A Farmville Church Sermon

Caught Between Here and There
Matthew 5: 1-12

My friend Gary DeMore reminded me of the times he and I used to attend the Georgia United Methodist Pastor’s School every summer at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia. Every year we were entranced by the preachers who came to deliver the Word of God to the preachers. They were the best there were. And, especially in those days, we were glad to attend. We were in desperate need of any help we could get in preaching. And when we walked away from that week we had two months of sermons we could appropriate.

Gary tells of one summer when he heard a sermon that really stuck with him. The sermon title was “The Parable of the Straight Pin.” The sermon went like this: A life well lived is like a straight pin. First, a good straight pin has a head on it. Second, a good straight pin has a point to it. And third, a good straight pin holds things together. Gary claims the reason that sermon stuck with him was that it never really got there. But that was okay because back then with our lack of life experience a lot of our sermons did not get there.

There was something missing from that sermon. Gary tells me he’s pondered if for forty years. This year he figured it out. Here’s what was missing: Even if the pin has a head and has a point and has the potential to hold things together it’s useless because it needs a force greater than itself to give it a shove.
I felt like that ineffective sermon this week. I felt like that pin. Here we are with these opening verses of the Sermon on the Mount . We have come to call them the Beatitudes.

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 saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are  those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled . . . .”

Okay, let’s stop right there. And let me put in an editorial word here. Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted? Or as Living Translation puts it: God blesses those who mourn …

Well, really? I’ve got to tell you when I faced having to preach on these beatitudes this Sunday I found it very difficult to even imagine what I’d say. “God blesses those who mourn … Well, you’ll understand my difficulty in walking up to that verse. I’d not fully recovered from the loss of my wife in almost ten years ago when I lost Lynn six weeks ago. God blesses those who mourn? Well, I’m not feeling particularly blessed in my mourning, Thank you very much.

Maybe it’s God’s will the Lectionary presents these verses for us today. Maybe they are here because I need to examine them more closely.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” That entire statement is a contradiction. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” You couldn’t prove it my be. “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.” Now, be truthful. When in the history of humankind have the meek inherited the earth? “Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy.” “Oh, really? When did that happen?

These beatitudes can cause us some trouble. They just don’t seem to hold water.  They are troublesome. But wait. Let’s start the reading from the beginning.

Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountain. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them. “His disciples came to him.” He wasn’t teaching the crowd. He was teaching his disciples. And that makes a big difference.

He was speaking to the ones who follow him, the ones who call him Master. And in the teaching he defines the tension in which we who also follow him are caught. It is the tension of what is and what will be, the tension between here and heaven. It is the tension in mourning and waiting to be comforted.
Blessed are those who mourn? Yeah! You bet. But I’m not sure I’m going to feel that blessing in this life.

What I do believe is this: to be blessed is to live under the care of God. And because I am under the care of God I know that God is with me in my mourning. Because I am under thee care of God I know that the meek will inherit the earth.

Bishop Desmond Tutu used to preach to the seekers of a new order in South Africa. Many times when he preached the security troops would be standing around trying to intimidate this man who is small of stature but a giant in faith. Desmond Tutu used to yell out to the oppressors, “Come on in. Join us. Be on the winning side.”

Those are the ones to whom Jesus was speaking that day, those on the winning side. I will find comfort for my mourning because I’m on the winning side. The meek will inherit the earth and much more. The merciful will receive mercy when they come into the glory of their Lord. And the pure in heart will see God while the peacemakers will know peace forevermore.

These beatitudes are given to those of us who stand in the tension between heaven and earth, the dichotomy represented by these seemingly conflicting statements of Jesus.

His disciples came to him and he taught them: Blessed are you.

Gary DeMore told me also of a picture he has in home. It’s a picture of him and his sister, taken in Detroit when he was one year old. His sister was eleven. They were on the stoop of the apartment in which they lived. Ann gave the picture to Gary just before she died. She’d put it in a frame and she wrote on it: “Loved you then; love you still.”

We are God’s blessed children because we are under God’s care. And in our mourning, in our suffering, in our meekness, in our not being understood, in all these tensions of living here on this earth while longing for the blessings he holds out for us, he is with us. And someday he when we come into the blessing he has promised we will here him say, “Loved you then; love you still.”

Blessed are those who mourn, who try to make peace, who are meek, who hunger for righteousness, who show mercy. I can live and go forward in my mourning because my comfort is really Jesus’ promise that when I obtain heaven for myself I will know the fullness of comfort and I will be blessed.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Comments

[James A. Garrison, Asheville, NC]

Thanks for those good words, Parson... you're an encouragement to me. Prayers continue for you and your family...

[DogBlogger]

Amen.