Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: So I have a confession to make.
And I realize some of you were becoming aware of this and others likely would discover it soon. So I thought I would just come clean and let you all know it. And hear it from me. And I hope you'll find it within you to forgive me.
So, over the past 18 years that I have been with you, I have never preached on the Sermon on the Mount.
I know you're thinking, Matt. It's the greatest discourse in all of scripture. Jesus, longest sermon as recorded in the Synoptic Gospels. How could you not have preached on it? But hear my defense. Okay, I have an explanation.
So as a preacher, when I'm preaching and have to follow the words of a great preacher, let's say, a really great preach.
Challenging. It's like having James play a song on the piano. And then I get up to play and I play a little piano. But after hearing James, you're like, ah, nice. Put James back on the piano.
And that's a little bit how I feel. When you hear the words of Jesus, great sermon. Read. And then you hear a sermon after it, it's like, how do you follow that? I did a memorial service yesterday for Carol Gibson.
The Yee family and others were there. And one of Carol, the person we're remembering and celebrating one of her grandsons, got up to give a beautiful present, a beautiful song he'd written, full of grace and truth. And then people were sharing about Carol's life. And the first person to stand up and speak right after that song said, how do you follow that?
And that's sometimes how I feel as a preacher in preaching on the Sermon on the Mount. But I've prayed about it. And each year from January through to the start of Holy Week, I like to focus in on one of the Gospels and hear the story of Jesus. Listen to Jesus, look with you at themes that are hit in the Gospels. And so I thought this year we could do the Sermon on the Mount, and a few of our guest preachers were willing to dive in as well. So here we go. And pray for us, if you would.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: All right, church, I guess, you know, you need to get your hearts ready for this sermon.
So if you will please bow your heads and pray with me.
O Lord our God, your word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.
Give us grace to receive your truth in faith and in love, that we can be obedient to your will and live always for your glory through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
Our passage is Matthew 5. If you want to follow along. Page 785.
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.
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 righteousness sake, 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.
And for the same way they have persecuted the prophets who were before you.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
[00:04:46] Speaker A: I love a great opening to a book or speech, don't you?
I know we have a number of readers here, so see if you can recognize this one.
In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.
Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It. In a single sentence, a single opening, maclean invites us through a kind of portal to another place, a beautiful place called Missoula, Montana. It's a place where fly fishing, at least in this narrator's memory, is like a religion requiring commitment, discipline, and giving glory to God and religion. At least the Presbyterian faith we will read about in that novella involves a kind of appreciation of beauty and the natural world and the rhythms of nature. Ordinarily, we think you have religion here. You have a pastime like fly fishing here. No, in the world that Norman Maclean invites us into. That line gets blurry and it's disorienting, but it's also fascinating.
How about this for an opening line?
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
That's it, Darlene. Got it. That's from Frank Kafka's famous short story Metamorphosis. And in a sentence, readers are transported into a surreal, dreamlike and unsettling world, one where the line between humans and insects has suddenly become blurry between reality and dream. It's blurry. Is it disorienting? Yes. Fascinating?
Absolutely. I want to hear more.
Or who can forget this famous opening?
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
You can probably recite it, right? The age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.
It was the epic of belief. It was the epic of incredulity. And Charles Dickens goes on in that, by the way. 119 word, opening sentence, I kid you not, all full of those contradictions. And it comes from what book?
A Tale of Two Cities.
In a sentence, a really long sentence, to be sure, but in a sentence, in a series of contradictions, Dickens pulls us into a world of competing forces. He ushers us into the tumultuous period of the French Revolution. The author Ursula Le Guin once wrote this first sentences are doors to worlds. First sentences, doors to worlds.
Well, in terms of speeches, how about this for a great. Opening a door to a world.
I'm happy to join with you in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of. Of our nation.
Whoa.
Can you name that one?
Martin Luther King, I have a Dream speech, given back on August 28, 1963 at the March on Washington for jobs and freedom. In an opening sentence, one of the most celebrated orations in American history, King grabs us. He ushers his listeners into a world where free freedom is a struggle, yes, but that struggle makes history.
Fascinating world.
Then, of course, there is this opening that you might recall hearing before. And it begins like this.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
And as the Beatitudes go on, comprising just a few words, more, by the way, than the entire opening sentence of Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, we're ushered into a world more stuffed with seeming contradictions than the world Dickens painted in that novel.
As listeners, then and now, we wonder, what world is this?
Is this world real? Is it a dream? Is it imagination? The world sounds upside down.
