jan-29-epiphany-4.md

Sun, Jan 29, 2017

Lectionary

Frankly the readings from scripture today seem like the triumphant announcement that all the weeks since Christmas have been building toward. The way a symphony starts by introducing a theme, pursues various sub-themes or variation, and then as the music reaches a crescendo, the grand presentation of the meaning of the work breaks forth.

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God? (Mic 6:8)

Paul: “message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

• Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise

Matthew’s gospel presents Jesus in the fullness of his authority as teacher and rabbi. He begins his grand sermon on the mount, beginning with the Beatitudes which we hear today. As if his birth, his epiphany to the magi, his baptism, his calling of disciples – all led to this moment.

The Beatitudes

These 9 blessings, drawn from familiar Hebrew context – we could unpack the many ways that they parallel teaching found in the Hebrew scriptures – are familiar to the point that they are among the passages where we are tempted to say to ourselves, “Ah, the beatitudes!” and then go on to the next thought.
They are cryptic, precise, and full of meaning. They are simple sounding. I hope to persuade you that they are anything but simple-minded. They are simple in the same way Jesus directed us to be simple as children if we expect to inhabit the kingdom of heaven.
The whole sermon Includes:

• Beatitudes
• salt and light
• love your enemy
• turn the other cheek
• judge not that ye be not judged
• seek the kingdom
• Lord’s prayer

My first encounter with them

I first attempted to absorb the Sermon on the Mt. when I was still a teenager.
The Vietnam War was at its peak. Our nation was in a turmoil, filled with protests, assasinations, a vow to land on the moon, and an inability to find adequate housing and food for millions of our own citizens.
In the midst of that I had to make a decision about what I would do if I were drafted. I knew that I was not going to go to fight a war in Vietnam. In college I was reading Aristotle and Reinhold Niebuhr, Augustine and Albert Camus. Like looking at the facets of a large diamond, I could see so many sides to the issue.
Eventually I became convinced that the place I wanted to make my stand was in opposition to war on religious principles. It turns out that the Sermon on the Mount is one of the important texts in the Bible when making that claim. In the 7^th beatitude, Jesus tells the people gathered:

9 “Blessed are (Jas 3:18) the peacemakers, for (1 Jn 3:1) they shall be called (Rom 8:14) sons (lit. huioi) of God. 

I ended up concluding in those last years of the 1960’s that I had to take seriously these words – some would remind us that after all they are red letter passages. These are words that Jesus literally addresses to us from the gospel

The Sermon on the Mt. – which begins with the Beatitudes and goes on for 3 chapters – provides a kind of new law for Christians to order their life by. Many is the time that people I meet tell me that they are good Christians because they keep the 10 commandments. There are really only 2 candidates for Christian-living and neither is the 10 commandments. The 2 are: 1) the Great Commandment to love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself, and 2) the Sermon on the Mt..

The Sermon is the longest continuous section of Jesus’ speaking found in the New Testament, and has been one of the most widely quoted elements of the Canonical Gospels. It includes some of the best known teachings of Jesus, such as the Beatitudes, and the widely recited Lord’s Prayer. To most believers in Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount contains the central tenets of Christian discipleship. (Wikipedia)

Such an ordering of our lives would be so radical that most of us – most Christians? I don’t know – wouldn’t recognize it and would even less be inclined to follow it.
but the most radical among us have chosen to do exactly that.
They come from all walks of life, all stations in life, rich and poor, black, brown and white, women and men – and they are the saints among us.

To create saints

I remember taking my oldest son to first grade in South Bend. Prior to that he had attended private church schools. I was somewhat surprised to see on the wall, outside the auditorium of the school, a mural of Jesus on a hillside, surrounded by children. He was obviously enjoying himself, and the children were paying rapt attention to him.
I thought at the time. Although it was obvious that there was a kind of simple message in the pictures, – that the children in school should be well behaved, well-ordered, and be courteous toward their superiors and interested in learning – nevertheless I thought that it was inappropriate in a public school. It wasn’t that I personally felt strongly that it ought not be there, but all the places I had lived previously, Colorado and Wisconsin, had rather systematically removed that kind of religious iconography from public education.
I tell you the story because I think there is a parallel between the kind of surface level way in which that picture of Jesus was used in the school and the way many of us over the years have related to the sermon on the mount. It is a lovely picture of a kindly pastor with his adoring flock gathered around them while he teaches in poetic verses about the blessedness of following his path.
The course of my life has progressively taught me that these words are not gentle. They are not comforting. They are not pastoral.
Rather I think the Sermon on the Mount is a fierce rallying cry. I think the words are meant to make us feel uncomfortable – to move out of our comfort zone. They are meant to lead us away from the things we take for granted and to point us in the direction of a radically re-oriented home, built according to divine principles rather than human principles.
They are, in short, meant to create saints.

The dramatic and radical call of the Beatitudes

We have sometimes used a prayer book at home: Common Prayer; Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals
One of the authors of that book has spoken and written frequently about how these chapters in Matthew, 5-7, are a focus for what God has to say to us. He asks the question, “What if Jesus meant all that stuff?” Esquire Magazine article
Taken together the whole sermon is comprehensive enough to guide one’s entire life. It is enough this morning if I just suggest some of what the Beatitudes hold out for us to do with our lives.
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Luke has it just: “Blessed are the poor.” Matthew says it is poor in spirit. In either case is this not perfectly upside down to the ways of the world we live in? Whether it’s that the homeless on the street are more to be praised than, say, living in my comfortable house, or it is the one “who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.” (Is 66:2) This is not a picture of the person we praise and hold up for awards in this country.
4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
We don’t identify with mourning and grieving with a comfortable feeling. Perhaps we would like to comfort the one who grieves so that they can stop hurting so much in front of us. But it’s a strange thing. My own experience confirms again and again that it is funerals where God is able to break into people’s lives. It is the hospital where people regularly begin to know that it is God who provides the fuel for their life.
5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Now this is the one that seems most laughable to me. There is no way that meek people are admired in our world. A singer I have sometimes admired, Randy Newman once wrote a song about “shy people.” He usually wrote ironically so what he said was usually the opposite of what he meant. But he song about shy people – well let me just say his ironic song said we should just get rid of them. He was expressing the values of our society.
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.*
I have often thought that our churches ought to be praying week by week for the peacemakers among us. But we don’t. What do the peacemakers look like? They’re not just people who try to satisfy everybody. That approach usually leads to disaster on all fronts. Peacemakers that I have known are among the most courageous people there are. They walk into war zones armed with nothing but a heart to serve and heal. They are the ones who step into the middle of conflict – sometimes becoming victims themselves.
Mel Gibson directed a film last year named Hacksaw Ridge The film is about Desmond Doss, an American pacificist combat medic who was a Seventh-day Adventist Christian, refusing to carry or use a firearm or weapons of any kind. Doss became the first conscientious objector to be awarded the Medal of Honor, for service above and beyond the call of duty. (Wikipedia)
Micah summarized this commandment so well and so completely.

• It is not a slight thing to do these 3 simple things. To do them is worth spending our lives in the effort.
• what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?