As we continue our study of the Sermon on the Mount, we come to the climax of Jesus’ reinterpretation of the law. He’s taught about anger, adultery, divorce and oaths to this point. This reinterpretation continues with its focus on two themes: the law of retaliation and the law of loving your neighbor and hating your enemy. By reinterpreting them, Jesus takes the meanings of these laws in a completely different direction. You can recognize this shift right from the start when Jesus says the phrase, “you have heard that it was said…But I say to you”. He’s taking the meanings of these two laws to a new level. Jesus takes the original as a starting point and builds from there. He is offering a new sort of justice; a creative, healing, restorative justice.
The old justice found in the Law of Moses was about limiting retaliation to be an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Once upon a time in the ancient world the practice of retaliating for the loss of an eye was to kill the opponent. For an insult made by one warrior on another, you burn down their village. The new justice Jesus is expressing is for us not to mirror evil with evil, but to confront the evil with good and without violence. “But I say to you do not resist with force an evil one. But if someone slaps you on the right check, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.” (Matt. 5:39-42)
Jesus’ focus is not to retaliate by doing nothing, but rather to confront an evildoer and retaliate with non-violence. The goal of an evildoer is to humiliate the other and require their submission. So we are not to simply sit back and soak up whatever the evildoer wants to do. We are called to resist with non-violence. Each of Jesus’ examples is a response of non-violent resistance to an evildoer.
To turn the other cheek…if someone struck you on your right cheek, it was intended to be an insult. Of course, if someone hits us we want to hit them back with ever growing intensity: confronting evil with violence. But Jesus calls us to turn the other cheek and force them to strike you again on the other side of your face without bowing your heard or signaling submission; to strike you as an equal. So to turn the other cheek is to refuse submission and to force the other into striking you again. The objective is to bring shame on the one who is doing the evil act, to demonstrate it is immoral and wrong.
To take your coat…Jesus shares a radical non-violent practice for anyone who finds themselves being sued for their garments. In such cases, the law in Exodus and Deuteronomy forbid the taking of a person’s last piece of clothing. What Jesus is suggesting here is that the person being sued for their coat or their next-to-last piece of clothing, should also give them their last piece of clothing. They are to strip naked in the courtroom and require the rich plantiff to experience the shame of requiring a person to have no clothes at all and thereby break the law. Again, it is a non-violent, aggressive action intended to bring shame on the evildoer.
To carry a soldier’s pack…it was common practice among the armies of the ancient near East to require the people in the lands they were passing through and conquering to carry their huge, heavy packs. To prevent abuses, the Roman government of Jesus’ day limited how long someone could carry the soldier’s pack and that was one mile. So, if someone was required to carry a pack one mile and carried it two miles instead, it was a violation of Roman law, leading to the risk of sanction by his commanders.
Jesus is not recommending passive responses, nor is he recommending a violent counterattack. Jesus’ teaches us to find a third way, a non-violent way, an alternative way that demonstrates the injustice of what is being done.
Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King were influential in promoting the principles of non-violent resistance in the last century. Non-violent resistance is not for cowards. One is passive and non-violent physically, but very active spiritually.[1] The goal is not to defeat or humiliate the opponent but rather to win them over to understanding new ways to create cooperation and community.[2] With a non-violent approach, one accepts suffering without retaliation; accepts violence but never commits to it. One learns to avoid physical violence toward others and also learns to love the opponents with “agape” or unconditional love – a love given not for what one will receive in return, but for the sake of love alone. It is God flowing through the human heart.[3]
Both Gandhi and King discovered through non-violent resistance you were able to learn to love your enemy. Virtually everyone, both in ancient times and today, practice the hate of the enemy. Loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you was a radical reversal of this practice. It was an idea whose time had come.
For Jesus the kingdom of God is good news for our enemies as well as for the people of Israel. Jesus made peace by healing his enemies and doing good for those who hated him. Jesus’ words and actions about loving your enemy were an extension to practicing God’s goodness. Since God is good toward those who do evil as well as who do good, we are called to follow the example of God who does good to all and whose desire is peace for all. This is required from each one of us if we want to live our best life now.