Poverty, mourning, weakness, hunger. They all denote well. A lack, a loss, a low position. Jesus says it is they who possess the very kingdom of heaven. It is they who will know comfort, they who will inherit the earth, they who will be filled.
Showing mercy, maintaining purity of heart, peacemaking, suffering, persecution. These aren't actions that we think of as gaining prestige, power or dominance, but losing those things.
And yet they, we read, are the ones lifted up.
Those who extend mercy, receive it. Those who are pure in heart stand before the ruler of the universe. The peacemakers are called the ruler's own children. And the persecuted for righteousness sake, they hold the very kingdom of heaven.
For thousands of years, readers have found that opening of Jesus Sermon on the Mount. Deeply disorienting and fascinating, too. It seems like it beckons to some strange and odd new world that may sound to us like it's a dream, and yet we want to hear more.
It asks us, wouldn't you like to step in to this world?
Well, up until this point in Matthew's Gospel, the world has often been painted not in hopeful, dreamlike tones, but very often in dark and foreboding, even brutal colors. Back in chapter two, we read of King Herod getting visited by astrologers from the east. And they told him they'd seen a star indicating a new king of the Jews had been born.
Herod thought he held that title of King of the Jews. And then we read on in Matthew, how Herod had every child two years old and younger in and around Bethlehem massacred, lest one of them threaten his reign.
It's one of the most disturbing displays ever of what lust for power can do to a person and to a population over whom a ruler holds sway.
In the opening chapters of Matthew's Gospel, we read of John the Baptist, a wilderness prophet unleashing hard truth on religious leaders of his time. And we learned he was imprisoned by this Herod.
Brutal leaders unleashing violence, prophets jailed. It's a dark world Matthew paints, but there are glimpses of light breaking in in the first four chapters of Matthew's Gospel, right?
Astrologers from the east glimpse a light in the sky, and it tells them that there is another king, another kingdom emerging, and they follow where that light leads.
Joseph, we read, has a dream. And in this dream, he's told not only to name the child that Mary will bear, Jesus, which means Yahweh saves, but also to have that child be his own, and then to follow where God will lead him and Mary and the child to safety.
And it's like in these dreams, another reality is breaking in. And Joseph and the astrologers, the magi, might wonder, is this real? But they dare to believe it is and dare to follow that light.
We then read, as Matthew's Gospel goes on, of how Jesus, when he grows older, goes out to the wilderness. The devil himself tempts Jesus. And remember what he does. He brings Jesus in the third and final temptation, up to a high mountain. And he says to Jesus, all the kingdoms of the world, I will give you if you just worship me. If you just do whatever you've got to do to get control and power for yourself, I can give it to you. Just worship me and my way. And remember what Jesus says.
He says in response, it is written, leaning on the Scriptures, worship the Lord your God and serve only him.
And we wonder, as this person, Matthew's Gospel is presenting as the very child born king of the Jews. What kind of king, what kind of kingdom is this?
Certainly a different one than King Herod's.
And then we read of Jesus in action in Matthew's Gospel. He proclaims another kingdom, another world has come near, a heavenly world. And he calls people to repent, that is to step out of one way of seeing the world, one way of interacting with the world, and enter into another.
With Jesus hands he healed all manner of illnesses and diseases, like the very healing power of heaven had broken in to a sick hurting world.
And then we read in Matthew chapter 5 that Jesus goes up on a mountain. And you noticed, as Angela read the passage, that he sits down.
I always think of Jesus preaching and standing up like we preachers are prone to do. But no, in the Gospel it reads, he sits down and he's departed from the crowds up this mountain. And it's only the disciples that later we'll read of crowds too. But at first it seems it's the disciples who gather around him like a small intimate circle. And his disciples come to him. And then Jesus unfurls a discourse that has impacted history and you and me in so many ways.
And from the very first sentence we know this.
This is another world we are being invited into.
It's disorienting enough to give us vertigo, like down is up and up is down and the poor reach rich and the meek are exalted. But what a beautiful, winsome, God filled world Jesus places before us, making us want to hear more disorienting, yes.
Fascinating.
Absolutely.
But you know, if I were a disciple listening to Jesus, I know what I would want to ask him.
I would want to ask him when.
When does this kingdom you speak of, when does this world that you're speaking to us about, when will it come to pass? Because it doesn't look like the world I'm living in.
When will those who mourn be comforted? When will they not be left bereft? When will the peacemakers be exalted, not vilified? When will those who hunger and thirst for righteousness be filled?
