A Sermon Based Upon Matthew 5:3; 6:
19-21
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
6th Sunday of Epiphany, February 16th, 2014
"Blessed
are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Mat 5:3 NRS)
Several years ago, on a winter Sunday
morning, our small congregation arrived at church to discover we had no
heat. The furnace had
malfunctioned. I’ve been in churches
where this happened before, and sometimes we had to cancel services and go
home. But this church was different. We all went to the basement, put out chairs
and huddled together to worship in closer quarters. I
enjoyed this, because it shifted things around.
People who normally set on the back row often found themselves sitting
closer to the front.
One particular man, who normally sat at
the very back of the church, was now sitting up front and right close to me as
I preached. I really don’t remember
what I preached on that particular Sunday, and it probably didn’t matter. After the sermon he came to me with something
on his mind and since the preacher was up close and personal, he thought he
would put a question he hoped I couldn’t answer. “Preacher,” he said, “These words of Jesus
in the Sermon on the Mount don’t have anything to do with the real world, do
they?” “God doesn’t really expect us to
live this way, does he?” I could tell
that for some reason, he wanted me to say, “Well, of course not!”
But the question that man was asking was
on the right track. He really had read
his Bible and was paying close attention, for certainly, these words in this
“Sermon” are not how we normally approach life, nor how we think about what we
want to attain in life. These words in
the Beatitudes are from another world.
As Bible scholars will tell you, they are the real words of Jesus
because no one in his right mind would make this stuff up. These ‘be-attitudes’ which will be
‘fleshed-out’ in rest of this Sermon on the Mount, present to us a world that
is very different than out own. How can it
be a blessing to be ‘poor’, even if only spiritually poor, as Matthew qualifies? How can grieving people who are in mourning find
comfort? Can the meek who seem to be
weak inherit or gain anything in this dog eat dog world? Ridiculous it sounds! One of most gifted American writers of the 20th
century, Kurt Vonnegut, claimed to be an
atheist most of the time, but he admired Jesus’ Beatitudes. In his book, “Man Without A Country”, Vonnegut expressed our uneasiness with these words.
He writes: “For some reason, the
most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). But, often with tears in their eyes, they
demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that's Moses, not Jesus. I
haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes,
be posted anywhere. "Blessed are
the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in
the Pentagon? Give me a break!” (As quoted by http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1119459-a-man-without-a-country).
THERE
IS NOTHING ‘GOOD’ ABOUT POVERTY
The very first thing you will notice
when you consider this first Beatitude is that there is a noticeable difference
between Luke’s and Matthew interpretation.
Luke has Jesus pronouncing God’s blessing on the “poor”, period (“Blessed
are you who are poor….” (Lk
6.20), meaning that God’s kingdom, when it comes near, brings God’s blessing to
the economically and socially poor. But
Matthew makes this a blessing upon the spiritual, morally, and emotionally poor,
“the
poor in spirit” (Mt. 5.3). We
know for sure that Luke meant the economically poor because right after his
beatitudes he clarifies by announcing a warning or ‘woe’ upon ‘the rich’, who have already “received” their reward in this world (Luke 6.24) and are destitute
in the ‘riches’ of God. We also know
that Matthew is making a contrast between those who are poor and humble in
spirit as opposed to those who are haughty and proud of themselves in their own
riches.
What we must understand up front is that
Matthew’s interpretation are not a contradiction to Luke, but a qualification,
a clarification and a correction of a misunderstanding that had surfaced among
God’s people early on. Matthew wants us
to know that when Jesus said, “Blessed
are you who are poor…” Jesus is not in any way ‘blessing’ or showing his
approval of economic or social poverty. Again,
Matthew wants us to understand that neither Jesus nor Luke is saying that it is
a ‘blessing’ to be poor. Poverty is not
in any way good, in and of itself (Pro 24.34).
Poverty can be destructive (Pro. 10.14).
Poverty can enslave, weaken, and beat a people down so low that they can
never get up. Poverty is never the will
and wish of God, but it is the result of sinful humanity or a fallen
world. Sometimes poverty is the result
of the sin of human laziness (Prov 10.4) but at other times poverty is due to
powers out of human control (Genesis 45: 11, Prov. 13.23). However it comes, Matthew does not want us to
misread Luke’s words, but to understand them properly as Jesus meant them. Jesus came to ‘bless’ the poor who need most
desperately to hear God’s good news
(Matt. 11.5; Luke 4.18), but Jesus did not come to bless poverty nor to
declare being poor good itself.
