justice. You are blessed.
In our reading from Corinthians today, Paul is trying to justify the reason for an embarrassing fact about the developing Jesus movement—that the Roman state murdered its founder by crucifying him as a common criminal. How is it possible to consider Jesus specially blessed, when he died such a humiliating death? Paul’s answer applies to both his situation and Jesus’ own declarations of blessing. I’ll read it again:
“Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.”
In the movie I suggested for this week, Saved, Mary is a student at a conservative Christian high school. When she finds out that her boyfriend is gay, she tries to cure him of it, but winds up pregnant instead. Her best friend, Hilary Faye, is very good at using the language and the appearance of piety, but under the surface her real interest is controlling her friends and getting her parents to buy her a Lexus. In the realm of the high school world, Hillary Faye is influential and popular. By contrast another student, Cassandra, looks like a total mess. She smokes, she’s disrespectful, she refuses to commit her life to Jesus. But in this scene with Mary, Cassandra, not Hilary Faye, is the one who brings the blessing of friendship and understanding.
[Clip]
Here is a reversal of the expected order: the one who is an outcast, who refuses to participate in the hierarchy, becomes an agent of blessing. Did you notice the beatitudes playing over the beginning of the scene? Mary, too, who has departed from the rigid rules of her world is blessed anyway.
Here is the crux of the matter: for both Paul and Jesus, true wisdom at first appears foolish. But this is only to a world that does not recognize God’s active presence. God makes the difference between who appears to be blessed and who is really blessed.
How can we apply this to our lives today? I don’t think the intention of Jesus’ teaching is necessarily to convince us to go out and become the people he declares blessed, although that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing —the world is severely in need of mercy, humility, peace, and justice. I think what Jesus is looking for here, rather, is a conversion to seeing things the way God sees them, and then to act accordingly. A total soul makeover. And this is why I think these beatitudes are so central to Jesus’ core teachings. Because to be a Christian—to live out that life of following Jesus—means exchanging the world’s priorities for God’s priorities. And Jesus’ wisdom is in showing us what those priorities are: the poor, the grieving, the helpless, and for all people mercy, justice, peace.
What would living this out look like? Rather than praying like it all depends on God and then working like it all depends on us, we could work like it all depends on God, too, which is to say, by dreaming big. By expecting more than what at first appears possible. By counting on God when counting our resources. This applies to our personal lives, and to our community life—a good reminder for Annual Meeting. Second, by setting our sights on God’s priorities: justice, peace, mercy, the poor and the suffering. What we do with our time, our mental and physical energy, our financial resources, these can be directed toward God’s priorities or toward our own. Good stewardship is making the choice to live for God’s desires so that they will become our own.
This is, of course, a life-long project. But I heard something this week that I found very encouraging and I’d like to share it with you: Don’t strive for perfection—strive for progress. Make improvement your goal. And we can expect in our journeys unexpected blessings. Because God is present, God is active, and God’s grand project is worth our effort, our strength and our devotion.
May we all be blessed in the journey. Amen
posted by Amy Sens at 11:23 AM
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