And then I think of the disciples imagining that small, intimate circle Matthew's Gospel invites us to picture, all gathered near enough to Jesus to hear him speak. And I think of them looking at this fascinating figure who had overcome the devil, healed the sick, proclaimed the kingdom of heaven, had come near. And I picture them catching just maybe a fleeting glimpse of how that other world of which Jesus was speaking had broken into their world, was sitting right there in front of them.
We've had George Hunsinger come and speak at Knox and share his perspective on the Beatitudes, and I've loved reading his commentary on the opening of Mark's Gospel in preparation for this. I especially love how Hunsinger lifts up the cross. Christological character of the Beatitudes Hunsinger notes how each one of the Beatitudes is not just a statement about the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, the merciful, and the peacemakers. It's also each one of those a statement about Jesus.
For he was poor in spirit, meek, mournful, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, merciful, pure in heart, a peacemaker, and would be persecuted for righteousness sake, even put to death on a cross. And yet in him was the kingdom, comfort to the mourning, a blessed inheritance to the meek, a treasure for those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, mercy to the merciful as we celebrate and savor each Sunday, the very face of God to the pure heart to glimpse.
He is a declaration to the peacemakers, you are God's children. And for the persecuted, joy, for they are declared to be among the community of prophets like Jesus himself, who knew suffering and the exaltation of God. Jesus didn't just speak about God's world, God's reality, God's kingdom coming near. He was that world come near.
That's our conviction.
And yet, even as Jesus spoke, King Herod was still on the throne.
And that kingdom, as Matthew's Gospel portrays it, clearly didn't operate according to values like lifting up the poor, comforting the mournful, exalting the weak, hungering for righteousness. As the disciples listened to Jesus speak, they surely wanted to say, wait, Jesus, this sounds great.
And maybe they even recognize the kingdom is there at work that moment as Jesus spoke to them. But what about when they come down from the mountain? What about when you and I come down from the mountain or step out into the world outside these doors? And it sure doesn't seem out there or down there like mercy, peacemaking, meekness and purity of heart are winning the day. It seems they are losing.
And certainly the disciples would have had that question placed front and center in their minds when this teacher of theirs, a king who rode into Jerusalem without weapons, on a donkey like a prince of peace, would be mocked, spat upon, crucified with a sign that read over his Head. This is Jesus, the king of the. Of the Jews.
And surely, the disciples wondered, is that not the real world, what we see there in that sign where a fantasy of some other world, some other king, some other way of being in the world is exposed as one cruel lie. The world is governed by power, enforced by violence. And that.
That is what rules the day.
That's the real world, the one Jesus was shown by the devil up on a high mountain during his temptations. One where a true king can control the world if they'll just bow down to the devil and abandon the ways of God. Simple, surely, the disciples wondered if the world Jesus had shown them was just a dream.
And now back to the world that is so often a nightmare.
But then, as Matthew's gospel will tell the story, the one crucified for righteousness sake, the one meek and merciful and pure in heart, the peacemaker rises to new life.
And the disciples will see him again on a high mountain. And again he'll usher them into another world where, with just a few words, he'll say, all authority on heaven and on earth have been given to me.
Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And remember, I'm with you always to the very end of the age.
And then that's the end of Matthew's gospel.
Nearly 2,000 years later, disciples still live in a world where the Beatitudes seem upside down compared to the world as we know it, or at least a different world than the one that's so often painted for us in the news.
You know, I was struck by the words of White House Deputy Chief of Staff for policy Stephen Miller 2 weeks ago when he said this in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper. We live in a world, he said, in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world in the real world, Jake, that's governed by strength, that's governed by force, that's governed by power.
These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.
So I'm a religious leader.
That struck me as a religious statement.
So let me make a religious response.
Let me lift up Scripture's proclamation and our faith's conviction that it is God who governs the world, and it is God's law, God's word that reveals to us who this God is and how this God has called us to be in the world even if that is in some tension with the world as it is or it is in tension with the world as others choose to live in the world.
And let me remind us of the good news of how in the fullness of time when God wanted to reveal God's law, God's word to us in a new way, God sent us Jesus Christ. He was God with us.
He is God with us. He will be God with us to the very end of the age.
And if you want to know what God's rule, what God's reign truly looks like, what that kingdom looks like so we can embrace it right now in this world, let me point you to words far better than I could ever offer.
And maybe another world will open up for you too as you hear those words again.
Blessed. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, amen.
