EPIPHANY 4

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: EPIPHANY 4
PROPER: A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: February 3, 2002

TEXT: The Beatitudes of Jesus: Matthew 5:1-12 “When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them saying: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’”

Micah 6:1-8 – 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?

I Corinthians 1:18-31 – 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. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus who became for us wisdom from God.

ISSUE: The readings for this day are instructions for the people of God, and more particularly The Beatitudes of Jesus are instructions to his disciples and close followers. Committed Christians are called upon to understand what it is that God truly honors and blesses. We need to be aware of that honor as we attempt to discover our ministries and make our witness to our Lord. The honor of our Lord is quite different from what the world honors.
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Last weeks Gospel reading told of Jesus’ selection of some of his disciples, more particularly the fishermen: Simon (Peter) and Andrew, James and John. The time was right for them to begin following Jesus and being a part of his ministry that would involve teaching and healing, and certainly his comments and grievances against a world that was often unfair and unjust, and which stole dignity from human beings.
The Gospel reading for today from Matthew is essentially a training period or training session for the disciples and close followers Jesus. After the selection of disciples, Jesus took them with him and began his ministry of healing and teaching. As the crowds increased, we are told that Jesus took his own close followers away from the crowds up on a mountain. Matthew always likes to associate Jesus with Hebrew scripture where important events often took place on mountains, as for instance the giving of the Ten Commandments to Moses, and Elijah’s Mt. Carmel experience of setting the sacrifice to God on fire by soaking the wood with water. The mountain experience is associating Jesus with some of Israel’s most important leaders. (Luke’s version of the Beatitudes of Jesus is taught on a plain.) In this quiet away from it all session, Jesus is taking his disciples aside for some instruction.
Rabbi teachers of this period often took their disciples aside and a part of their style was to try to summarize their teachings and God’s laws. For instance, Jesus summarizes the Law of God on one occasion by saying: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the rest of the laws and prophetic teaching.’ You get another instance of this summarization in the lesson from the Prophet Micah. Micah poses the question to his listeners: ‘What is it that God really wants? “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?”’ Which is, I am told, one of the most quoted passages from the Hebrew Scriptures, and quite consistent with the teachings of Jesus in his Beatitudes.
In the 5th, 6th, and 7th Chapters of Matthew, you have a picture of Jesus summarizing, condensing, and using images to teach his disciples what his ministry is about, and what it is that God demands. Here on the mountain, the inner group is getting the Word. This teaching was heavy stuff. It was a calling of the disciples like Micah into a covenant, not a contract. A contract can be broken, but a covenant, like a marriage is something you keep forever. Now Jesus addresses his disciples. The first part of his teaching is the Beatitudes, or also known as the Sermon on the Mount.
Get the pictures straight. Jesus gathers his closest disciples to him on the mountain after having been with the larger crowd. In essence he is saying, what is the most important basic value in life? And the basic important value of the time was a person’s honor. In much of the Middle Eastern culture it still is. Well says Jesus let me tell you what God thinks is real honor. Here it comes again, Jesus’ reversal of what the world thinks and believes to what is the way of God. I tell you says Jesus that what God honors down there at the bottom of the mountain are those who are the poor in spirit! God seeks to raise up and bless the poor, while the world often condemns the poor, and ignores them, or sees them as the unimportant cast a offs. The world sees the successful and the noble and the hot shots, and pompous religious leaders and politicians as the honorable, but God sees the least as his own, and the most honorable. You disciples, honor them too.
God honors (blesses) those who mourn. God blesses and honors with all his might, the widows and orphans, and those who have had their property confiscated from them. God honors those sensitive to human need. God will comfort them, and you do the same. God is not taken, according to Jesus, with the grandiose and the successful, but honors and gives honor to the merciful and the compassionate and those who long for a true and pure simple relationship with God. God honors and loves those who hunger and thirst for justice, righteousness, and those who are peacemakers, not merely the apathetic lovers of peacefulness. There’s a big difference. God honors those who have been persecuted and beaten down by the injustices of the world.
And to you disciples who will be persecuted in teaching what new honor is, and what is really important in the world, God will hold you in high esteem, as were the prophets of old who were persecuted when they demanded justice for the poor in a world that only held the rich, those of high position, and elegant status to be people of honor.
