Blessing

Sermon on the Mount:  Blessing

February 2, 2014         Matthew 5:1-12, Micah 6:1-8 and Psalm 15

Happy Groundhog Day!  (what the groundhog predicted here) It is a fascinating custom isn’t it – waking up a groundhog from it’s hibernation and hold it up to see if it sees it shadow.  I think it is a really impractical way of predicting the weather - the groundhog after all is apparently only correct 37% of the time - but by this time of the year – and especially after the weather we have been having we need to know that this winter is going to end at some point, and if a groundhog is going to let us know that well – more power to him – what a week we have just lived through –how many of you were becoming ‘shack happy’ towards Thursday, time was weird – it was hard to feel  like we accomplished anything during our day, the girls were getting on each other nerves and quite frankly so were we.  And we are in for more this week – a Texas Low coming in on Tuesday.  Winter will end at one point – be it in 6 weeks or the first week of May – winter will end and all this snow will melt – I promise.  

How many of you have seen the movie Groundhog Day? – it was a favorite in our home for a while when my boys were growing up.  For those of you that do not know the plot – it is about an obnoxious news reporter who is in Punxsutawney Pennsylvania, covering the annual Groundhog Day festival.   Throughout the day he has various encounters with the people he works with and the locals.  You learn pretty quickly that he is not happy to be there, scornful of the event, the people and generally the world around him – but he is unable to leave town because of a ‘snow event’.  Day one completed – he wakes up the next morning only to find that it is not the next morning, it is still February 2^nd all over again and all the events that he lived through the previous day unfold around him, again and again and again and again – Phil Conners relives this day over and over and over again –and every day is Groundhog Day.

As he begins to realize what is going on he starts to take advantage of the situation, he treats people terribly, he is rude and disrespectful and still he wakes up again on February 2^nd, but no one else knows that he has been there and done that before.  He decides to take advantage of the situation with no fear of long-term consequences: he learns secrets from the town's residents, seduces women, steals money, drives recklessly, and gets thrown in jail. Eventually, Phil becomes despondent and tries more and more drastically to end the time loop; he tries a number of suicide attempts but they don’t work either and he wakes up to find that nothing has changed.  Eventually, however he shifts his focus and his life and begins to think beyond himself – and his strange situation - and starts to get to know the people around him, to take an interest in their lives, and to discovers what makes them tick.  

Something in Phil shifts – he takes piano lessons, he helps out an old friend, he supports a young couple, he saves a man’s life, and he realizes that he cannot save the life of another.  What really happens is that he becomes human and his life starts to become blessed and he then becomes a blessing in other people’s lives.  He learns to live as the prophet Micah indicates – when he proclaims:  What does the Lord require of you – to seek justice and love kindness and walk humbly with our God– for Phil - seeking justice, being kind to himself and to others, and walking humbly his life shifts – and finally after countless days of re- living February 2 over and over again – when the focus of Phil’s life has shifted outward instead of inward -  he finally wakes up on February 3rd.

These words of the prophet Micah speak down to us through the ages – reminding us of what it is to live on this earth as a human being and what God wishes for our lives.  All of our readings today have one thing in common – they are articulations of wisdom about what makes a life good and godly.  The readings offer the listener instructions(and remember the bible was book written to be read out loud)  – helpful information – from the prophet, the psalmist and Jesus about how to live on this earth as God wishes us to – how to live the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

The psalmist asks the age old question about how our lives should be lived– this is how it is written in The Message: 

God, who gets invited
    to dinner at your place?
How do we get on your guest list?

² “Walk straight,
    act right,
        tell the truth.

^3-4 “Don’t hurt your friend,
    don’t blame your neighbor;
        despise the despicable.

⁵ “Keep your word even when it costs you,
    make an honest living,
        never take a bribe.”

Act right, tell truth, don’t hurt your friend - It is all very good counsel about how to live in the world – and again it focuses us outward instead of inward.

 The Message does a lovely job with Micah’s words as well:

“But he’s already made it plain how to live, what to do,
    what God is looking for in men and women.
It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor,
    be compassionate and loyal in your love,
And don’t take yourself too seriously—
    take God seriously.”

And we may know these words as seek justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.  Taking God seriously was the best advice the prophet offered to a people who had lived through difficult times, people longing for a word of hope.