Theologian G. K. Chesterton said, “The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.” To be complete, mature, full-grown adults, perfect in the sense of having attained the end or purpose of human life, is not to pursue the mentality of the warrior who becomes a hero by killing the enemy. The chief purpose of human life is to love the enemy, finding ways of non-violent resistance to evil that will in turn create the possibility of God’s kingdom on earth. The formation of such a non-violent practitioner of the law of love is the fulfillment of God’s purpose for every human being.
What Jesus came to show us through the Sermon on the Mount is it’s about Jesus himself. It was the blueprint for his own life. He asks nothing of his followers that he hasn’t faced himself. It’s about discovering the living God in the loving, and dying Jesus, and learning to reflect his love into the world that needs it so badly. It shows us how to live our best lives now in community because the life you live matters in the lives of others. How you care for a laborer matters. How you care for a widow matters. How you care for the orphan matters. How you care for the poor, the downtrodden, the outcast, the weak: it all matters.
Most people just give up living where they slowly die little by little, piece by piece. They shrink from the responsibility of serving one another, failing to grow and mature in their life and their faith in Christ. We are called to be like God; we are called to engage the world in our journey of faith and to do so is to care and love one another.
Monday, February 24, 2014
Monday, February 10, 2014
New World People (Part 2)
Matthew 5:13-20
Lord, open our understanding by the power of the Holy Spirit that as the Word is proclaimed we may receive holy wisdom to understand the gifts you have bestowed on us. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
There are plenty of stupid things I've done as a Christian. Trust me, if God rewarded us for our good behavior and punished us for the bad stuff, I would not be here with you as I am today. Basically I'd be dead. I'm a firm believer in God's grace, simply out of practical experience. Author and Pastor Steve Brown has a list of the top 10 stupid things Christians do to mess up their lives. He wrote about these ten things in a book entitled, A Scandalous Freedom. Here's the list:
1. We think of God as either a child abuser, or away on vacation, or as Santa Claus instead of looking to Jesus to find out what God is really like.
2. We are obsessed with getting better rather than with God's forgiveness.
3. We forget the gospel and sacrifice the joy that sets us free.
4. We wear masks instead of being authentic and real.
5. We put our leaders on pedestals and thereby demean ourselves.
6. We demonize our enemies instead of acknowledging their humanity.
7. We live in fear.
8. We avoid the reality of pain.
9. We define ourselves by our failures instead of God's love.
10. We surrender the freedom for which Jesus has set us free.[1]
All ten things on this list are the results of our inability and/or our unwillingness to be the person God created us to be. We forget what it truly means to follow Jesus and trust in him. In our scripture reading this morning, Jesus is calling the Israel of his day to be the Israel God wants them to be, now that Jesus is here. God had called Israel to be the salt of the earth; but Israel was behaving like everyone else, with its power politics, its factional squabbles and it militant revolutions. How could God keep the world from going bad (salt was used to preserve food in the ancient world), if Israel, his chosen salt, had lost its saltiness, that is its distinctive taste?
In the same way we are called to be New World People by becoming the salt of the earth. It’s our calling, but we often get caught up in behaving like everyone else in our culture. Jesus warns that salt can lose its ability to season and preserve. It can fail to do what it is intended to do; it can become content on doing things the way they’ve always been done; it can work to preserve itself by not giving too much of itself. Basically it can become useless; it can be cast aside, tossed in the trash. We hear in this image a warning, a warning to take seriously God’s call to mission, to the task of being the church in the world. We must not fail in this mission and we cannot fail to try. New World People are to be the salt of the earth.
In the same way, God called Israel to be the light of the world. Israel was the people God intended to shine his bright light into the world, even in its darkest corners. It was done to help people who were blundering around in the dark to find their way.
