A View From The Top

The Sermon Study Guide is here. 

Matthew 5:1-12

March 3, 2013 • Portage First UMC

VIDEO INTRO

I think I first fell in love with the mountains in Colorado. My grandparents moved from Dayton, Indiana to Divide, Colorado after they retired, and it became our annual summer vacation to go see them. Their house sat on the edge of a small mountain, with a lake at the foot of the hill, and from their deck, you could see Pike’s Peak. It was a beautiful setting, and I was very sad when their health no longer allowed them to live in a high altitude. The mountains had captured my heart.

Many years later, I had the privilege to travel to Austria, and I realized then I had never really seen mountains. The Rockies are nice, but they have nothing on the Austrian Alps. When we would travel from place to place during that week, I would just stare out the windows at the mountains. There’s something about the mountains that draws my spirits up. There’s something about the mountains that calls to me and pushes me closer to God.

Jesus loved the mountains, too, for when he wanted to get away from the crowds, and even from the disciples, to pray, he went into the mountains of Galilee. All around that sea there are small mountains, places of retreat. Going to the mountains in that region can give you a new perspective. One of the places we hiked last summer was to the top of Mt. Arbel, and though it’s not mentioned in the Bible, you can’t help but imagine this might have been one of the places Jesus went to pray. From that peak, you can see the whole area around the Sea of Galilee. We do know, though, from the Scriptures, that often when Jesus taught, he went to the mountains, and so as we continue our study of The Way, of Jesus’ life and ministry, we want to think about the mountains as a place that reminds of his teaching, primarily his teaching about the kingdom of God.

Not far from Capernaum is a gentle rising hill that, today, is called the Mount of the Beatitudes. On the top of this hill is an eight-sided Roman Catholic chapel designed by an Italian architect and built in the early 1900’s. It’s located, however, near the ruins of a fourth century church, and we have written evidence going back to the fifth century of this being the traditional site where Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount. Of course, we don’t really know, but it is in this place and at this chapel that we remember Jesus’ teaching. The eight sides of the chapel today represent the eight beatitudes, and the quiet grounds have become a favorite place for travelers to stop and pray as you look out over the Sea of Galilee (cf. EO, Holy Land Study Guide, pg. 12; Knight, The Holy Land, pg. 252).

Now, why did Jesus choose the mountains to do his teaching? Well, there is a practical reason in that of course there was no sort of public address systems or amplification in those days. The mountains along the Sea of Galilee provided a natural amphitheater, so that if Jesus stood on the seashore or even up on the mountain, large crowds of people could gather around him and hear quite well as the mountains and the sea helped carry his voice. Jesus is at the height of his popularity in this passage, and though Matthew says he drew his “disciples” to him, we have to understand that was more than the twelve. There’s no head count taken here, but it likely was a rather large gathering who wanted to hear what this miracle worker had to say (Carson, “Matthew,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 8, pg. 128). One scholar estimates, based on the shape of the land, eight to ten thousand people could have sat within listening distance of Jesus on this mountain (Spangler & Tverberg, Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus, pg. 164).

But I think there’s a more symbolic reason Jesus chose the mountains. As I said, the mountains are often seen as a place of refuge, a place of reflection and peace. But it was not so in Jesus’ day. In fact, Biblical scholar N. T. Wright says that then, and still somewhat today in that part of the world, the mountains are where you go to plot revolution. Mountains were places where dreams about a different way of life could be discussed (qtd. in Nunley, A Holy Journey, pg. 64). In many ways, Matthew wants to present Jesus as the new Moses, the one who brings a new law, a new way of living. Moses gave the Ten Commandments, which forever shaped the Jewish way of life, from Mount Sinai in the desert. Jesus comes, on the mountain, and again presents a new way of life, one meant to shape the lives of those who follow him in the same way the Ten Commandments shaped those earlier believers. Now, he’s not doing away with what Moses did and said; he’s quite clear about that in this Sermon on the Mount. He says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (5:17). So those churches and groups that want to get rid of the Old Testament have missed what Jesus is saying here. He’s come to fulfill everything that has come before, not get rid of it, and so he teaches the people what that looks like. He plots a new way of life, a revolutionary way of living. Even his teaching it on the mountain tells the people that because the mountains were places you went to plan a revolution.

