Matthew 5:1-12 "Ten Thousand Beside" Scott Hoezee

It's the kind of thing that makes headlines. When a successful person quits, when someone who has at long last managed to climb up to the top of the heap willingly leaps off that heap, it's big news. The nation was taken aback in 1968 when President Lyndon Johnson suddenly announced he would not run for re-election. Johnson, of course, was beset with troubles both foreign and domestic at the time, but still the news that he'd step aside came as a bracing surprise. Imagine how much greater the surprise would have been had Ronald Reagan made such a move after his first term at a time when he was flying high.

Someone once said that the one thing all first-term presidents want more than anything else is a second term. So if a president decides not even to try for that much-coveted second term, most people are left scratching their heads. Similar reactions come when an actress on TV's #1 hit program decides just to quit the show so that she can spend more time with her family. We don't expect the folks at the top (and who worked so hard to get to those heights of power, fame, and money) to then back off.

Last week we noted that when Jesus left behind Jerusalem for the backwaters of Capernaum, lots of people thought Jesus had made a wrong turn and a bad career move. Curiously, however, the people who thought this may have rather quickly found a reason to re-assess that opinion. Because despite his rather remote location, the power of Jesus' words and the wonder of his works soon became front-page news throughout Syria, Galilee, and even all the way down to Judea. Chapter 4 concluded by noting that great crowds of people from even Jerusalem began making the eighty mile, multiple-day trek northward just to see, hear, and touch this Jesus fellow.

Jesus' star is rising. Even some of the disciples were probably starting to think, "Today Capernaum, tomorrow Jerusalem, and then the world!" But notice how chapter 5 begins. We're so accustomed to sheering off the Sermon on the Mount from the rest of Matthew that we often forget the context. Chapter 4 ended on a high note with the verbal exclamation point about the ever-growing crowds that were following Jesus around the way those mobs used to pursue The Beatles. These crowds are happy news for Jesus, right?

Wrong! As Matthew 5 opens, we see Jesus looking at these crowds and apparently being troubled by the sight. So he withdraws, climbs a mountain, moves up to a location that will make it more difficult, not easier, for people to get to him. What's more, he huddles just his own disciples around him and then begins to teach them alone instead of his adoring fans. The folks who manage to clamber up the mountain after Jesus will indeed overhear a lot of what Jesus has to say, but Jesus' focus is not on them. Instead, he starts to teach his disciples what being a citizen of his kingdom is all about. And what Jesus has to say is hardly what anyone would describe as crowd-pleasing rhetoric.

The reason is simple and obvious: Jesus did not wish to be seen as some kind of fast-track to the top. He wasn't interested in political power, in money, in being named Man of the Year, or in any other measure of success the way this world defines it. But since a lot of people followed Jesus precisely because they thought he was headed for that kind of earthly fame and glory, Jesus thought it best to cut to the truth of the matter by pointing to the sacrificial faithfulness that results from being a member of God's kingdom.

That's the whole point of the Beatitudes. But we often misunderstand these famous words. Because notice what these blessings are not. Jesus is not saying that this is the kind of person you need to be in order to enter God's kingdom. Nor is he saying that once you enter the kingdom, these are rules you need to follow, as though you need to make yourself poor in spirit and mournful so that you'll fit in. Nor is Jesus saying that if you should happen to find yourself experiencing one of the less happy emotions described here, God will swoop in with some kind of quick-fix solution and turn things around for you.

These are not entrance requirements, rules to follow, or a prelude to receiving a reward from God in this life. That's not what Jesus says. Instead he says that if you are a citizen of the kingdom, then being poor in spirit, mournful, meek, hungry for the things of God are going to be the natural result of your kingdom membership. Further, the reason this will be the result is because commitment to that whole new world of God that we talked about last Sunday morning is always going to clash with the powers that be and the authority structures of this present world.

This is a vital connection to notice. Because in Matthew 5 Jesus is not saying that if you are mournful or persecuted or poor in spirit for any reason, then you will automatically receive blessing and consolation. After all, there are lots of reasons why people might be sad or downtrodden. Someone might be exceedingly mournful that his stock market portfolio is not performing as well as he had hoped, but that hardly qualifies this person for the comfort Jesus talks about! Someone might be very meek, but maybe in some cases it's sheer sentimentality, being someone who's prone to cry whenever she watches a re-run of The Waltons. The guy next door might feel persecuted and disliked, but maybe that's the result of his being an unpleasant guy who has a personality that could curdle milk.

The point is that the dispositions Jesus blesses in the Beatitudes are not free-floating but are kingdom-rooted. If you are mournful, then what makes you mourn is the sin you see around you, the disjointedness of life in a world that has fallen so far from God's loving hopes and intentions. If you are merciful and meek, then it's not because you're just an old softy by nature but because the Spirit of God has given you the heart of Jesus. If you are persecuted, then it's not because you're an oaf of a person but because you won't compromise your belief in Christ as Savior. You will live out what you believe the gospel reveals as God's way, even if that pits you against the "business as usual" practices of others.

These are simply the things that happen and the emotions that come to those who are in love with God and who see their kingdom identity as more important than any other identity in this world. Jesus declares a blessing on the people who are like this, but that's no surprise in that these kingdom citizens are already blessed! Just being brought into the kingdom by grace is a blessing in and of itself. The blessings Jesus details in Matthew 5 are simply more of the same, the "ten thousand beside" blessings we will sing of in a moment.

