Grace Presbyterian Church
February 2, 2020, Epiphany 4A
Blessed Are...
I think most folks in this church is at least vaguely aware that I was a professor, specifically a music history professor, before changing vocations and heading off to seminary. That is in some ways a challenging subject for teaching on the college or university level. Early in your career, as I was, the core class you’ll end up teaching the most is some part of the music history sequence for majors, the one that over two or four terms covers the full sweep of the development of music in the European classical tradition from the Middle Ages up to the current day.
The reason that the courses in this sequence can be the most challenging of all to teach is that inevitably, you’re going to have some substantial chunk of the population of that class coming to it pre-prejudiced with a particular bias, one that is summarized “why do I have to take this?” A great many music students come to higher education believing that the only thing that matters is their applied study – the lessons they take on their instrument – and any other ensemble playing or singing that they do. As a result, they have a habit of viewing anything that “distracts” them from those studies as a “waste of time.” Whatever core classes the school requires fall into that category without fail.
You can spot these performers out in their careers. They are often technically brilliant performers, befitting the time and energy they have spent in that practice room. They are also, very often, bereft of anything beyond that technical brilliance. It might be described as having “no feel” for the music, or being aesthetically dull or lacking in interpretive nuance or skill, the kind of ability that is formed not only by knowing the notes but knowing the music, the in and out and how and why of how Bach or Beethoven or Brahms came to write the way they wrote, the kind of learning formed by classes such as music theory and, yes, music history.
I am convinced that something like this applies in the life of the Christian faith as well. For an awful lot of Christians, what matters is the death and resurrection of Jesus. There might also be space for the Incarnation – the birth of Jesus, the Son of God, God-with-us, God in the flesh. But beyond that, these Christians (some so-called Christian “leaders” even) seem strangely disinterested in all the things that come in between those two events in the life of Jesus.
Matthew would be horrified at that.
After the baptism of Jesus, the temptation in the wilderness, and the initiation of his public ministry and calling of his first disciples, we read in 4:23-25 that Jesus began to minister to great crowds of people, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of heaven come near and healing all manner of diseases. His fame spread quickly as a result, to the point that people were coming from far and wide to hear him and be healed.
And we then read in 5:1 that “when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them…” Specifically he began by teaching them these thoroughly upside-down lessons known as the Beatitudes, continuing with what we call the Sermon on the Mount.
Notice about these Beatitudes: on some level all of them are formatted “Blessed are… for they will …”. Good thing, because we can easily look at all of these and, without that “will” qualification, think the poor in spirit, blessed? the ones who mourn, blessed? the meek, blessed? None of those things look at all “blessed” to us, and being persecuted or treated ill for Jesus's sake certainly doesn't look "blessed." Yet in sitting down to hear what Jesus teaches we learn what it is to repent – to “turn around” and see not from the world’s perspective, but from Christ’s own view.
As is so often the case with Matthew's record of Jesus's teachings, these words have many roots in Hebrew scripture. Perhaps most worth noting today is their connection to today's reading from the prophet Micah, which might not be apparent on the surface. Following the rhetoric of the courtroom that opens this oracle, we come to its core in verse 6, as the prophet ponders what kind of offering would be needed before the Lord; burnt offerings, even the offering of the firstborn are rejected. Instead the prophet reminds the people,
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
It isn't hard to draw the line from these three "requirements" to the characteristics of the "blessed" as described in the Beatitudes. And yet so many self-proclaimed Christians proceed as if Jesus never said such things, living according to the world’s idea of what “blessed” means, what the world says is important – gaining and wielding power, getting ahead no matter who gets hurt, punishing or killing anyone who gets in the way. Self-proclaimed Christians – even or maybe especially pastors with all the fancy titles and great big pulpits in great big churches – treating with utter contempt those with whom they come into conflict, as if Jesus never said a word about hungering for righteousness or being peacemakers.
Or there is the tendency observed by the late Rachel Held Evans in many Christians, described as follows:
“Jesus came to die,” they often say, referring to a view of Christianity that reduces the gospel to a transaction, whereby God needed a sinless sacrifice to atone for the world’s sins and thus sacrificed Jesus on the cross so believers could go to heaven. In this view, Jesus basically shows up to post our bail. His life and teachings make for an interesting backstory but prove largely irrelevant to the work of salvation.
Like that student wondering why they have to take music history, too many Christians get hung up on the death (and maybe resurrection) of Jesus to the neglect of, well, pretty much everything else about Jesus's life. That is, suffice to say, a woefully incomplete theology. What Jesus said and taught matters. No less a figure than Pope Benedict XVI, of all people, summed up the alternative thus: “Jesus himself, the entirety of his acting, teaching, living, raising and remaining with us is the ‘gospel’.” All of it, beginning right here with these backwards “blessed”s, is our good news. The Christian faith is not a get-out-of-Hell-free card; it is no less than a call to repent - not just to confess, but to repent, to turn away from sin altogether, and see the world from a turned-around perspective. These Beatitudes are a beginning – but only a beginning – to understanding what that means.
And we must, no matter how awkward or difficult it may be, be very clear that attitudes and behaviors and wielding of powers that is not guided by these teachings of Jesus cannot be reconciled with the gospel of Jesus. Not now, not ever.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #386, Come, Worship God; #731, Give Thanks for Those Whose Faith Is Firm; #525, Let Us Break Bread Together; #700, I’m Gonna Live So God Can Use Me
