Living the Beatiudes: Part 4

This morning we conclude our series of reflections on the Beatitudes with the last and longest of these famous sayings of Jesus.  It’s the Beatitude that is perhaps the most disturbing to our modern ears, as well as the one that is— for many of us I suspect— the most distant from our actual lived experience:

 “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, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

What on earth are we to do with this? 

 At least with all the other Beatitudes, we feel like we can relate.  At one point or another all of us have been the ones who mourn, the ones who are poor in spirit, the ones who hunger and thirst after righteousness.  But this last Beatitude can feel like words for a distant people in a distant time and place.  After all, while our friends might wonder why we still bother to come to church in this modern age, no one is going to jail us, beat us, or threaten our lives because of what we believe.  We no longer live in the world—for example-- that Jesus’ original audience lived in.  1^st century Jews in Palestine knew that their situation was precarious.  They had allowances from the Roman Empire to practice Judaism, but only so long as they remained compliant with Roman authorities, paid their taxes, and maintained ultimate loyalty to Caesar.  Any hint of radical religion or rebellion, and what little freedom they had could be crushed in a moment.  One can imagine that Jesus’ audience might have been even more uncomfortable hearing these words than we are today.  They might have thought—“this guys needs to tone down his rhetoric, or he’s going to get us all in a whole lot of trouble!”  And of course, as we all know, he eventually did.  By the time these words were actually written down, John the Baptist had lost his head, Jesus had been crucified, and the early Christian church had begun to see its first martyrs.

But things are different for us now.  We live in a world where Christianity, while perhaps not as all powerful of an institution as it was hundreds of years ago, is still the dominant religious voice in America.  We live in a world where we are free to believe whatever we want, and practice those beliefs, for the most part, however we choose.  So what could these words possibly mean for us today?

I think one answer to that question lies in the ultimate meaning behind the Beatitudes as a whole, as well as the Sermon on the Mount of which they are a part.  Throughout the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus takes care to set up two realities, and is constantly giving his audience a choice— which reality will you choose?  The Kingdom of this world?  Or the Kingdom of God?  And the Beatitudes, as part of the sermon on the mount, frame that choice in a very specific way.  Whose blessings will you seek?  The blessings of this world?  Or the blessings of God?

Perhaps it would help to frame the question in our modern context a bit.  Consider the complaint of one individual, who says this:

"I go to church on Sunday and hear about how the essence of the good life is self-sacrifice and service—that we are to take up our cross and follow Christ.  But then from Monday to Saturday we are told by pretty much everyone else that the essence of the good life is to assert ourselves and gain all that we can."

I don’t know about all of you, but I can certainly relate to that feeling of conflict between what we talk about in here, and how we live out there.  But in the Beatitudes, Jesus gives his followers— including us— a very clear cut choice.

Which kingdom will you choose?

Whose blessings will you seek?

The truth of the matter is, while it may be a very clear cut choice Jesus is setting up here, as people of faith, we often find ourselves caught between two kingdoms.  Because while we are called to seek after God’s kingdom and God’s blessings, we can’t just sequester ourselves from the world either.  We can’t just hide out behind the doors of our churches all week long.  We are still called to be— in Jesus’ own words— in the world, though not of the world.  And so in setting up a choice between the kingdoms of this world and the kingdom of God, Jesus is not telling his disciples to simply wait things out in this world in order to receive blessings in the next. Immediately following the Beatitudes comes another famous teaching— Jesus’ call for his disciples to be a light to the world, and salt of the earth.  In choosing to seek after God’s kingdom and God’s blessing, Jesus is not calling us to disengage from the world.  But he is warning his disciples—and us-- that the kind of engagement he is calling for may cause conflict when the ways of God’s kingdom inevitably bump up against the ways of the world.  But like the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures, and like Jesus himself, we are called not to shrink away from that conflict-- not to be afraid of it, but to shine God’s light upon it and seek to mend it.