And hundreds of years later – into another time of political unrest and persecution Jesus comes and also shares how to live in the world, how God wants us treat ourselves and treat each other. How we are to live in the world taking God very seriously.

We are very early in Jesus ministry when we join the story this morning – Jesus has been baptized in the Jordon, spent 40 days in the desert – called his first disciples and began to speak in synagogues, healing the sick and curing diseases.  He is becoming more and more known and people are seeking him out, bringing the sick to be made well.  He is also a wonderful speaker and crowds of people want to hear what he has to say so large crowds of people have begun to follow him.  Jesus is already, within a few months of beginning his ministry making quite a splash among the people – and so , today when Jesus encounters yet another crowd of people wanting to hear what he has to say – he goes up the mountain – and sits down and the crowd follows and they wait to hear:  

Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, blessed are the merciful, and the pure in heart and the peacemakers, and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness– blessed are the last and least and the ones that you would least expect to feel blessed, says Jesus. You will note that the first time that Matthew records any of Jesus words – we hear him speaking counter- cultural – startling the listeners into re-examining what they know to be true and to re-order the world from what the culture says to what God says. They know that the rich and the healthy and the powerful appear to have blessings – to their eyes those who are strong and mighty, those who look after themselves instead of others, those who guard their hearts seemed to be the ones the world is blessing – not so says Jesus – look again - 

 A fellow preacher this week writes:  “Jesus’s vision and words, though, seem to stretch those of the prophets to new degrees.  Imagine those famous words of Micah as a piece of fabric, stretching across the universe, the words that tell us to “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.”  Now imagine that fabric pulled and stretched at the edges as Jesus proclaims how justice and kindness and humility are accomplished: by poverty of spirit, and by mourning, and by meekness.  And that those who live in those ways, the ways of poverty of spirit and mourning and meekness, are blessed.

Does this sound like something you want to sign up for?  Poverty of spirit?  Mourning?  Meekness?

Let’s think about that word “blessed” for a moment.  The Greek word, makarios, is often translated as “happy” or “fortunate.”… When have you felt most happy or fortunate in life?  When have you felt most blessed?”[1]

Was it in times of meekness, mourning, when you were feeling poor in spirit or where hungering of thirsting for righteousness?  I suspect not – for when we think about it – certainly as a culture we do not think that meekness and mourning and thirsting for righteousness as strong and dominant ways of being in the world that we expect to be blessed.  But Jesus says – let’s look at that again – let go of what the world sees as right and correct and focus on what God sees as right and good and true.

So what does it mean to be blessed – what does it feel like to be blessed?  Times in my life when I have felt blessed are when someone I value looks at me – really looks at me and says that they value me, that what I have contributed has been important and I am worth something.  Being  blessed can feel like accompaniment, that you are never alone, that someone is with you, is on your side – it could be another person or it could be God who cares enough about you that where ever you go, whatever you do – you don’t do it alone. 

Being blessed allows you to feel that you can rise above your circumstances even when they are really challenging and that your circumstance do not define you, nor do your faults, or your failings or your limitations or even bad choices you made in your past.  

Being blessed feels like you have worth,  not because of what you do, or what you have done, or who your parents are or what your job is or how big your house is or your bank account either – 

Being blessed means that you have value and worth just because you are you and you deserve to be blessed.  You are a beloved child of God blessed in your meekness and mourning and poverty of spirit, blessed in your truth. 

Mary Craig again:  “Jesus is telling us, instead, that true blessedness, true happiness, is found in reliance upon God.   Ultimate blessedness is found in poverty of self, in emptying of self, in letting go of our own priorities -- in recognizing that abundance is God’s to give, not ours to achieve.  True blessedness is found in seeing that when we mourn, or when we are meek – when we are gentle, when we defer to others – God offers gifts of insight and compassion to us.”[2]

When we live a blessed life, something in us shifts and we begin to see the world with a different focus – no longer are we seeing the world through the filter of our desires and longing, through our brokenness and pain – instead the life lived in blessing sees the other and sees in the face of the other – a glimpse of their creator, a glimpse of God – sees another as a blessed and beloved child of God.  

Jesus says blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek and blessed are those who mourn, the peacemakers and the pure of heart – blessed are you – holy are you – God’s beloved child.  Amen.

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[1] Mary Craig:  Beautiful and Terrible; http://metanoia-mrc.blogspot.ca/ (2014)

[2] Ibid.