January 29, 2023
Hope Lutheran Church
Rev. Mary Erickson
1 Corinthians 1:18-31; Matthew 5:1-12
The Unexpected Visitor
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
Jesus opens up his Sermon on the Mount with a real show-stopper. The Beatitudes are dearly beloved verses. Their repetition and rhythm imprint on our souls.
Jesus declares that a surprising group of individuals are blessed. When we first hear his words, it seems that something is terribly wrong. “Jesus, is that what you really want to say? You must be confused. These people are anything BUT blessed!”
But Jesus is pointing us to a greater truth about how God’s kingdom operates. He reveals a profound and often overlooked blessing that sustains the weary and downtrodden. It shows up like an unexpected visitor when we need it the most.
These blessings come to us when we’re at our lowest – when we’re poor in spirit, when our hearts are overwhelmed by grief, as we yearn for the day when justice and mercy kiss. Into our midst, this blessed guest breathes a fresh and reviving breeze into our sorrow. When we sink in the mires of this world’s burdens, we are not pulled under by despair. Our faith in God’s indomitable goodness and mercy lifts us up. We are blessed by this unshakable certainty in God’s faithfulness. And from this blessing, there grows in our hearts the Holy Spirit’s fruit of joy.
Joy has a very different quality and character than happiness.
• Happiness is temporary, it comes and goes. Joy is more constant, like a spring that continually emerges.
• Happiness is fleeting in nature because it is externally derived. We’re happy when things are going well. But joy is generated from within. It’s independent of our situation. It doesn’t depend on favorable winds.
• And so happiness lacks depth, it’s superficial, whereas joy is deeply profound.
• Happiness leaves no lasting mark on our person. It evaporates and then we’re not happy. But joy is transformative. It leaves a lasting essence on our character.
• And most importantly, happiness shrinks away when faced with hardship. It cannot coexist with suffering. But joy can. Joy remains even when the going is tough.
It’s this lasting quality of joy that allows us to be joyful within incongruous situations. We can be poor in spirit, we can be grieving, we can even endure persecution and our joy remains.
As the psalmist said, “Weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning.”
Our joy remains through incongruously dire circumstances because our Lord was crucified. In his dying on a cross we see that there is nothing, nothing at all, that can defeat God’s plan for the healing and salvation of the world.
They thought they had finished him off. He was arrested and sentenced to death. He hauled his cross through the streets of Jerusalem. They nailed him to his cross and left him there till he was good and dead. And then they put his cold body in a tomb and sealed it shut. That was supposed to be the end of him.
But it wasn’t. They weren’t planning on the power of God. They didn’t factor in the unquenchable source of divine life. They couldn’t fathom that something could be stronger than death.
But now we know. Now we have witnessed Jesus’ resurrection from the grave. We have seen that we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
And so we see the cross for what it really is. In its folly, the cross of Jesus has revealed the wisdom of God and the power of God.
These blessings we hear today, they are spoken by the one who will conquer all things on his cross. These bewildering declarations of blessedness come from him, from the Word made flesh.
And so we believe them. We believe him. We believe that we are blessed, even in times of deep strife and pain. The incongruity within these beatitudes is nothing compared to that of Jesus’ cross. In his cross, he has overcome. Life and love prevail.
And so when our spirits are poor, when our hearts are deflated by grief, when we look at the state of the world and question, how long must we wait for justice, even then the unexpected visitor from Jesus’ blessing remains. Joy is our constant companion. And joy never outgrows its welcome.
