February 2, 2014 – Matthew 5:1-12
Matthew 5:1-12
Blessed are You
4th Sunday after Epiphany – February 2, 2014
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
These opening lines of Jesus’ first sermon in Matthew seem hard to understand.
What could Jesus possibly mean?
Blessed are the poor in spirit? Blessed are those who mourn?
Blessed are those who are persecuted?
This is hard.
But, as I’ve said before, it helps to imagine the scene in your mind.
Just prior to this Jesus has called the first disciples and then immediately goes about
proclaiming that the reign of God has come near,
that God’s reign of mercy and justice is breaking into the world –
and then he shows how that is happening by healing and
curing vast numbers of people.
Crowds start to follow him around.
And, not surprisingly, the more people he heals,
the bigger the crowds get who follow him around.
Now, among the people in the crowds who follow him are the disciples,
those who he’s training in his ways.
And he wants to train the disciples because there are so many who are coming for help.
So he goes up the side of a mountain to begin teaching what life is like when
the reign of God comes near, and what their lives will be like now that
the reign of God has come near.
And he begins to instruct them in a great, long sermon that we’ll hear from for
the next four Sundays: the Sermon on the Mountain.
He goes up the mountain, and the crowds follow him –
but closest to him he gathers his disciples.
Then he speaks so that the crowds can hear him, but he speaks just now to those he’s training.
It’s like when I do the children’s message:
I’m speaking to the children, but I know you are listening!
So, imagine: Jesus at the centre, the disciples are around him, and around them are the crowds.
The disciples are between Jesus and the crowds: that is important.
And then Jesus starts talking – and he begins by pronouncing blessing.
Blessing means honoured or favoured by God.
In the ancient world you were usually considered favoured by God if you were wealthy and
had influence and power.
But Jesus, as usual, doesn’t see things like that: as usual, Jesus turns everything upside down.
I’ve made my own version of what he says to help us hear it fresh:
The first four blessings deal with those who are beaten down by
the circumstances they find themselves in:
these describe the people in the crowds surrounding them:
Favoured are those with no hope, for God’s reign is over them.
Favoured are those who mourn and those who mourn for the state of the world,
for God will act and they will mourn no more.
Favoured are those without their share of the earth’s resources,
for they will inherit their fair share when God is reigning.
Favoured are those who hunger and thirst for the justice of God’s reign for they will be filled.
God will act for those who find themselves in these circumstances,
and they will find themselves blessed and favoured and honoured by God.
The next four blessings pronounce favour on those who act on behalf of those who
have no hope, who mourn, who do not have their share of the earth’s resources,
and who long for and hunger and thirst for the justice of God’s reign:
Favoured are those who help put right was has gone wrong, for they will receive God’s mercy.
Favoured are those whose hearts are on fire for God’s reign, for they will see God.
Favoured are those who work for the wholeness and healing and shalom of God’s reign for
they will be called God’s children or apprentices in the world.
Favoured are those who are willing to suffer in their commitment to the justice of God’s reign of
manna-sharing and mercy-giving.
And then – and then, it’s time for Jesus to stop talking about people in general.
After describing those who act on behalf of those who find themselves in difficult circumstances,
Jesus takes a deep breath,
looks straight into the eyes of the disciples sitting very close to him,
and addresses them directly:
Favoured are you when you act on behalf of those who find themselves in difficult circumstances,
when you suffer for your single-hearted commitment to putting right what has gone wrong and
your hearts are on fire for God’s reign.
Blessed are you when you take my blessing and
pass it on to the crowds of people surrounding you.
I am blessing you so you can be a blessing, and take my healing,
and give it to those surrounding you.
Blessed are the people surrounding us, says Jesus.
God’s favour, Jesus says, God’s deepest concern, is for the underprivileged and the suffering.
God wants to bless them. And God wants them to know that they are blessed.
And so God wants to bless them through you.
When you call to imagination this scene, you can easily see what Jesus is doing.
Here at the beginning of his ministry with the disciples,
before he asks them to do anything, he blesses them for their work,
a work which will consist of their bringing God’s blessing to these very crowds.
He blesses them, announces God’s favour upon them, announces that God is with them,
so that they in turn can bring blessing to these crowds.
They are being blessed, in order to be blessing.
Matthew is giving us a glimpse here of how God is working
through Jesus to mend a broken world.
All the mercy and all the compassion in the universe is focussed in this one person, Jesus.
The whole Spirit of the God of all mercy and all compassion is concentrated in him and then,
and then . . . God unleashes the Spirit at work in him into the world by
blessing his followers with it.
His Spirit, his Holy Spirit, is given to the church so that the church can bless the world with it.
Blessed are you and blessed are the refugees you helped settle here this past year.
Blessed are you and blessed are the children of this neighbourhood who found blessing at
our Kids Club last summer.
Blessed are you and blessed are the hungry ones who
received food hampers from your hands at Christmas.
Blessed are you and blessed are those homebound members of First Lutheran Church to whom
you take Christ when you visit them.
Blessed are you and blessed are those guests whom you welcome so warmly into our fellowship.
Blessed are you and blessed are those who are fed so generously at our Food Banks and
at our Community Meals where the hungry are filled with good things.
At one of our Community Meals last fall, a woman, after saying how wonderful it was to
to have a meal of such delicious home-made food, said to me, It’s a blessing to be here.
She’d found God’s favour, God’s blessing, God’s affirmation of her fundamental worth in
our humble Parish Hall.
How many other places does she find that, I wonder?
How many other places do people find blessing?
From God the creator, through Jesus, whose Spirit was given to you:
that woman and all those people we named have been blessed.
They have experienced God’s favour: through you.
Through you who have chosen week after week to sit with Jesus, listen to him,
be trained by him, fed by him, blessed by him, and then
take that blessing out with you to people and to a world that need it.
And the thing is: the disciples – you! – need blessing!
Because you are not all that different from the people Jesus is calling you to serve.
You know what it is like to have no hope.
You know what it is to mourn.
You know what it is to know addiction and illness, both mental and physical.
You know what it is to be recently unemployed and to feel totally at sea and abandoned and lost.
You know what it is to be lonely.
You know what it is like to know these things.
And so Jesus blesses you. Jesus looks you in the eye and announces your worth and your favour.
He announces: you were not made for these deathly things.
He announces: you were made for blessing. So: he blesses you. You are named blessed.
Every Sunday before you leave, you are blessed.
It’s no accident that the blessing happens in that spot, just before you leave.
The blessing reminds you that you have been named blessed and favoured in the Gospel and
that you have been blessed in the meal, and so just before you go, you are blessed again,
so that you can take that blessing to the people who need it.
The blessing is the last thing that happens before the assisting minister sends you to serve.
Before you have a chance to do anything, Jesus blesses you and names you worth-ful, favoured.
You now are the ones between Jesus and the crowds.
You are blessed. And so may you be a blessing. And let the assembly say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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