Matthew 5:1-11
Jeremy Richards
Audio recording: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/02-02-20-youre-in-the-right-place-if-jeremy-richards/id1479727299?i=1000464938474
I never used any form of the word “bless” until I was a pastor. Actually, it all started when I was applying to Grant Park, and I was emailing with Shelley, herself an accomplished minister with more experience than me, and she ended every email to me with the farewell, “Blessings, Shelley Varner.” I thought to myself, I guess that’s how pastors and ministers end their emails, I guess I better do the same.
But the word “bless” is such a churchy word.
I remember being a teenager, working at this resort in McCall, ID, right along Payette Lake. There was this couple staying there one time, sitting at a table on the patio right by the shore, and every chance they got to use the word “blessed” they took. They were so blessed to be there. I remember my coworkers lightly mocking them behind their back for using the word blessed so often. In all fairness, it isn’t really a word that most people use regularly. It’s a word that religious folks use. If someone uses some form of the word “bless,” you instinctively assume they’re Christian, probably of a certain evangelical or Pentecostal persuasion, though not always.
Blessing implies a gift or a status or favor or fortune that comes from outside of the person, most often from God. In our culture, there’s usually an implicit “God” before the word bless. It’s like short hand for saying “God bless.” Blessings don’t exist on their own, they come from somewhere.
For much of my life I tried not to be too Christian, not because I was ashamed, but because I didn’t want to be one of those in-your-face Christians, and so I avoided being too overtly religious, especially when it came to the words I used. But now I’m a pastor and it’s my job to bless. The benediction every Sunday is a kind of blessing. In a few minutes we’ll share Communion, and I’ll offer to bless anyone who, for one reason or another, chooses not to partake of the bread and the cup. I’m obviously still not super comfortable with this whole “blessing” thing, because last month I went to say a blessing over Noah, and my mind went blank. I couldn’t remember what to say. What did I say?
Aside from the churchy sound of the word “bless,” there’s another reason I get uncomfortable with it, and that’s because it’s often associated with material wealth. We are “blessed” when we get stuff, when life is easy, when everything’s going our way. I think about that couple from when I was a teenager. They were blessed because they were sitting along a beautiful lake at a fancy resort.
There’s also an assumption that goes the other way, too: if life is hard, if the going gets rough, one must not be blessed, and the opposite of “blessed” is “cursed,” so it isn’t a huge leap to go from saying those with a bunch of excess wealth are blessed and those without excess stuff, those who lack, are not only not blessed, they are actually cursed. If we keep traveling down this line of thinking, the “haves” are the blessed, the beloved of God, and the “have-nots” are the cursed, those not loved by God. This, obviously, can’t be true, as Jesus makes clear in the Beatitudes.
Thank God for Jesus, am I right? We’d be in trouble without him. Jesus comes along and in his first real teaching in the book of Matthew, he tackles the topic of blessing. And, well, he complicates the issue. He doesn’t exactly set the record straight, though. He flips the idea of blessing on its head, but we’re left wrestling more with what he means than coming to a clear conclusion, especially in Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes. In Luke’s version, the blessing is all about one’s circumstances, “Blessed are you poor, blessed are you that hunger, blessed are you that weep…”
But in Matthew’s version it isn’t so straight forward. In Matthews version, Jesus says:
“Blessed are the poor…in spirit.”
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst…for righteousness.”
“Blessed are the pure in heart.”
What do these phrases mean? What does it mean to be poor in spirit, or hungry and thirsty for righteousness, or pure in heart? We know what poverty and hunger look like. In Luke’s version, we just have to wrestle with what Jesus means by “blessed” – which is still no easy answer – but in Matthew’s version, we also find ourselves unsure of what the descriptors mean as well. And we aren’t alone. The commentaries I read this week throw out a number of ideas, but they don’t give a definitive answer. It turns out there’re a variety of possible meanings.