Author Robert Fulghum tells a story of one of his professors, a wise man whose name was Alexander Papaderos. When asked by a student, “Dr. Papaderos, what is the meaning of life?”, he took his wallet out of his hip pocket, fished into a leather billfold and brought out a very small round mirror, about the size of a quarter. And he said something like this. “When I was a small child, during the war, we were very poor and we lived in a remote village. One day, on the road, I found the broken pieces of a mirror. A German motorcycle had been wrecked in that place. “I tried to find all the pieces and put them together, but it was not possible, so I kept only the largest piece. This one. And by scratching it on a stone, I made it round. I began to play with it as a toy and became fascinated by the fact that I could reflect light into dark places where the sun would never shine—in deep holes and crevices and dark closets. It became a game for me to get light into the most inaccessible places I could find. “I kept the little mirror, and as I went about my growing up, I would take it out in idle moments and continue the challenge of the game. As I became a man, I grew to understand that this was not just a child’s game but a metaphor for what I might do with my life. I came to understand that I am not the light or the source of the light. But light—truth, understanding, knowledge—is there, and it will only shine in many dark places if I reflect it.
“I am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have I can reflect light into the dark places of this world—into the black places in the hearts of people—and change some things in some people. Perhaps others may see and do likewise. This is what I am about. This is the meaning of life.” And then he took his small mirror and, holding it carefully, caught the bright rays of daylight streaming through the window and reflected them on the face of the student who asked the question and onto his hands folded on the desk.[2] This is what it means to be the light of the world.
But what would happen if the people who were supposed to be the light of the world became part of the darkness? Jesus presents this question as a warning as well as a challenge. We as Christ’s disciples are to live in the light of Christ. The image of light develops the church’s place in the wider world in a more positive light. The primary function of light is not to be seen, but to let things be seen as they are. Jesus says, “A city on a hill cannot be hidden.”( ) Its very nature is to be visible. Wherever New world people go, they make the light of Christ visible with their daily lives. They will shine light on otherwise dark places. Jesus emphasizes stewardship of the light by exhorting the crowds around him to “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” Christ’s light radiates outward in the lives of his disciples – like a pebble thrown into a pool. The ripples of the gospel light will overcome the world’s darkness.
To be the salt of the earth and the light of the world demands everything from New World people. The scripture passage asks how these demands of discipleship relate to the law of Moses. First and foremost we learn that Jesus came not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. What is radically new in the presence of God’s coming rule is not an annulment or a retraction, but rather a completion of both the promises and the demands set out in the law and the prophets. Jesus is part of the ongoing story of God’s relationship with the community of believers, but as such he is the final and decisive chapter in the story. Jesus is the culmination of the story that gives meaning to all the rest of the story. For New World People, the law is not to be messed with; it must be obeyed and taught. Jesus does not deny God’s story in scripture, but confirms it. Jesus wasn’t intending to abandon the law and the prophets, but establishes them.
Israel’s whole story, commands, promises and all comes true in Jesus. But now Jesus was here and a way was opening up for Israel and all the world to make God’s covenant a reality in their own selves, changing behavior not just by teaching but by a change of heart and mind itself.[3]
Jesus brought all of this into reality in himself. Jesus was the salt of the earth. Jesus was the light of the world: set up on a hilltop, crucified for all the world to see, becoming a beacon of hope and new life for everybody, drawing people to worship God, embodying the way of self-giving love, the deepest fulfillment of the law and the prophets.
To be a witness for God is to be a living sign of God's presence in the world.[4] This is our calling as Christ’s disciples, but we often get caught up in behaving like everyone else in our culture we lose our saltiness and the light bill doesn’t get paid on time. With the Kingdom of Heaven breaking into our world, equipping us to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world, we come to envision a radically different world; a world marked by unheard-of reconciliation, simple truth-telling, outrageous generosity, and love of one’s enemies. It is a world we are called to exhibit, one we are called to put on display; one we are called to practice and live out as disciples of Christ each and every day. Amen.
