Matthew 5:1-12
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he began to speak and taught them, saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. “Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
We’ve all heard that experience is the best teacher. Some of us have stories confirming that to be true… but maybe others don’t agree with the age old adage. For example, experience is the best teacher doesn’t seem to hold up well with most if not all of the beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in spirit, the mourning, the meek, the merciful. These are not characteristics or situations our culture celebrates.
Afterall, there’s no scholarships for those who show mercy or are gentle and content! There are no greeting cards that say “hooray, you're mourning!” And if you’ve ever been or felt poor in spirit, felt like you were in despair and totally hopeless toward your inner life: your thoughts, feelings, confidence, and you beg God to help because you are completely unable to help yourself, if you’ve felt that way, did it feel like a blessing?
I think of the neighbors of the church I served in Glendale, AZ. By neighbors I don’t mean the families in the houses surrounding the church, but our neighbors who slept on our campus under the bushes out front or in the breezeways. Most, if not all, struggled with addiction, and with undiagnosed or unmanaged mental illness. Many had lived on the streets for years, some more than a decade.
As I got to know them, I listened and heard their feelings: despondent, helpless, begging God to help break their addiction, for the system to work, to feel loved. They were poor and spiritually poor, but I'm not sure I’d called or they would call themselves blessed.
Maybe Jesus is wrong on this one, maybe these things, these beatitudes just aren’t right and true. If that’s the case, Jesus can chalk this one up to inexperience: he just doesn’t know any better, he doesn’t know the way the world works yet. He hasn’t experienced how the merciful get screwed over, or the one’s who fight for justice don’t see the fruition of their efforts,
or the peacemakers pale in comparison to the violence of this world.
Afterall, he’s still young… What is he? 29? Maybe 30? Heck, this is his first sermon!
And coming from a 29 year old about to have a child, I feel very confident that there certainly is more I don’t know or haven’t experienced compared to what I do know and have experienced. If experience is the best teacher, then maybe Jesus needs a little more.
But that’s not the case. Jesus is speaking from experience, it’s just not included in the part of the text we read today. Just before Jesus climbed the mountain, he had been off in Galilee, and Jerusalem, and beyond, where he’d been “curing every disease and sickness among the people.” As he traveled, people brought the sick and the lame, people with all sorts of diseases and demons, pains and paralysis.
And we have to remember, that to be one of these people in the time of Jesus didn’t mean you were just sick: you were an outcast, viewed as a terrible sinner who deserved their plight.
You were poor, likely unable to work, and forced to the margins of society. These people were the poor in spirit, the meek, and the mourning.
These were the people who hungered and thirst for justice because they’ve been starved by injustice. After calling his first disciples, these are the people Jesus goes to; Not the rich in spirit, not the joyful, not the ambitious, but the opposite.
If experience is the best teacher, no wonder Jesus preaches with such potency. And if experience is the best teacher, no one knows or has lived these beatitudes more fully than Jesus himself. He’s the poor in spirit who cries out in abandonment asking “why, God?!”,
the one who mourns a world full of oppression and sin, the meek one who put all people before himself, the one who hungers and thirst for justice in every land, the giver of mercy to the least deserving, the pure in heart who sees God’s will and does it, the peacemaker who overcomes death not with violence but self-sacrifice, the persecuted and reviled One who willingly went to the cross. Like my neighbors in AZ, I, and most people, wouldn’t call that blessed.
Which is precisely the point. In the beatitudes, Jesus isn’t just describing reality, he makes reality. When Jesus speaks, the Word creates what it declares. In other words, The beatitudes are promises, promises to all who find themselves in these situations. You are and will be blessed. Not because of what you have done or didn’t do, but because of what Jesus has done, is doing, and will do through the cross.
In that way, those who are poor in spirit, persecuted and reviled, they are blessed because Jesus is there beside them and makes it so. My neighbors in AZ, they are blessed because Jesus promises to be there with them. And it’s not blessed as in lucky, wealthy or successful, but blessed as in favored by God because that’s where God is at work. Hopefully, there is some comfort in knowing that no matter how helpless or desperate or mournful you feel, Jesus has felt that too. And we see that most clearly in Christ crucified.
Now I want to be clear. These beatitudes are not imperatives. They don’t command you to become poor in spirit or meek or mournful as if that would save you. They aren’t goals you can check off. On the cross, Christ became all these things, each beatitude for you, giving you grace. So the beatitudes are not demands, but a warning and a promise. A warning to potential disciples back then and to followers today.
Picture yourself on that mountainside and it’s as if Jesus is saying:
“because you follow me, because you will speak and act and live in ways different from the culture around you, you will find yourself poor in spirit, meek and mournful, hungry and thirsty. You will be merciful and people will take advantage of you. You will attempt peace and you will be a lonely voice. It will be hard. You’ll feel pain, maybe even despair. But I promise, you’re blessed because I am there with you”.
As followers of Jesus, heed the warning and trust the promise.
Know it won’t take very long and we won’t have to look very hard, till we find ourselves in these situations, like: mourning the brutal killing of Tyre Nichols; hungering and thirsting for justice for our black and brown siblings; acting meek by refusing to take part in violent and unjust systems; making peace in our own families and communities.
May experience be the best teacher and may you be blessed.
Amen.
