Pastor Thanael Certa-Werner
Scripture | Matthew 5:1-12 (NIV)
5 Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2 and he began to teach them. He said: 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 be shown 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 because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
This week, we are starting a new sermon series which continues our work of learning what it really means to live into our mission: to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. We’ve just finished looking at what it means to disciple ourselves, our neighbors, our cities, and our world over the course of four weeks.
Now we’re embarking on an eight-week journey through the first part of the fifth chapter of Matthew as we ask the question, what does it mean to be a disciple in the first place. Altogether, we’ll be exploring 12 verses over these coming weeks. These 12 verses have been considered from the early church throughout church history to be the constitution of Christian discipleship – the very essence of what it means to follow in the ways and path of Jesus. These 12 verses are the beginning of a sermon, probably the most famous in all of history: Jesus’ sermon on the mount. And in these introductory verses to the longer sermon, Jesus outlines eight blessings – or Beatitudes – for His followers. Each week, we’ll be exploring one of these blessings and diving deep into what it means for us as followers of Christ who want to know what it means to be disciples.
When we turn to the Gospel, we find that Jesus is working in His home region of Galilee. Galilee was a territory north of Israel proper. Life there was centered mostly around the Sea of Galilee (which is really a lake). As Jesus is going throughout the countryside, He is “teaching in their synagogues and preaching the Gospel,” as well as, “healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease.” Word, of course, starts to spread of this amazing Man Who is healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, taking away illnesses and people start to come from all over to hear Him speak and to be healed. Imagine if there was someone walking around completely curing and immunizing people from COVID-19! I know that I would go just about anywhere to receive that healing touch. And as a large crowd begins to form, Jesus moves to the mountain side – to God’s great synagogue, to teach them.
It’s important to point out that both what Jesus does and Who He is plays an important role in our scripture for today. First, Jesus sits down. This is the act of a teacher and of someone of authority. In synagogues, it was the Rabbi who would sit and teach about the Word of God. In schools, it was the teachers who would sit while pupils would gather around to listen and learn; in palaces, kings would sit as crowds would gather round to hear what commands they had to give; and so Jesus takes a posture of both wisdom and authority as He lays down the eight Beatitudes. The word beatitude is an anglicized version of a Latin word which means blessing or happiness. Through the beatitudes, Jesus is laying out the sum of what real faith looks like.
This leads to one of the key aspects of the Beatitudes: who’s teaching them. We heard them read at the beginning, they are a laundry list of moral values which seem almost impossible to live into. But equally important to what is being said here is who is saying it. Ask yourselves, does the person saying something change how you hear things and what you do with what you hear? In other words, is there a difference between some random person off the street saying you owe $12,000.00 in taxes and the IRS telling you owe $12,000.00 in taxes? Of course there is! And in the same way, who is talking to us here has enormous importance to what’s being said.
Jesus is God incarnate – the God Who crafted the universe and put all things into motion; the God Who understands all, knows all, can do all things, and is in all places – that God made into flesh and blood and living amongst His creation. Again, we look back to Jesus’ sitting and remember this fact. As a person sits, they seem to get physically smaller. As Jesus sits, we are reminded that the God of the universe made Himself “smaller” to become like us so as to teach us what it means to live the best life. So, when Jesus speaks to the crowds and to us today, the words carry differently because it is He Who is speaking them.
If it was an ethics professor at some university, we could write it off and allow for these morals to be excused away from our conscience. But, “When we think of the Beatitudes as the fulfillment of the Law in and through God’s Son Himself, we are less likely to write them off as unattainable or too culturally different to be relevant.”[1] In fact, it is essential for Jesus to be Incarnate and the One who is teaching us the Beatitudes, because “only the Son of God Himself could impart such lofty moral teaching because He had already set His people free by His love.”[2]
Finally, we return (yet again) to Jesus’ sitting. In it, we remember that God made Himself smaller in order that we might know His love and forgiveness. This act is an act of humility – the great God of the universe humbles Himself to become just like you and me. In fact, the incarnation is the greatest act of humility possible – and Jesus takes it. This act of humility was the point through which Jesus began His transforming work in the world and it is also the point in which He begins speaking about transformation in us.