There is perhaps no better contemporary example of this than that of the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. One of the most famous documents to come out of that era is Dr. Martin Luther King’s Jr. letter from Birmingham jail, in which he responds to the criticisms from clergy colleagues that his actions are too extreme.  They tell him that he’s causing too much trouble.  “Now is not the right time,” his fellow ministers tell him, “the kingdoms of this world are not ready for your demands.”  But as he writes—literally from a jail cell— he defends his actions in Birmingham, saying, “just as the prophets of the 8^th century left their villages and carried their message of justice far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my home town…  for injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.  Later in the letter, he responds the criticism that he and his fellow activists are extremists, writing “was not Jesus Christ an extremist for love, truth and goodness?”  And of course it was not just King who found himself persecuted for his belief in the gospel of freedom.  Many other suffered police brutality and jail time for their actions.  Even many of the white preachers and lawyers who stood alongside King found themselves losing their jobs and their credibility. Dr. King and those who walked with him were people who made a choice.  They chose—very deliberately-- to eschew the blessings of the world in order to seek the blessings of God’s kingdom.

As followers of Christ, we are similarly called to choose to live within the tension between two worlds— the tension that exists between the world as it is and the world as it should be, between the already and the not yet.  We are called to recognize God’s saving act in Jesus Christ, but we are also called to recognize that God’s work is not yet complete, and that God has chosen us, and given us the power of the Holy Spirit, so that we might be a part of that great work.  And that also means that as people of faith, we are not always called to be comfortable.  We are called— as we heard in our first reading this morning-- beyond our comfort zone.

Now don’t get me wrong, there are times in our walk of faith that we need the comfort of the gospel.  Times when we have experienced great loss, time when we are in the midst of tragedy and need to hear Christ’s voice saying to us, “come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”  But just as often, there are times in our walk of faith that we must move beyond that comfort in order to more fully experience the blessings that God wishes for us to have.  There are times when we must make the choice of which kingdom we wish to build, and whose blessings we wish to seek. And for those of us who have read the rest of Christ’s words in the sermon on the mount, we know that that’s not necessarily an easy choice to make. It’s a choice that requires loving our enemies, turning the other cheek, and purging anger from our hearts.  It’s a choice that requires-- to use Christ’s words—“being perfect as our heavenly father is perfect.”  It’s a tall order for sure.  G.K. Chesterton once famously said that “it’s not that the Christian ideal has been tried and found wanting, It’s that it has been found difficult, and left largely untried.”

In this last Beatitude, Jesus tells us flat out that to make the choice to follow him will not always keep us free from pain and conflict.  And why would we ever expect it to-- knowing that this man we are freely choosing to follow was ultimately taken to the cross?  But lest you think this Beatitude is all doom and gloom for us Christians, there is good news to be found in these words as well.  The good news is that if we make that choice to follow in the ways of Christ, we are choosing to be people of hope.  We are choosing to believe that the world as it is, is not all there is. We are choosing to join the ranks of prophets, poets, and priests— people who have been lights to this world and salt to this earth.  And even if we run into conflict and even if we face obstacles, even if the results of our work seem small and unremarkable to our eyes, remember that the real hope is not in what we do ourselves, but is in God.  Our God who can make something out of nothing, and who can transform the feeble works of our hands into miracles that can move mountains.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Amen, and let it be so.

Living the Beatitudes Part 3: Blessed Are the Peacemakers

Part three of a four week series of reflections on the Beatitudes from the Gospel of Matthew

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Living the Beatitudes: Part 2

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled...

One of the most highly anticipated movies of the summer is coming out in less than two weeks, and it’s one I happened to be very excited about.  It’s the third in a trilogy of films based on a popular comic book series-- one of the most popular film adaptations of a comic book to come out in recent years.  Some have even gone so far as to call it a modern cinematic classic.  If you don’t already know which film I’m referring to, let me clue you in—it’s Batman.