To be honest, I wish the text assigned today was Luke’s version, because Luke’s version is a pretty great setup for a straight-forward social justice message, which I was primed and ready to preach this Sunday. Before I really looked at the details of Matthew’s Beatitudes, I thought I knew what I was going to say. I was going to talk about how Jesus singles out those who are marginalized and suffering and disposable in the eyes of society makes a special point to affirm their dignity, their blessedness, and that this is the very same idea behind the modern Black Lives Matter movement, and that the competing “all lives matter” movement is the equivalent of some rich person yelling at Jesus after he says, “Blessed are the poor,” “Hey, why can’t we all be blessed.” That sermon also would have fit in with the sermon last week, which was all about particularity. We talked about Jesus’ particularity, and now we could look at how Jesus’ acknowledges the particularity of individuals, especially those who are the most easily ignored in society.
That’s what I would have preached on, if I was preaching from Luke. But, like I said, Matthew is more complicated. Some people accuse Matthew of watering down Luke’s version of the Beatitudes and making them too “spiritual.” Matthew could be interpreted as giving those of us who aren’t poor and aren’t hungry an easy out: you don’t have to take real poverty seriously, it’s just about poverty of spirit; don’t stress about those hungry for food, it’s really about those who hunger for righteousness.
I have to be honest, I’m really afraid that I’m going to be guilty of this “spiritualizing” Matthew’s Beatitudes in my sermon today. I’ve been stressing about it all week. But I’m trying to be true to the Scripture, and the reality is, Matthew isn’t talking about the poor, he’s talking about the poor in spirit, and he isn’t talking about the hungry, he’s talking about those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. So I’m going to do my best to preach on what the passage says, while not ignoring the justice element of Jesus’ teaching, which I think is still definitely present. But if you disagree with my interpretation, please come talk to me. I’d love to hear your perspective. I really wish we were having our time of response today…
So, that being said, I do think Matthew’s Jesus is very much concerned with justice and the plight of the poor and oppressed, but in Matthew, Jesus aims first at the heart, knowing true transformation doesn’t happen unless it starts on the inside. “First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may be clean,” Jesus says later in Matthew. Jesus wants us not just to act different, but to become different people, kingdom people we might say. Or, as I’ll explain a little later, maybe we should say kin-dom people. Jesus wants transformation of heart, mind, and soul, which will lead to a transformation in how live, move, and act in the world, and how we relate to others, especially those on the bottom. In the words of the theologian Anna Case-Winters,
…Matthew’s approach is to emphasize human response to the Gospel through authentic virtue and doing God’s will. The blessings are directed toward those who have a certain disposition and inclination to act in ways consistent with God’s will rather than toward those who have a particular circumstance or status. Matthew is taking an ethical perspective.[1]
Anna Case-Winters is arguing that Matthew is concerned more with how one responds to God’s call than one’s socio-economic status. Jesus comes along and flips the world on its head, tells us blessings have nothing to do with wealth, tells us the tax collectors and sex workers are entering the kingdom of heaven ahead of the pious, tells us, ultimately, victory comes through the cross. Then he challenges us to see the world in the same way he does. Talk about a paradigm shift.
When Jesus begins his ministry with the words, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near,” this is what he’s talking about. He’s inviting us into a radical new way of seeing. Change your mind! He says. Stop thinking in the old way about power and success and…blessing. See with new eyes, enter a new way of thinking, a new way of being, enter the kingdom of heaven. To quote Case-Winters one more time, “…a new way of life is at the heart of the gospel call.”[2]
Jesus walks along the seashore calling out repent, which means turn from the old way, and then he travels up to a mountain, sits down and calls his disciples to huddle up so that he can start the long, 3 years process of explaining and modeling this new way to them, explaining what it is they’re turning toward. And he begins with blessing.
This past week I listened to Krista Tippet’s interview with Greg Boyle on the On Being podcast. Greg Boyle is a Jesuit priest who started Homeboy Industries in East Los Angeles. Homeboy Industries is the “largest gang intervention, rehab and re-entry program in the world.”[3] You should listen to the interview on your drive home from church this morning. You should also look up Boyle’s commencement speech at Pepperdine University on Youtube. He’s a phenomenal speaker and his stories about working with gang members are really moving.
