It's hard to preach a message which tries to do too many things. This message serves as an introduction for an extended series of messages on the five blocks of Jesus teaching in Matthew's gospel. It also provides some points and reflections on the Beatitudes... here is the audio link of this message.
I lost my
glasses out at the beach over Christmas. I came back from a couple of hours in
the surf and couldn’t find them anywhere. I couldn’t find them in my bag, I couldn’t
find them in the car, I couldn’t find them in a pocket, or on my towel, or on
the ground, and definitely not on top of my head. So I’ve had to get new
glasses. At the same time, I’ve got to the life stage where my arms have got too
short because as well as having trouble seeing at a distance reading up close is
getting hard. So I’ve got progressive lenses and I’m having to learn how to see
the world in a totally different way. To tell you the truth it’s kind of
disorientating, I’m assured that it will transform my life, but at the moment
it’s just weird.
I made a
joke about it on facebook, by posting a photo and saying ‘conservative
evangelical minister learns to see world through a progressive lens’. I find it
rather strange that using a progressive lens means I now look down my nose at
other peoples’ perspectives and opinions, no it is not a posture of superiority
I simply do it to be able to read what is written, through these glasses. Apparently the best way to get used to these
new lenses is to put your glasses on first thing in the morning and leave them
on all day. To live seeing things in a new way…
At the same
time I’ve been reading a book that talks about the word ‘repent’, and the
authors say that we misunderstand this word, we can think it means to simply
feel bad about things that we have done wrong, and so ask for forgiveness to
stop feeling so bad. Feeling bad does not really lay a solid foundation for
true change we need to have a vision of a preferred future. We are even used to
repent meaning to turn around from going our own way to going God’s way,
usually as a one off event, a conversion experience. The authors suggested that
the greek word can mean to see things in a different way, in a new way. When
Jesus starts his ministry in Matthew’s gospel he says repent for the kingdom of
heaven has drawn near… come and see things in a new and different way. View the
world through the lens of the Kingdom of Heaven, breaking into the realms of
humanity in the person of Jesus the messiah. That will transform your life. Repent…View and live in the world through this
new reality.
In the
ethos section of our Proposal to Join
Together and Become One (the document that forms the basis of our three churches coming together) it states that “We aspire to truly understand,
embody and proclaim Jesus’ Good News about the Kingdom of God.” We have a clear
vision for having a clear vision of the Kingdom of God and living that out.
This year to help us see that vision become more a reality in our morning
services we are going to be working through Jesus teaching in Matthew’s gospel
that speaks about the Kingdom of Heaven, Matthew’s way as a Jew writing to Jews
of saying the Kingdom of God.
The series
is called ‘A 2020 vision of the kingdom of heaven: The manifesto, mission,
meaning and means of the much awaited kingdom of heaven’. Good preaching
alliteration and yes a play on the use of 2020 as the date and prescription for
perfect vision, which I did think was clever when I thought of it last year but
know I see it’s a cringe worthy cheesy cliché.
We are
going to look at five blocks of Jesus teaching that Matthew presents in his
gospel… the sermon on the mount Jesus teaching on kingdom living, Matthew 5-7,
Jesus teaching on mission when he sends out the twelve in chapter 10, the
parables of the kingdom in Matthew 13, his teaching on being the church
together in Matthew 18 and what’s known as the Olivet discourse in Matthew
23-24, about what is to come and what it means to wait for the kingdom to be
consummated, to come in its fullness.
We start
today with what’s known as the Sermon on
the Mount. It’s an election year and by the end of it we are going to be
bombarded with party manifesto’s. People telling us what it will be like if we
elect them to govern in our country. It’s election year in the US and that may
over shadow our own elections as we see a ding dong battle over whose vision of
America and the free world that nation wants. The Sermon of the Mount has been
called the manifesto of the Kingdom of God. We don’t like the idea of the
gospel being political, but we tend to forget that Good News, gospel was a
political word, and politics is about how we live together as a society. In the
ancient world, a certain ruler would come and conquer a people and say Good News
Guys I’m the boss now I have kindly come and conquered you and it means that you
will live together as a people in this way. In Jesus day you had the Romans say
this is the Good News of Caesar Augustus, live this way and pay us taxes for
the privilege, and these will be the benefits, peace, prosperity, commerce,
protection…blessings. Matthew’s birth narrative focuses on Jesus as the long
awaited ‘king of the Jews’ and now Jesus teaches his Good News of what it means
that ‘Jesus is Lord.’
