Last week we heard the blessed and woes, what we call the Beatitudes. This morning we hear a sort of Part 2 of what we began to hear last Sunday. Jesus climbs a mountain and teaches. He actually sits down. Some have said that all rabbis teach when they sit but I don’t think that’s the case. In fact, what we have preserved for us is probably not one teaching but several. In a sense this teaching could be called “the greatest hits” of Jesus because they were originally part of a series of teachings. But whatever it was, we hear that he sits down and his disciples draw near. I am confident that they had no idea how radical of a teaching Jesus was about to deliver. Nor did they have any idea how many have distanced themselves from these teachings over the years, or attempted to spiritualize them or find a loop hole in the middle of them.
It’s good to note that these teachings were not intended for those outside the movement Jesus was establishing. It was those on the inside, and it still is. Those who were the first hearers were those who had already left everything to follow this itinerant preacher from Galilee. They had left families, homes and occupations to follow Jesus.
At this point we are pretty confident that there were twelve disciples but at this point in the Gospel of Luke we have only recorded the call of four: Peter, James, Andrew and John. But the number of disciples is insignificant because the very fact that this has been saved for us indicates that the early church saw these teachings as significant and preserved them for later generations. They were important to this fledgling movement and continue to be so for those of us who seek to live more fully into the Jesus movement.
This is one of those times that we can get lost in the Gospel, even though we have heard it so many times. Or we can spiritualize it or make it into a self-help manual about how to be happy. Frankly the worst I have heard done to this radical teaching was to make it a how-to guide on how to be happy. Someone once called them the “Be happy attitudes.” That’s pretty cute but it misses the point. So, let’s try an experiment that can be helpful when trying to recapture the essence of Jesus teaching. I can’t always do this, but let’s try, if you can, tpo suspend your sense of time and place and pull up a rock to sit on… or a pile of leaves, whichever is more comfortable. Sit down and let this itinerant preacher from Galilee teach something that we all want: how is it that we can be blessed? Not just happy but truly experience the blessed life even though we live over two thousand years after Jesus showed us how we should live to experience a life described as “blessed.” So instead of a road map on how to find a happy life, the beatitudes point us toward a responsibility of living fully into who we were created to be, and that points us toward a responsibility to live in a specific way. Indeed, to live this way is to live a life well-lived. To ignore it is to waste the beauty of life that God intends for each of us.
So, as we look again from afar, indeed we are centuries from this moment recorded for us and Jesus sees the crowds and seems to know that they need to listen as carefully as his disciples. to receive it. We don’t know a lot about the crowds but if we’ve paid attention we have read that by this time Jesus is becoming pretty well know. His fame, we are told, has spread throughout Syria. It’s interesting why this was happening. It’s not because they want a teacher to open up the door to a life well lived. Nor do they necessarily want a savior, though there was a significant expectation that a messiah would soon become. No they had heard about the healings, the miracles. They had heard that people were being set free and so the drawing card was the miracles and so there was a growing movement of people bringing those they knew who were struggling with illness, or had been born blind, were disabled and found themselves without hope. There were others who had friends and family members struggling spiritually, some they felt were possessed by demons. But it that was their primary reason for showing up to hear the Sermon on the Mount, they might have left disappointed because there was something more important than Jesus simply providing relief from physical and emotional challenges.
So, with that as a background, lets swoop down from a thousand feet above to right on top of Jesus’ teaching. In a lot of ways, all this seems so beyond us. Can you imagine if you’re not familiar with these words? I can only think of one way to describe what Jesus is teaching: this is radical, loving stuff.
We do not have recorded any conversations that were being held among those in the crowd but surely there were many. But we can make some educated guesses about what was said. If they had heard of all that he had done and showed up to see more of the same, many had to be disappointed. This isn’t what they had t have expected. It was almost like buying tickets to a concert and then arrive and find out there won’t be any of that. It’s just some man teaching. There wasn’t even an opportunity for some Q and A.