The Beatitudes, teachings of Jesus, which describe what it is that God really honors and blesses are a spelling out of Micah’s “Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.” We also see in the entire ministry of Jesus a man committed to doing justice, who himself honors and had a profound affection for the poor, the disenfranchised, and those held in low esteem by the world. We see in Jesus Christ a modeling of kindness for Jew and Gentile alike in his healing ministry and compassionately restoring those who were cast out by the society. And certainly we see in the Gospel of Jesus a man walking humbly with God, exposing the love of God and God’s forgiveness. He himself in his great humility accepts humbly the cross, and the unjust persecution. Death on a cross in Jesus’ time by the Romans was the most dishonorable thing that could happen to a person. You were tied and left to hang on the cross, naked and exposed before the whole community. You were left there and scorned until you were finally dead from exposure, and in many cases then attacked and eaten by wild dogs, which were unclean animals. St. Paul’s writings made it clear that this treatment of Jesus was scandalous. For the Jews, the end of Jesus’ ministry was considered to be the very last thing expected by most people of the day who could not believe the Messianic hope would end in such worldly dishonor. Greek philosophy and their leaders were all seen as grand heroes, and great victorious warriors. Jesus’ end by world standards was a huge failure, a folly. And yet, what the world believed to be mere foolishness and failure has become what is most honorable: a simple human life given in the pursuit of justice, compassionate and mercifully kind, that walked humbly with God. For thousands of years now, we’ve seen a new value of God proclaimed by Jesus and his discipleship that has been a challenge to the world’s way of popular thinking. Christ’s departing was certainly another great reversal in terms of the way the world thinks.
In modern American Culture today, there is certainly the popular notion that what is the most important thing is to be able to consume as much of the world’s goods as possible. It used to be said that if you don’t work you don’t eat. Even St. Paul’s teachings made this point to lazy Christians. But in our cultural way of doing things the saying now goes: If you don’t eat, you don’t work. If you are not consuming and using up the world’s resources you are going to be laid off. American culture is a consumptive culture today. We are building rather large homes, expensive to maintain, to heat in the winter, and cool in the summer. They seem to be signs of status, success, and honorableness in the community. These are they who have made it.
Yet there are others things that plague our society and our world. Things like not being able to get along well with one another, and isolating ourselves from the community and its needs. We seem to honor past glory without participating fully in what is important human need in the world today. We lose sight of the difference between a contract and a covenant of lasting commitments. The Baptismal Covenant we make and renew when a child or person is baptized has nothing to do with how you or the baptized person is going to make it big in the world. It is about walking humbly with God the Father, the Son, The Holy Spirit. It is about actively continuing in the ways and teachings of the apostles of Jesus Christ and having supper with him, and conversation in prayer. It is about renouncing injustice, prejudice, and hatred. It is about respecting the dignity of every human being, striving for justice (not paying lip service to it), being a peace (maker) among all people. The Baptismal Covenant relationship with Jesus is an ongoing lasting commitment.
There have been many saintly witnesses to this way of Jesus Christ in the past. There have been many in recent years, notably, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Sister Teresa in India. These are folk who understood what God truly honors and blesses, and whose lives have been given in sacrifice. Many mothers and fathers have done the same in more modest ways, but are no less extraordinary witnesses to their family and friends. The church of Jesus Christ, you and me, the members of Jesus in the world have a significant calling and partnership with Christ. We must be so careful that we don’t lose our focus by merely seeing church buildings as an old historic memento of the past to be preserved, rather than a living vital organism that is called upon to bless and honor God’s living world of the present.
The call to sacrificial caring and involvement in the world of today is hard for us, and surely can seem to be very demanding. But we have to keep in mind that we are called upon to be a servant people who give respect, allegiance, and honor to a sacrificial God. God hates oppression and the lack of freedom, not the story of Moses. God hates to see people victimized, depraved, dishonored with prejudice and hatred. God hates vengeance among his children. Note the wonderful gift of Jesus Christ to renew, raise up, and provide the world with forgiveness, love, hope. To do what we are called to do is simply and clearly committing ourselves to the ways of God and to participate in our calling to the best of our ability, and to be assured of God’s grace.