To help us ‘rich’ Americans understand
just how bad poverty can be, Robert
Heilbroner, once asked what it would take for the average American family the
live the lifestyle of the poor of the world?
He writes: “Begin by stripping the
family home of its furniture. Beds,
chairs, lamps, TV sets, silverware, everything.
Leave them with a few blankets, a kitchen table, and a wooden chair. Take the clothing bureaus and the clothes. Each family member can keep one article of
clothing, and only the head of the household is permitted a pair of shoes. In
the kitchen, take all the appliances.
Leave a small bag of flour, some sugar and salt, a few moldy potatoes, a
handful of onions, and a dish of dried beans.
Then, take away the meat, the canned goods, the crackers, the
candy. Next strip the bathroom, shut off
the running water, and turn off the electricity in the house. Then, take away the house itself.
But
this is just the start, it doesn’t include the lack of telephone, newspapers,
firefighters, hospitals, paved roads, or doctors. It also doesn’t include the fact that the
nearest school is three miles away, reachable only by foot, and consists of two
classrooms. Finally, money. We will allow our family a cash hoard of five
dollars, which will prevent the family breadwinners from experiencing the
tragedy of the Iranian peasant who went blind because he could not afford the
$3.94 cent he mistakenly thought he needed to receive admission to a hospital
where he could have been easily cured.
This is poverty. Blinding.” (From “What Jesus Meant” by Erik Kolbell, p 35,
2003).
Fortunately most of us cannot imagine
what it might mean to be ‘poor’ or completely ‘impoverished’. We should thank God for that. God does not ‘wish’ poverty on anyone, except in a spiritual sort of way….(you knew I say that, didn’t you),
except. Except what? What is it that Matthew was trying to clarify
as the way to God’s blessing in this life and in the next? What is this poverty of spirit that brings God’s blessing to life?
BUT THERE IS GREAT GOOD IN BEING POOR IN SPIRIT
Do you recall the young, rich, guy who
came to Jesus asking about ‘eternal life’?
This is a story told in Mark (10.17ff), Luke (18.18ff) and Matthew
(19.16ff). The gospels say he was young, rich and
powerful; a person who had everything he needed, except the promise of life in
the world to come. When Jesus told him
to ‘keep the commandments’ of God, he
told Jesus he had done everything necessary.
Of course he had. Being rich and
having ‘a golden spoon in his mouth’ he thought he had all the resources to do
what he needed to do, so he could always get and have everything he
wanted. But this is where he was in for
a very big surprise. What Jesus told him
is what no rich, self-man, or independently rich person ever wants to hear,
then or now: “You lack only one thing”, Jesus
says: “Go, sell what you have, and give it to the poor, and then you will have
riches in heaven, and then come and
follow me.” That wealthy,
powerful man, who thought he had everything already, ‘went away grieving because he was very rich’ (Matt. 19:22). We
would too. But we must understand, says
Jesus in this first Beatitude, is that what was keeping this man from God’s
kingdom and from receiving God’s greatest blessing of eternal life was not simply
what was in his pocketbook or in his bank account, but it was mainly and mostly
what was in his heart. This is why Jesus
commanded poverty on this very rich man, and on people like him. Jesus was not commanding poverty for the sake
of poverty, nor did Jesus command poverty to take away what people have, but
Jesus commanded poverty to give this man, and any one like him what they know they
are missing; that is, the ‘one thing they lack’ so they can have God’s greatest
blessing--a humble, caring, compassionate, and generous heart that truly trusts
in God.