For us, we know that Jesus primary purpose in coming among us wasn’t to heal, cast out demons, raise the dead, give sight to the blind and enabled the lame to walk. He did all that but if that was his primary purpose for coming us, then he would have found another steep mountain, climbed it, spread out his arms and healed everyone on the earth. That didn’t happen becuasue that is not why he came. He came to bridge the gap between God and God’s creation. He came to show us that God is loving and desires to engage with us on a very deep, personal level. He came to start a movement that would reveal to the world that there is a different way to live, to love. He came to set us free to love and by doing so to point all toward the one who creates, sustains and redeems. He came to tell us that despite our best efforts, all our religious attempts to make things right between humanity and God always fails. That’s why the religious folks had the hardest time with him. They had established a thorough and complicated check list full of duties and obligations. That won’t do, Jesus said. Nice try but religion ultimately ends up with the haves and have nots, those on the inside and those on the outside.
We tend to take these teachings and make some sort of religious dogma out of them. We hear Jesus say blessed are you when you do this and that, and we quietly whisper to ourselves: yes, I do that. Check. Yes, I am like that. Check. And then we hit a difficult one that challenges us and say: well, this is impossible. I don’t even know anyone like that.
Oh, it even gets worse. Sometimes we think we may know someone just like what Jesus described and think well, that’s them. They don’t have all the baggage of life that I do. Or maybe you’re like me and you think: well, if this is the job description of those who call themselves Christians, someone needs to introduce them to me because I have questions. I’m not sure I’ve seen many of these people.
Before I go any further, this needs to be said: be kind and gentle to yourselves. Most of come to church Sunday after Sunday pretty much beaten up by the world and those in it. You see, we tend to make even the teaching of the Beatitudes into some sort of litmus test and when we fall short, as we all do, we tend to be self-critical and disappointed. That’s not why Jesus taught these things to the original hearers and to us who follow in their footsteps. We need to hear these old words again: “we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Yes, indeed. But also hear these ancient words: “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” It might seem like a careful threading through both of these, but I believe it is in grasping the truth of that we can be set free. And when we find ourselves free, the gratitude alone creates in us a heart that can forgive and love the way Jesus calls us. We don’t end up disappointed and disillusioned but instead, if we will allow it, the love of God, freshly and openly experienced, will change us.
Although the Sermon on the Mount begins with the Beatitudes and the promises of comfort, it moves quickly and challenges that comfort. Jesus is not selling his disciples a false hope; he is veryhonest with them. In this same Gospel, he will tell these same disciples, and anyone else who claims that designation, “whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:38) and “if any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). As someone has said: “The cross is the narrow way. It is also the way to show love. No one said the path into the kingdom would be easy. But is it worthwhile? Absolutely, because it allows disciples to focus their love and their talents, to have better knowledge of self and better concepts of living within a community.” Levine, Amy-Jill. Sermon on the Mount (p. 119). Abingdon Press. Kindle Edition.
And that’s the key for us. Like so much in the Gospel, and in the teaching of Jesus it is very easy to make it into some sort of individualistic formula to make it to heaven, but as I have mentioned, that something that Jesus doesn’t focus on much. Jesus is telling his disciples, and by extension us, what it means to live in community. Or better, how to live in a community that makes a difference, indeed that changes the world. That’s why this is so important for us to look at, to examine. This kind of community ethic is what we, those of us here at Holy Comforter, are called to live into. You see in order to love our enemies as ourselves, we are called to love those with whom we do life. You know, the person sitting next to you, the kids in the youth group, those serving in the altar guild, the LEMs and acolytes and even that pesky deacon we call Bob.
But don’t give yourself a grade. Just take this teaching, the beatitudes to heart because the ironic thing is this: when we fail to live into such a loving ethic, God gives another opportunity and another one and another one. God doesn’t do this to punish us or to beat us up because, here we go again, we’ve failed. No, God gives us these opportunities to change us. When we stumble, we get up, shake off the dust from our pants, ask for forgiveness and start all over again.
I recently read this which is a great reminder about love:
Love is more than a feeling. Love is a form of sweet labor: fierce, bloody, imperfect, and life giving—a choice we make over and over again. If love is sweet labor, love can be taught, modeled, and practiced. This labor engages all our emotions: Joy is the gift of love. Grief is the price of love. Anger is the force that protects that which is loved. And when we think we have reached our limit, wonder is the act that returns us to love. —Valarie Kaur, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love
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