The People of God's World (1)

The People of God's World (1)

Matthew 5:1-12   |   2/2/2014

The Church of the Wayfarer

Norm Mowery, Pastor

          On Monday I made several mistakes.

                   I went hiking in Big Sur alone.

                   I left my trail map in the car.

                   I didn’t take enough water on the hike.

                    I missed the correct trail, twice.

          But… I had one of the most wonderful days of my life alone in the mountains.

          Here are some pictures that I took.

           I hiked the Tan Bark Trail (picture of sign) to the Tin House near the Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. It is a most beautiful trail along a stream with water falls (picture of water falls) and many redwood trees (picture of redwood trees). All the while there are views of the ocean in the distance (picture of ocean).

          At the top there are ruins of a most interesting house. It is called the Tin House (picture of house). It was built at a time when tin was very scarce.

          The Tin House sits high on a Big Sur mountain top. The locals say that President Franklin Roosevelt vacationed there. The owner who built the house was a childhood friend of President Roosevelt.  They roomed together in prep school and at Harvard. They were each other's best man in their weddings. So they maintained a lifelong friendship.

          By 1944 in the middle of the war building material was not available. The Brown’s solution was to acquire two gas station buildings that they had disassembled and hauled up to the site.

          I share all this because as I hiked on Monday I had fun and I thought a lot about Jesus’s time alone in the mountains. This series of messages taken from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and Matthew Chapter 5.

          In this chapter Jesus reveals that the people of God's new world will be identified more by their character than their culture.

          In this discourse, Jesus gives us a glimpse of what he called the kingdom of God.

          As I think of the people of God’s Kingdom (or God’s world) I ask?

                    What do the people of God's kingdom look like?

                    How do they live?

                    What do they believe?

                    What can we expect from them?

                   How are they different from the rest of the world.

          It's no secret that American culture is one of the most diverse tapestries of humanity of any country in the world.

          We value diversity because our country consists of people who literally come from every tribe and nation.

          In many areas of our country you're as likely to hear someone speaking Spanish in the grocery store as you would the local American English dialect, for example (be it "Y'all" or "You'ns" or "Yous guys").

          Our cities are populated by a patchwork of ethnic neighborhoods, and walking down the street can often seem like a tour of the world and its peoples.

          But not every country is as diverse.

          Even nations that would seem to be traditionally homogenous are changing as the world becomes "flatter" and we become more technologically linked by computers and travel.

          Many people in South Korea, for example, would still see themselves as ethnically homogenous. At the same time, however, the country hosts immigrants from 126 different countries and races.

          As one South Korean professor I know points out,

"We are the Han race and Han means sky,

sky embraces everything,

                                      so the term 'Han race' is inclusive."

          There's a truth to that statement.

          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.

          While we pay attention to differences in culture, language and race, God tends to evaluate us based on characteristics that are more than skin deep.

           In Matthew's gospel, Jesus reveals that God defines the world much differently than we do. God views the world in a way that defines God's people by their character and conduct more than their heritage.

          In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus redefines what it means to be a citizen of the kingdom of God.

          Who are the people of God's world?

          While we all may look different on the surface and speak a different language, Jesus reveals that there are certain traits that will be common to all of those who are a part of God's kingdom. These traits are revealed in what we call the Beatitudes.
          Look closely at the Beatitudes.

          They build on one another. 

          You can divide the nine Beatitudes into three sets of three.

          When you look at them in this way, you begin to see that Jesus is laying the foundation for citizenship in God's new world.

          The first set of three begins with the thesis:

          "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven".

          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 making the connection with the Old Testament Prophets.

          If we want to know what being poor in spirit looks like, we turn to Jesus as the first example.

          I like to change the wording like this: "Blessed are those who have the spirit of the poor."

          To be "poor in spirit" combines these three traits of Jesus:

                   servant hood,

                   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.

          The poor in spirit are those who voluntarily empty themselves so that they can be filled by God.

          This leads to the second beatitude: "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."

          Disciples who are poor in spirit turn their attention to the world and begin to see it as it currently is—

                    a world in pain,

                    a world that dehumanizes people,

                    a world full of violence,

                    a world that has given up hope.

          Those who mourn are blessed because they are able to enter into the world's pain and grief and are not afraid of it.

          Synthesize those two beatitudes together and you get the third: "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth."

          We tend to think of meekness as wimpiness, as though our lives could be written as a "Diary of a Wimpy Christian."

          But here meekness is a combination of the power 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, is willing to share everything with it are the meek.

          Here we see that the spirit of self-denial and the spirit of service come together to make a new person.

          Jesus then turns to another set of three beatitudes that follow the same pattern:

          "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness";

          "Blessed are the merciful"; and

          "Blessed are the pure in heart".

          Whereas the first three beatitudes gave us a pattern for emptying ourselves, these next three teach us with what we are to be filled.

          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.

          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.”

          The third set of three.

          "Blessed are the peacemakers";

          "Blessed are those who are persecuted"; and

          "Blessed are you when people insult you".

          Take the meek who want nothing from the world,

                   and the pure in heart who want nothing but God.

          Put them together and you get peacemakers!

          The peacemakers are the ones who are resolute in their pursuit of reconciliation between humans in conflict with each other,

          whether the conflict is between families, races, cultures or countries.
         
          History tells us that anyone who acts as a peacemaker will usually become one of the persecuted.

          Jesus is the ultimate example of that truth. As E. Stanley Jones once put it, "Peacemakers must get used to the sight of their own blood."

          The fruit of living a peacemaking life is JOY.     

          Peacemakers can rejoice because their peacemaking, even if it costs them their own blood, is making change possible.
          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 world. The church is where we begin to develop this kind of character as we work and minister with each other.

          Next week, we will continue to look at the "People of God's World" in the passage following the Beatitudes where Jesus talks about how we're salt and light.

                                                          Prayer

          God of grace, we come together in prayer with thanksgiving for our health and this day of life.

          That we are able to hear the wind whistling through the trees ...

                   see the rain which brings new growth ...

                    and feel the warmth of the sun on our faces,

                   we offer you our thanks and praise.

          Let us use the gifts you have given us wisely that we might see the needs of our neighbor

          and that we might feel the pain of another's loss.

          Free us from the temptations that confront us in the busyness of our every day.
          When we are tempted to respond in anger,

                   grant us the patience to return anger with kindness;
          When we want to insist on our own way,

                   grant us the grace to replace self-indulgence with unselfishness;
          When we are tempted to allow our families to be secondary to everything else we do,

                   help us to rearrange our priorities;
          When we are tempted to live out our lives at a hectic pace following our own agenda,

                   grant us the wisdom to take time to hear what you would have us do;
          When we are tempted to take the easy way out ...

                   to put desire over discipline ...

                   to let someone else take a stand for peace and justice,

                   remind us that the easy way is not always the right way.
          We offer our prayer through Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns now and forever, and who taught us to say when we pray ...