January 29, 2017 – The 4th Sunday after the
Epiphany
© 2017 Evan D. Garner
Do you ever feel like whatever line you choose at the grocery store is certain to be the slowest line? I don’t believe in luck, but I do believe that God has a way of teaching me patience by making sure that whoever is in front of me needs to get a price checked on some salad dressing or has a file-folder full of coupons or feels the need to argue with the cashier about whether the broccoli crowns are $1.39/lb. or $1.49/lb.. I am so bad at choosing the right line that I’ll make my decision and then, when I discover that the person in front of me wants to by a dozen gifts cards and make each one a separate purchase, I’ll switch to another line only to have that register freeze up so that I can watch the gift-card guy and the two people behind him finish their transaction while we’re still waiting for a manager. Sound familiar? It happens to everyone. In fact, I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone who thinks that he or she is consistently good at picking the right line.
Some of us were brought
up here in Alabama or were born with ties to the state. The rest of us moved
here and had to make a choice: Alabama or Auburn? If you moved here in the
1970s and picked Alabama when they were on a roll, you might have been
disappointed when Auburn won six of eight to close out the 1980s. Likewise, if
you arrived in the early 2000s and jumped on Auburn’s bandwagon when they won
six in a row, you might have regretted missing out on Alabama’s recent success.
When it comes to grocery stores or college football, however, it doesn’t really
matter all that much if you make a bad choice. But, when it comes to deciding
which team you’ll be on when Jesus comes back, you might want to choose
carefully. I don’t know about you, but, when everything comes to an end, I want
to be on the right side—on God’s side.
Over and over again in
the gospel, Jesus shows us whose side God is on. When he welcomes outcasts,
breaks bread with sinners, touches the unclean, comforts the mentally
disturbed, shows respect for women, and celebrates with the poor, Jesus is
showing us whose side God is on. In Matthew 5, when Jesus offers the Sermon on
the Mount, again, he is telling us what side of history God is on. “Blessed are
the poor in spirit…Blessed are those who mourn…Blessed are the meek…Blessed are
those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…” This is Jesus’ way of telling
us where to look for God and the fulfillment of God’s work. And he’s asking us
to search for him in the last places the world would ever think to look.
A long time ago, hundreds
of years before Jesus was born, the prophet Isaiah foretold this kind of
blessedness. In Isaiah 61, the prophet wrote,
The
spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has
sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to
proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the
year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all
who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion—to give them a garland
instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise
instead of a faint spirit (Isaiah 61:1-3a).
Poor, meek, mournful,
oppressed, and persecuted—those are the people to whom God speaks good news.
The prophet proclaimed those words to a nation in distress—a people who had
been defeated and imprisoned in exile, a people who were desperate for the hope
of redemption. Jesus came and once again declared that hope to those in
distress, but, this time, instead of speaking those words to a nation, he spoke
them to the ones whom a nation had forgotten—to the ones on whom the world had
turned its back. Has there ever been a more important moment for us to hear
these words of Jesus?
Who are the blessed ones?
“Oh, you’re so blessed,” we might say to the parents of successful children or
the owner of a successful business or the pastor of a successful church. But
they aren’t the ones to whom Jesus is speaking. “Blessed are the poor in
spirit,” he says. In other words, blessed are those whose esteem is run down,
whose heart and soul have been trampled on by life. “Blessed are those who
mourn,” he says, offering blessedness not to those with large families but to
those who weep at the graves of their loved ones. “Blessed are the meek,” he
declares, not honoring success but honoring those whom success has left behind.
In what way could these people ever possibly be blessed? In what strange
universe would anyone say to a grieving widow or an impoverished beggar, “You
are the blessed ones?”
In what universe? In
God’s universe. In God’s kingdom. In Christ we see most fully that God is on
the side of the disadvantaged. The rich and proud do not need God’s
vindication. The successful are never the ones who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Those who have been denied even the comforts of a modest life are the ones who
eagerly wait for the day of the Lord—for God and the justice and righteousness
that he brings. And where do we see them? In the Beatitudes, we discover that
true blessedness is found in the kingdom of God. Leonhard Goppelt, a German
theologian from the middle of the twentieth century, wrote, “As a single ray of
light passing through a prism is broken into the colourful spectrum of the
rainbow, so too what the kingdom brings finds colourful development in the
promises of the Beatitudes.”[1]
Do you want to know what side God is on? Listen to what Jesus says, and
discover where true blessedness is to be found.
But what are we supposed
to do about that? I don’t want to be on the wrong side when Jesus comes back,
but what am I willing to do to make sure that I’m not? Should I sell all that I
have and become poor? Maybe, but what about the other identities of
blessedness. Is God asking me to become mournful? Should I look for
opportunities to be persecuted? Perhaps all of us could stand to be a bit more
merciful or pure in heart, but I don’t think that’s the point. The Beatitudes
aren’t prescriptive; they’re descriptive. Jesus isn’t telling us to seek out
opportunities to be miserable, but he is commanding us to look at the world
through a new lens. By identifying true blessedness, he is telling us to search
for God in new places—not among the successes of this world but among those who
face the world’s deepest challenges.
Maybe it’s time for us to
stop looking at the world the way the world sees it and pray that God would
give us eyes to see the world the way that God sees it. Jesus does not say that
the poor and meek and mournful will
be blessed. He declares them blessed here and now. Yes, the fulfillment of that
promise is still ahead of us, and the world cannot see it now, but, with God’s
help, we can see that blessedness. We can see it because Jesus has shown it to
us. But are we willing to see what he sees? Will we let the story of the poor
and the oppressed and the marginalized teach us about God? Will we recognize
the blessedness that God has given them, or will we be blind to God’s preference
for the disadvantaged? Jesus tells us whose side God is on. Will we be on that side,
too?
[1] In
Theology of the New Testament (trans.
Of Theologie des Neuen Testaments 1975,
Vol. 1, p. 68), Grand Rapids, 1981; qtd in W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison The Gospel according to Saint Matthew,
Vol. 1, p. 446.
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