We Are Blessed
Matthew 5:1-12
Blessed are those who have gone through a divorce.
Blessed are those who cannot pay their bills and may be facing bankruptcy.
Blessed are those who have just heard that they have a terminal illness.
Blessed are you when you have been fired from your job.
Blessed are you when your friends desert you and betray you.
Blessed are you when a family member has died.
Blessed are you when life has beaten you down.
Rejoice and be glad, for great is your reward in heaven.
The kind of reaction you are having now is very close to what the people hearing Jesus originally speak the beatitudes had. You were probably thinking, “Are you nuts? I’m going through that right now and I can tell you that it is not a place of blessing.”
Actually the things I just listed get very close to the real idea of the beatitudes. Jesus meant for them to be shocking – even confusing. Jesus meant for his words to be totally the opposite of how we usually think. He wanted to rattle their brains so they would begin to think. He wanted to empty their minds of how they were used to thinking and begin thinking in a new way – the Kingdom way. The beatitudes run counter to culture and common sense.
Luke’s gospel puts the beatitudes in a different form and turns some of them around:
“Blessed are you who are poor (not poor in spirit),
for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who hunger now (not hungry for righteousness),
for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
Blessed are you when men hate you,
when they exclude you and insult you
and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man.
Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven...
“But woe to you who are rich,
for you have already received your comfort.
Woe to you who are well fed now,
for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will mourn and weep.
Woe to you when all men speak well of you,
for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets.”
Luke 6:20-26
At question here is: What is really the good life? And, more importantly, how do we live as God’s people in the Kingdom?
1. There have been many misinterpretations of what the beatitudes mean.
I have heard people say:
These are the “Be-attitudes”, they are the way we should be and the attitudes we should have.
Others have called them the “Be Happy Attitudes”. Okay, but how can you be happy while you are mourning, poor, or persecuted? It is wrong to think of the Beatitudes as something positive that you should strive to be, and if you do you will be rewarded. This is not what Jesus was saying.
These are not commandments for us to obey, neither are they attitudes for us to adopt, they are statements of fact that we need to believe. These sayings were ripped from the everyday lives of Jesus’ listeners. And what Jesus was saying was radical: Don’t worry that you are poor, because a new world is coming and eternal riches will be yours. Even though you are beaten down by life, God will lift you up. The kingdom of heaven is yours. Even though you are mourning your loss of health or loved ones, there is a God who is with you, he suffers with you, and one day he will do away with suffering and wipe every tear away. Even though you are oppressed because you are not a powerful personality, and the world takes advantage of that and runs over you, one day you will inherit the earth. Even though you are persecuted, treated unfairly and blamed wrongly, you are part of a long history of others who have suffered in the same way — not to mention Jesus himself. You have been given the kingdom, and your reward is coming.
Many treat the beatitudes as though Jesus was giving us commandments to be this way. As though we should seek to be poor, poor in spirit or humble. We should be mourning because of the state of the world, willing to be meek and mild, or even desire to be persecuted.
During the great persecution of the early church, many took this so literally that they deliberately did things that would lead to their death at the hand of Rome, or even turn themselves in as Christians, knowing they would be martyred.
But these are not stated in the imperative mood (commands), but rather the indicative mood (simple statements of fact).
2. The beatitudes are important because they show us what God is like.
God is perpetually in a good mood. He is not discouraged, perpetually angry or depressed. He is not upset or anxious at the state of the world as though these problems caught him by surprise. He is in a good mood because he knows exactly what he will do to bring the world to his final purpose and rectify the evil and sorrow of the world.
Even when it came to Jesus having to face poverty, hunger, loss of loved ones, persecution or even death, he kept his focus on the goal rather than the present predicament. He was meek and got stepped on because of it, but the Bible says, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” Hebrews 12:2-4
So we are to be like God and consider ourselves blessed even while facing difficulties, because we know that God’s plan for the future and the kingdom cannot be thwarted.
We are not to believe Jesus and follow his teaching because it pays off, but because it is what God is like. We are to be merciful even when it does not pay off, because God is merciful. We are to be pure in heart even when it does not pay off, and in fact may cost us our job or a relationship that we value. We are to be peacemakers even when everyone around us may be for arguing, conflict and war. We are to be content, even when faced with financial difficulties, not because we have a martyr complex, but because we trust God. We are to consider ourselves blessed even when we are persecuted, because we know we have a God who endured persecution himself, and who hears our cause and will take it up.
The way Jesus lived did not pay off in this present world. It got him beaten and crucified. But he knew there was joy set before him.
