EDITOR'S NOTE: On Oct. 23, 2021, I was ordained as a minister of word and sacrament in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and installed as pastor at Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. I also served the same church for four years from October 2017 to October 2021 a synodically authorized minister. The journey together these past four years has been an amazing one, full of learning, growing and a deepening of my theological mind. This sermon took place on Jan. 29, 2023.
This week's gospel: Matthew 5:1-12
The Beatitudes
5 When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2 And he began to speak and taught them, saying:
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
5 “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
The message:
We don’t know it, because it is so pervasive in our culture nowadays, but we have done a mighty good job of contorting Christianity to suit our own needs.
We’re all guilty, of course. Because this level of contortion only comes when all of us collectively have bought into the ruse.
Strong words, you might think. … After all, we’re here on this bone-chilling cold Sunday to come hear the word of God and take communion right? … And you’re telling us our Christianity is contorted?
Yes … and I say that confidently because if you use today’s gospel lesson as a prism through which to view the current state of Christianity, I think it’s the only conclusion you can come to.
I say it confidently … because if you listen to what we as a society consider being blessed … and compare it with whom Jesus says is blessed in today’s gospel … it’s people at completely opposite ends of the spectrum.
Jesus tells his disciples that it is the poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who are meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, those who are merciful, pure in heart and peacemakers, those who are persecuted and reviled for believing in Jesus.
Now, those are those who are blessed, Jesus teaches his disciples.
But, compare that against what we consider blessings today. Look at what media messaging tells us what blessings mean. Big fancy houses, fast cars, bigger trucks, glamorous hair, glitzy vacations. Right?
But where are the commercials about being poor in spirit, or hungering for righteousness or being meek?
Whose got time for those principles … when we’ve got fortunes to make? … Because, if I’m honest, that’s when I feel blessed!
We’ve even coined a term for this belief. … We call it the “Prosperity Gospel.”
Have you heard that phrase? … Prosperity Gospel?
In a nutshell it tells us that if I’m a good enough Christian, that the glamorous houses, fast cars and fancy vacations will find their way to me. … That if I pray enough, and think the right things, and go to church on Sundays like good Christians do … then all of these blessings will find me.
But notice, it is called the “Prosperity Gospel” after all … and the blessings are equated with material things that never receive a mention in Jesus’ words in the “Sermon on the Mount.”
That seems a bit strange, doesn’t it? … Jesus doesn’t mention anything about prospering when he sits down on that mountain to describe the kingdom of heaven to his disciples. … Rather his description of blessings likely would make today’s televangelists recoil.
Well, certainly us Christians can’t be doing that bad, you might be thinking to yourself? … After all, we do a lot of good for people. Aren’t you being a little harsh, pastor?
Maybe I am … but the evidence doesn’t support that we understand Jesus’ sermon very well.
I’ll give you two real world examples.
First, we just came through the Christmas season, and we -- like you probably did -- received a couple of dozen Christmas greetings, some containing the annual family Christmas letter. … I’m sure that many of you received similar letters.
And as I perused every one of those letters, they all contained a great many reasons that people were grateful this year. And nearly every one of them were blessed because they were healthy, surrounded by their loved ones, had great pets and someone in the family got into the college they desired.
“We feel so blessed,” many of those letters concluded. … You know what I’m talking about. … You receive them too.
Not one of those letters, though, ever tells me the family was blessed because they mourned a loved one dying this year, or that they had a crisis in faith and Jesus met them there this year, or that they attempted to make peace in a longstanding family dispute this past year, or that they found themselves being merciful to someone who maybe didn’t deserve it.
Nope, that’s not what makes the Christmas letters, is it?
Instead, we assure the receivers that we are blessed because we are financially secure, our closest loved ones still surround us and that we have handsome looking pets.
Sounds a little silly? … A little facetious? … Well, maybe.
But I’ll give you one more real world example. … For those of you who do follow any sort of social media. … Look up the hashtag “blessed” … and tell me what you find there.
For those of you who don’t use social media, a hashtag is like a label. … When you post something on your social media, you can add hashtags to the end of the post. And then anyone searching for that specific hashtag would see everyone’s content that received that label.
So, imagine what you find when you search social media for the hashtag “blessed?” … I’m sure you can imagine.
Photos of big new homes, and shiny new cars. … New job announcements. … Big, happy family gatherings. … Christmas trees obscured by mounds of presents in front of them. … College acceptances. … Glowing engaged couples. … People on vacation.
And on and on.
But nowhere in the many hundreds of thousands of social media posts that contain the hashtag “blessed,” do you see the poor in spirit, or those who mourn, or those who are meek, or those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, those who are merciful, pure in heart and peacemakers, those who are persecuted and reviled for believing in Jesus.
Because collectively, we faithful have contorted Jesus’ original message in the “Sermon on the Mount” to suit our earthly desire for money, big houses and the fancy things that everyone else will covet.
Today, we too easily equate our financial standing and our status in society and our possessions as indicators of our blessings. … The Prosperity Gospel, remember?
Well, if I’m a good Christian, then I will prosper. And given my current prosperity, it must be proof that I’m a good Christian. … See how that works? … See how we’ve contorted Christianity to fit our needs?
But if we hold up this vision of earthly life with the vision of the kingdom of heaven that Jesus describes in the gospel today. … Then, we can only conclude that we have missed his point entirely.
Jesus tells us very plainly what God’s kingdom looks like, and it has very little to do with those who are prospering now, here in this life. … In fact, he plainly states that the meek and mournful and reviled and persecuted will be the ones rewarded in heaven.
Well, now that doesn’t make for a very effective television commercial, does it? … And who wants to see that kind of post on their Facebook page?
Faith Family, please take note that this famous sermon by Jesus tells us what the kingdom of God looks like: Those who struggle but trust in their faith, those who mourn for any reason, those who don’t have the power, those who forgive those who don’t deserve it, and those who hunger to set the injustices of this world right. Those who seek to mend fences, and to ensure that all equally enjoy God’s bounty.
They are the ones who are blessed. The rest of us are pretending.
Faith Family, that is what the kingdom of heaven looks like, but we’ve been tricked by modern Christianity to believe in something entirely different.
Don’t fall for it.
We must resist the temptation to believe that somehow we receive compensation for being good Christians. That our health, wealth and status are somehow examples that God is shining his countenance on us.
Because if that is the basis of our faith, then one day it will fail us. … If we truly believe that our prosperity is the just rewards of our faith, then the moment the prosperity evaporates -- and it will in this life for nearly all of us at some point -- it’s then that our faith crumbles.
But, if we can root our faith in Jesus’ message today, we just might find rare glimpses of heaven right here on earth. In the eyes of the panhandler standing at the interstate off-ramp, in the look of relief on the family finding a shelter in which to stay on 20 below nights, in the joy of those standing in line at the food pantry.
Yes, we have contorted Christianity, Faith Family, but … our blinded, narrow-minded understanding of the kingdom of God doesn’t have to win. Jesus provides us all the insight we need right here in today’s “Sermon on the Mount.”
And that is the Good News for this Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Jan. 29, 2023. … Amen.
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