Well, at one point in the interview with Krista Tippet, Boyle talks about the Beatitudes, and he says that he read somewhere that a better translation than “blessed are” is “you’re in the right place if…”. You’re in the right place if you’re poor in spirit, if you mourn, if you hunger and thirst for righteousness, if you’re meek, if you’re merciful, if you’re pure in heart, if you’re a peacemaker, if your persecuted because you’re so dedicated to justice, if you’re reviled and slandered because you just love Jesus so much and follow him so whole-heartedly. When those things happen, know you’re in the right place. He goes on to say that it’s “…not a spirituality. It’s a geography. It tells you where to stand. You’re in the right place if you’re over here. It’s about location.” It’s about where we place ourselves, and who we place ourselves with.
I’m not sure if that translation of the Beatitudes is correct. I didn’t come across that anywhere in my studying, but I do think that’s what Jesus is getting at in Matthew’s Beatitudes. Matthew is concerned with ethics. Matthew wants you to know that the way you live matters. Following Jesus isn’t about joining a social club that meets on Sunday mornings or singing songs that make us feel warm and fuzzy. It’s about discipleship. It’s about following Jesus, and Jesus, as we know from Matthew 25, is with the down and out, the forgotten and the despised, the sick, the lame, and the disgraced. He’s with the ones everyone calls sinners. He’s with the “cursed.” And he tells them they’re blessed.
Mitch is a chaplain, so he blesses people a lot. I’m sure that at this point he’s much more comfortable with using the word “bless” than I am, so this week I texted him and asked him what a blessing is. What does it mean to bless someone? He said, “I think a blessing is a reminder to a person that God is present and active in their life.” So when Jesus says blessed are “the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, those who are reviled for following Jesus,” Jesus is saying that God is right there with them. “You’re in the right place.”
Maybe some of us this morning don’t feel very blessed. Maybe you feel broken, tired, used up – poor in spirit, starving for goodness and justice that seems so hard to find, maybe you’re grieving. Maybe, in other words, you feel more like the cursed. But Jesus says you are blessed. Jesus says God is right there with you. Jesus says you’re in the right place.
And the thing about blessed people is that they bless others. If you came this morning and you’re at the end of your rope, you’re barely hanging on, if your life’s spinning out of control, whatever it is that’s going on in your life, it doesn’t matter, you are a blessing to us. You are blessed and you are a blessing.
Greg Boyle talks a lot about mutuality and kinship. He’s very clear about the fact that he is blessed more by the teenage gang members he ministers to than they are by him (though they would surely say the opposite). He isn’t interested in simply serving them, he wants to enter into relationship with them. It isn’t enough to simply serve the down and out – the poor, the weeping, the hungry and thirsty – one must become their brother, their sister, their sibling. Boyle says, still talking about the Beatitudes, “service is the hallways to the ballroom,” but it isn’t the ballroom. The ballroom is “the place of kinship, the place where you ask who is receiving from whom?”
Kinship is the goal. Mutual love and respect and reciprocity are the goal. Solidarity is the goal. That’s the ballroom. The ballroom is that place where finally the boundaries dissolve as we dance together, where the distinction between the giver and the receiver can no longer exist because both are giving and both are receiving. It’s the place where the “cursed” are seen for the blessing they are, where the disposable of society are infinitely valued, where the lines blur and
the gang member and the priest,
the patient and the physician,
the poor and the rich,
the black, brown, white, and indigenous,
the men, women and non-binary,
the gay, the bi, and the straight,
the cis and the trans,
live and give and receive together, mutually blessing one another.
The beatitudes create this ballroom for us, and in this ballroom we’re all in the right place, because we’re all together.
[1] Anna Case-Winters, Matthew, 77.
[2] Ibid 71.
[3] https://homeboyindustries.org/our-story/about-homeboy/