Gospel: Matthew 5:1–12
In the beatitudes, Jesus provides a unique description of those who are blessed with God's favor. His teaching is surprising and shocking to those who seek wealth, fame, and control over others.
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2Then 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 righteousness' sake, 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 12Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
1Ἰδὼν δὲ τοὺς ὄχλους ἀνέβη εἰς τὸ ὄρος: καὶ καθίσαντος αὐτοῦ προσῆλθαν αὐτῷ οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ: 2καὶ ἀνοίξας τὸ στόμα αὐτοῦ ἐδίδασκεν αὐτοὺς λέγων, 3Μακάριοι οἱ πτωχοὶ τῷ πνεύματι, ὅτι αὐτῶν ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν. 4μακάριοι οἱ πενθοῦντες, ὅτι αὐτοὶ παρακληθήσονται. 5μακάριοι οἱ πραεῖς, ὅτι αὐτοὶ κληρονομήσουσιν τὴν γῆν. 6μακάριοι οἱ πεινῶντες καὶ διψῶντες τὴν δικαιοσύνην, ὅτι αὐτοὶ χορτασθήσονται. 7μακάριοι οἱ ἐλεήμονες, ὅτι αὐτοὶ ἐλεηθήσονται. 8μακάριοι οἱ καθαροὶ τῇ καρδίᾳ, ὅτι αὐτοὶ τὸν θεὸν ὄψονται. 9μακάριοι οἱ εἰρηνοποιοί, ὅτι αὐτοὶ υἱοὶ θεοῦ κληθήσονται. 10μακάριοι οἱ δεδιωγμένοι ἕνεκεν δικαιοσύνης, ὅτι αὐτῶν ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν. 11μακάριοί ἐστε ὅταν ὀνειδίσωσιν ὑμᾶς καὶ διώξωσιν καὶ εἴπωσιν πᾶν πονηρὸν καθ' ὑμῶν [ψευδόμενοι] ἕνεκεν ἐμοῦ: 12χαίρετε καὶ ἀγαλλιᾶσθε, ὅτι ὁ μισθὸς ὑμῶν πολὺς ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς: οὕτως γὰρ ἐδίωξαν τοὺς προφήτας τοὺς πρὸ ὑμῶν.
“The Ongoing Gospel of Love”
+ In nomine Domini. Amen.
By the 9th Decade of the 1st Century, or shall we say, 60 years after the death of Jesus, the Gospel Writer we call Matthew collected the accumulating stories about Jesus of Nazareth and put them into a narrative that was used – as all the Gospels were used – not only as the formulating story of a community gathered around that narrative, but also (and we would say most importantly) as the continuing story of that community of the followers of Jesus who were seeking to understand how it could be that after all the things that had happened under the Roman occupation culminating in the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem 20 years before … how it could be that God, said Jesus, was making a new and renewing reign of authority, a βασιλεία as Matthew called it in Greek … a kingdom, a ruling where God’s love, God’s gentleness, God’s peace would rule in the lives of all people. How could this be? What would this look like? Where would it take place? And most importantly, when would it happen?
***
It’s hard for me to believe that when I wrote that little introduction, it turned into a single paragraph – the words running on beyond themselves into the future … and yet, when I read Matthew’s Gospel-Story that’s the sense I get from it. I see it as an “Ongoing Gospel of Love” rather than a literal newscast … a Story that penetrates reality, human reality, my reality, your reality and so penetrating takes what we see as ordinary, fragile, impossible, dull, meaningless, hopeless, fearful, and without purpose … and re-shapes all that into just the opposite: reality that is extraordinary, possible, shining, full of meaning, full of hope, full of peace and full of life.
It’s why I come to Church; to hear the Good News that even though I think my sins are as scarlet, and that some days I am not worth very much, and that looking into the darkness (especially this time of the year) there’s only darkness beyond the darkness … even though … the Good News I hear is that I am forgiven, I am good enough … maybe even more, and there is light … lovely loving light whose spark ignites hope and sometimes even laughter inside … and can even bring that light into the most desperate of human conditions, the ugliest of human conversations … even peace in our world, peace in our homes and communities, peace to soothe all the nastiness and hatred and violence that rises up like a dragon … instead a world of respect and tolerance and understanding and welcoming. That’s why I come to Church.
So very often people say to me when they find out who I am and what I do, “Well, I don’t believe in organized religion.” My answer is always, “Neither do I. Neither did Jesus. That’s not what we celebrate when we get together … that we’re organized. What we celebrate is the true meaning of that word “religion” from the Latin religare … it means “to be bound fast” … connected, attached … we celebrate that we are bound fast to the Eternal Presence that fills every living thing, and that we are bound fast to each other in ways that are so profound that we experience the warmth of embrace, the power of healing, the binding up of what is broken … and we are bound fast to our neighbors whoever they may be to bring love and not hate into their lives, into this world. That’s what we do, when we gather together, to follow Jesus, and be “religious.””
I’ve never had anyone change their mind about their view of Church because of what I just said, but it’s still true.
It is in fact what Matthew is on about as that wonderful Gospel Storyteller has Jesus go up a little hill and teach the folks who were following him around, just like we do … we follow Jesus around as it were.
Blessed are the poor in spirit … Blessed are those who mourn …
Ah, that’s where it hits us today, doesn’t it? All Saints Sunday, the remembering of those who have gone before us, whom we have lost (we say) ‘tho they are not lost to the Eternal, rather they have found their way into the timelessness of God … but our hearts ache, our eyes fill up as we think of them and the empty place beside us where they once were and now longer are …
… Blessed are those who mourn …
How, what, where, when …? We ask.
By the words themselves, and by the collective embrace of the community … it is how the Holy One works … not in some distant way or place … not in some internal spirituality, but through human beings, through created human beings, through each one of us. Often we have no words … right? Often all we have is our presence. It is enough, it is holy enough. And when it takes place in our mourning, in our grieving, then we are able to carry the cup of our grief, because others help us carry it. That’s what Blessed are those who mourn means.
And Jesus was right. It’s not in doctrine, it’s not in dogma, it’s not in committees and constitutions and (as Luther would have said) in the Councils of the Church … it is in the Living Presence of the Holy One who inhabits that embrace of caring which we exchange with one another … so powerful is that exchange that it can not only heal a broken heart, it can end a war … and not only end a war, but heal a broken heart.
There’s more of course, Blessed are the meek, the hungering and thirsting for justice, the merciful, the pure in heart, the ones who are persecuted unjustly, and the peacemakers … they are all, says Matthew, says Jesus, says God … Blessed.
You don’t get that from organized religion, but you do get it in the binding fast of God’s love and hope, bound fast to each one of us because we are cared for that much, and even more … we are precious that much and even more.
From that little hill in the Galilee, from Matthew’s Story that becomes our Story, is spoken today to each of us how precious are all the saints, all the loved ones … as are we, precious and holy and embraced in the gentle Spirit of God.
***
Way back in the 5th Century an entire Council of the Church worked hard to put all that into a statement which – like all church statements – can come alive not in the words, but in the doing. I like to think of the Nicene Creed as a church hymn, which when we say it together, even though its theology and construct are often very foreign to us today, and the churchly battles of the 5th Century are not our battles at all … it is a kind of hymn that we sing together with those ancestors of ours who, just like us, got up every morning in the darkness and yearned once again to see the light of hopefulness in a God who they believed appeared to them as Father, Son, and Spirit.
Let us say together:
NICENE CREED
We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father; through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary and became truly human. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets. We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.
Deo Gratias (+)
The Rev. Benjamin Larzelere III
Pastor, Christ Lutheran Church
Santa Fe, NM
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