Jesus begins His teaching with the first beatitude: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.”[3] Some Christians, and people outside the faith, have believed that this is a call to poverty. They believe that what Jesus is saying here is that we must be careful of our wants and live in a way which gets rid of worldly desires and wants by becoming poor ourselves. They believe that if they can impoverish themselves, that they would be happy. But the people sitting around Jesus listening to Him then – and plenty of people listening now – are poor as dirt and just as unhappy as kings sitting on their thrones. From experience alone, we know that poverty does not bring blessing or happiness.
So what does it actually mean to be poor in spirit? John Wesley taught that the “poor in spirit” are those who, whatever they own or receive in income, have that special realization in their hearts which is the first step to having real, substantial, and sustained happiness, both now and in the life to come.[4] In other words, being poor in spirit means that a person has come to a realization about themselves and their lives. John Wesley continues on to say, “Without question, the humble; they who know themselves, who are convinced of sin; those to whom God has given that first repentance which is previous to faith in Christ.”[5] What Wesley is teaching is that the poor in spirit are those who know that when they look at their lives, when they look at everything they’ve done – all the good and all the bad – that they deserve nothing but punishment. That in the spirit, there is nothing they could ever do to make up for the way they have lived their lives and that they have spiritually separated themselves from God in a way they can never repair. If God was only Just, they realize that they deserve to be parted from Him forever.
Being poor in spirit is realizing that we cannot say, I am rich and will continue to get more stuff, and am in need of nothing because of how depraved and poor and miserable and blind and naked I truly am. To be poor in spirit means to wake up! To see things as they really are. To examine ourselves and our lives and to see clearly how we have not been the people we have ought to be.
It can be hard to hear that we are not, in fact, good people because all we want in life is to be seen as good people. We want everyone around us to think that we’re good moral people. And I’m not saying that you aren’t a good person. Jesus is. He is saying here that we need to wake up! Only then can we experience the happiness which comes from spiritual poverty. This is not only the first beatitude, but also the first step towards real faith: realizing that you desperately need forgiveness which can come from God alone. This is why Jesus says that the kingdom of God belongs to the poor in spirit: because it is only in our poverty of spirit that we can see what we need and come to receive it. In God’s forgiveness and grace, we begin to know God’s kingdom and experience its peace, joy in the Spirit, and righteousness. Wesley says, all we need to do is say, “Yes, I give up, I give up at last. I hear Your blood which speaks and I cast myself and all my sins onto my redeeming God!”[6]
This speaks to the reality of every Beatitude that we explore over the coming weeks. Living into this and every beatitude essentially means living in Christ. It is easy for us to forget that the blessed, flourishing life depicted in the Beatitudes only comes about in Christ. He Himself lived it out. It is only a possibility for us to the extent that we are united to Him by the work of the Holy Spirit in us as the Church. The Beatitudes will challenge us – if this first one has not already challenged us. The reality is that they are impossible without Christ. But in Christ the impossible becomes possible.
In Christ, we can see ourselves as we truly are and live into His example of humility as we humble ourselves to admit when we are wrong before God and to confess our sins. Through self-examination and confession, we become poor in spirit and begin our first real step into the Kingdom of God. With our confession, we open the golden doors and begin our new life. There is hard work ahead, but I pray that together, we faithfully see it through to its completion. Let us humble ourselves. Let us examine ourselves. Let us confess our sins. Let us see how desperately we need Christ, and let us choose to take our first step into the Kingdom of God. Amen? Amen.
[1] Andrew Selby, Reading the Beatitudes like a Christian, 41.
[2] Andrew Selby, Reading the Beatitudes like a Christian, 43.
[3] Matthew 5:3.
[4] John Wesley, Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, Discourse the First (1748), I.2, paraphrased.
[5] John Wesley, Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, Discourse the First (1748), I.4.
[6] John Wesley, Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, Discourse the First (1748), I.12, paraphrased.