But because all of this stems from being in the kingdom--and because much of what Jesus describes is simply what happens when God's kingdom clashes with the present order of the world--the consolations Jesus mentions are not necessarily things that will happen right now. The meek will one day, by God's mercy, inherit the earth, but it won't be tomorrow or any time this side of Christ's return in glory. Jesus isn't offering an incentive in the sense of, "If you come to me today, I'll give you these goodies tomorrow."

Instead the consolations and comforts Jesus lists are things in and for which to hope. For now, therefore, believing what Jesus says requires a faith-fueled vision. Believing the punch of Jesus' promises requires the ability to see the reality beyond the reality of the nightly news; we need to see down to the reality that lies beneath the surface of what everyone else can see. But that is solely the gift of the Holy Spirit. If you can see this present moment honestly, in all its stark and sometimes bitter truth, but still declare, "This is not my whole story!" then that's a gift. If you can take the worst the world can dish out but still say, "This does not define me, but only my God in Christ defines me now and forever," then that's your faith talking.

And it's important to recognize that this is not some psychological trick. Seeing life this way is not the result of engaging in self-talk or getting in touch with your inner child or developing strong enough self-esteem that you cannot be knocked down by the harsh blows of the insensitive people around you. Being able to believe Jesus' words does not result from years of good therapy through which you've learned how to rise above your circumstances and so assert your own self-worth. Instead, a faith-based view of life is the gift of the same Holy Spirit who, by grace, brought you into God's kingdom in the first place.

This is why, of all the theologically dubious things he has ever said, perhaps the worst thing Robert Schuller ever produced was that ill-titled book, The Be (Happy) Attitudes. For there he turned the kingdom descriptions of Jesus' Beatitudes into a therapeutic model of positive thinking. Both the traits Jesus describes and the consolations Jesus promises ceased to be gifts of the Holy Spirit given to kingdom citizens and became instead tools and mental ploys by which to feel better about yourself and about your life, come what may. Schuller changed this from the blessed result of being part of God's new world to being good advice for how to get along in this world. Not to put too fine a point on it, but that's just heresy.

Because if you sheer away the kingdom perspective of all this, Jesus' words make no sense. From the vantage point of just this life and this world, there's nothing good about persecution, about being a nobody, about being sad. No one in his or her right mind wants to experience any of that. Also, if the kingdom is not real and not true, then being persecuted for it is like going to jail because you got convicted on a false charge. If God is not real and his new world not true, then there is nothing to hunger or thirst for, nothing to desire, nothing to pursue. If we are mournful, it's because we've seen the moral beauty of God's new world and, compared to that, we find much to lament in this present world. Again, however, take away that kingdom, and there's nothing actual to compare this world to.

The kingdom of God becomes the way we see things, the lens through which we view life. It's a gift to be able, already now, to see into God's world. In a moment, we will exercise another part of that same gift when we come to this table. Here we see through the bread and the wine into God's kingdom. But it's more than just a glimpse of some far-away world: at this table that world enters us anew so that we can infuse even this world with something of the goodness, grace, and holiness of God.

As I mentioned once some years ago, writer Peter Kreeft once tried to sum up the difference between a Protestant view of the sacraments and a Roman Catholic view. Protestants, Kreeft said, think a sacrament is like a window through which you may see into the future of God's kingdom. Catholics, on the other hand, see it more as a door through which the actual flesh of Christ comes to you and then enters you in power. Kreeft is a fine writer and a sharp thinker, but these images don't quite capture what we believe happens at the Lord's table. A couple of years ago when I was talking about this in my Pastor-Theologian group, a colleague of mine commented that since I'm from the Christian Reformed part of the Reformed tradition, maybe a better image would be neither a straight window nor a straight door but something more like a Dutch door! It was pretty hilarious when she said it, but the really funny thing is that this image works theologically!

What happens to us through the sacrament this morning is neither just a glimpse through glass nor our full entrance into God's kingdom as though we were walking straight through a door. Instead it's like a half-door, a Dutch door, that swings open on the top. We can't walk through this door yet, not in this life. But we can see through it into God's new world. What's more, something of that world's power, essence, goodness, grace, and joy can get handed to us through the open top-half of the door. We both see and receive, both remember and believe, both pray for the kingdom and get a jolt of kingdom energy.

When we opened today, we reflected on how Jesus turned away from the crowds and their ideas about success in this world so that he could re-focus the disciples on that alternative world of God's kingdom. The whole point of the Beatitudes is not, as Schuller or others might claim, to oil the gears and sprockets of this world so that everything will click along that much more smoothly for us. The point is to re-direct us to the strange new world of the gospel. The point is to remind us that being in the kingdom makes us look for now like we're flying upside-down. But the larger point is to convey the good news that in Christ and by grace, we'll really be flying right-side up in God's eyes. And that's a blessed fact to know, especially when we feel the tug and temptation to abandon the gospel's way for the more "normal" avenues of success as the world defines it.

The chopped-up bread and spilled-out wine of this holy table remind us of what this world did to God's own Son when he proclaimed and lived the kingdom way. When it comes right down to it, we shouldn't expect the world today will be any more fond of the gospel than it was 2,000 years ago. Thankfully, God has given us food and drink for the journey; nourishment to sustain us as we walk the kingdom's paths.

This table reminds us that we are children of a different bread. As we said last week, that means our kingdom identity should be obvious and clear. We cannot walk away from the holy supper this morning without feeling and being changed. For at our Lord's table we not only glimpse the kingdom, we receive still more of that very kingdom. If this morning you can both see and receive that, then blessed are you, for by grace yours is the kingdom of heaven. Amen.