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: January 31,1999

TEXT: Matthew 5:1-12 - The Beatitudes
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."

ISSUE: The Beatitudes that Jesus taught were in many respects startling in his time. Jesus challenges his time by saying what true honor is in the sight of God. People normally seek honor in the community. Jesus teaches what is honorable to God. The passage follows Jesus' call of disciples to fish for people. Now he teaches those disciples in this somewhat private setting what it means to be in God's Kingdom where the simple people, the poor, lame, disenranchised, and dispossessed are worthy of God's redeeming love.
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The story of Jesus' manifestation to the world continues according to Matthew's account. Last week Jesus began his selection of disciples, mostly fishermen who obediently chose to follow him. They were to repent, that is, change, and fish for people. Their lives were to be dramatically changed in their new calling. They joined Jesus in the preparation and calling of people into the Kingdom of God.
In today's continuation of the story, Jesus climbs a mountain or hillside. He sits down which was the appropriate posture for rabbinic teaching, and his disciples join him there. Once again, Matthew tries to associate Jesus with one of the big guys, out of the Old Testament scriptures. (Incidentally, Luke's account of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount takes place on a plain, but Matthew is insistent on associating Jesus with the great leaders of the past.) Moses took to a mountain to receive and return to his people with The Ten Commandments. Jesus in this case resides with his disciples to reveal his teachings. In this case this morning, they hear from him The Sermon on the Mount, specifically, The Beatitudes. (In next week's Gospel reading the teachings of the famous Sermon on the Mount continues.) In a passage from Deuteronomy, Moses gives a beatitude (Dt. 33:29): Happy (Blessed or Honorable) are you O Israel . . . In Yahwaeh is the shield that protects you and the marching sword leading to your triumph."
Jesus begins with Beatitudes. The Beatitudes or the way of Blessedness is best translated "Honorable: " better still how "Very honorable," or "How greatly esteemed are the poor in spirit or those who mourn, etc. Jesus culture was a time when the most significant value in a person's life was their honor.
Some of you may have seen a TV news magazine a few weeks ago about how some Jordanian men were murdering their sisters or wives for abandoning them, or seeking another life style. These women were perceived as dishonoring their families because of their actions, and their murder by other family members was seen as an appropriate way of handling this kind of family situation. This cultural way of life is quitre similar to the cultural way of life in Jesus' time, the 1st century Mediterranean culture. Remember women caught in adultery were sometimes stoned, but another form of murder, because they dishonored their fathers and brothers. So in Jesus' time your honor or blessedness was extremely important.
Remember too, that Jesus at this point is following the ministry of John the Baptist; he calls all to repentance, i.e. significant change. So Jesus begins to teach his disciples what it will mean to be truly honorable in his shared ministry. He begins to teach them what true honor (or blessedness) is in the sight of God. He begins to teach them that they must change significantly their way of thinking. Jesus obviously picks up on Isaiah's Old Testament teaching: "My thoughts,"says the Lord, "are noty like yours, and my ways are different from yours." (Isa. 55:8) In the Gospel of Mark, when Jesus is talking to Peter about the possibility of his death on the cross, Peter rebukes Jesus for such talk. But Jesus in turn rebukes Peter: "Your thoughts don't come from God, but from man." (Mark 8:33) Thus, Jesus' teaching on blessedness and honor is a teaching that is a significant and startling change from the normal cultural teaching.
When Jesus says to the disciples, "How highly esteemed are the poor in spirit." He is dramatically challenging the cultural perception of the poor. Keep in mind that the poor were not poor because they didn't have any money. Economically the large majority of people in Jesus' time did not have money. Most people were economically poor by our standards, and theirs too for that matter. But the poor were the people who were without power or standing. Widows who had no sons were the poor. They had no power or place in community. The lame, the blind, the deaf, the lepers, the maimed, the diseased, the orphaned: these were the poor, who had no standing or power. These were the outcasts, like the poor beggar Lazarus with his sores outside the rich man's house. They had no clout, no ability to fight back or take a stand in regard to the injustices that surrounded them. And Jesus comes saying that these very people who had no justice or play are the very ones that are held in highest esteem by God. This thinking and teaching of Jesus was diametrically opposed to the thinking and teaching of the time. Honor was seen to be given by the community. Jesus says true honor comes from God. St. Paul picks this up and expresses it in his first letter to the Corinthians (1Cor. 1:18-31), "He (God) chose what the world looks down on and despises and thinks is nothing, in order to destroy what the world thinks is important." (28)
You have here in the Beatitudes a dramatic change (repentance) in thinking. Those who mourn the orphan and widow, the sick and dying are those whom God honors. They are not the doomed and cursed as was so often believed. The meek and pure, the compassionate are seen as God's own inheriting the Kingdom the earth of God. These are the honorable. This is the teaching of Jesus to his disciples. It is their charge to claim the love of God, the esteem of God to the broken and fallen.