So what kind of revolution did Jesus bring? We’re going to look in a moment at his teaching in this section of Matthew, because in many ways it’s sort of a summary of everything else he taught. But before we do that, I want us to understand something about the way Jesus taught. We have this ongoing debate in the church at large as to how “literal” we take the Scriptures, but even those claim to take Jesus absolutely literally don’t much of the time. Jesus said, “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off...if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off…And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out” (Mark 9:43-47). If we took Jesus absolutely literally there, there’d be a whole lot of people wandering around half-blind and missing hands and feet. And we don’t do that. So how do we understand Jesus’ teaching? Well, first of all, we have to remember Jesus nearly always spoke using figures of speech. That is, he described God’s kingdom by using things in their culture, things they understood, things they saw every day. The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed or yeast (Luke 13:18-20). The kingdom of God is like a man scattering seeds on the ground (Mark 4:1-20). The kingdom of God is like a treasure hidden in a field (Matthew 13:44). There are lots of these in the Gospels. He used imagery that was not to be taken literally (the kingdom is not literally a mustard seed), but it was a way to help paint a picture, to help people understand something that really is beyond our comprehension. Each figure of speech gives us an insight, a glimpse of what God’s kingdom is all about.

More than that, Jesus often told parables—short, vivid stories that made a point. If we go through the parables and try to make each thing represent something else, we’ve missed the point. God is not an unjust judge, but by telling a story of an unjust judge, Jesus in Luke 18 helps us understand some of the dynamics of God’s action in prayer. Other parables, like the Good Samaritan or the Prodigal Son, are meant to make a singular point. J. R. R. Tolkien did the same sort of thing. He would get frustrated when people would try to take his stories, like The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings apart and match the symbols to certain Christian truths. Like Jesus, that wasn’t his point. Christian imagery flows through those stories, but they’re stories, meant to point us toward something else. That’s what Jesus did with parables.

And third, Jesus often spoke with what is called “prophetic hyperbole.” That is, he would exaggerate to the point of the absurd to make a point. This brings us back to the saying about plucking out your eye or cutting off your hand. He didn’t mean us to take that literally. He said that to make a point about how serious sin is. When he said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24), he wasn’t excluding wealthy people. Rather, he was calling us to consider how riches can potentially destroy our souls. We need to understand, when we’re reading the Gospels, how Jesus is teaching. I like the way Adam Hamilton puts it: “We are meant to take what he said seriously, but we get in trouble at times when we take it literally” (The Way, pgs. 74-76). With that in mind, then, let’s turn to what Jesus teaches there on that mountainside.

He begins with a series of “blessings” that don’t sound like any sort of blessing we’re familiar with. We picture “blessing” as getting good things, stuff, money, power, anything we want. When things are going well, we talk about how we’re “blessed.” The word Jesus uses there is sometimes translated “happy,” but the word “happy” in our language is so circumstantial, so changeable. We’re happy if our team wins. We’re happy if we get a good tax refund. And our happiness can vanish as quickly as it comes. And “blessed” doesn’t really convey anymore what Jesus means, either, because he’s talking about someone who lives close to God, someone whose life reflects kingdom of God values. Someone who is “blessed,” in this sense, doesn’t necessarily make a lot of money or have a lot of things the world values. In fact, they probably don’t, because they have come to a place where Jesus is all they ultimately need. That’s why, as N. T. Wright says, Jesus isn’t really describing something toward which we should strive. He’s announcing what a “turned-over-to-Jesus” life looks like. He’s not analyzing the world or just giving good advice; he’s proclaiming good news (Matthew for Everyone, Part One, pg. 36). You’ll know you are blessed, Jesus says, when your life looks like this.