Now many of you—like myself— may be eagerly awaiting the arrival of this film on the big screen.  When you think about it though, it’s really kind of incredible that anyone would want to go see a movie-- let alone three movies-- about an eccentric billionaire who dresses up like a bat and flies around town fighting crime.  It’s really pretty ridiculous when you think about it!  But I think the reason it’s so popular is that underneath the costumes, the over-the-top villains, the crazy gadgets and the special effects; there is a timeless, classic story of a man who is hungry for justice.  Someone who recognizes the injustices in the world around him and seeks to do something about it.  Justice, fairness, and retribution.  These are supposedly the kinds of values underlying the stories— not only of batman-- but really of all the classic comic book tales.  And they are also values that have become deeply ingrained in American popular culture.  We love to hear these stories of good triumphing over evil, of wrongs made right, of injustice being met with justice. People flock to the theaters to see these stories played out on the big screen.  One might say we are hungry for it. 

On the surface, one might think that seeing these values surface in our popular culture is a pretty positive thing.  In fact some might even make the argument that it’s a reflection of our Judeo-Christian values.  After all we find references to justice and righteousness scattered everywhere throughout both the old and new testaments— “Let justice roll down like waters,” the prophet Amos declares, “and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”  “What does the Lord require of you,” asks the prophet Micah, “but to do justice.”  And of course we have the words of Christ himself— “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be filled.”  Other translations of this text read “blessed are those who hunger and thirst after justice.”  It’s the fourth of Jesus’ Beatitudes— his descriptive list of what it looks like to live a life blessed by God.  And when placed before the backdrop of American pop-culture, it might seem as if we are actually doing pretty well at this particular beatitude.  After all, do we not hunger for justice?  Do we not stand up and cheer when the good guys triumph over evil and when justice and righteousness win the day?

Well perhaps…

But as is often the case with Jesus, there’s a little more to it than that.  And in order to truly claim an understanding of this Beatitude and then be able to live it out as Christian disciples in the world, we have to dig a little deeper in order to understand the depth of what Jesus is really trying to tell us.

Now to our modern ears, to hunger and thirst after righteousness may simply sound like a call to live just and moral lives.  To be upright citizens-- living according to the law and ensuring that when laws are broken, proper retribution is carried out.  And it certainly is that.  But it’s also more than that.  Jesus was echoing the words of the Hebrew Prophets in this Beatitude, for whom justice and righteousness was not only about following the letter of the law, but also went beyond the law towards a far far deeper kind of justice. Not just punitive justice for those who do wrong, but restorative and transformative justice for all.

In chapter 58 of the book of Isaiah, for example, the prophet declares these words: “Is this not the fast I choose: to loosen the bonds of injustice and to let the oppressed go free?  Is it not to share bread with the hungry and shelter those who are homeless?  Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and then shall your healing spring up, and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.”

For Isaiah, and for all the prophets, the meaning of true justice and righteousness could be summed up in a single Hebrew word—Shalom.  Most of us know this word as a kind of greeting meaning “peace be with you.”  But beyond its function as a mere greeting, Shalom also refers to an important concept within Jewish theology.  It means restoration of right relations between human beings, between humanity and creation, and between humanity and God.  Shalom is about restoring the earth and all creation to its fundamental goodness, the goodness that is inherent in all things because creation was made— as Genesis tells us— to reflect the very image of God.  In this fourth Beatitude, Jesus is talking about the kind of hunger for righteousness that goes far beyond a simple desire to see the unjust receive their due.  It’s a hunger for shalom— a hunger for the restoration of the world as it should be, rather than the world as it is.  It’s a hunger to see creation as it was meant to be— reflective of the very image of God.  And so the blessing in this case-- “blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness”-- comes not merely with the execution of justice or the punishment for wrongdoing. Rather, the blessing comes in the seeking itself.  It comes when we align our hearts with the heart of God to seek after true righteousness and shalom.

So what then?  What does this actually look like for us in our communities?  How do we live this beatitude out?

