Matthew 5:1-12, The Message version of the New Testament
While serving as pastor of First Presbyterian Church
of Hollywood, CA, the Rev. Lloyd John Ogilvie wrote a book entitled
Falling Into Greatness in which he described an encounter with an old
friend who asked him to go to lunch to discuss a matter of top priority.
The friend was a man who had once embraced Christianity in all aspects
– marriage, family life, and career – but had drifted away
from the church and the fellowship of other Christians. Lloyd Ogilvie
wondered what the trouble could be causing the man’s despondency.
When they sat down for lunch the conversation began abruptly with the
man blurting out, “Lloyd, I’ve become a cynic! I’ve
become a negative, critical, and sarcastic man.”
Inwardly Lloyd Ogilvie was relieved that his friend was not confessing
some heinous sin, but as he listened he realized that what was being
confessed could be regarded as sinful as adultery or cooking the company
books. He writes: “My friend had been jarred by the reality of
the kind of person he had become because of an ultimatum his wife had
given him. She was not willing to spend the rest of her life with a
man who had come to be down on life, people, and even God. Several friends
had confronted him about his snarling attitude. Three people had resigned
from his company because they said they could not work in the negative
atmosphere his attitudes had created. The man’s world was falling
apart.” (Falling Into Greatness, p. 16)
The two men spent the remainder of their time discussing the disappointments
of life that had caused this deep cynicism, including his inattention
to the things of God, such as prayer, Bible study, and Christian fellowship.
He was running on his own negative energy and falling deeper and deeper
into a set personality trait that was driving everyone away from him.
This man had lost his joy, a loss expressed in the words of Robert Louis
Stevenson, “To lose the joy is to lose everything.”
So how do you get it back? There are many places to go, but tracing
back they all flow from the same fountain. Lloyd Ogilvie points to the
first Psalm as a good starting place to learn about the true nature
of happiness or blessedness as the scriptures call it: “The Hebrew
word for blessed, ‘ashre, means happy or joyous. But a deeper
penetration into the root meaning reveals the nature of that bliss.
It comes from a verb meaning to go forth, to advance, or even to lead
the way. All these nuances may be implied in what the psalmist depicted
in the first verse of the psalm (“Happy are those who do not follow
the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit
in the seat of scoffers.”) His portrait of a joyous person is
one who is pressing on in a life of clearly set goals and purpose. The
blessed person is one who is energetically pressing ahead through life,
grasping its many-splendored wonder. His eyes are on the Lord and His
plan for him. Life is exciting, serendipities of grace await him each
new day; expectation of unlimited possibilities makes his spirit vibrant
with hope.
Surprisingly, the psalmist described what the blessed (one) does not
do. He does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, stand in the path
of sinners, or sit in the seat of the scornful. From what we are told
the blessed person has no time to do, we are given an apt description
of how cynicism begins, grows, and becomes a settled attitudinal sin.”
(Ibid, p. 17) On the other hand, the psalmist tells what brings joy
to a (person), and for that matter, to all people: “Their delight
is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night.
They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit
in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do,
they prosper.” (Ps. 1: 2-3)
When we think of the law of the Lord we recall that it was Moses who
delivered God’s law to the people from Mt. Sinai. Today’s
Gospel contains the opening words of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.
Many scholars believe the Matthew was deliberately paralleling the five
books of Moses in the way he structured his Gospel. There are five great
discourses or teachings from Jesus that close with the same formula,
which read, “When Jesus had finished saying these things,”
thus and so happened. Either the crowd was astonished, or Jesus departed,
or something else to this effect occurred. But in every case (7:28;
11:1; 13:53; 19:1; 26:1) the discourse concludes with the words, “When
Jesus had finished these sayings”. We also note that like Moses,
Jesus brings his teachings from the mountain.
