Matthew 5:4
In the first Beatitude, Jesus resets our self-expectations as human beings. Jesus reminds us that we are made to be vulnerable with God and with others. There is an essential, even if unrecognized, poverty of spirit in each of us that reminds us of our need for the other. Most of us experience such relationships only occasionally. In our lives, openness, humility and trust are uncommon. And that brings us to Jesus’ second Beatitude. “Blessed are those who mourn.” The first Beatitude surprises us with our created condition and its resulting blessedness. The second Beatitude surprises us with the blessedness found in our brokenness as human beings. There’s little dispute that we live in a broken world. What is surprising is that Jesus promises blessedness in that reality. Jesus recaps the biblical story not by focusing on human culpability, but by reminding us that the Gospel is indeed Good News. Those who mourn the great loss of humanity’s original potential are promised comfort. As the great prophet Isaiah predicted, “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’” (Isaiah 52:7, NIV) The kingdom of heaven (“Your God reigns!”) comforts us in our mourning because we are promised the restoration of three categories of losses. First, we are promised the restoration of our full humanity. When someone screws up, you’ve probably heard it said that they erred because “they are only human.” But the biblical narrative suggests just the opposite. We behave badly because we are not fully human. Our world and our history are filled with violent brutality, sexual exploitation, and oppression of the poor, all carried out by those of us who are human in name only. The memory of who we are created to be has seemingly been lost. Jesus has come to restore true humanity for us for us in the Sermon on the Mount. Given the vast distance between God’s original intention and our present reality, the second Beatitude is significant. Our first and natural response is to mourn. And rightly so. But Jesus tells us what we, like the returning prodigal son, can scarcely believe: that God our Father is waiting to welcome us with open arms, to comfort us with a compassionate and gracious embrace. And as that parable makes clear, we are not just welcomed and forgiven. Rather than being demoted to the role of a servant (as the prodigal at best expected at his return), we are restored to our place as a member of the family. Jesus’ teaching is inescapable. God wants nothing less than to restore each person to their full humanity. Second, we are promised the restoration of the world in which we live. It is one thing to restore each of us individually, it’s another to fix the mess we’ve made of our world. Today, more than ever before, we are confronted with the reality of the effects of humanity on the planet. Even on a less-than-planetary scale, we each inhabit polluted worlds of our own. Each of us has had injustices and injuries done by others to us, and if we are honest, by us to others. These injustices and injuries are passed on from generation to generation, and leave an indelible mark on the histories of our worlds. How will those things be made right? Not only do we need personal forgiveness and restoration, but our world(s) clearly needs to be put right. This too is part of the Good News that “Our God reigns!” God’s reign promises a restoration of what is wrong and a bringing to justice of those who do wrong. The promise of the Gospel is that there will come a day when everyone will be brought to account. Not only do we live in hope for that great day, but we live in light of that promise, by being people who comfort those who mourn, and who work in anticipation of that restoration each day, as far as we are able. Finally, we are promised the restoration of the vocation to which we are called as human beings. Not only will we and our world be restored, but our work as God’s image-bearers and stewards is surprisingly embodied in Jesus’ blessing of those who mourn. As followers of Jesus we are called to be lead servants. An essential element of that calling is that we willingly enter into the suffering of others. Jesus Himself demonstrated in His death that our identity as human beings is deeply intertwined with our capacity for self-sacrifice for the sake of others. Jesus’ blessing and comforting of those who mourn is not only an act of consolation for the oppressed, but also an act of encouragement to those who will follow His example to go and do likewise. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” is a reminder of the vocation of all who follow Jesus, who are called to enter into the suffering of others. John 15:4
Expectations. We all have them. Many of us live with high expectations; expectations define our world. For some, those expectations are a positive motivator. For others, they are a profound burden. Jesus too lived in a world of great expectations. His extraordinary birth raised great hopes as well as created profound fear. Was He the One who would, in the phrase of N. T. Wright, “set the world to rights?” And perhaps the unasked and even more weighty question behind that question is, “What will that world look like?” Jesus begins the Sermon on the Mount by resetting the expectations of His listeners. Perhaps a stronger and more accurate verb is “reverse.” Jesus reverses the expectations about what the world looks like when it is made right. What is striking is how backward it all seems. In the opening beatitude, Jesus blesses those who are poor in spirit. That’s not exactly a category for people to aspire to, either in the first century or in the twenty-first. In doing so, Jesus raises the disturbing possibility that our expectation ladders are leaned up against the