The Blessed Problem: A quick Introduction and overview (Matthew 5:1-2)

Annie reminded me that when I first came to St Peter’s seven years ago,  I started my ministry here with a series of sermons on the beatitudes and Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. It was great that she remembered.

The fact that we’re looking at them again doesn’t mean I’ve run out of ideas. It’s not like with TV… ‘there is a gap in the programming so let’s rerun F*R*I*E*N*D*S again, or M*A*S*H yet again.’ We’ve worked our way systematically through the gospels in those seven years, amidst other books and so we are back to Matthew again.

It doesn’t mean I’m just going to rehash those old sermons, although as I’ve reread them I though I was a more confident preacher back then, now as I’ve come to look at Jesus teaching I am aware of just how wonderful and deep and challenging these passages are, and preaching on them and opening them up for us is daunting.

The reason why the sermon on the mount is so important for us, hasn’t changed, more than ever I am convinced that this teaching of Jesus on the kingdom of heaven is of utmost importance to the Church. It’s been called the manifesto of the kingdom, As a good friend of mine in Rotorua would say, its important because in it Jesus calls us to keep the main thing the main thing. The rediscovery of what is contained here has been the basis of reform and renewal time and time again for the church. St Francis of Assisi, was said to have read the sermon twice a day, and it was the core of his faith and lifestyle and his move to reform the whole church in the twelfth century. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and pastor who was arrested and killed by the Nazis towards the end of the second world war and whose book ‘Discipleship” is still the best volume on Jesus Sermon said this…

 “The restoration of the church will surely come from a new kind of community, which will have nothing in common with the old but a life of uncompromising adherence to the Sermon on the Mount in imitation of Christ. I believe the time has come to rally people together for this.”

We have an aversion in our day to getting radical, being radicalised is a negative we equate with terror cells and jihadis and  we are afraid of them, even bungling ones … just an aside wouldn’t it be amazing if Christians in New Zealand sort to help Mark Taylor…that would be love your enemy in action… can you imagine this hard core guy being shown such Christian love… that’s the radical we want… to be radical is to again base oneself of the founding principles of a movement in our case the radical love and call to love of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.

We are going to work through the beatitudes over the next few weeks, follow the helpful groupings that Scott McKnight uses in his ‘the story of God bible commentary series’.

 Three blessings forthe humble poor, which we will look at next week,

 three blessings forthose who pursue righteousness, the week after,

and then three blessings on those who create peace. 

Before we look at that today, I want to give a real quick over view of the sermon on the mount and put it into the context of scripture and Matthew’s Gospel. That may sound dry and academic, but it is anything but… I think it sets the scene, its like a spectacular sunrise on a gorgeous new day.

Let’s put it into the context of Jesus ministry.

In the chapter before the sermon, Matthew had told us of Jesus ministry in Galilee. After his baptism and temptation in the wilderness, he had come preaching ‘repent for the Kingdom of God has come near’, he went about gathering a community together who would be the basis of that kingdom and live it out, he called the disciples to come and follow him, and he healed the sick of all kinds of diseases, he demonstrated that God’s Kingdom had come and the unjust pain and suffering of this world were going to be reversed by that. When we come to the Sermon on the Mount, people are aware that the Kingdom has come, that this Jesus is the messiah, that is what Matthew has been showing us. Jesus teaching in the sermon on the mount is his expounding of that core message repent for the kingdom of Heaven has come near.

 The beatitudes are the declaration of the blessings of that kingdom. It is the proclamation that the Kingdom has drawn hear. It is the good news to those who suffer in this world but who long for and hold onto God, that things have changed, because Jesus, God’s anointed King, has come. Brett Johnston preached on Luke’s list of the beatitudes about a month ago and talked of them being the reversal of what this world considers to be blessing and setting things right side up. NT wright translates blessing as ‘Wonderful news’. The blessing of the poor and those who hunger and thirst and who suffer for righteousness is not in their condition but in who Jesus is and the inauguration of the kingdom of God. 

The rest of the sermon is that repent message. Not be sorry for all the bad things you’ve done, but what it means to live in response to the good news of the Kingdom, how that kingdom is going to be manifest through this beloved community Jesus was drawing together to follow him. How the blessings that Jesus proclaimed were going to be partially fulfilled by the way in which God’s new people lived generously and lovingly in that kingdom, as they await its total consummation, when Christ returns.