But, as I said, these so-called blessings aren’t what we think of. We don’t look toward someone we think of as meek to see what a blessed life is like. We don’t think of someone who is mourning as being especially close to God. We don’t think of someone who is making peace as necessarily doing God’s work. That’s what I mean when I say Jesus is planning a revolution on the mountain, because he’s busy turning the world upside down, or perhaps we should say he’s actively turning the world rightside up. He’s proclaiming that, by his arrival, these things are starting to come true about the world. When God shows up, Jesus says, this is what the world looks like.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,” Jesus says, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (5:3). When Luke repeats this saying of Jesus, he simply calls them “the poor” (Luke 6:20). We’re not just talking about economics here, but that is certainly a factor, because, as I mentioned a moment ago, Jesus is concerned throughout his teaching that wealth and privilege can keep us from knowing God. But the “poor in spirit” are those who, because they have so little, find that they can only depend on God. While God is concerned throughout the Scriptures about the least, the last and the lost, he has a special concern for those who are poor, though that does not give them a guaranteed spiritual advantage. The poor in spirit are the opposite of the proud and arrogant. They are those who turn, in humility, to God (Carson 131; Hamilton 79).

Then Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (5:4). Some have tried, through the years, to spiritualize this blessing, to say that what Jesus really meant was those who mourn their sin. But I think Jesus really meant “those who mourn.” In nearly twenty years of ministry, I’ve walked with a lot of folks who have lost loved ones. I’ve stood by a lot of caskets. And there is a distinct difference between those who have hope and those who do not, those who entrust their loved one to God and those who aren’t able to. Those who, in a time of mourning, find strength in their savior are comforted long after the casseroles stop coming and people stop asking how they are doing. Comfort from friends and neighbors, honestly, ends about two weeks after the funeral. But the comfort we find in Christ never ends. It doesn’t take away the pain of the loss, but it enables us to find strength for each day.

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” (5:5). This is one we’d like to skip over, because we picture meek as weak, as powerless. They’re going to inherit the earth? How would that happen? The word translated “meek” doesn’t mean weak, though. It implies an absence of pretension, knowing who you are, having gentleness and self-control (Carson 133). It implies a person who doesn’t have to do all sorts of things to try to impress others because they have a quiet power. In our celebrity culture, we know very little of that. But think of the people in your life who have had a significant influence, and I would imagine that many if not most of them are people who didn’t necessarily draw attention to themselves. I think of Esther Beard, my high school Sunday School teacher. Just an ordinary woman who showed up for 25 years, every Sunday, to teach Sunday School. She was even somewhat embarrassed when the church named her room the “Esther Beard Room” after she retired from teaching. Her goal wasn’t to draw attention to herself, but to Jesus. The meek make a lasting impact in quiet, yet powerful ways.

Then Jesus says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (5:6). Again, this is a hard one for us to get our heads around, because few of us know real hunger or thirst. Our teenagers get a glimpse of it when they do the 30-Hour Famine each year, but even then, they know at the end of 30 hours, they will be able to eat again. Jesus was speaking to people in a part of the world where food and water were sometimes scarce. If the rains didn’t come, if the fish weren’t “biting,” these folks in Galilee could often go without food and drink. They knew what it was to be hungry and thirsty, and Jesus compares that kind of desire to desperately wanting righteousness. In the psalms, we hear that desire expressed this way: “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (42:2). Someone who wants what God wants, whose heart breaks with the things that break the heart of God—that person is one who will be filled when the kingdom comes, because then everything will be the way it should be. Those who think things are the way they should be now will be surprised. You can sense that throughout these beatitudes, because in all of them, Jesus is changing things. He’s turning the world upside down, and if your power is in this world the way it is now, you’re going to find yourself in a mess when the kingdom comes. But if you long for things to be the way God wants them to be, the promise is you will be satisfied. 

