Awkward!

Text: Matthew 5:1-12

Focus: The Beatitudes

Function: To help people live by Christian instead of worldly principles.

Form: GOK

Intro:

Perhaps you have seen the tire commercial about the guy who finally makes it to the top of the mountain to ask the guru a profound question and instead of asking “what is the meaning of life” he asks him what is the best tire to buy.

In the history of humanity, people have been seeking for answers to the biggest questions in life.

One of the biggest is this: “how can I be happy?”

What brings happiness?

Is Christianity about bringing happiness to people?

Is Jesus promising happiness in this passage?

Are the beatitudes, the title of this list of blessings, a formula for happiness?

You may say, "why use the word "happy?"

In the beatitudes, theologians and translators are mixed about the translation being “blessed are” or “happy are” or “fortunate are.”

I have met people who have been fortunate in their life and have equated that with happiness.

I have met people who attribute their good fortune to blessings, with the implication that the blessings are from “above,” and that has created their happiness.

I have met people who claim to be happy because they perceive that have no needs.

I have met people who are successful who are happy.

I have met people who have been successful and therefore they believe that they must be, or should be, happy but they doubt.

At the same time, we have met people who perceive themselves to be successful who are miserable.

We have met people who have little, or no money, and are very happy.

And I have met people who perceive themselves to be failures who are miserable.

I am not an expert on happiness, but the definition of happiness in our consumerist culture, and Jesus' are different.

What is our standard of happiness?

What is our measure of being blessed?

What is our standard of success?

Wouldn't life be easy if we could find some list of rules and principles that will insure that no matter what, we would be happy?

Wouldn't it be great if we could buy it?

Doesn't the book of Job teach us that God is not confined to some sort of box whereby if we do x, y and z in the right way, or right order, as if there is some sort of formula we are guaranteed success or good fortune?

Job's counselors were convinced that x, y, and z brought blessings and not x, y, and z brought curses, therefore Job must be a sinner.

But Ecclesiastes tells us that the battle is not to the strong, the race to the swift, riches to the wise, but time and chance happens to all of us.

Some people are lucky, some aren’t.

And we, I, have been guilty of promising happiness to people in order to convince them to trust Jesus.

People are the same, but our culture is different than the one to which Jesus is preaching.

We are living in a consumerist culture. We are constantly bombarded with the message that in order to be happy, we must have more.

I attended a conference where Don Miller, the author of Blue Like Jazz was speaking.

He is a Christian author with a wide appeal to the Millennial Christian crowd.

He told us his first writing gig was writing advertising copy and he was given this formula for marketing a product.

It is a simple two step process:

1. Convince people that they are not happy
2. Convince people that if they invest in our product you will be happy.

(pause after) Convince people they are not happy....

Consequently, in our culture, according to Don Miller, nearly 3,000 times a day, each day, we hear the message that we are not happy.

And then his lecture took a turn and he explained to us how at times the Church feels a need to sell itself, or to market ourselves, in order to be faithful.

For example we, I, have said: "there is a whole in your heart that only Jesus can fill."

"You can be the person God designed you to be."

"You can be fulfilled."

Listen folks, I have made those promises many times in my desire to preach the good news that Jesus came to save us.

But when Don said that, it confirmed a suspicion that was gnawing at my gut for quite a while.

Was I selling Jesus? Or was I inviting people into a relationship with Him? Was I using this same marketing principle to evangelize?

Have I been conditioned by our culture to sell Jesus?

As much as we want to resist this conditioning, it is hard to overcome because we hear the message thousands of times A DAY.

Now, let's go back to these beatitudes.

Because, in this consumerist culture perhaps we have created a sort of Pavlovian response to advertising. But the beatitudes expose values that are much different.

Back then they had markets with street venders hawking their goods, they had snake oil salesman with a lot of flash and style come into their towns, they probably even had door to door salesmen.

But there was no where near the 3,000 times a day when we are told that we are not enough, and are probably not happy unless we buy a certain product.

The Beatitudes introduce the Sermon on the Mount which we will be studying for the next few weeks. And Jesus was preaching this "Sermon on the Mount," these beatitudes to a people who were oppressed, virtual slaves to Rome, who were living in a sort of feudal system to their kinsman who were Roman collaborators.

