Message for Sunday, February 2, 2014
Scripture Matthew 5:1-12
In his final book A Man Without a Country, the late Kurt Vonnegut noted that some Christians want the Ten Commandments posted in public places, but none seem to want to do the same with the Beatitudes: “ ‘Blessed are the merciful’ in a courtroom?” he wrote. ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ in the Pentagon? Give me a break!”1
Let’s bring it back home: How
about posting the Beatitudes in our church? Any church?
The Sermon on the Mount is making a comeback these
days . Among many recent offerings on
the subject, Hans Dieter Betz of the University of Chicago has written this
massive tome – all this, on three chapters of scripture! In his 88-page
introduction, Betz writes: “The conflict between the authority attributed to
the Sermon on the Mount … and the realities of common church life and history
has never escaped astute observers inside and outside the church.”
Which may explain why the
church institutional in the twentieth century largely ignored these three
chapters of collected teachings. For example: the three-year Sunday biblical
guide for many, if not most, mainline Protestant pastors – known as the Revised
Common Lectionary – only stretches through the first of the three Sermon on the
Mount chapters in its triennial cycle. And then
only if the cycles of the moon dictate a late Easter, which means a late Lent,
which means a longer Epiphany season. And it’s only with a longer Epiphany that
Matthew 5 is added as “filler”. Luke’s shorter, and probably earlier, version –
known as Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain – suffers a similar fate.
And an interesting fate this is, for teachings so universally influential that spiritual thinkers from Tolstoy to Gandhi, from Christian mystics to Islamic scholars, have extolled all three chapters of its ethical riches. Words that Betz identifies as the “epitome” of Christ’ teachings.2
Why this lectionary
oversight? Why this conflict – this discomfort – this dis-ease – between Sermon
on the Mount and the church?
Maybe it’s not so much our
conflict over or discomfort with the Sermon on the Mount that prompts us to
cast these teachings to the discipleship sidelines. A recent nationwide poll of
Christians from many denominations revealed that nearly three out of four of us
who know what the Sermon on the Mount is about consider it to have very little
relevance to our contemporary life.3
The Sermon on the Mount: It’s been seen as irrelevant.
Even though churches for nearly twenty centuries used this carefully-defined unit
of teaching as a reliable guide for church membership preparation. Even though
it is beautifully designed for catechetical instruction, and “studied more
intensively, quoted more frequently” over time than any other text in Matthew.
So much for the hubris of Protestants millions a century ago, planning to “win the world for Christ by 2000” – an ideal swept away by realpolitik and total war. For with the sowing of the first bullets of World War I, and the reaping of national enmities that followed, a famine of interest in the Sermon on the Mount’s concept of a divine kingdom “on earth, as it is in heaven” swept over the face of Christendom. While amidst this kingdom famine sprang forth the tender first shoots of postmodernism, grafted to astonishing theories of relativity, convincing us out of war’s rubble that there was no ultimate objective truth…
But wait: There is ultimate, objective truth. Not that we might ever arrive at that truth – not in this lifetime. But the Sermon on the Mount presents us with a road-map for that truth that beckons us: Come along on the journey! As one wag puts it, it may seem all relative – but, then again, we are all related!
And so along this journey we go! Gathering at Jesus’ feet with his disciples now, those
we are told who “came to him” to hear him. Beginning to listen to this epitome
of Jesus’ teachings, metaphorically spoken from a mountain: the place ancients
considered the “navel” of the universe between heaven and earth. Listening to
Jesus instructing, in Matthew’s context, Jewish and Gentile Christians both how
to live among each other, and among the world.
The Sermon on the Mount. It
all begins with today’s series of blessings and promises known as the
Beatitudes: “Blessed are the poor in spirit … those who mourn … the meek (i.e.,
the powerless) … Blessed are the merciful … the pure in heart … the peacemakers
… the persecuted …” And he’s blessing “you” – you plural. He’s speaking to a
community of disciples, here.
Some of you might recall the
Good News Bible, so popular in the 1970s. “Blessed” came to us in that
translation as “Happy.” A feel-good word, for a feel-good generation.
And yet, Jesus spoke in a Semitic context, and Matthew, the most Jewish Christian of all the gospel writers, understood this well. And in the Semitic context – conveyed well by our Hebrew scriptures – the concept of righteousness is key to blessedness. As in this Beatitude: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.” Righteousness: meaning, doing right by God by doing right by others.
The Greek makarios – translated “Blessed” – does not convey well the active and righteous Semitic understanding behind it. Elias Chacour, who knows Jesus’ Semitic vernacular – Aramaic – suggests a more active verb.
Chacour is an Eastern
Orthodox priest from Galilee – and now archbishop of areas that include his
home region. He has worked tirelessly for justice for his fellow Palestinians
and reconciliation with the Jewish people in Israel
We come closest to the true
meaning of the Beatitudes, Chacour states, when we understand the active,
righteousness-laden Aramaic equivalent of the Greek word translated “blessed”. For in Jesus’ native language of Aramaic,
Chacour notes, to be blessed is to wake up – or get up – or stand up. To ... Arise!
As in, “Get up, arise, you poor in spirit … Arise, you who mourn … Arise, you
who are meek …” Participatory words, rather than being blessed as a spectator.
"Arise!" It is a joyful, uplifting word –midst reminders of the
world’s brokenness all around us. “Arise – Arise – Arise!” Take action! As in
Jesus’ very active words subsequent to the Beatitudes we will hear next week: Be
salty! Let your light shine! Don’t keep it under a bushel! Don’t just say, as a
people of hospitality, “Here we sit – y’all come!” Shout out to the world,
“Here we stand – y’all come!” Be a people of conviction: teaching and preaching
and encouraging those most vulnerable to arise!
Here’s to Jesus the Jew, teaching his audience anew, the weepers, the persecuted, the approximately one-half of the Roman Empire world at that time suffering in debt slavery, that they – that we – are all created in God’s image, and we can therefore stand up – arise – for the sake of basic human dignity! A dignity that transforms persons and communities and churches anew, bringing us alive!
Beginning with the right to worship freely. Beginning with the right to speak freely. And then continuing with freedoms we seldom discuss, so central to Jesus’ ideas of blessings: The right to eat. The right to be clothed. The right to have adequate shelter. The right to have quality and affordable health care. These are, indeed, rights – and we have a responsibility as Christians to ensure those rights.
Enslaved, ensnared, entrapped at times as we may feel today, in the midst of violence and vulnerabilities and social stratifications of endless varieties, we can take heart in the empowerment these Beatitudes provide. Not that our lives might become more orderly. But that our lives, and the lives of those around us, might become more just.
Dare we pray
for God’s kingdom: the freedom to be heard?
Dare we work
for God’s kingdom: the freedom to be fed?
With these holy rights come –
as ever – holy responsibilities, so others may enjoy them as well. We shall
hear of some of those responsibilities in next Sunday’s message: Sermon on the
Mount, Part 2.
Until next week, then: Arise!
You mournful, meek, and merciful – you poor, pure, peacemakers, and persecuted:
Arise! For it’s you who shall be loved. For it’s you who shall be heard. For
it’s you who shall be fed. You: the salt and light of the world.
You – Yes, You: Arise!
1Kurt Vonnegut, quoting Eugene V. Debs, in A Man Without a Country (Seven Stories
Press, 1995), p. 81.
2Hans Dieter Betz, The Sermon on the Mount (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), p. 1.
3Personal notes from a workshop with the Rev. Dr.
David Buttrick on the Sermon on the Mount, Houghton Lake , MI
No comments:
Post a Comment