Lord, open our understanding by the power of the Holy Spirit that as the Word is proclaimed we may receive holy wisdom to understand the gifts you have bestowed on us. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
There are plenty of stupid things I've done as a Christian. Trust me, if God rewarded us for our good behavior and punished us for the bad stuff, I would not be here with you as I am today. Basically I'd be dead. I'm a firm believer in God's grace, simply out of practical experience. Author and Pastor Steve Brown has a list of the top 10 stupid things Christians do to mess up their lives. He wrote about these ten things in a book entitled, A Scandalous Freedom. Here's the list:
1. We think of God as either a child abuser, or away on vacation, or as Santa Claus instead of looking to Jesus to find out what God is really like.
2. We are obsessed with getting better rather than with God's forgiveness.
3. We forget the gospel and sacrifice the joy that sets us free.
4. We wear masks instead of being authentic and real.
5. We put our leaders on pedestals and thereby demean ourselves.
6. We demonize our enemies instead of acknowledging their humanity.
7. We live in fear.
8. We avoid the reality of pain.
9. We define ourselves by our failures instead of God's love.
10. We surrender the freedom for which Jesus has set us free.[1]
All ten things on this list are the results of our inability and/or our unwillingness to be the person God created us to be. We forget what it truly means to follow Jesus and trust in him. In our scripture reading this morning, Jesus is calling the Israel of his day to be the Israel God wants them to be, now that Jesus is here. God had called Israel to be the salt of the earth; but Israel was behaving like everyone else, with its power politics, its factional squabbles and it militant revolutions. How could God keep the world from going bad (salt was used to preserve food in the ancient world), if Israel, his chosen salt, had lost its saltiness, that is its distinctive taste?
In the same way we are called to be New World People by becoming the salt of the earth. It’s our calling, but we often get caught up in behaving like everyone else in our culture. Jesus warns that salt can lose its ability to season and preserve. It can fail to do what it is intended to do; it can become content on doing things the way they’ve always been done; it can work to preserve itself by not giving too much of itself. Basically it can become useless; it can be cast aside, tossed in the trash. We hear in this image a warning, a warning to take seriously God’s call to mission, to the task of being the church in the world. We must not fail in this mission and we cannot fail to try. New World People are to be the salt of the earth.
In the same way, God called Israel to be the light of the world. Israel was the people God intended to shine his bright light into the world, even in its darkest corners. It was done to help people who were blundering around in the dark to find their way.
Author Robert Fulghum tells a story of one of his professors, a wise man whose name was Alexander Papaderos. When asked by a student, “Dr. Papaderos, what is the meaning of life?”, he took his wallet out of his hip pocket, fished into a leather billfold and brought out a very small round mirror, about the size of a quarter. And he said something like this. “When I was a small child, during the war, we were very poor and we lived in a remote village. One day, on the road, I found the broken pieces of a mirror. A German motorcycle had been wrecked in that place. “I tried to find all the pieces and put them together, but it was not possible, so I kept only the largest piece. This one. And by scratching it on a stone, I made it round. I began to play with it as a toy and became fascinated by the fact that I could reflect light into dark places where the sun would never shine—in deep holes and crevices and dark closets. It became a game for me to get light into the most inaccessible places I could find. “I kept the little mirror, and as I went about my growing up, I would take it out in idle moments and continue the challenge of the game. As I became a man, I grew to understand that this was not just a child’s game but a metaphor for what I might do with my life. I came to understand that I am not the light or the source of the light. But light—truth, understanding, knowledge—is there, and it will only shine in many dark places if I reflect it.
“I am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have I can reflect light into the dark places of this world—into the black places in the hearts of people—and change some things in some people. Perhaps others may see and do likewise. This is what I am about. This is the meaning of life.” And then he took his small mirror and, holding it carefully, caught the bright rays of daylight streaming through the window and reflected them on the face of the student who asked the question and onto his hands folded on the desk.[2] This is what it means to be the light of the world.