We often simply see the first two verses of this chapter as a geographical summary, to set the scene for us. Jesus sees the crowd, he sees the opportunity to teach them and goes up onto a hill and sits down, and his disciples gather round because they get the idea of what he wants to do. On one level that is that’s what it is, it where we get the Sermon on the Mount from, but it also for Matthew puts what Jesus is doing into the context o the wider biblical narrative.

Matthew had been painting a picture of Jesus fulfilling the story of Israel. He had gone down to Egypt and come back up, he had gone through the waters of baptism, like the red sea he had been tested in the wilderness and come through victorious and now as the crowds gather to him, Matthew presents us Jesus as the new Moses, the law giver. Moses went up on to the mountain at Sinai and received a revelation from God, what we call the Old Covenant, and taught Israel what it meant to be God’s people. Jesus going up on to the mountain is an affirmation of Jesus bringing fresh revelation from God, like Moses, revelation that does not do away with the old but which fulfils it. In Matthew’s gospel Jesus teaching is presented in five big blocks, in his gospel layout Matthew is saying here is the new Torah, the new way to live in the kingdom.

Jesus sitting down is the posture that the rabbis would take when they taught, so for Matthew Jesus is taking that authority to teach the people. Unlike the rabbis who referred to other authorities specifically Moses Jesus authority to teach comes from who he himself is, God’s chosen king, the messiah.  Matthew will finish his account of Jesus teaching by saying the people were amazed as he taught as one with authority. The teaching on the kingdom of heaven cannot be separated from the one who is giving it. Matthew is not simply telling us that Jesus is a good teacher but he himself as the messiah has bought about the new reality that he is calling his followers into.

To fully understand the beatitudes and he whole sermon we need to be aware of the hopes and expectations that people had about the coming of God’s king. I another simply geographic description in chapter 4 about Jesus leaving Nazareth and going to galilee, Matthew sees Jesus fulfilling a prophesy from Isaiah of a light coming to the land of Zebulun and Naphtali” which was the place that first experienced exile from the land in the Old Testament. AS Jesus proclaims his beatitudes behind that are all the expectations and promises that are found in Isaiah and the other exilic prophets as they look forward to the restoration of Israel. A place of peace and plenty where no one will have a need, where all will be welcomed to Jerusalem to worship God. The beatitudes pick all that up and say that with Jesus coming they are starting to come true. Scholars often compare the beatitudes in Matthew with the beatitudes in Luke’s gospel, and that is helpful and we will do some of that. But I also think that to understand the beatitudes and the intent of the sermon on the mount, we need to compare it with Jesus reading from the scroll of Isaiah in Luke 4, which is like Jesus declaring his mission statement.

 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,     because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
¹⁹     to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

That passage goes on to speak of God’s comfort for those who mourn in Zion.

What does all this mean for us.

Firstly, the beatitudes are this wonderful amazing welcome to all into the Kingdom of God. Specifically, those who the religious people of Jesus day saw as being outsider, or in no way blessed by God. The poor the sick, the lame the broken and the hurting, those beset by difficulty and tragedy, even though despite those things they still longed for God help and love. At the heart of the Kingdom of heaven is the great offer of God’s love and grace.

Sometimes we think of the Beatitudes as a list of qualifications for God’s blessing. To be blessed by God we need to be more like this, and we forget that it is a proclamation of good news, the blessing is god’s welcome and love and care and consolation. I love matt Woodley’s translation of the word blessed, he says its congratulations your on the right path, rejoice… God offer of grace is for you.  We can forget that at the heart of the gospel is God’s offer of grace and love and welcome to us. We want to jump right to the how do I earn it. You know in the old testament we can often read the ten commandments as a to do list to earn God’s favour and we can forget that they come some twenty chapters into the story of God redeeming Israel out of Egypt, fulfilling God’s gracious promises to their ancestors. It is about how do we respond to the gracious love and saving activity of God, not earn it. It’s grace you are loved and invited in by God, the broken will be whole, our poverty met with the resources of god’s kingdom, our sorry comforted by God.

The second thing is it invites us to see people through the eyes of the kingdom of heaven, through Jesus eyes.  Last week we talked of how the world sees whose blessing, they see those who have it all together, and those who have it all those who are prominent and important. But the beatitudes calls us to see the people we might not consider as blessed with dignity and not as being marginalised but important to god and his kingdom. The rest of the sermon shows us how to show that dignity and love. AS we work through the beatitudes we are going to keep those two things very much to the fore.