If to hunger and thirst for shalom means seeking to restore creation to reflect the image of God, and if God is particularly concerned with the poor and oppressed— which the Bible tells us that God is— then our communities must also be restored in a way that reflects that image and that concern.  If seeking after shalom means seeking after God’s own heart, then our hunger for justice and righteousness must lead us towards a world in which all are fed. A world in which all have bread, in which all are cared for, in which all have dignity and respect.  Because all of us are made in the image of God.

In most of the comic book movies, there may be thrilling adventures and satisfying endings in which the good guys triumph over evil and justice prevails. But perhaps it’s worth noting that rarely does that triumphant ending have anything to do with justice for the poor or the oppressed.  I can’t really think of any comic book movies in which the hero’s concern for justice is to make sure all the hungry people in the world are fed.  I suppose that wouldn’t really make for quite the same kind of summer blockbuster.  But that’s the kind of justice and righteousness that Jesus is talking about.  That is Shalom.

Here then lies the challenge for us-- because Jesus meant for these Beatitudes to be for all of us— not just the superheroes of the world.  While we may not go out and change the world in as dramatic and impressive ways as they do in the movies, we can change our world— right here.  We can be the superheroes of our own lives and the lives of others around us.  We can be superheroes for Shalom.  We can pay attention to that hunger that resides within each of us-- that hunger that says, I know this isn’t quite how it’s supposed to be— I know that we are meant for something more.  We’ve all felt it that hunger.  So go now, and seek the blessing that resides within it.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be filled.  Amen and let it be so.

Living the Beatitudes: Part 1

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The first in a four part series of relfections on the Beatitudes in the Gospel of Matthew. 

The Beatitudes found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke are among some of Jesus’ most beloved teachings.  In them we find great comfort and promise, and we also find validation for those who seek to walk the Christian Way.  But in them we also find many questions.  Because like so many of Jesus’ most famous teachings, they seem to take conventional wisdom, and turn it completely upside down.  For instance, conventional wisdom in our culture would say that it’s the wealthy and happy people in the world who are blessed— not the poor and grieving.  It would say that it’s the rich and powerful-- not the poor and meek-- who will inherit the earth.  To say ‘blessed are the poor in spirit,’ ‘blessed are those who mourn,’ and ‘blessed are those who are persecuted,’ sounds pretty darn strange in a world where we avoid things like poverty, sadness, and persecution at all costs. And so the beatitudes are not just these nice pithy sayings meant to comfort us in times of trouble.  They are also words that are meant to challenge us to live differently— not in accordance with a world that is often competitive, greedy, and harsh, but rather in accordance with God’s kingdom of love, justice and compassion.  In other words, the Beatitudes are meant to teach us how to be disciples.

And so we are not meant to simply hear the beatitudes— soaking up the truth within them as nourishment for our spirits alone. We are also meant to live them out. For this reason, we will spend the next few weeks taking a more in depth look at these famous sayings of Jesus in order to discover how we might find ways to live them out in our world today.

This morning we begin with the first of the Beatitudes: “blessed are those who are poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” And already we find ourselves in a quandary.  Because for those of us who know the version of the Beatitudes from the Gospel of Luke, we know that it’s slightly different.  In Luke’s gospel it simply reads: “blessed are those who are poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  Absent from Luke’s version is the qualifier—poor in spirit. So which is it?  Is Jesus talking about spiritual poverty?  Or is he talking about material poverty?

One could certainly decide to privilege one version over the other and come to two very different conclusions about who it is that is actually blessed, and therefore what it means for us to live out this teaching in our lives.  Some might hear Matthew’s version and say that one’s material wealth— or lack thereof— has nothing to do with it. That to be poor in spirit is about spiritual humility, it’s about not thinking of oneself more highly than one should.

Others might hear Luke’s version and point to Jesus’ famous interaction with the rich man who asks him how to get into heaven.  Jesus tells him he must sell all his possessions and give the money to the poor, because in Jesus’ words, “it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into heaven.”