Last Thanksgiving, on the Evening News,
there was a story about a Culinary Chef in Minnesota who gave up a salary of
almost six-figures, to go into the inner city and for a very meager salary, to run
a soup kitchen in a Salvation Army rescue shelter. Why on earth would anyone leave all the
comforts of a much more comfortable life, to work harder and even to earn much
less? Why would a person move down the
ladder when everyone else wants to move up the ladder? Why on earth, would someone do that? Well, the truth is that it might have a lot
less to do with ‘earth’ and a lot more to do with ‘heaven’. When
the man, Jeff Ansorge was interviewed, he gave his reason as being ‘to get
his priorities right’. In other words he was taking this new job so
that he not only could save his soul, but to help reach out to and save the
souls of others. He said he used to only
make sure that he and his own family got the fruits and vegtables they needed,
but now he says, he wants to be the ‘hands and feet of Jesus’ and to ‘serve
them the gospel, we all need. ( http://hennepin.kstp.com/news/news/422732-minneapolis-culinary-master-gives-six-figure-job-work-soup-kitchen )
Jeff Ansorge understands what Jesus
understood: You can be very rich and live
a very poor life. If you are living
that way, then you need to have a change of heart. In order to get what only God can give, the
secret, if it is a secret, is not putting more into your heart, but it is
getting everything else out. The blessings,
gifts, and treasures of God come by getting everything else out----becoming
spiritually, destitute, impoverished and humble of heart. Only by opening your heart fully, only by emptying
it completely, and only by releasing all you have to God can you gain what only
God can give which no one or nothing else can.
Only God can give you eternal life.
Only God can give you the blessing of what you don’t need to make you
happy. Only God can give you the ‘treasures’
that will never rust out or never corrupt you soul or your spirit. And God can only give you these things when
you give him a heart that is completely open, sincerely humble and totally empty
before God. The blessing of God can only come this way, as
the poet has rightly written, “Nothing in
my heart I bring, but only to the cross I cling.” That’s the spirit of the soul that has become
‘poor’ before God.
Oseola McCarty had that kind of poverty
of spirit. Born in 1908, a black child
of the segregated South, Oseola McCarty spent eighty of her ninety-one
hardscrabble years laboring for others, washing, drying, and ironing the
clothes of the well-to-do of her hometown of Hattiesburg, Misssissippi. When Oseola was eleven an aunt took ill, and
Oseola left school to tend to her aunt’s needs, which were considerable. Shortly thereafter she began taking in
laundry to make ends meet. She didn’t
stop until her eight-sixth year. A woman
of small stature with eyes that penetrated you with their wisdom and soothed
you with her kindness, Oseola was not given to complain much about the rigors
of her work, or her hard life, having to care for others more than for herself,
even when she could scarcely afford it.
Living in the tiny house her uncle gave her, her quiet life revolved
around her work, her friends, (she never married), and her beloved church. She kept her Bible together with Scotch tape,
she said, “so that Cornthians won’t fall out.”
When---after seventy-five years of
taking in laundry for as little as two dollars a bundle---she retired, this
woman who had given so much of herself away, decided to give a little
more. So in June of 1995, she wrote a
check for $150,000 to create a scholarship fund at the University of Southern
Mississippi---a school that once would not have accepted her because of the
color of her skin. She gave in order
that deserving young people who otherwise couldn’t afford college would be
given a chance to have the education she never had. The Oseola McCarty Fund represented her life
savings. When the local news, the University,
and the community took notice of what she did---how she opened her heart and
held nothing back---and even the President invited her to the White House, as
the newspapers headlined that “Dinner with President Is Her Reward”, they probably
got it wrong. Her reward is
elsewhere. It was somewhere in those
pages she kept taping up so Corinthians wouldn’t fall out, especially in
chapter 9, verse 15, of 2nd Corinthians where Paul writes, “Thanks be to God for His indescribable
gift!” (Adapted from a story by Erik Kolbell in “What Jesus
Meant,” pp. 38-39).
The poverty of our spirit, living by
God’s grace and nothing else, is the gateway to the Beatitudes and to the rest
of the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon
on the Mount is the fleshing out of this and all the beatitudes. The first lesson of life Jesus gives is that
until you release and give our whole heart to God, you will gain nothing eternal
from God. This is what Matthew means by
being ‘poor in spirit’. We are utterly dependent on God. “Standing
before God”, someone has said, “we are all dirt poor and butt naked” (Source Unknown). The faithful poor already know this. You will have the opportunity to learn it
too, before your life is over, like Job did when he cried out, “Naked I came into this world, and naked I
will leave it” (Job 1.21). Until we
are impoverished or broken by life, the rest of us can only learn the value of spiritual
poverty from the Holy Spirit. It is the first and foremost spiritual lesson,
because until we learn and live this truth, no matter how much money we have,
how much education, or how much talent, we can receive none of the eternal blessings
God has to give until we know come to realize just how poor we are and how
unless life is, without God’s grace, goodness and love.