But what would happen if the people who were supposed to be the light of the world became part of the darkness? Jesus presents this question as a warning as well as a challenge. We as Christ’s disciples are to live in the light of Christ. The image of light develops the church’s place in the wider world in a more positive light. The primary function of light is not to be seen, but to let things be seen as they are. Jesus says, “A city on a hill cannot be hidden.”( ) Its very nature is to be visible. Wherever New world people go, they make the light of Christ visible with their daily lives. They will shine light on otherwise dark places. Jesus emphasizes stewardship of the light by exhorting the crowds around him to “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” Christ’s light radiates outward in the lives of his disciples – like a pebble thrown into a pool. The ripples of the gospel light will overcome the world’s darkness.
To be the salt of the earth and the light of the world demands everything from New World people. The scripture passage asks how these demands of discipleship relate to the law of Moses. First and foremost we learn that Jesus came not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. What is radically new in the presence of God’s coming rule is not an annulment or a retraction, but rather a completion of both the promises and the demands set out in the law and the prophets. Jesus is part of the ongoing story of God’s relationship with the community of believers, but as such he is the final and decisive chapter in the story. Jesus is the culmination of the story that gives meaning to all the rest of the story. For New World People, the law is not to be messed with; it must be obeyed and taught. Jesus does not deny God’s story in scripture, but confirms it. Jesus wasn’t intending to abandon the law and the prophets, but establishes them.
Israel’s whole story, commands, promises and all comes true in Jesus. But now Jesus was here and a way was opening up for Israel and all the world to make God’s covenant a reality in their own selves, changing behavior not just by teaching but by a change of heart and mind itself.[3]
Jesus brought all of this into reality in himself. Jesus was the salt of the earth. Jesus was the light of the world: set up on a hilltop, crucified for all the world to see, becoming a beacon of hope and new life for everybody, drawing people to worship God, embodying the way of self-giving love, the deepest fulfillment of the law and the prophets.
To be a witness for God is to be a living sign of God's presence in the world.[4] This is our calling as Christ’s disciples, but we often get caught up in behaving like everyone else in our culture we lose our saltiness and the light bill doesn’t get paid on time. With the Kingdom of Heaven breaking into our world, equipping us to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world, we come to envision a radically different world; a world marked by unheard-of reconciliation, simple truth-telling, outrageous generosity, and love of one’s enemies. It is a world we are called to exhibit, one we are called to put on display; one we are called to practice and live out as disciples of Christ each and every day. Amen.
[1] Erik Guzman, "10 stupid things Christians do to
mess up their lives, "Genuine Motivation
Website, http://genmoycm.wordpress.com. October 3, 2010. Retrieved February 6, 2014.
[2] From It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It by Robert Fulghum.
Copyright 1988, 1989 by Robert Fulghum. Adapted by permission of Villard Books,
a division of Random House, Inc.
[3] Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part 1, Chapters
1-15. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004) p.41.
[4]
Henri J. M. Nouwen, Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith,
entry for June 20 (HarperCollins, 2009).
Monday, February 3, 2014
New World People (part 1)
Matthew
5:1-12
"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"[1]
They came here and brought their cultures and traditions with them. They brought their native cuisines: Polish Kielbasa, Czech Kolaches, German pretzels and Italian Tomato Pie. They brought their native traditions, their native languages, their native dress, their native dances and their native religions. They even brought their native drink. All these distinctions and differences have made our country what it is today.
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. Indeed, in Matthew's gospel, Jesus reveals that God defines the world much differently than we do and, in fact, God is remaking the world in such 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 New World People in a world Jesus called "the kingdom of God" or "the kingdom of heaven" (those terms are used interchangeably). While we all may look different on the surface and speak a different language, Jesus reveals at the very beginning of his discourse that there are certain traits that will be common to all of those who are becoming part of God's new world.