The idea that the peace makers are the honored, the blessed, the highly esteemed of God, is in sharp contrast to the belief that one should take revenge for any insult or offense. The eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth was a common means of preserving your honor in these days.
The idea of hungering and thirsting, or searching for righteousness in a world that honored there being no change was another startling concept for Jesus' disciples. People struggled for honor in community, but dared not move beyond a certain status or position in life. The idea that Jesus himself leaves family behind to strike out on a mission of daring to call for justice and love for the disenfranchised was held as greatly suspect. Jesus was thought to be mad at times. He broke with established tradition by becoming a wandering prophet. He was thought to be himself demon possessed by some of the honor establishment.
Jesus teaches his disciples: How honorable to be among reviled and the persecuted. Persecution in this world was to be expected. Persecution was significant. The Temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed by the Romans to crush a people of God who resisted their oppression. John the Baptist who had been a prophet in the wilderness was murdered by Herod Antipas. Jesus is crucified on a cross. Fishermen who left the establishment to become fishers of people were likely to be reviled by the establishment and their own families and communities as deviant. But God honors and holds in high esteem those who are faithful.
The world today is different. We do not live in the kind of honor shame society of the 1st century. What was once viewed as dishonorable behavior is often written off now as merely everybody does it, so what's the big deal. But as we listen to and hear what it is God honors and holds in highest esteem, we might make some attempt to face our time and how we as the church today embrace and hold close to us the teachings of our Lord, the one whom we claim to hold in high esteem. There is still with us a kind of disenfranchisement of supposedly less fortunate persons than ourselves.
The poor today are often viewed with disrespect. They are seen as people who don't work hard enough. They are written-off by the established gentry as those to be least respected. In the church's relationship with the poor, our own needs are often placed as first before the needs of the one's God honors. At the end of the year, it is interesting that after all of our other bills are paid, we then see if we have enough left over for our commitments to the Helping Hands Food Pantry and The Ark, a pre-school for homeless children. Benevolences are often the left-overs of our resources. We determine that this year we are going "to try" to fit outreach to those in need into our budget.
Compassion and mercy do not always come easy for some of us. We live and grew-up, and matured into a society where being tough and on top, powerful is valued above being sensitive to the week and the infirm. We believe in and embrace the survival of the fittest. Our way is often seen as the only way. We are still many of inclined to hold our grudges and contine in subtle ways the age old doctrine of an eye for an eye. In more subtle ways we are what they term as passively aggressive. We try to act pleasant enough, but we still carry the proverbial big stick behind our backs. We quietly nurse our angers and grudges without seeking resolutions and true peace. We embrace being lovers of peace as opposed to being peace makers, a truly big difference. To be truly compassionate and merciful is to be self-giving, and like little children we often see giving as losing rather than community building.
In our own time we have more aggressively attacked the prophets than taking the role of prophets ourselves. We see keeping things the way they are as our highest goal, as opposed to being ourselves prophetic in establishing what is right for the handicapped, the poor, and the disenfranchised of our own time. It is not easy to put ourselves on the front lines of change for all of God's people.
In so much of our modern day education we have taught individualistic competition and gain rather than co-operative planning and working together for the good of all people in community. I got mine, now you get yours.
Jesus gathered his disciples on a hill side and began to teach a daring way of life. It was a radical way of life that was unlike the world's way. It is the way of life in the Kingdom of God that Jesus was diligently proclaiming. It was a whole new understanding of what it was that God truly held in high esteem and honored. He was calling this motley group of fishermen into a new order of God. It had to be startling for them, and indeed, it has startled every generation since. Jesus was calling them into a new and wonderful relationship with God. They were being claimed like himself as the sons and the daughters of God. And as they embraced that relationship with God, they entered into a new relationship among themselves and with God's people in the world. They were called into a relationship of love for God and with God, among themselves, and with God's people. They were called into a humble earthy love and respect of God's creation as they inherited the earth, or inherited the Kingdom of God.
What does the Lord require: To love justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God. It is primarily in walking humbly with God and stepping into God's Kingdom with Christ as his disciples that we come to know more acutely what real justice and love is.