Right away
Jesus calls us to see things in a different way. He starts off with what we
know as the beatitudes, a list of people and attributes that are blessed and
what that blessing entails. Right off the bat it feels very disorientating,
because we are not used to thinking about people who are poor, physically and of
heart as blessed, people who mourn, or thirst and hunger as blessed. We tend
think of the powerful, not the meek and humble, those who have peace not those
who make peace as blessed, those who are popular and highly thought of as
blessed, not when they are being oppressed and persecuted, put down and spoken
falsely against. We see those who have their hearts desires meet, not the pure
of heart as blessed, maybe we are Ok with the mercy one, but we tend to think
people should get what they deserve. Commentator Matthew Woodley talks of a
friend of his shaking his head and walking away when he read the beatitudes
because they just didn’t make sense to him. Jesus flips the way we see who and
what is blessed on its head, upside down. Or is it that we are so used to
seeing things the wrong way up, in a topsy-turvy manner and in Jesus and the
Kingdom of God things are being set right, put the right way up.
We tend to
view things through our western materialistic worldview, but for Jesus and
Matthew and the disciples and crowd, their hope their expectations were shaped
by the scriptures of the Old Testament and in particular passages like Isaiah
61 that we had read out to us that gave hope to the exile suffering physical
and spiritual hardship, but continued to trust in God, that a time when God
would establish his kingdom, and put things right. In fact in Luke’s gospel
Jesus starts his ministry in synagogues by quoting from Isaiah 61 say that the
spirit of Lord is upon me, to preach good news to the poor recovery of sight to
the blind, to set free the prisoners, to declare the acceptable year of the
lord” and in the beatitudes Jesus proclaims that reality.
This is an
introduction to the series, and so we are not going to get the chance to delves
too deeply into the beatitudes but I want to make a series of quick comments
about what the beatitudes say to us about God’s kingdom.
The first
may sound rather obvious but it is all about Jesus. The context for Jesus
teaching in verse one and two was that Jesus called his disciples to himself
and began to teach them. The teaching is for those who already had made a
commitment to follow Jesus, who had been captivated by him. The crowd in this
case listen in and hear and for them it is to help them know about who Jesus is
and what it means to follow him. But also we may think the beatitudes give us a
list of characteristics of a disciple that is unrealistic and over the top, but
in actual fact they paint us great picture of who Jesus was and is. Jesus
speaks of being meek and gentle and lowly of spirit, trusting in God even on
the cross, he shows mercy, he is the ultimate pacemaker between humanity and
God, calling us together across the divides of humanity to be God’s people
together, he mourned for the restoration of God’s people. Paul will later call
Jesus follows to imitate Christ. 
Secondly, the beatitudes are this wonderful
amazing welcome to all into the Kingdom of heaven. 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’s 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. We forget that at
the heart of the gospel is God’s offer of grace. 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. You are
loved and invited in by God, the broken will be whole, our poverty met with the
resources of god’s kingdom, our sorrow comforted by God, as we experience that
in Christ our hearts are turned to peace making and mercy and being meek;
working for the common good and not being turned aside by hatred, slight, false
accusation or persecution.
It invites us to see people through the
eyes of the kingdom of heaven, through Jesus eyes. The beatitudes
calls us to see the people we might not consider as blessed with dignity and
not as being marginalized but important to God and his kingdom. The rest of the
sermon shows us how to show that dignity and love.
One of the challenges when it come to
studying and understanding and applying the beatitudes is the difference
between Luke and Matthew’s versions. Luke’s version focuses on the physical
needs, the poor, hungry, those who weep and those who are persecuted and he
reinforces that with a series of Woes for those who are invested in being
fulfilled in this life. The rich the full, those who simply seek amusement, and
doesn’t that say something to our devise distracted culture today, those who
seek public acclaim and popularity. Matthew is often accused of spiritualising
Jesus teaching, but the reality is that they speak to the kingdom of God being
about the both, in fact they are intertwined and they call us to be both about
evangelism and also about justice and peace in our world. It invites us to have
the passion for the lost of a billy graham, the compassion for the least of a
mother Theresa and the courage to dream and dare for difference and justice of
a martin Luther king Jr. That might set
bar rather high, but all three are examples of God’s kingdom at work in the
world.
I find comfort in the fact that in the
beatitudes Jesus shows us that being blessed is not tied to our circumstances,
rather it comes from God’s goodness and God’s promise and god’s provision. When
we face difficulty and trouble when we find ourselves joining the psalmist in
the prayer “how Long O God” that we can trust That God is setting things right.
When it comes to that we live in the tension between the already and not yet,
we can experience it in God’s presence and moving in our lives now, because Jesus
has come and inaugurated the Kingdom, in his life death and resurrection, and
we can have hope that it will have a future fulfillment when Christ returns to
finally set all things right.
With my new glasses I am learning to see
things differently, hopefully to see things more clearly, and with the
beatitudes Jesus invites us to start seeing things through the lens of the
kingdom of God… to start to see things in our topsy turvy world the right way
up.
Lets pray
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