Given by Sherry Black If you look at the attributes listed in the Beatitudes of our gospel lesson, it sure doesn’t look like a recipe for success!! Blessed are the poor. It seems that the world says blessed are the rich! I used to work in plastics manufacturing and a joke that was told is: How do you make a small fortune in plastics? Start with a large one!! Society says it takes wealth to be successful. Blessed are those who mourn. Gosh, this can’t be right! The rich and successful always look happy. Who said money can’t buy happiness? I don’t know, but I think most of us would like to try! Blessed are the meek. Society says blessed are the powerful, the aggressive, the go-getters. I don’t know about you, but unfortunately my get-up and go, got up and left! Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. The world says blessed are those who hunger and thirst for power, for wealth, for status. Blessed are they who keep up with the Jones’s, hungering and thirsting after more and more possessions and stuff. Blessed are the merciful. Society says blessed are those who look out for number one, and who cares about those you step on on your way to the top. Blessed are the pure in heart. Society says purity doesn’t matter. Sin doesn’t matter. God doesn’t matter. If it feels good, do it!! If it feels right, it must be right. Blessed are the peacemakers? Blessed are those who sue their neighbors, or corporations, or anyone they can . . . to make a buck. Not peace, but division and antagonism. Play the victim. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that they aren’t out to get you—so you better get them first! Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake. But the world says blessed are you who are persecuted for being a Muslim, a Jew, a Hindu, a minority, whatever. But Chris tians are fair targets. What an upside down view! Poverty, mourning, meekness, hungry and thirsty, merciful, pure, peacemakers, persecuted, these are all attributes of blessing? How countercultural can you get? Do the beatitudes sound like good news? Or are they impossible demands? Why do the poor, the mournful, the meek get God’s attention? Why are they especially deserving of God’s concern? Monika Hellwig was an American Roman Catholic theologian and author who put together a list of ten advantages to being poor.
In short, the poor are more open to God’s grace, and perhaps because of neediness and dissatisfaction they are more able to welcome God’s grace into their lives. In contrast, the rich do not know they need saving. Their security is in things, not people. They don’t acknowledge their need for redemption. They don’t depend on other people or on God, but on their own ability and power. Competition reigns supreme among the wealthy, and luxuries have become necessities. When you look at the attributes of the beatitudes, and of spiritual life, they include things like dependence, humility, simplicity, cooperation, and abandonment. These are elusive qualities for the rich and powerful. In God’s eyes, in the Kingdom life, there aren’t many wealthy saints! The poor are not necessarily better or more virtuous than anyone else, but they tend not to have the arrogance and self-righteousness of the rest of us. They don’t have any masks to hide behind. The poor, the hungry, the mourners, the oppressed—are blessed, because there is little that gets in the way of their openness to God. People who are rich, successful, and beautiful rely on their natural gifts. People who lack such things, in their desperation, just might turn to the Greatest Gift. And while most of us don’t consider ourselves to be poor, we can look at these attributes and substitute the word “I” as a barometer of our spiritual fitness. Let’s try it:
So how did you do? The good news, too, is that these are not really attributes we can develop in our own lives, but they come as a natural result of living our lives surrendered to Jesus our Lord. He had—he was all these things, and by living “in him” we will become like him. We cannot try to be humble, to be poor in spirit, to be mournful and sad. It really doesn’t work. But Jesus became humility, poverty, and sorrow on our behalf. Like the poor, we truly are powerless to obtain God’s grace. When we read the beatitudes, like the 10 Commandments or other “rules,” we find ourselves humbled by them. Martin Luther said that the law humbles, and grace exalts. Through knowledge of our own failures and shortcomings comes humility, and through humility comes God’s grace. When we are humbled by own sinfulness, emptiness and inward despair, we see that God is our only hope. And God gives grace to the humble. We cannot be saved by our works, and we cannot even humble ourselves. But we can be humbled. Like God’s grace, humility is something that is done to us, something that comes from the inside out. The point is that we bring nothing and Jesus brings everything. We do nothing because Jesus already did everything. The beatitudes tell us the shape of our character when we are ruled by the purposes of God and not by credentials, status, and money. When we live according to God’s purposes, we will develop these attributes. One final story:
Living our lives, loving our God, we will be transformed from the inside out. Blessing will follow us wherever we go. In Philippians 1:6, Paul says 6 I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. Amen. 1 http://net.bible.org/illustration.php?topic=1674 2 http://net.bible.org/illustration.php?topic=1674 3 Charles Kirkpatrick, www.Sermons4Kids, 2002 |