The crowd gathers around Jesus trying to hear him, they jostle and argue with each other trying to get closer.
One person says, “What did he say?”
The other person answers, “I think it was blessed are the cheese makers.”
Some one else then says, “What’s so special about the cheese makers?”
The first one then answers, “Well, obviously, this is not meant to be taken literally. It refers to any manufacturer of dairy products.”
Jesus continues his sermon on the mount, and the crowd continues to misunderstand what he says.
They think Jesus says, “Blessed are the Greek.” They then try to figure out the name of this Greek man who is supposed to inherit the earth.
It is a funny scene from a very silly and irreverent movie by Monty Python.
It makes a good point.
It is hard to hear Jesus.
It is hard to hear the Sermon on the Mount.
It is hard to hear the beatitudes.
It is Lent.
Part of what we do is to begin an examination of our lives, to redirect ourselves into the way that is of God.
There are different standards, or tools that are traditionally used as we do the work of self-examination, such as the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, the fruit of the Spirit or the Beatitudes.
During Lent we will be listening to the Beatitudes on Sunday Mornings. I will be giving a sermon series, reflecting on two beatitudes at a time, as a way examining and redirecting our lives.
The Beatitudes are found in Matthew’s Gospel, the first eleven verses of chapter five. They are the beginning of a three chapter long ethical discourse that is called the Sermon on the Mount.
The word “Beatitude” is the Latin word for “blessed” in the vulgate translation of scripture. The Latin word means happy, fortunate, blissful as in one who is in favor with the gods. The original Greek word for blessed, “makarios,” is full of even more meaning. Blessed is a very important word.
It means sharing in the life of God, being on the same path as God, being in communion with God.
In the beatitudes, to be blessed, is to be walking with God, or rather to have God walking with you. It is a gift, a grace.
These are the people who have God’s special attention.
The blessings are not for now but for later, for when God’s kingdom is all and all.
For now the blessed live out of step with the world around them, valuing and prizing things that are held in contempt by contemporary standards.
The way of the beatitudes is to live in the sure hope that God’s way will ultimately win out, will be vindicated. Until then God’s way will only seem foolish, and to be blessed is to be marginalized.
This is not about self improvement, or diet or career advancement. It is about faith, trusting that God’s way really is about meekness; that righteousness and peace will win out; that God’s future belongs to mercy not cruelty.
To be blessed is to live with that great hope, a tremendous hope, so much hope that it seems foolish right now.
The first Beatitude: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
To be poor is to be in need, dependant. To be poor in spirit is to specifically know that we stand in need of God. Do we understand ourselves, our families, our church, our country to be absolutely and desperately in need of God? Is that at the heart of how we see ourselves? Is that where our self image and motivation comes from?
Or does it come from somewhere else?
We are all beggars, we are all welfare queens.
Self –reliance is a lie. All is grace, all is thanksgiving.
To need God is to ultimately receive everything, the whole kingdom, one day.
Until then…hope and need.
As Eugene Peterson puts it, “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God’s rule.”
The second Beatitude: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
To be in mourning, to be in grief, to be in loss is to be on the pathway of God.
The world is not as it should be, is not as it is meant to be, it is not as God created and wills it to be. We have lost something, someone so dear to us that life is hard to imagine going on.
Do we know that grief? The grief of God, God’s mourning. We know something of God when we have lost what is precious.
It is important to be able know and feel that.
We don’t resign ourselves to the facts that surround us, neither do we blind ourselves.
We have to be wary of using grief as a weapon, indignation as a state of being, or seeking oblivion to anesthetize our pain.
Rather we live as things ought to be, mourning our failures and loss, but always living in hope of the ultimate cure of all our dis-ease.
We live with the great hope, the tremendous foolish hope that ultimately there is comfort for those who can still feel the pain of our broken world.
Poverty and grief, they invite a hope into the world, the hope of God, and to live in that hope is to do something. To live in need is to live a life that gives to those in need. To live in grief is to live a life that gives comfort to those who live with loss.
We live with a hope that is so great, a longing that is so great that God’s kingdom spills over from the someday into the here and now.