Matthew 5:1-12
February 2, 2014
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
It is no secret that American culture is one of the most diverse tapestries of humanity of any country in the world. We value diversity and multiculturalism because our country consists of people who literally come from every tribe and nation.
People might think that if they came to visit Chinatown that we would all be speaking the same Chinese dialect but we know that isn’t true. Our own neighborhood has always been a place where many different kinds of Chinese and other Asians came to begin their new lives or to retire from living a long life. We are very diverse. I love it when I walk down these streets and I hear people speaking Toishanese and they have no idea that I can understand them. They just think that I am another one of those ABCs.
And speaking about the ABC, that is the American Baptist Churches; we are the most diverse denomination in the US. Those of you who have had the opportunity to attend an American Baptist gathering like the Biennial Mission Summit know what I’m talking about. More than 1000 churches are African Americans. Besides the larger groups like the Hispanics, we have Haitians and Portuguese and now many Burmese groups—Karens, Chins, Kachins, and others are joining the American Baptist family. It’s no wonder that I am serving as its President today. And again, thank you for your patience and support of my ministry that goes beyond this church.
While on the one hand, we celebrate and affirm the richness that we have as a diverse and multicultural human race; on the other hand, we all share the common identity of being one people.
No matter where we live or what ethnic tribe we’re from, we all live under the same blue sky in God’s good creation. Whether our current drought is the result of global warming or not, we all know that our carbon emissions travel across the country and over the oceans and eventually affecting others. Did you read that we are getting the air pollution from China’s factories here on the west coast?
While we know and have witnessed how beautiful the differences in culture, language, and race that make this incredible tapestry; we also know that these particularities are only skin-deep. In reality, the passage from Matthew, the Beatitudes, evaluates us base not on the level of skin-deep but deeper in who we are as human beings. Jesus reveals that God defines the world much differently than we do and, in fact, is remaking the world in such a way that defines God’s people by their character and conduct more than their heritage.
Sermon on the Mount
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus redefines what it means to be a citizen of God’s new world—a world Jesus called “the kingdom of God” or “the kingdom of heaven.” Who are the people of God’s world? While we all may look different on the surface and speak a different language, Jesus reveals at the very beginning of his sermon that there are certain traits that will be common to all of those who are becoming part of God’s new world.
Remember how we say in the Lord’s Prayer, “God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven?” This means that the kingdom of God that exists in heaven is happening and coming on earth as well. This means as God’s people we are experiencing the blessings that accompany the unfolding of God’s kingdom on earth. What might this look like?
When we look closely at the Beatitudes, we would see that each builds on one another. The 20th century missionary E. Stanley Jones observed that you could divide the nine Beatitudes into three sets of three, with each set of three Beatitudes following the same pattern: statement, opposite and the conclusion. Let me explain—statement is the first premise; opposite is the contrary to the statement, and when you combine the statement and the opposite, we have the conclusion. Got it?
When you look at the Beatitudes in this way, you begin to see that Jesus is laying the foundation for citizenship in God’s new world which is further elaborated in the rest of his Sermon on the Mount. Let me try to explain and hopefully you’ll get my point.
Those who Need Good News
The first set of three begins with the statement: “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (v. 3). Plenty of people have debated what “poor in spirit” means, but here’s where the context can help us. Remember that Matthew’s gospel is written to a Jewish audience and is aimed at telling us that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of David and the son of Abraham, and that he’s the one who fulfills the law by embodying it. So when Jesus talks about the poor in spirit, our clue to what that means is found within the context of his own life and character. If we want to know what being poor in spirit looks like, we turn to Jesus as the first example.
In Chapter 3, we read about Jesus’ baptism, where the voice of God says, “This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well-pleased” (v. 12). This reminds us of Isaiah 42:1, when God s speaking to the figure called the Suffering Servant. Right at the outset, Jesus, the king of God’s new world, is marked as a servant who came to give his life for the world (20:28). Jesus then immediately obeys the Spirit in chapter 4 and goes out into the wilderness where he engages in radical self-denial.
To be “poor in spirit” combines these three traits of Jesus: servanthood, obedience and self-denial. The one who is poor in spirit recognizes that he or she has nothing to offer God on his or her own, that his or her life has no purpose apart from God. They obey God not out of obligation but out of a desire to gain something better—the life of God’s new world. The poor in spirit are those who voluntarily empty themselves so that they can be filled by God.
This leads to the second beatitude, which focuses the attention from the inward to the outward: “Blesses are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Disciples who are poor in spirit, who have turned their attention away from themselves, now turn their attention to the world and begin to see it as it currently is—a world in pain, a world where the selfish desire of sin dehumanizes people, a world full of violence, a world that has given up hope of redemption. Those who mourn are blessed because they are able to enter into the world’s pain and grief and are not afraid of it.
Combine those two beatitudes together and you get the third—the conclusion: “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” We tend to think of meekness as wimpiness or cowardice or weakness. But here meekness is a combination of the previous two elements: the power and decisiveness of self-denial in the poor in spirit, and the passion for the pain of the world in those who mourn. Those who both want nothing from the world and, at the same time, are willing to share everything with it are the meek. There is nothing wimpy about this!