When you look closely at the Beatitudes, you might notice that they build on one another. The 20th-century missionary, E. Stanley Jones, observed that you could really divide these nine Beatitudes into three sets of three, with each set of three Beatitudes following the same pattern: thesis (theory, idea, notion), antithesis (direct opposite, converse) and synthesis (blend, combination).[2]
When you look at them in this way, you see Jesus is laying the foundation for citizenship in God's new world which he will flesh out in the rest of “The Sermon on the Mount".
The first set of three begins with "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (v. 3). To be "poor in spirit" combines three important characteristics of Jesus: servanthood, obedience and self-denial. The one who is poor in spirit recognizes that they have nothing to offer God on their own, that their 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 found in God's new world. The poor in spirit are those who give themselves completely so that they can be filled by God.
This leads to the second beatitude, which focuses the attention from the inward to the outward: "Blessed 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: "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." We tend to think of meekness as being soft, weak, a push over. But here meekness is a combination of the previous two beatitudes: 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, those who are willing to share everything with the world are the meek. The spirit of self-denial and the spirit of service come together to make New World People: 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.
The first three beatitudes gave us a pattern for emptying ourselves. These next three teach us with what we are to be filled. They follow the same pattern: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness" (thesis, v. 6); "Blessed are the merciful" (antithesis, v. 7); and "Blessed are the pure in heart" (synthesis, v.8).
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. New world people aren't just those who do good; they do good with a purpose -- to bring God's justice into the 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're less focused on justifying themselves than participating in God's justice for those who need it most.
But righteousness by itself can easily turn into narcissistic 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 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”. 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 (Matthew 25).
The third set of three starts in v. 9 with "Blessed are the peacemakers", followed by "Blessed are those who are persecuted" (v. 10); and "Blessed are you when people revile you" (v. 11 NRSV). Take the terrible 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 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 peacefully and working for justice. They 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.
In verses 10-11, Jesus says that:
a) if you're a peacemaker, you are blessed! But Jesus also says,
b) if you are a persecuted peacemaker, you're 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 -- lie and talk trash.
History tells us that anyone who acts as a peacemaker will usually become one of the persecuted (vv. 10-11). 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."[3]
The synthesis for this final triad of beatitudes is in Jesus' concluding remarks. If you're a peacemaker, if you're a persecuted peacemaker, and if you're a lied-about, trash-talked, persecuted peacemaker, then it's time to rejoice.
The synthesis is joy. The fruit of living a peacemaking, persecuted life, even a life that embodies all of the qualities Jesus itemizes in this 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 own blood, is making change possible.
We may pay attention to differences in culture, language and race, but God truly knows us based on what is inside of us. Life is not to be valued according to their outer appearance, but by the content of their character.
The Sermon on the Mount is a description of those whom God cares for and how life is to be lived in the Kingdom of God to come. The church is where we begin to develop this kind of character as we work and minister with each other. Living this way is a sign that God's new world is breaking all around us. The more we focus on living like new world people in God's new world, the more likely this present world will start to look beyond outward appearances toward a brand new way of life in Christ!
That’s the power of the Good News of Jesus Christ! Amen.
[1] Text courtesy of the National Park Service
[2] Jones, E. Stanley. The Christ of the Mount: A Working Philosophy of Life. (Reprint Edition). Kessinger Publishing, 2006.
[3] Jones, E. Stanley. The Christ of the Mount: A Working Philosophy of Life. (Reprint Edition). Kessinger Publishing, 2006.
[i] Bob Kaylor, Senior Writer for homileticsonline.com, and Senior Minister of the Park City United Methodist Church in Park City, Utah.
[2] Jones, E. Stanley. The Christ of the Mount: A Working Philosophy of Life. (Reprint Edition). Kessinger Publishing, 2006.
[3] Jones, E. Stanley. The Christ of the Mount: A Working Philosophy of Life. (Reprint Edition). Kessinger Publishing, 2006.
[i] Bob Kaylor, Senior Writer for homileticsonline.com, and Senior Minister of the Park City United Methodist Church in Park City, Utah.
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