So which is it?  Certainly if we look at Jesus’ entire life and ministry, it’s clear that he often pays special attention to the poor and grieving, and that he never hesitates to cut down the wealthy or elite of his society. But it’s not because being poor, in and of itself, automatically gets you into heaven, or even that being rich automatically keeps you out. I think it has more to do with the fact that worldly wealth and security often gets in the way of becoming true disciples of Jesus. Scholar Stanley Hauerwas has written that “to be poor does not in itself make one a follower of Jesus, but it can put you in the vicinity of what it might mean to discover the kind of poverty that frees those who follow Jesus from enslavement to the world… too often we fail to recognize our accommodation to worldly powers because we fear losing our wealth, independence, and security.”

A number of years ago, I spent a year in a faith and social justice internship that took me to the city of Los Angeles, where I shared a small three bedroom apartment with 5 other people and lived off the meager sum of $500 a month.  Believe me when I tell you that in Los Angeles, that doesn’t exactly go far. The idea was to enter into a sort of voluntary poverty and radical simplicity as I and my roommates all worked full time jobs with agencies where our clients had even fewer materials resources than we did.  And I have to admit that when I started off that year, the thought did cross my mind-- once or twice-- that living with so few material comforts would most definitely grant me some serious bragging rights when it came to living the Christian Way.  So much for spiritual humility!

But very early on, I learned something quite surprising. First of all, I learned it wasn’t about having bragging rights. More importantly, however, I found that even though I was living with fewer material comforts than I ever had before, never had I experienced such a deep sense of God’s abundance. It was in fact the very lack of material wealth that forced all of us to rely upon one another and to care more deeply for one another.  We simply weren’t able to go it alone— and that was perhaps one of the greatest luxuries we gave up that year. The illusion of independence and self sufficiency was broken down in front of our very eyes, but in it’s place was a wonderful feeling of deep community and care.

The other thing that began to happen during that year of living simply was that the lines between us and the people we were serving began to blur. Those cultural barriers that separate the haves from the have-nots, the fortunate from the less fortunate, began to break down, as we discovered that the stories clients had to tell were stories that we desperately needed to hear.  I remember one man— I’ll call him William— was a former drug addict. He spent years out on the streets, in and out of prison, on and off drugs.  But when I met William, he had been clean and sober for years, and was finally moving out of the shelter and into his own apartment.  In the years since he had become sober, he had become deeply involved with substance abuse support groups such as NA and AA.  He traveled locally as a motivational speaker for 12 step groups, churches, shelters, and other local service agencies.  Now William would be the first to tell anyone that going through those years of pain, suffering, and poverty is not something he would recommend or wish for anyone.  The point is not to seek out poverty or suffering for its own sake.  But it was through that experience that William’s eyes were opened to the image of God in people that most others would simply ignore or turn away from.  For William, there was dignity and grace and the possibility for restoration in every person— no matter how messed up they were.  He knew this for a fact because it had happened to him.

These are the kinds of stories that changed us the most.  And by the end of the year, as we learned to stop relying on ourselves for everything we needed, we were opened up to the people around us in a new way.  We realized we needed these people just as much or more than they needed us. Hearing the stories of their bravery, their persistence, and their struggles through difficulties we could only imagine was truly humbling.  And it was then, perhaps the first time, that any of us really understood what it meant to be poor in spirit.

Personally, I think that the two versions of this beatitude that we find in Matthew and Luke are simply two sides of the same coin.  It is through our material and spiritual poverty that we come to the realization that we are not meant to live our lives in isolation from one another, but rather that all of us are deeply connected and interdependent, and that we can only make the kingdom of heaven a reality on earth if we recognize the image of God in every person-- whether they are among the wealthiest on the planet, or whether they are among the poorest of the poor.

So what does it take to live this beatitude?  I recognize that not all of us have the luxury of moving to LA for a year and joining some experimental Christian community.  So how do we become poor in spirit where we are, here and now, so that we might experience the kingdom of God?

This morning I would suggest two things as a way to begin.  First, that we continue to examine our own lives to see where it is that our accommodation to worldly power and comfort is keeping us from following in the Way of Jesus Christ.  What are we clinging to—either materially or emotionally— that is holding us back from true connection with others?  Where do we need to give up the illusion of independence in our own lives in order to experience God’s full and true abundance?

