Text: Matthew 5:1-16
Grace and peace to you through God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Over the last nine months, we have been making our way through the Beatitudes, taking them one by one, spending three or four weeks on each one. We’ve now made it completely through them, and this is the last sermon in this series. But we aren’t done with the Beatitudes. We can’t be.
The Beatitudes form the preamble for Jesus’ Kingdom Manifesto, his Sermon on the Mount. Many people read the rest of the Sermon on the Mount like a set of idealistic commandments that no one can ever achieve. “Jesus could fulfill them, but we can’t,” the thinking goes.
We are experts at avoiding what God asks us to do. Even so, we must remember that God’s grace does not begin with our obedience, it begins with Jesus’ obedience and the blessings that flow through him. Jesus frees us to lives of obedience, to live life as God intended.
In Jesus, God’s blessings are poured out upon the people – people just like he had been healing, people just like you and me. The poor in spirit, the mourning, the meek, those thirsting for righteousness, and so on.
Jesus has the crowds in view, and he wants his disciples to know that the Kingdom of God requires no visas, no passport photos. The Kingdom of God has no walls, no fences costing hundreds of millions of dollars, no fingerprints, no rules as to who can come in and for how long. No, the Homeland Security for the Kingdom of God is Jesus, the lamb who was slain, the suffering servant. This is the Good News: “Repent, believe, and receive God’s blessings.”
But God’s blessings are not sent with a delivery confirmation only. No, God wants more than that. God wants a return receipt. And the receipt that God desires is for his people to be God’s blessings for others. They are the salt of the earth, a light of the world, a city on the hill. The Blessed People who are part of the Blessed Community that is a sign of the Blessed Kingdom of God are to be a Blessing People a part of Blessing Community because Jesus has brought the Blessing Kingdom of God. Here, in this place. Now, at this time.
Blessed to Blessing. When we receive God’s blessings and live into them, we will join God in blessing others. Blessed to Blessing. This is the journey of all disciples. But sometimes, we have a hard time living into that journey.
Every three months or so, you receive in your church mailboxes a publication from Mennonite Mission Network called Beyond Ourselves. There is a new one in your mailboxes this morning, and I encourage you to read through this. In the last issue, the Executive Director, Stanley Green, wrote an editorial that he entitled “I will make you a blessing.” (Link)
He told the story of growing up “coloured” (as he was classified) in apartheid South Africa. When he was six years old, his father and mother bought some property in the coloured section of town. They had plans to build a house. But soon after, his father was laid off from work, and his mother became pregnant with what would be his youngest brother. Relying on their savings, they went ahead with their plans to build anyway, even though their money was not nearly enough. Let me continue this story in his words:
We had to move into our new house when we had no windows. We propped up tables in the front and back doors to keep out whatever needed to be kept out. We used candlelight at night. Slowly, my parents made progress. My dad started his own contracting company. In time, there were windows and doors where earlier there were geometric holes.
Things began to look up.
One evening, during those difficult days, my mother prepared a stew with bones. I suppose there was a little meat on them, but they were mainly bones. While the meal was cooking on a wood fire out back, tended by my mother, a neighbor couple came to visit. Embarrassed by the meager meal that was to be our fare that evening, and unsettled by the timing of our neighbors’ visit, my mother chose not to invite them to share our paltry dinner offering.
Untended, the fire logs burned out. As the visit stretched longer than was expected, stray dogs came by and made themselves a feast . . .. When our neighbors finally left, Mother and Dad ventured out back to see if the stew was still warm enough to be enjoyed.
They found what was left of the pot’s content strewn on the ground.
There were no stores anywhere nearby in this newly-created neighborhood. That night, when my siblings and I finished whining, I watched my mother cry herself to sleep.
Later, my mother would recount three important lessons she learned that evening:
- Never stop being grateful for what you have (for these too are the blessings of God.)
- Never be ashamed of what you have.
- Always be willing to share, whether what you have is little or large.
Green goes on to say that, after that experience, his parents trusted God to provide. Even in the lean years, the table in his home always seemed to have enough for his family and for the guests who came to visit with them.
In Genesis chapter 12, God promised Abraham, “I will bless you, and I will make you a blessing, all the people of the earth will be blessed through you.” In Matthew, Chapters 4 and 5, Jesus announces the fulfillment of God’s promises with his miraculous healing and his announcement of God’s blessings in the Beatitudes.
When you think about it, it’s really a strange way to change the world, isn’t it? God does not begin with meetings in corner offices, with campaign contributions, or by currying favor with those in power. No, Jesus begins with the lowly, the down-and-out, the despised, and the vulnerable. God blesses those with meatless bones cooking over backyard pots and asks them to bless others. If that does not give us hope, if that does not sound like good news to us, then we are on the wrong side of the upside down kingdom.
This is the quiet revolution. This is the revolution not of grand gestures but of authentic, everyday acts.
I like the way Shane Claiborne describes it. This revolution will not be televised. It will not be brought to you by Fox News with commercial interruptions. It will not be sandwiched between advertisements promising to accelerate your life, slow down your aging, or allow you to be all you can be. It will not be attended to as a hobby, interrupted by cell phones, or relegated to emails and the internet.
There will be no reruns. The revolution will be live 24/7/365. The revolution will be in the streets. The revolution will be cleaning toilets, hanging laundry, baking casseroles, mowing lawns, sending cards, cutting flowers, giving another blanket to the man sleeping in the park.
The revolution will not be talking about poverty, talking about grace, talking about salvation, talking about forgiveness, confession, and Jesus. It will be eating tv dinners with your lonely friend Jim, sweeping the stoop of your ill aunt Mary, watching a baseball game with your talks-too-much neighbor, celebrating the graduation of a troubled teenager. Get ready, friends, God is preparing us for something really, really . . . . small. (from Tom Sine, The New Conspirators, link)
“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches.” He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough.” (Matthew 13:31-33)
Whatever the status or future for our nation’s economy, no matter the fears created by budget deficits, the pressures caused by overcommitted calendars, the grief caused by losses, God will supply all of our needs. God will give us all we need to flourish.
The Kingdom of God that Jesus announced and embodied is the Blessed Kingdom, and the good news is that God has chosen to help those who cannot help themselves. The Kingdom of God that Jesus announced and embodied is the Blessing Kingdom, and the good news is that you – and we – are particularly qualified to join with what God is doing through the grace of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit.
In 1 Corinthians, chapter 1, Paul reminds the believers of the church in Corinth who they are and who God is. ”Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: ‘Let those who boast boast in the Lord.’” (1 Corinthians 1)
May we never stop being grateful for the blessings that God has given us.
May we never be ashamed for what we have.
May we always be willing to share, whether what we have is little or large.
”You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:13-15)
The Kingdom of God is the Blessed Community. The Kingdom of God is the Blessing Community.
Get ready: “The world for which you have been so carefully prepared is being taken away from you…by the grace and for the glory of God.” (Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church, quoting Walter Brueggemann)