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (5:7). “Mercy embraces both forgiveness for the guilty and compassion for the suffering and needy” (Carson 134). Now, I don’t know about you, but I can do the second part of that—compassion for the suffering—better than I can the first part. Forgiveness for the guilty? That’s hard, but let me bring it close to home. The last few weeks, a lot of us have been watching the trial around Amanda Bach’s murder, and this week, we got a “guilty” verdict for Dustin McCowan. So the justice system has done its work. What is to be our response? Jesus says the merciful are blessed, and mercy would call us to work on extending forgiveness even the young man. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have to face the consequences of his crime, but mercy is more about how we react toward those who hurt us. Mercy involves forgiveness toward that person who betrayed you, who left you and the kids high and dry, even the one who cut you off in traffic when you were in a hurry—and countless other situations. The merciful, Jesus says, are the ones who will in turn receive mercy. He says a similar thing later in the sermon when he tells us that as we forgive, we will be forgiven. It’s easy to judge someone else, failing to remember that we need mercy and we need forgiveness ourselves, just as much as they do.

Jesus isn’t done yet. Don’t we kind of wish he was by now? “Blessed are the pure in heart,” he says, “for they will see God” (5:8). Soren Kierkegaard said, “Purity of heart is to will one thing.” Jesus isn’t just talking about not doing certain things, though when we focus on one thing as our priority, we do tend to do nothing else that might distract us. Purity of heart, in this context, is having a singleminded commitment to the kingdom of God so that everything we do and everything we say and everything we are is dedicated toward growing his kingdom and not our own (cf. Carson 134). This week, I heard Max Lucado talked about purity of heart in regard to worship this way: “What are your children and others learning from your worship? Do they see the same excitement as when you go to a basketball game? Do they see you prepare for worship as you do for a vacation? Do they see you hungry to arrive, seeking the face of the Father? Or are others seeking the face of the Father while you’re seeking the face of your wristwatch? Do they see you content to leave the way you came? They are watching. Believe me. They are watching.” Purity of heart is to will one thing.

Then, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” Jesus says, “for they will be called children of God” (5:9). We tend to be better at making conflict than we are at making peace, but when Jesus is talking about peacemaking, he’s not talking about folks who tend to give in just to avoid an argument. He’s not talking about being walked over just so the fight ends. He’s talking about seeking reconciliation above all else, and not just between God and humanity, but also between people of all sorts. Where we tend to hang onto division, bitterness, strife and pettiness, Jesus calls us to be active in bringing peace, shalom, wholeness to every situation. Children of God are called to peacemaking, because by doing so, we reflect God’s character (Carson 135).

The last two blessings really belong together: “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (5:10-12). The reason Jesus ends these blessings with this promise is that he knows if we live like this, if we believe in an upside-down kingdom and seek to live it out, we’re going to be out of step with the rest of the world. Persecution, in varying forms, will likely follow. They’ll treat us, ultimately, like they treated Jesus because this way of life he envisions is far different from the way the world works. And sometimes we think we can pick and choose which of these blessings we want to experience. You know, I’ll choose “hunger and thirsting for righteousness” today, but I’d just as soon have nothing to do with “meekness” or “mourning.” And yet, that’s not the vision for life Jesus presents. That’s not the way life in the kingdom works. This beginning to the Sermon on the Mount describes the normal way of life for Kingdom dwellers. These all go together; they are a unity (Carson 133). We don’t get to say, “I’ve got 70%, so I’m passing.” That’s not the way it works.