Second, we make every effort we can to break down the walls of division between the so called haves and have-nots-- recognizing that all of us are equal in the eyes of God.  I believe that this is especially important for us in this country right now, as the lines between the rich and poor seem to be growing ever more quickly into battle lines manufactured by pundits and politicians, with voices on both sides of the aisle crying out “class warfare!”  Well let me tell you something-- we have news for them.  They may be in a war, but we are not.  They may want to create division, but we do not. Instead, we reach out. We create opportunities to hear the stories of people who are not like us. We find ways to reach across social boundaries of class and economic status—just like Jesus did.  Serve a meal to a hungry person. Talk to someone on the street. Notice that person that you usually ignore. Start small, and see where it takes you.

Blessed are those who are poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Amen, and let it be so.

Singing for Transformation

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In preparation for a congregational hymn-sing, Park Congregational Church spent a month collecting ballots for members’ favorite hymns.  The top vote-getter was then chosen as the subject of that morning’s theological reflection.  What follows is the text of that reflection.

 

In the church, we talk a lot about the gap that supposedly exists between generations when it comes to musical taste.  Some of the older, more beloved hymns that we sing are completely unfamiliar to younger generations, and some of the music that younger generations listen to today sounds utterly foreign to their parents and grandparents.  And so we often wonder if it will ever be possible to bridge that gap.  And yet, interestingly enough, when it came to the hymn that was most requested by all of you for this morning’s service, turns out it was the exact same hymn that was most requested by our youth when we were planning our youth service earlier this summer.  Which I think goes to show that when it comes to the most powerful music, that gap between the generations gets a whole lot smaller.

Now some of you may already have guessed which hymn was the top vote getter this morning, but rather than simply tell you the name of the hymn and then have us sing it, I thought I would first tell you a little bit of it’s story.

In 1736, at the young age of eleven, John Newton left school for a life at sea with his father.  After his father died, Newton continued to serve on a number of ships, until he eventually became the captain of his own, becoming deeply involved in one of the most lucrative industries of the time-- the British slave trade.  Newton captained his ship for many years, until gradually, he found himself more and more uncomfortable with the conditions that the slaves faced during the long voyage from Africa to England.  At first he tried to justify his work by seeking to improve the conditions on his boat as much as possible.  But eventually he realized there was no amount of improvements or adjustments he could make that would justify the cruelty of the slave trade itself.  And so he found himself unable to continue in the work that was essentially the only thing he had ever known in his entire adult life.  And he walked away.  He eventually became an Anglican priest, as well as a strong advocate in the abolition movement in England.  He became good friends with William Wilberforce, who many of you know was the British politician that is largely credited as one of the most powerful figures in the English abolition movement.

As a priest, Newton was not a terribly prolific or even gifted hymn writer.  Only a handful of his hymns actually survive, and of those, there is really only one that is sung with any degree of regularity.  However it’s one of the most popular and beloved hymns of all time.  Perhaps that’s because the words so powerfully describe Newton’s own journey of personal transformation— “I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.”

Maybe some of you know this story already—the story of Amazing Grace.  But it’s worth remembering from time to time-- especially as we prepare to sing it in just a few moments.  Because while Amazing Grace is a beloved hymn that we sing often, it’s more than just good poetry set to a nice, sing-able tune.  We may not think about it much, but perhaps the reason that we love this hymn so much, and perhaps the reason it bridges the gap between generations so well, is because it has its origins in the deepest longings that all of us feel— the longing for true and lasting transformation.  It speaks to the truth that we all so desperately want to believe in-- that change—real change-- is possible.  That even the worst evils and injustices in our world can be defeated by goodness and grace.  That no person, and no situation, is ever beyond redemption.

And so as we join our voices in this old and familiar song, let us sing with the knowledge that wherever it is we seek transformation-- in our lives or in the world in which we live—amazing grace can always be found.