BEING POOR IN SPIRIT OPENS US UP TO LIFE'S GREATEST BLESSINGS
But what will we ‘do’ with this great
love? What proves that we have the
poverty of spirit, like a Jeff Ansorge, or like Osela McCarty? The rich, young ruler, needed to give up his
wealth to show that his heart was right with God, what do we need to show? The great Danish pastor, Soren Kierkegaard,
who was probably the most brilliant philosopher in human history, once shook up
the Church of his day, when he told a story about the tame Geese who went to
church, heard a great message about flying from the Great High Geese, but
always, each and every Sunday, always ‘waddled home’. Why didn’t the Geese fly? They had wings covered with feathers. They could fly anywhere they wanted. But always, after hearing a great sermon
about what they could do, what they should do, and what they were made to do,
they never did it. They always waddled
home. Not one time, though given every opportunity,
did they spread their wings and fly even though they had the capability to fly
anywhere in the world. Where these real
Geese? They looked like Geese, they
smelled like Geese, but they weren’t Geese any longer, says Kierkegaard, because
they were just too tamed. Then, Kierkegaard,
went on to explain his parable saying that “being a true Christian is not a
matter who we say we are, even if we go to church, but what we actually do or
don’t do, says who we really are.”
Christian psychotherapist, Erik Kolbell
tells of a patient named Linda who came to him for counseling. Linda was a brilliant, battle-tested young
woman with a no-nonsense, close-cropped hair cut, impeccable tailored clothes,
and a fierce dedication to her work. She
was one of those inspiring American success stories; born to poverty, went to
school at night, landed an entry-level position in a large and prestigious investment
firm, and gradually worked her way to a high salary, a second home, a generous
nest egg, and also, unfortunately, a low-level depression.
In one session, as Linda and her
therapist were knocking around ideas as to why she was so unhappy, she told
about a dream she had the night before. “It was a chilling, raw winter’s day,”
she started. “I was on a street in the neighborhood I grew up in, and my hands were
cold. In short order I found a clothing
store, went in, and bought a pair of gloves.” Normal enough so far, but then something
strange happened. “I left the store, started down the street again, found another store,
went in, bought another pair of gloves, and put them on over the ones I was
wearing. I did this two or three times,
until I could not only feel the cold, I couldn’t feel anything.” They stopped the conversation. In all psychodrama Linda’s unconscious (or
we might say ‘conscience’) was trying to alert her to what she had lost as a
result of what she had gained in life.
As her professional success carried her farther away from poverty, it
also carried her farther away from the poor, and from the people she had grown
up with, from the pleasures they had shared, and from the love and closeness they
had with each other. Now, her life was ‘insulated’
but cold and since she felt she had no need and no need for others, she started
feeling nothing. Because she was so far
away from the pain of those who strain daily to survive, she could no longer
feel anything herself. She was literally
out of touch and now her heart was calling out to rescue her from the ‘padding’
that had robbed her of her life. (“What Jesus Meant”, p. 36-37).
What did Linda do to regain her sanity
and overcome her depression? Of her own volition,
Linda went back to the old neighborhood, rekindled some friendships, involved
herself in a community renewal project, and started to help support some poor
children who faced the same obstacles she once faced. She began to live more simply in her own
life, and learned that living in wealth and excess was robbing her of her eternal
soul. As she gave more and more time to
helping others and thinking less of what more she wanted or needed, as she stopped
waddling in comfort and started to unfurl her wings and fly, she felt the
gloves come off layer by layer and she became alive again. She gained blessing by being a blessing. By returning to live beside those who were
less fortunate, she discovered what it meant to be rich toward God by living
more humbly.
“I
like to go to Marshall Field’s department store in Chicago,” says, Mary
Madeleva, “just to see how many things
there are in the world that I do not want and do not need.” Only God can give a gift like that, which says, “Because the Lord is my Shepherd, I already have everything I need”. This is how you know that your heart has
been is transformed by love that makes all you can be, by what you don’t have
to have. For you see, God’s plan “Be” will
always be better than our own plan “A”, which ends by making us more “Arrogant,
more Aggressive, more Angry, and more Apathetic”. Only God’s plan “Be’ blesses by with what
only God can give. Which plan are you
going to follow? Amen.
No comments :
Post a Comment