All Saints Sunday A
Text: Matthew 5:1-12
Sermon by Rev. Robert Klonowski
Faith Lutheran Church, Homewood, IL
November 1, 2020
Beatitudes
In the first few chapters of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus prepares for the ministry he’s going to do. He encounters John and is baptized, he goes on retreat for 40 days in the wilderness, he calls to himself the first disciples. Crowds have started to follow him.
Now at the beginning of chapter 5, the lesson we read today, it’s time to get started. Jesus walks up the mount, turns to his disciples … and he blows the whistle and begins the first practice of the brand new season. You know, if you’re a coach, the very first words to your newly drafted team are so important. You want to set the tone. You want to set the agenda.
And that is exactly what Jesus does here. Chapter 5, verse 1, is the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount; Jesus begins to teach. The very first thing out of his mouth is the Beatitudes; we’re going to start right there, says Jesus. Everything you thought you knew about this world, is going to be turned upside down.
Yeah: think for a minute of everything you just know to be true in this world: that it’s the rich who call the shots, right? It’s those who have it all together, who are the respected. It’s the arrogant and the ruthless, who win.
Well, Jesus lays out a very different game plan, and it turns out what he’s got in mind is a very different world. Because actually, it’s the poor, for whom the Kingdom of heaven is on the way. It is the meek, the humble, those whom this world thinks are no-account, who inherit the very earth. And if you are one who yearns for righteousness, for things to be put right in this old world of ours, well, then. You have known nothing but hunger and thirst for a very long time. But … you will be filled, says Jesus. It’s people with that very kind of yearning in the gut, who will be filled.
Some years ago I had a conversation with a friend of mine about these Beatitudes. “Ah,” she said, “the Beatitudes always make me feel so guilty! All those lines about being humble and being righteous; I always feel like I just don’t measure up.”
I don’t know how to break this to you, but she’s right. in the first place she’s right about herself – I know her! And let me tell you, she just does not measure up! But she’s right about you, too: You just don’t measure up.
And then again, she’s wrong. Because the Beatitudes are not about measuring up. Quite the opposite. Quite the opposite.
Her mistake is common enough, though, I suppose. Everybody always assumes that if Jesus is going to commend anybody, then of course he’s going to commend the commendable. Who else would he hold up as examples to us if not the saintly, those with impeccable spiritual credentials, those who are spiritually and morally upright? Today is All Saints Sunday; the spiritually and morally upright, that’s what a saint *is*, is it not? Jesus is all about trying to build a little moral fiber into us, isn’t he?
And yet, when those blessings come here in the Beatitudes … on whom do they come? To whom, do they come?
Not to any spiritual giants. No; it’s actually to the “poor in spirit,” the ones who – spiritually speaking – just don’t measure up. Blessings on those with empty spiritual tanks, those who like the Prodigal tell the father, “You know, after all that’s happened, I’m not worthy to be your son.” Is that you? Poor in spirit; empty tank in these dragging, sapping, spiritually depleting days of pandemic? It’s someone just like you, then, who in that Prodigal story discovers for the first time all he always had, in having a father. Blessed are those, who are *poor* in spirit.
On whom do blessings come? In the Beatitudes they come not on any champions of faith who can rejoice even in the midst of suffering, but rather on the broken-hearted ones, says Jesus; the ones who cry out at the loss and the emptiness and the pain. Is that you, from time to time in these days? Blessings on you, then; you who just can’t get over it the way the world tells you to.
On whom do blessings come? In the Beatitudes they come not on the strong ones, but the little people, the ones who are relatively powerless, and gentle. Not weak, mind you! There’s a big difference between gentle, and weak. Think of the passion of Jesus here: in the most humiliating deal the world has to offer … you get the most powerful act the world has ever known. Gentle, and powerless, … and powerful.
On whom do blessings come? In the Beatitudes they come not on the ones who are already righteous, who have it all figured out, but on the ones who hunger and thirst, the ones with only the slimmest hope they may be made righteous one Day and in the meantime are so well aware that the distance they still have to go in this journey of righteousness is even greater than the distance they’ve already come.
On whom do blessings come? Not on the winners of great victories over evil in the world, but on the ones who know sin all too well in themselves, when they look in the mirror in the morning. And the blessings come on the ones who are merciful when they find evil and sin in others, and maybe in that way win the greater victory.
On whom do blessings come? Not on anyone who claims to have found peace in its fullness, but on the ones who look for it and make that peace, again and again – the peace-makers. Peace with their neighbors and God, peace with themselves.
Then: Jesus saved the last blessing for the ones who side with heaven even when any fool can see it’s the losing side and all you get for your pains is pain. Looking into the faces of his listeners, he speaks to them directly for the first time. “Blessed are you,” he says. “Blessed are just such as you.”
You can see them looking back at him. They’re nothing that you’d call a high-class crowd: fishermen and peasants; just your ordinary south suburban types; schoolteachers and office workers, care-givers and parents, all of them trying to make their way in a bewildering world where it seems the answers are never simple. They’re a little on the shabby side, that crowd; they don’t seem to have it together enough that they really know what they’re doing. Not a real spiritual hero among them, really. They have their faces set, and they listen attentively to Jesus their Lord. Their foreheads are bent with concentration.
And Jesus says that the blessings of the Beatitudes are theirs, even in spite of the fact – maybe even because of the fact! – that they don’t measure up.