Most scholars believe that Matthew grouped a number of Jesus’
sayings into these five discourses as a way of showing what life under
the reign of God is like. Fred Craddock, the well-known New Testament
scholar notes, “The Sermon on the Mount begins with blessings,
or beatitudes. To preface instruction with blessing is as appropriate
here as prefacing the Ten Commandments with the recital of God’s
deliverance of Israel from Egypt (Exod. 20:1-2). In other word, God’s
imperative is couched in and surrounded by grace. The obedience demanded
by the Sermon on the Mount must be understood as response to, not an
effort to gain, God’s favor. The beatitude says, ‘Blessed
are those who’; that is, it gives its blessing, it is not an urging
or an exhortation to be this or that. (We) will want to be careful not
to (receive) the impression that Jesus said, ‘We ought to be poor
in spirit’ or ‘Let us be meek.’ He pronounces his
blessing, and the language is performative, conferring its blessing
in the saying of it.” (Preaching Through the Christian Year A,
p. 99-100)
As a further aid to our understanding, Craddock notes three things:
1) “the powerful dynamic of saying the blessing and receiving
the blessing;” 2) “that these blessings completely reverse
the values of most societies, including our own. No doubt many in Jesus’
audience, zealous to take the kingdom into their own hands, were infuriated
by these beatitudes and the behavior called for in the teachings that
followed;” and 3) “attention needs to be given to the types
of persons who receive Christ’s blessing,” i.e., “the
meek, the poor in spirit, peacemakers, all who mourn,” and so
forth. (Ibid.)
Ralph W. Sockman the great Methodist preacher, lecturer, and author,
has written a wonderful book entitled The Paradoxes of Jesus, which
tries to explain how the simple Gospel of Jesus is not always so simple.
Jesus often spoke in paradoxes, which at first seemed contradictory
to common sense. I looked up the word paradox in the Random House Webster’s
Collegiate Dictionary and found the first definition thus: A paradox
is “a seemingly contradictory or absurd statement that expresses
a possible truth.” In Jesus’ case we are not speaking of
“a possible truth”, but words that were always full of grace
and truth. Sockman writes, “the paradoxical figure of Jesus is
heightened by many of his recorded single statements which seem self-contradictory.
‘He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his
life for my sake shall find it,’ is an enigma which readers usually
try to explain by explaining away. ‘Blessed are the meek: for
they shall inherit the earth,’ is an utterance so seemingly contrary
to practical experience that a magazine some years ago in a spirit of
irony offered a framed copy of this beatitude to any meek man who made
good.
‘Unto everyone that hath shall be given; but from him that hath
not, even that which he hath shall be taken away from him’ is
a statement which might be understandable in Wall Street where the wolves
grow more shaggy and the lambs are shorn more closely, but such an assertion
of progressive inequality sounds out of place on the lips of Jesus,
the apostle of justice. Victims of chance, convinced that life is a
lottery, might say, ‘The last shall be first and the first last,’
but did not Jesus proclaim the unfailing providence of an infinitely
just Heavenly Father who keeps track of even the falling sparrows?
Wisdom in ignorance, gain in loss, freedom in bondage, victory in defeat,
life in death – such assertions do seem to justify a Papini in
calling Jesus ‘the supreme maker of paradoxes.’” (The
Paradoxes of Jesus, pgs.16-17)
In summarizing this lengthy explanation of the way paradoxes are utilized
in the teachings of Jesus as a way of getting to the way God grants
blessedness or happiness, if you will, he declares, “Taken in
its full sweep, the gospel record of Jesus is the greatest mystery story
ever written. In our day when we turn out mystery stories by the ton,
writers have become very adept at confusing situations, concealing motives,
and creating suspense. After following a number of these modern plots,
the reader begins to find the clues whereby he can foretell the outcome.
He can be pretty sure that the characters who look the most innocent
will rove the most vicious, and the ones who invite the most suspicion
will turn out to be the most virtuous. In short, the way to solve so
many mystery plots is to reverse the obvious. But the puzzling situations
of the gospel are not solved so simply. Jesus did not always speak in
riddles which had to be reversed. Often his words were so patently practical
that his hearers nodded their heads in admiring assent. His very reasonableness
heightens the color of those occasions when he seemed so impractical
that his own friends said, ‘He is beside himself.’ The story
of Jesus is not that of a poor carpenter who triumphs over difficulties
and becomes rich, but of a Carpenter who dies ‘poor, yet making
many rich.’ The Gospels give not the picture of an oppressed peasant
who turned the tables on his persecutors and defeated them, but they
show us One who claimed to be overcoming the world while it was succeeding
in crucifying him.
But what makes the gospel surpass the mysteries of fiction and the paradoxical
careers of other historical figures is not the way it ends but the fact
that it has not ended. The up-country Leader who was killed during a
Jewish Passover was more alive as a factor on the streets of Jerusalem
forty days after his death than in the days of his flesh. And the story
of Jesus is still running in serial form, to be read in new chapters
of healed bodies and changed lives. The supreme paradox of the Palestinian
is that he was killed but refuses to die.” (Ibid. pgs. 17-18)
Not only does he live in the courts of Heaven: he lives in the testimony
of scripture, and particularly so in the seemingly contradictory things
he taught. In his paradoxes was eternal truth. Within them is found
the truth and the way to abundant life. An important part of that life
comes from spending time in God’s garden. In the Upper Room devotional
booklet earlier this week an author spoke of the way the fragrance of
the leaves on the tomato plant and basil remains on your hands for quite
a while after leaving the garden. Anybody around you will know you have
been in the garden. The fragrance fades only after you have been away
from the garden for a time. The same can be said for the Christian life.
If you want to radiate joy as a Christian you need to stay in the garden
with Jesus regularly to learn the secrets of his joy. Every bit of time
spent there yields treasure that can be carried into life to make our
lives happy. This truth is so beautifully reflected in the hymn that
begins with the words, “I come to the garden alone while the dew
is still on the roses, and the voice I hear, falling on my ear, the
Son of God discloses.” (UMH, p. 314) Time in the garden with Jesus
makes the vital difference in our lives!
We began this morning talking about a man who was suffering with a cynical
attitude toward life. Robert Schuller in his book, The Be Happy Attitudes,
points to three reactions to sufferings or hard times that create cyncism
and unhappiness. He says some are cinders … they get burned out.
Some are sinners … they get burned up. And some are senders …
they just burn brighter.” (p. 180)
Dr. Schuller illustrates his point by describing something he witnessed
while flying over the Pacific Ocean one night: “I thought I’d
seen the wake of every possible boat or ship. I’ve seen the gorgeous
wakes of luxury cruiseliners, and I’ve seen the lovely little
wake of a canoe on a quiet stream in Canada. I’ve watched my children
ski behind a motorboat in glassy wakes on an early morning mountain
lake.
Long or short, narrow or wide – it’s always been a thrilling
sight to me to look back and see the wake that’s left behind.
But flying over the ocean I saw a wake such as I’ve never seen
before. I saw it from the window of a commercial jet. At first I thought
the marks on the water were hidden reefs. But my companion said, ‘It
looks like the wake of a vessel, but those lines are too far apart to
be that!’
As we flew on, we could see that the lines were in fact moving closer
together, the way a wake would look. And finally we saw the vessel that
created the wake. What had made this mammoth wake? Was it an aircraft
carrier? No. It was just a very slim, slender, black, short line in
the water with a periscope piercing the surface.
I said, ‘It’s a submarine!’
My companion said, ‘it is, at that.’
It had just surfaced. And a submarine, when it surfaces after plowing
through the depths, leaves a wake that is remarkable.
I tell you today: People who go through the deep waters of suffering
leave a wide wake if they choose (and it is a choice) to trust and forgive.
In spite of their suffering, they send a huge message of hope to the
world … (like the words scrawled in the basement of a German home
next to a Star of David):
I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.
I believe in love even when I do not feel it.
I believe in God even when He is silent.” (Ibid.)
The paradoxes of Jesus seem at first contradictory, and in a way they
are. They contradict the common wisdom of the world by saying there
is a greater truth to be known and lived – the truth of the ways
and means of God’s kingdom. By living in love as God would have
us live we find the way to true happiness.
Prayer: Thank you God for the wisdom of Jesus, which
at first may confuse us or seem impossible in this world. Thank you
for challenging us to go deeper and to find the truth of Christ so beautifully
expressed in scripture, the lives of the faithful, and in the words
of the saints, e.g., St. Francis of Assisi, who said, “for it
is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.” Help us
turn our world right-side-up again by trusting Jesus and learning to
live faithfully in the midst of life’s seeming contradictions.
Amen.