The rest of this Sermon on the Mount, then, basically expands what Jesus has started with. If you’re doing the devotional, you’re going to skim over some of the highlights of this Sermon this week; if you follow the readings in the bulletin and in the YouVersion app, you’ll read all of the Sermon on the Mount this week, and I encourage you to do that, to begin to get a glimpse, a view from the top as it were, of what kingdom life looks like. It’s a life in which anger is the same as murder, lust is the same as adultery. It’s a life in which we keep our word, we don’t pray or practice other spiritual disciplines just to be seen, and we refuse to rely on the “treasures” of this world for our security. Jesus calls us to live above worry (one I have a hard time with). He calls us not to judge others, and to be on the lookout for those who would lead us astray. He wants us to be able to build our spiritual house on a firm foundation. These are the words that come to us from the mountain. These are the words that call us to a higher way of life.

But I want to look just very briefly at two other parts of this Sermon on the Mount, two passages that, I think, have particular import for Jesus’ general teaching. The first we find in 5:48: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” A lot of folks struggle with that passage. I can tell you for sure that I am far from perfect. I don’t ever want anyone to think, when I stand up here and preach, that I’ve got it all figured out. I don’t. I’m preaching God’s word, not my own, and I mess it up a lot. I’m guessing you can relate to that. But the context of that word really goes all the way back to verse 20 in the same chapter. 5:48 is sort of a summation of all that Jesus has being saying to that point. Verse 20 says, “Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Now, Jesus isn’t calling for a righteousness measurement. Rather, what’s he pointing out here is that those who were religious leaders in that day said one thing and then blatantly lived another. “Righteousness that exceeds” that is righteousness that seeks to live out what we believe. We don’t get it right all the time. I don’t get it right all the time. But that pushes me back to my knees, in repentance to a God who shows great mercy. John Wesley talked about verse 48 in terms of “perfection in love.” We aim to do all that we do out of love for God; that’s the perfection Jesus is looking for. We seek to live in the kingdom at every moment. We don’t have a “Sunday life” and a “Monday through Saturday life.” I once heard a Bishop put it this way: “If you were accused of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”

One way that is lived out, then, is described in the verses right after the Beatitudes, and I want to settle there as we wrap up this morning. “You,” Jesus says, looking at all those would-be followers sitting on the gentle slope of the mountain, “are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world…let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven” (5:13-16). We are the blessed. We are those called to kingdom life, walking in the footsteps of Jesus along The Way. But we’re not called to this life just for ourselves or our own salvation. We are called to live this life in public, to let our light shine, to be salt in the world. Salt, in those days as in ours, was a preservative, especially important in a time when there was no refrigeration. Salt made things taste good, just as it does today. When Jesus calls us salt, he’s calling us to make the world better just by our presence. Do you do that? Are you the sort of person who makes your world better, by offering encouragement to others, help when it’s needed? Is your life helping preserve the world? If so, Jesus says, you are the salt of the earth.

Furthermore, he says we’re the light of the world. We know how a little bit of light can brighten up the darkest place. When the power goes out, and we might have only a candle, it’s enough to bring light to a dark place. In Jesus’ day, oil lamps like these were the common method, certainly in Galilee, of lighting up a person’s house. Even that small light made a difference. And cities and towns, largely, were put on a hill for protection, but that also meant you couldn’t hide them. As night descended over Galilee, you could see the cities by their light. In the midst of a dark world, how well do we shine our light? How well do we live so that others can see a difference in us? Or, to follow up with what I said last week, do our lives contribute to pushing back the darkness of our world? If we are aspiring to live as Jesus’ teaching calls us to live, then we will be. In fact, Jesus says, if we live this way, others will notice our good deeds—not for our sake, not to bring attention to us, but so that God can be glorified. That’s the calling of the kingdom. That’s the purpose of Jesus’ teaching: to call us to be a blessing to the broken and dark world around us. Is the way you live a beautiful light to those around you? How will you bless someone this week? I challenge you to live out one of these beatitudes this week—forgive someone, comfort someone who is mourning, stand strong and yet not obnoxiously for what you believe, make peace with someone—or any other way that you can think of to bless someone this week. How will you live out Jesus’ kingdom teaching this very week?