These people knew hardship, pain and oppression.

And Jesus gives them principles about what it means to be His followers in the now present Kingdom of Heaven on earth.

These are the actions and consequences of Jesus' followers.

These principles are backwards, or upside down compared to the world's promises of blessings.

As Christians, we live by a different set of principles, and if we are trying to market Jesus to a culture that has been conditioned to be consumer driven, then our sales tool is awkward.

Awkward. Listen to these statements of Jesus:

“If you want to live forever, you must die to yourselves.”

“If you want to be great among people, be their servant instead of their master.”

Blessed are the poor in Spirit, and just as inspired as the gospel of Matthew is the gospel of Luke, and Luke, in order to emphasize what he thought Jesus' meaning is left out the words “in Spirit” and says only, “blessed are the poor.”

“Blessed are the poor?” We'll get back to that.

Blessed are the sad, they get comfort. Notice, he never says their problems will go away.

Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those, who, in the NLT translation hunger and thirst for justice, a better translation of the Greek word Diakonos. Blessed are those who long to see the wrongs turned to right.

Blessed are those who work for peace instead of violence.

Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are those who are persecuted for doing the right, especially those persecuted for following Jesus.

This is not a list of actions that if we do them they provide the automatic consequence of happiness. That is not Jesus' intention.

In our consumer culture, we want something we can do, something we can obtain, even something we can buy to maintain control so that we can finally rest.

But this list, this list of behaviors, this list of attitudes goes out to a group of people who in many parts of their lives have little control.

This is a list of some of the behaviors of Jesus' followers.

They are merciful, they care about doing the right thing, they hunger for the right things to happen, they are pure in heart, they are meek, and etc.

It isn't a set of promises to live a blessed life. It is a lifestyle that happens, that flows out of the hearts and spirits of those who have been given comfort and are restored to God through the power of the Holy Spirit and trust in Jesus.

When Jesus says that they are blessed if they are meek, it is huge. These people lived under the boot of one of the most oppressive regimes that ever rose to world power when they were under the boots of the Roman legions.

The Cross is the symbol of our faith, but at the time the cross was a terrible symbol. It meant: “Obey the Roman conquerors or face terrible results.”

They had to be meek in the face of their oppressors to survive, and Jesus tells them that resisting evil with violence is not the path to blessings.

Remember, the Kingdom of heaven is here and now, and it is not a human kingdom.

Blessed are the poor, “poor in spirit” or just “poor.” I look at it as blessed are the broken.

Blessed are the broken. You see, this is a contrast to worldly measures of success. Jesus said: "theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

Broken people do not think of themselves are blessed. But theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

We do not think of it that way, but I can tell you that time spent away from our consumer driven culture shows me a lot. I have spent several weeks in the ghettos of Tijuana, or in the desolate villages of Haiti and in those two places, I have found the happiest people I have ever met.

The Christian communities and the interdependence among believers, is amazing.

I used to think: "well, they do not really know what they are missing."

But they are not bombarded with the 3,000 times a day message that somehow their lives are incomplete because....

They have time for each other.

The kingdom of heaven is here and now in their lives.

When we think about the broken, we have to remember that Jesus calls them “blessed.”

Blessed are those who mourn.

This is one that relates to a consumerist culture and a non consumerist culture.

We all mourn.

I did my chaplain residency in a downtown hospital in Indy.

It amazed me to see the difference in the way death is handled between believers and non believers.

What a great hope we have!

Blessed are those with that hope, because the pain of loss is still the same, but we know that it is temporary.

I love this. Jesus does not say blessed are those who mourn because they can claim a better outcome by faith, if they believe enough.

He doesn't promise deliverance from these painful human conditions.

Christianity is not a genie in a bottle that gives us some sort of outcome that transcends the problems of this world.

No, by faith, it gives us a relationship with Jesus Himself who lost a father at a young age, who was persecuted, who didn't even have a pillow to lay his head on.

By the standards of a consumerist society, he was a failure.

But by the standards that make human living possible, that make human living meaningful, that embraces both the messiness and ugliness of all the problems of deprivation in our culture, these beatitudes give expression to the life that God has for us.

(If time, share the Haiti Story)