You Are Blessed
Speaker: Rev. Matt Henry
Location: Whitney United Methodist Church
Date: June 28, 2009
You remember that last week we touched upon the idea that the surrounding text of what we get on a Sunday has everything to do with the text that we actually hear. This week is no different. I want to take us back just a few verses from this familiar Sermon on the Mount that we’ve heard, probably since we were this tall. The part that we heard, of course, is colloquially known as The Beatitudes. I remember the last time I think I preached on this passage it was entitled “Be At It Dude.” I think it still works. This is what is written right before this Sermon on the Mount. Jesus went throughout Galilee teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. So his fame spread throughout all Syria and they brought to him all the sick and those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, paralytics, and he cured them. He didn’t say “I’ll pray for you.” He cured them, and great crowds followed him from Galilee. Great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis which is Gentile territory Jerusalem, Judea and from beyond the Jordan.
And them Chapter 5 begins with the words we just heard….When Jesus saw the crowds he went up the mountain. Friends, this surrounding text reveals a Jesus working the crowds of the disenfranchised, the sick and diseased, those declared sinners and untouchables by the law. In other words, the outcast. No doubt these are the meek, the poor in spirit, those hungry and thirsty for friends, company, compassion, those who are unfamiliar with mercy, those whose daily life is so full of upheaval and restlessness that the one thing they crave the most is a little peace.
But Jesus doesn’t lecture these people with his Sermon on the Mount. Did you listen to this very carefully? They don’t need to hear it. They live it. 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. No, like the poor of the world, these impoverished people; they give the most out of their limited resources with great joy and dignity, proud they have something to share with their fellow human beings, for they are very wealthy after all. They are rich in God’s spirit. They have inherited the Kingdom of Heaven. And they give it away. Physical poverty and disease, these are not noble things but they can be ennobling, lifting the lifeless human spirit out of the depths of complacency, and negligence and lethargy and thanklessness, into the realm of activism, responsibility, visioning and above all, the capital G, gratitude. Amen? Like Jesus, like Jesus himself, blessed are those who minister to people in such consequences. They tend to be discredited, gossiped about, rejected and ostracized, all of which happens to Jesus, and in this they are blessed for that means they are doing the holy work and battling Satan.
A long time ago, when I was a mailman with the US Postal Service, that company of sanity, I made the mistake of being the shop steward, so I was my local union steward in my post office. And my postmaster had a picture of me on his dart board, and it was rough going. I will tell you, some days it was absolutely miserable to be there and the statement “Going Postal” truly has reality. One day I was out delivering mail on my route and who should pull up in a delivery Jeep but my union chapter president whose name was Steve. Now Steve worked at a different post office; he worked on a different route. He wasn’t supposed to be on my route. He pulled up. I was just coming down the steps from a house and I rolled down the window and I said, “What are you doing here?” Now, I’ll never forget what he said. “Oh, I hear you’re making some trouble over there for Nick.” Nick was the name of the postmaster. And I said, ‘Well, I’m not trying to, I’m just trying to do my job.” I will never forget the words he said to me, and you’ll have to excuse my French on this but they’re so true. He said, “Matt, if you’re not pissing someone off, you’re not doing your job.” Such is the ministry of Christ. Jesus was always, my friends, if you are reading the Bible closely; he was always no matter what he said or did, making someone angry. “Hey, you can’t heal that sinner. They deserve what’s going on with them. You can’t declare someone forgiven after what they’ve done (or what we assume they did). You can’t minister to those people when you’re supposed to be ministering to us!” Yes, Jesus heard all these things. Is it no wonder that he says to you and me, You are the salt of the earth? You know what salt does. If you put into a wound, what does it do? Huh? You are the salt of the earth, he says, but if salt has lost its taste how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything but is thrown out and is trampled under foot.
What does it mean to be poor in spirit, my friends what does it mean to be mourning, what does it mean to be downtrodden. What does it mean to be castigated and rejected and unforgiven and diseased and poor and be “blessed?” Can the concept of blessing imply being a blessing instead of receiving blessing? Or even that one receives God’s blessing by being God’s blessing to someone else. Is it better to give then to receive? Could Jesus preach against the spiritually toxic subject of wealth if he were materially rich? What really killed Michael Jackson? I don’t think it wasn’t a drug overdose. Could someone truly understand and minister to someone in depression if they have never suffered depression themselves?
Being blessed in the biblical sense is not a reprieve from suffering, unfortunately. There is no such thing. But being blessed in the sense of the beatitudes means an awareness that God hasn’t forgotten about you in your pain and misery and that healing and wholeness and restoration are somewhere at work in your life. Amen? There are plenty of miserable, wealthy, physically fit married people. Isn’t that the truth? I hope they’re none of you. Maybe the Governor of South Carolina, I don’t know. Sorry men, that wasn’t fair. Brothers and sisters, being blessed doesn’t include or preclude any of that. Being blessed in the biblical sense means being aware that you need Jesus and that Jesus needs you in order to be a blessing to someone else, right?
If my spouse should die on me, no one is more fit to minister to me than a widow or a widower. If my life is in constant turmoil, no one is more capable of setting me at ease than a peacemaker. If my circumstances have fed me with the bitter nourishment of injustice, no one can ease my pain better than a prophet. If I become cynical about human nature, no one is better equipped to jolt me back on track than someone pure in heart. And yes, if I become poor in spirit, there is no better representative of the kingdom of heaven than a face lick from my dog, Levi, to lift me up and make me aware that Jesus is there.
Blessed are each and every one of you for being a blessing to me and those around you. Being blessed is being aware you are the blessing. As I close here with my final preached words here at Whitney, I leave you with no better sentiments of Gospel meaning and “beatitudiness” than this: After 10 long years of collaborating together making some of the greatest music every written and produced, after 10 long years fraught with joy and sadness, deep friendship and some serious infighting, after everything the Beatles had ever written, composed and sung about the subject of love, it all came down succinctly boiled to its most precious, purest lyric. On their last album, titled simply “The End,” the end of their partnership, the end of the Beatles, the end of the most meaningful times in our lives for some of us, Paul McCartney penned these words. They are the very gospel of Jesus “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” Blessed are you.
These words I speak to you this morning I give to you in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.