When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2 Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
5 “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely[b] on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
13 “You are the salt of the earth; 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 trampled under foot.
14 “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. 15 No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. (New Revised Standard Version)
The Great Ends of the Church sermon series, Week Five
It was something that went viral, stacked on top of something else that had gone viral: a double-virus. I don’t even have to begin singing the song “Baby Shark” for most of you to know how it goes, and even mentioning it has probably put it in some of your heads for the rest of this sermon. It has gone positively bananas across the world, to the tune of—as of this writing—3.7 *billion* views on Youtube…for a song that is less than four years old.
But that was what got a little Lebanese one-year-old named Robin to become less afraid in the midst of country-wide (literally—protesters have formed a human chain across the entirety of Lebanon) protests against their sectarian government: the child’s mother, Eliane Jabbour, driving her car, told the protesters in the streets that they were inadvertently frightening her child, and so the protesters, to help the child feel safer and less afraid, began serenading little Robin with…Baby Shark.
And then that story, too, went viral, with news outlets around the world picking it up. In a nation-wide effort to promote social righteousness in the face of a corrupt government, a children’s song of all things brought even more attention to the protests. So a viral song becomes a viral story stacked upon it about the goodness we are capable of in the face of childlike innocence.
Virality on the internet, by its very nature, spreads like wildfire, but it also strikes in an instant, like the lightning starting the fire. Lightning strikes, who can know what will result? But every once in a while, lightning is caught, like in a bottle, and becomes something truly magical: Baby Shark being sung by protesters to a tiny child. A Swedish teenager named Greta Thunberg going from lonely school strikes to addressing the United Nations inside of a year and a half. And a Nazarene carpenter beginning a sermon with a series of blessings that we know now as the Beatitudes.
Today represents the fifth installment of our autumn sermon series on The Great Ends of the Church, which thus far have covered: the proclamation of the Gospel, the spiritual fellowship of the children of God, the maintenance of divine worship, and the preservation of truth. Today, we arrive at the promotion of social righteousness, and the Beatitudes which begin the Sermon on the Mount are like lightning caught in a bottle specifically for defining what social righteousness might look like.
From whence did lightning of inspiration for the Beatitudes—or for the Sermon on the Mount more broadly—arrive? The easy answer is to say God’s own Word, because Jesus was God-Made-Flesh, but how does God made flesh arrive at communicating such immutable truths so simply, plainly, and compellingly? How was the lightning of the Beatitudes caught and shared as it was?
I must confess, my favorite version of how comes from Christopher Moore’s sometimes irreverent, but also deeply reverential, novel Lamb, in which Jesus and his childhood friend Biff, co-write the Beatitudes:
“We’ve got: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness; blessed are the poor in spirit, the pure in heart, the whiners, the meek, the—”
“Wait, what are we giving the meek?”
“Let’s see, uh, here: Blessed are the meek, for to them we shall say, ‘attaboy.’”
“A little weak.”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s let the meek inherit the earth.”
“Can’t
you give the earth to the whiners?”
“Well then, cut the whiners and give the earth to the meek.”
…
“How about the wankers? I can think of five or six disciples that would be really blessed.”
“No wankers. I’ve got it: Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.”
“Okay, better. What are you going to give them?”
“A fruit basket.”
“You can’t give the meek the whole earth and these guys a fruit basket.”
Moore’s alternate reality of how the Beatitudes stumbles upon a vital truth: for true justice, for genuine promotion of social righteousness, you cannot dole out tokens or band-aids. You cannot give the persecuted a fruit basket. That does them no good.
This fundamental reality is, I believe, why so many of the church’s efforts to alleviate poverty and persecution have not actually eradicated either: we are more content with band-aids than with big-picture solutions. We would rather give the poor a fruit basket than the whole earth because, well, there may still be some part of us that believes the earth is still ours. Better for us to give up something small rather than something big. Which is not particularly meek of us.
So, what if we are not all these things? What if we are not particularly meek? What if we are not in a season of mourning? In Luke 6—which contains Luke’s highly truncated version of the Sermon on the Mount—Jesus pairs each blessing with a woe pronounced upon its opposite. So not only blessed are the poor, but woe upon the rich. Not only blessed are the persecuted, but woe upon those who are well-spoken of.
That, quite frankly, probably includes most of us. We are here in an upstanding congregation of a mainline denomination that has produced presidents, cabinet secretaries, and congresspeople aplenty. I have to remember that while being persecuted for righteousness’ sake is a part of my own family’s history, I myself am not so persecuted—at least not until someone decides that I am not white enough, or that the Armenian Genocide never happened (especially with a recognition vote coming this past week from one of the houses of Congress). And even then, I still have privilege, resources, and a platform to fall back on.
The promotion of social righteousness, as dictated by Jesus, includes the reversal of circumstance. It is not enough that the lowly are elevated; the proud must also be humbled.
I must be humbled. Many of us must be humbled.
And humbled we still can be, but we must choose it. We must allow the humility to reach us, to dictate the terms of our surrender of unearned power. It is never too late for lightning to strike in our hearts, and for us to catch it and turn it into something that changes lives because we too have been changed. We do not have to be Greta Thunberg or Eliane Jabbour to do that. We can simply be the children God hopes for us to be.
If we are meek, if we are mourning, if we are persecuted, we can seek to change the world knowing that this blessing is at our backs. And if we are not yet mourning, if we are not being persecuted, the hard work of promoting social righteousness as preached by our Lord and Savior falls especially upon our shoulders.
We cannot abdicate the divine mandate. We must do the work. And we cannot pretend that this work is somehow beneath us or unimportant. Jesus says, after the Beatitudes, that others will see our works and that God in heaven might be glorified in doing so. We do not get to abdicate the work of social justice. On the contrary, it is integral to the Gospel.
In undertaking this great work, may we choose to be merciful, and find mercy. May we choose to be pure in heart, and see God. May we choose to be peacemakers, and be called children of God. May we choose to pursue God’s blessing, even if that means emptying ourselves of prior ambitions and surrendering to God our unearned advantages, because before God, there is no greater advantage than love.
For blessed are the meek, the poor in spirit, the mourning, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted.
And, I believe, blessed are they who, in humble solidarity with the poor and the meek, make moments that catch lightning in a bottle and transform creation forever for the better.
Blessed are the lightning-catchers.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Eric Atcheson, D.Min.
Vancouver, Washington
November 3, 2019