wrong building. Or, consider the medical condition called anorexia. Anorexia is “an eating disorder characterized by an abnormally low body weight, an intense fear of gaining weight, and a distorted perception of weight” (Mayo Clinic). It is a strange disease. You may be surprised that, for the anorexic, much of life works backward. When encouraged to eat more as they lose weight, they chose instead to eat less even more resolutely, thereby losing more weight. The reason is that their self-perception is reversed from reality. When they look in the mirror, instead of seeing someone losing weight, they see a person gaining weight. Their perception is diametrically opposed to what the rest of us saw to be true. Jesus’ Beatitudes attempt to address something similar. Like an anorexic looking in a mirror, our views and expectations for God’s rule (and for us as human beings) are deeply distorted. Instead of seeing what God intends for us, we see something quite the opposite. So, when Jesus declares God’s actual expectations, we come away disoriented and disturbed. Everything seems backward from what we thought was true. Jesus begins by calling the poor in spirit blessed. How can that be? For both the secular and religious person, “being blessed” is usually an indication of flourishing. For those familiar with God’s work in the history of Israel, a blessing is associated with God’s goodness as it is expressed in the bounty of creation, in God’s faithfulness to deliver His people from their enemies, and in God’s affirmation of those who are faithful to God’s instructions. Economic poverty in ancient Israel (as to some Christians today) was a sign of the lack of God’s blessing. Spiritual poverty suffered much the same assessment. Even if the causes of such poverty were debatable, the effects could hardly be described as “being blessed.” What was Jesus talking about? Jesus’ Beatitudes have been with us for two millennia and it is easy to become too comfortable with them. There have been many explanations offered for what Jesus meant. It’s easy for Jesus’ words to lose their edginess. I think it’s worth letting the shock of Jesus’ words disorient and disturb us for a while. In the words of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, we suffer the “consequence of the film of familiarity” where “we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand.” We will delve further into the Beatitudes next week. 2We always give thanks to God for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers; 3constantly keeping in mind your work of faith and labor of love and perseverance of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father. 1 Thessalonians 1:2-3; 4:13
There is an adverb in the greeting from Paul to the Thessalonians that reminds me of my father, who passed away 20 years ago today. My parents left the tiny island of Taiwan over 55 years ago to serve as missionaries in a country they knew little about before leaving their own country. My parents were hard workers, struggling and laboring in a foreign country where they probably knew not one word in the local language when they landed on its soil. He could be often found working and praying at three or four in the morning. He was a living example of the adverb adialeiptós that I would read much later in life in the Greek of Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians. Even difficult circumstances can bring about adialeiptós (incessantly, without intermission) good work in us. In this case, Paul incessantly thinks and prays for the Thessalonians. Some people who leave such a profound effect on you that it compels you to talk to them. Some people’s candor and work are something so noble you cannot help but thank God and cheer them on. To remind them to weep – but not to weep like those with no hope (see 1 Thess. 4:13). In Paul’s case, it was not one person but a whole church. His remembrance and reflection about the work of these Thessalonians resulted in one implication that evoked his perpetual thanksgiving and constant prayer: they responded to the Gospel. The Gospel reminds us that we are being conformed to the image of the Son. It also reminds us that we labor with the same tools, hands and feet as others but with different motives and results. In many cases we do the same thing but with a different song in our hearts. Paul was not there involved with the day-to-day, but he got the pleasure of knowing that the presence of the Lord is sufficient. He learned from this early church community a good lesson in life for disciples of Jesus: that the same Spirit that hovered over the waters in Creation is holding Gospel communities together in their work also. They worked (for each other and in the city) because they had faith in (trusted) the Lord. They toiled in difficulty even if things did not work out because God’s love loved them first. They bore down under pressure because their hope was in Jesus. And this is the nature of the day’s labor for believers. One good work evokes another good work and one “constantly” evokes another “constantly.” We work sometimes by remembering other believers’ work. The Thessalonians received the Gospel message that rang out without intermission, and they responded by working together incessantly. And while Paul may not be present to get involved with the day-to-day activities, it is not as though he was not working with them. Perhaps at three or four in the morning, you could hear him calling on the Father in heaven and mentioning the Thessalonians also. Lord, make me a person who cannot stop thinking about You and my fellow brothers and sisters. Help me to see the work of my local church and my fellow saints in the workplace. |
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