The spirit of self-denial and the spirit of service come together to make a new being—the most formidable person on earth—the terrible meek. They are terrible because they want nothing, hence they can’t be tempted or bought, and they are terrible because they are willing to go to any lengths, even unto death, on behalf of others.
Now that you see how the first three beatitudes have a dynamic relationship with one another, you can’t wait to hear about the other two sets of threes.
Those who Help Share Good News
With this image of the “terrible meek” still fresh in our minds, Jesus then turns to another set of three beatitudes that follows the same pattern: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness” (v.6) which is the statement; “Blessed are the merciful” (v. 7), the opposite; and “Blessed are the pure in heart” (v. 8), the conclusion. Whereas the first three beatitudes gave us a pattern for emptying ourselves to help others, these next three teach us with what we are filled to help others.
Another way of translating the Greek word for righteousness is “justice.” Justice takes the meaning of righteousness out of the realm of the individual and into the realm of the whole world. The people of God’s world aren’t just those who do good; they do good for a purpose—to bring God’s justice into the world. In other words, they are those who see their lives within the context of God’s larger mission of redeeming the whole world. They do the will of God, but they see God’s will as being bigger than themselves. They’re not as concerned about their own eternal destiny as they are about the destiny of the whole creation. They are less focused on justifying themselves than participating in God’s justice for those who need it most.
But we know that righteousness by itself can easily turn into a form of self-righteousness. That’s why we need the balancing of the second beatitude in this triad: “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy” (v. 7). Those who have hungered and thirsted for God’s justice must begin to show mercy to those who need that justice the most. When you put the passion for justice and the compassion of mercy together, you become the “pure in heart” or the “undivided in heart” (v. 8).
Blessed are those whose life is geared toward a single purpose that is both righteously merciful and mercifully righteous. These are the ones who are blessed to “see God” because they see the movement of God and the purpose of God in every person. They see God everywhere because they are always looking for ways in which to live out God’s purpose through obedience, mercy, service and love. They see God the way Jesus said they would—in the face of the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the stranger, the least, the last and the lost (Mt. 25).
Those who Work for Good News Even at Personal Cost
So we come to the final three beatitudes: “Blesses are the peacemakers (v. 9); “Blessed are those who are persecuted (v. 10); and “Blessed are you when people insult you or revile you or utter evil against you” (v. 11). Take the meek who want nothing from the world, and the pure in heart who want nothing from God. Put them together and you get peacemakers!
The peacemakers are the ones who are resolute and active in their pursuit of reconciliation and justice between humans in conflict with each other, whether the conflict is between families, races, cultures or countries. The peacemakers, in other words, are those who stand in the gap and are willing to engage conflict with peace, to work for justice, and stay in that gap for as long as is necessary despite the sabotage that will inevitably come from those who are unmotivated or unwilling to change.
If peacemakers are the statement and the opposite, or that which acts against it, is persecution (v. 10). Jesus says that if you are a peacemaker, you are blessed! But Jesus also says, if you are a persecuted peacemaker, you are blessed again! The final beatitude, verse 11, is a variation of the previous one. You’re blessed yet again if, after persecuting you because of your peacemaking, they insult you and slander you with lies and trash talk.
We know that anyone who acts as a peacemaker will usually become one of the persecuted (v. 11). Jesus is the ultimate example of that truth.
If there is a conclusion for this final triad of beatitudes, it is in Jesus’ concluding remarks. If you’re a peacemaker, if you’re a persecuted peacemaker, and if you are an insulted and slandered peacemaker, then basically you can start rejoicing. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.
The conclusion is joy. The outcome of living a peacemaking, persecuted life, even a life that embodies all of the qualities Jesus itemizes in the list we call the Beatitudes, is Joy.
Persecuted peacemakers in particular can rejoice because they’re persecuted for doing something worth persecuting! They rejoice because they are walking directly in the footsteps of Jesus and the prophets. They rejoice because their peacemaking, even if it costs them their lives, is making change possible.
God’s New World
The poor in spirit. The mourning. The meek. Those who hunger for righteousness. The pure in heart. The merciful. The peacemakers. The persecuted peacemakers. The slandered, insulted and persecuted peacemakers. These are the people of God’s new world.
We may still value the rich diversity of race, languages, and cultures, but in God’s eyes, we are all God’s children. He sees no difference! God wants us to have a character change and to develop into the kind of people that he made us to be in the beginning. The statement is God loves the world. The opposite is our rejection of God’s love and we have messed up the world. And on the cross, Jesus Christ brings God and us together and the final conclusion is that Christ reconciles us to God.
On this annual Church Meeting Sunday, we celebrate the work of FCBC and anticipate where God is calling us to do in 2014. We want to once again affirm the truth that the church is where we begin to develop this kind of character as we work and minister with each other. Living like this is a sign that God’s new world is breaking out all around us. The more we focus on living like the people of God’s new world, the more likely this present world will start to look beyond our differences and races and borders and toward a brand new way of life!
Let us pray.
Dear God, we pray each week for the kingdom of God to come. Forgive us when we set ourselves apart from each other and begin to help us see that we are most blessed when we are meek, merciful, hungering for righteousness, pure in heart and poor in our selfish human spirit but right with yours. Show us how to be peacemakers with the sure knowledge that your kingdom comes through you. Amen.