3. These are not promises for the present, but guarantees of our future.
Dallas Willard wrote, “Jesus did not say, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit because they are poor in spirit.’ He did not say, ‘What a fine thing it is to be destitute... It makes people worthy of the kingdom.’ ...Those poor in spirit are called ‘blessed’ by Jeus, not because they are in a meritorious condition, but because, precisely in spite of and in the midst of their ever so deplorable condition, the rule of the heavens has moved redemptively upon and through them by the grace of Christ.” (The Divine Conspiracty, p.102).
In other words, being poor in spirit is not a virtue, and it is not because a person is poor in spirit that he/she is rewarded with the kingdom as though they especially deserve it, rather it is because through Christ, the kingdom has been opened to all of us.
Almost all of these promises of the beatitudes are in the future tense:
Those who mourn will be comforted.
Those who are meek will inherit the earth.
Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled.
Those who are pure in heart will see God.
All of the rewards are in the future tense, except two: to the poor and the persecuted. The promise they are given is in the present tense and the promise is the same for both of them: “...for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The Kingdom is already here, and the advantages and the privileges of that kingdom are here and now – forgiveness, peace and the presence of the Father. We live between the now and the not yet – between the kingdom inaugurated by Jesus and the kingdom realized in God’s new world where all the promises of God will come true.
Warren Wiersbe once said, “Nothing is harder to heal than a broken heart shattered by experiences that seem so meaningless. But God’s people don’t live on explanations; God’s people live on His promises.”
C. S. Lewis wrote: “At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door... But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so.”
We have a future. We are not just living for this present world and its pleasures and comforts. Even if we are in need of much, we realize that we have much coming.
Some say that we have a “pie in the sky” religion, and they laugh as we sing about “the sweet by and by”. But there is nothing wrong with having a pie in the sky religion if there actually IS a pie in the sky — if there is a future, eternal reward that outlasts and outshines anything this world has to offer.
All you have to do is watch the lives who have it all. People in show business, the music industry or politics who have all the fame, money, privilege, looks and all the rest are trying to fill the terrible emptiness of their meaningless lives they have inside with drink, drugs, sex and whatever else they can find to fill the void inside.
We of all people should be perpetually in a good mood, just as God is, because we know that life is not a hopeless end, but an endless hope. We of all people should be optimistic. We know where we have come from and we know where we are going. We know the end is God’s end: the Kingdom.
This is the only way that the beatitudes make sense, and ultimately this is the only way that life can make sense. There is a new world coming, and it is God’s world where he lives and reigns.
Do you expect the Christian life to payoff now? If you listen to Joel Olsteen and some of the other TV preachers you will be told that it is God’s business to bless you here and now. The only problem is: Jesus never promised that. All he promised was a cross. He said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?” Luke 9:23-25
We are not looking to gain the world, we are looking to gain the kingdom. C. S. Lewis said, “Live for this world and its pleasures and you get neither, live for God’s kingdom and you get both.” He wrote in another place: “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
On July 16, 1999, John F. Kennedy, Jr. was killed when the Piper Saratoga light aircraft he was piloting crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. His wife, Carolyn Bessette, and sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette, were also killed. The intended flight path was along the coastline of Connecticut and across Rhode Island Sound to his final destination of Martha’s Vineyard Airport.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) concluded that the crash was caused by: “the pilot’s failure to maintain control of his airplane during a descent over water at night, which was a result of spatial disorientation.” The cause of his disorientation was hazy conditions which existed on the night of the fatal crash, coupled with the fact that he was insufficiently trained to fly using the instrument panel. Especially at night, haze can lead to disorientation for pilots. Other pilots flying similar routes on the night of the accident reported no visual horizon while flying over the water because of the complete fog which made it impossible to know up from down. Because of the conditions he thought he was flying in the right direction, but instead he flew his plane downward until he was in a death spiral. He thought he was going up when he was in reality going down.
Kennedy, like many people, thought he was going the right direction even though the haze made it impossible to distinguish between heaven and earth. He did not rely on the instruments, but on his gut feeling. Jesus has given us an instrument panel to guide us and help us to distinguish between heaven and earth. That is what the Beatitudes are for. This is what Jesus intended to do: get us headed in the opposite direction of what we think (and everyone is saying) is the right direction. The beatitudes help us to remember that we are headed for another world and that the rules are different, We cannot rely on our gut feeling about what is right or wrong, up or down. We need to believe in the instrument panel we have been given to guide us as we live in another kingdom.
And then the scripture will be fulfilled that says, “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.” Matthew 25:34
Rodney J. Buchanan
Amity UMC
January 30, 2011
