Today’s Gospel is the first of the five major discourses Jesus leads in Matthew’s gospel. His preaching and teaching helps his followers can make sense of the gospel in the context of their background and beliefs. They are first-century Jews living in a society that was imperial and patriarchal where leaders were respected for their power and authority, and households were modeled similarly. Like us, they probably had relationships with the people immediately around them, people with whom they probably shared similar social or economic status.
Now, think about your relationships and the people who shape your faith, your beliefs and practices. Who are they and how do you know them?
One of the obvious places where we find people who influence our faith is in church because it remains one of the rare places where we can find a half-dozen or more different generations all in the same room. This is one of the reasons we have intergenerational Sunday School: our faith is enriched by listening to people from different generations, whether they are older or younger than us.
But church isn’t the only place where we find these relationships that crisscross generations. We can find them in face to face or digital community outside of church – places like work and school, the gym or the American Legion.
All of these different relationships form a “faith web” around me, connecting me to someone who is my parents’ generation, and maybe a generation older than them, and, also to a college student or a 20-something, teenager and even a younger child.
But, in this sermon, Jesus challenges his followers to rethink who their community includes.
We call this sermon the Beatitudes, and often what we hear in that description is the word “attitude” as though Jesus is an advice columnist, giving us pointers. But Jesus isn’t interested in only changing our attitudes; the cross is about transforming our lives.
Faith begins with our relationship to God as sons and daughters, but it is never just about Jesus and me.
Incarnational faith, love with skin on it, depends on relationships with each other as brothers and sisters, and with our neighbors.
Jesus doesn’t want us to see others differently so that we will express pity, charity, or even compassion. He is inviting, no, commanding, us to rethink how we measure a person’s worth and respond — act and live — differently with each other.
He invites us to recognize blessedness in people and circumstances where it may be obscured or hidden,
covered by scars or bruises,
soaked by tears or the elements,
or silenced by fear.
He invites us to see each person we meet as a gift, from the God who created us and loves us, looking past the ways they annoy us, disappoint, or even anger us.
I know what Jesus is asking us to do is hard. But I want us to try it here this morning.
Take the bulletin insert for today. It has eight circles on it.
Start in the center and write your name there. Then, add the names who are the same people that Jesus names in the beatitudes.
Maybe you don’t know them by name, but as a group.
That’s ok. For example, we can all probably name someone who is mourning, but who are the poor?
Who are the peacemakers? Who are the merciful?
Your answers are your own; when you have put a person’s name or the name of a group in each circle, you’ll have another kind of faith web, built around the beatitudes.
So take a few minutes now to fill out your faith web.
That’s ok. For example, we can all probably name someone who is mourning, but who are the poor?
Who are the peacemakers? Who are the merciful?
Your answers are your own; when you have put a person’s name or the name of a group in each circle, you’ll have another kind of faith web, built around the beatitudes.
So take a few minutes now to fill out your faith web.
When we pray together later in worship, lift up the names of the people you have included, naming them blessed by God and praying for them.
This is what it means to be Kingdom people, united in faith and following Jesus. It’s not about living for some distant or far away future. It’s about recognizing God’s presence all around us, in the beautiful and in the broken, and remembering that God sees us all as blessed, both saint and sinner, loved and forgiven and given new life to follow Jesus as we live in response to God’s forgiveness, mercy and grace.
Let us pray:
Lord Jesus, giver of every blessing, help us come to you and welcome your word just as your followers did before us.
Send us out into the world to proclaim your Good News, with eyes wide open to see You in the world.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment