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Sermon on the Mount - Matthew 5:1-10
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Here's the thing about this sermon on the mount. If you don't get at the start that God comes to you in your poverty and God loves you in your poverty and God will love you forever in your poverty, then you will read the rest of the sermon as rule after rule after rule to live up to, and that is exactly the opposite of what Jesus is trying to say to you. Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week.
Speaker 1:Head to commons.church for more information. Hey, look. We know it is very packed today. We're doing our best to get everyone in, but thank you for being here with us. Welcome again, once again, to our fifth birthday at Commons.
Speaker 1:And this is actually the sixth version of our journal that you are hopefully handing, holding in your hands right now. My son turned six a week ago. This church has turned five today, and it just seems like everything in my life has moved so quickly over these last few years, but this really has been an incredible season and an amazing honor to lead this community and serve this community and watch this community become something so much more than I think any of us ever imagined five years ago. So thank you for being here with us. Thank you for being part of this day with us.
Speaker 1:We really don't take it for granted that you come and worship with us. But if you and I haven't met IRL, my name is Jeremy and we are here together at the start of another new season. And for a lot of us who are familiar with commons, you know all about our annual journal project that we put together every September. But of course there are always new people finding commons and dipping their toes into community, and no doubt that is a lot of you here today. And if that's the case, then welcome.
Speaker 1:But also please grab a journal before you leave today. It will help give you a head start here. The first half is all about who we are, where we come from, and how to get connected when you're ready. The second half is an outline of all of our teaching for the next fifty two weeks and space for you to take notes each of those Sundays. So to take a quick look ahead at what's coming, today we are kicking off the fall with an extended series in the Sermon on the Mount.
Speaker 1:In January, we're gonna hit a series called Swipe Right where we'll talk about relationships. During Lent, we're gonna talk about the story of Jonah, a story that has been associated with kids for years but really has a lot of very big human themes for all of us to pay attention to. And then after Easter, we are gonna talk about our big loud mouths and all the things we wish we didn't say. But those are just a few of the highlights because as always, we have scheduled the next twelve months to move through sections of the Hebrew scriptures, through a New Testament letter, and then of course to ground ourselves directly in the words and the teachings of Jesus, which is where we find ourselves today with the Sermon on the Mount. And I gotta say, I am pretty pumped about this one.
Speaker 1:Jesus has a lot to say here, and we have only eight weeks to work through it all. But if you are not familiar with the Sermon on the Mount, this is actually Jesus' first major public sermon. So this is sort of like all of us are jumping in on the ground floor day one, early adopter before anyone knew he was famous with Jesus. And that just seemed like an appropriate place to start in September. Because no offense to January, we all know that the start of the year is really right here.
Speaker 1:Am I right? School's back, the journals are out, pumpkin spice lattes fill the air, and it just feels like we're ready for something new. As I mentioned, my son turned six this week and that means he's in grade one now, so this is a big new start for us. But on Monday, just before school started, he was here at the church helping me with some projects as we got ready. And we were talking about him growing up and getting older and starting grade one and how excited he was to be a big kid now.
Speaker 1:But on the way back to the house, he was in the back seat and we were driving and talking and he said to me, dad, do you know what big kids say when they get in the car? They say shotgun. And do you know what that means, dad? It means they get to sit in the front seat. And he says, I know I'm not old enough to sit in the front seat yet, but I am in grade one, so I was just wondering, would it be okay if I say shotgun when you and me ride in the car together because I really like that part.
Speaker 1:And so my son is growing up and our church is growing up and it's September and we're all ready for a new start, even if we're not quite ready to sit in the front seat yet, although some of you are, thank you. And the Sermon on the Mount is really one of those moments where if we're paying attention, everything changes before our eyes, and that's special. So, let's pray, and then we'll dive into this sermon together. God of infinite grace and peace, who is always just beyond our ability to make sense of, and yet who comes to us in the experience of humanity. Wrapped in the joy and the grief and the pain and the celebration of this life.
Speaker 1:May we encounter you today in new ways. May your words reach into us and through us. May we begin to know ourselves as you know us. Might this conversation begin a fresh new start for those who need it. For all of the anxiety and the stress and the baggage that we don't need to carry anymore and yet we have lugged with us on our backs into this room today.
Speaker 1:We ask you to help us lay it all down. For all of the performance and the expectation and the presumption that we place on ourselves every day. For that crushing weight of measuring up that we place on ourselves. We ask you to help us all leave it behind. For the confusion and the blindness and the willful ignorance that sometimes obscures your incredible love for us, You open our eyes so that we could see you for who you are.
Speaker 1:Infinite and omnipotent, yes, but more importantly loving and gracious. May we know ourselves as fully welcomed and completely loved right now in this moment here today. In the strong name, the risen Christ we pray, amen. Okay. The Sermon on the Mount.
Speaker 1:I am excited about this one. There is so much brilliance to talk about here. Today, we are gonna move through the first 10 verses traditionally known as the Beatitudes, but we're gonna focus on the first three because they really sort of set the stage for everything that follows in this sermon and series. The problem is I just can't say everything I want to say, And so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna create some videos over the next week or two and all through this series, and we will put those up on our YouTube channel. If you want to, you can head over to youtube.com/commonschurch, and you can track with all of the bonus content there if that's your thing.
Speaker 1:But in the Sermon on the Mount, we get a young, fresh faced Jesus who has just launched his public ministry, has been moving through the area teaching and healing and performing some miracles and the buzz has been building and a crowd gathers to hear him and so Jesus pauses to speak to them. And the sermon runs from Matthew five to the end of seven, but I actually wanna start today by backing up just a little bit to the end of chapter four to set the stage. And so this is starting in chapter four verse 23 where we read that Jesus went throughout Galilee, that's where he's from, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news in the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, obviously, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases. Those suffering severe pain.
Speaker 1:The demon possessed, those having seizures and the paralyzed, and healed them all. Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him. And so when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him and he began to teach them. And so, here's what we have to picture in our minds.
Speaker 1:A huge crowd of people from all over come to hear Jesus. He notices the crowd and so he goes up on a hill where they can see him. His close friends come close to him and he teaches them in sort of this public open air address. And we'll get to what he says in a moment because it is seismic. But first, we have to notice who Jesus is talking to.
Speaker 1:It says large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis and Jerusalem. Now, Galilee is where Jesus is from. This is a very Jewish, very religious, very blue collar region. These are Jesus people. He knows these people.
Speaker 1:He grew up with these people. Probably the specific people in the audience he doesn't know, they're strangers, but he gets them. These are his people. And anytime you start to think that maybe Jesus is just a little bit too respectable for you, remember that Jesus comes from the other side of the tracks. He's from the Galilee, not the Jerusalem.
Speaker 1:Now, these are also Jewish people and these are also very religious people, but these are probably a little more fancy people. These are the people who come from the city, they know how the world works, they understand power and politics and probably have a much better grasp on the machinations of Rome. And this is where all the religious leaders in the Jewish culture would be found. So, there's a lot in common here, but at the same time these are very different areas. There's sophisticated region that Jesus knows from his childhood, and then there's the city where the leaders and the elite are coming from.
Speaker 1:I remember that time when word about Jesus is starting to spread and a man named Nathaniel has asked if he has heard of Jesus and he says, can anything good come from Nazareth? That's kind of the attitude you might expect in Jerusalem. So, the Galilee and Jerusalem, but we've also got the Decapolis tucked in here. That's a really interesting one. Now Decapolis means 10 cities and these were a collection of Roman cities Southeast Of Galilee.
Speaker 1:These were not Jewish people and at least in the eyes of Jewish people, these were not religious people. In fact, for a lot of the people that Jesus would have grown up with, certainly for the religious leaders from the city, these were the people that you avoided assiduously. This This is who your mom warned you about, right? Like, these are the people with tattoos and cigarettes and motorcycles and whatever cultural stand in for loose morals existed in the first century, I don't know about that. Yet here they are, mashed together, blue collar Jews and big city moguls and Roman pagans.
Speaker 1:Everyone is here to see what this guy from Nazareth has to say. That's an important part of the story. But today we need to talk about the meaning of meek, the source of our blessing, a poverty of spirit, and why making Jesus makes sense is actually missing the point. Let's pick up again in verse three. It says that he began to teach them saying, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Speaker 1:Blessed are those who mourn for they shall 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. Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.
Speaker 1:Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. A series of eight declarations we call the Beatitudes. And by the way, Beatitude comes from the Latin translation of the Greek word for blessed. But, there's a book by Christopher Moore called Lamb, the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal.
Speaker 1:And if you've not read this book, you legitimately should. It is somehow at once irreverent and sacred and hilarious and beautiful all at the same time. Although be forewarned, the irreverent is irreverent. But the book is about Jesus' childhood best friend Biff and Biff is resurrected to write a new gospel that tells the real story of Josh's formative years. That's what the kids called Jesus.
Speaker 1:And at one point Biff is helping Jesus write a sermon and he says to him, how are we doing on those beatitudes? Pardon? The blesseds. Oh, well, so far 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 to the meek?
Speaker 1:Let me see here. Blessed are the meek for we shall say to them attaboy. That's kinda weak. Yeah, I know. Let's let the meek inherit the earth.
Speaker 1:I thought we were giving the earth to the whiners. Well then cut the whiners and give the earth to the meek. Okay, earth to the meek. Here we go. Blessed are the peacemakers, the mourners, and that's it.
Speaker 1:How many is that? Seven? Not enough. We're gonna need one more. And I know it's silly.
Speaker 1:The book is great though. But tell me you haven't read the Beatitudes and thought to yourself at least for a second, what on earth is going on here? I mean none of this makes any sense. It all sounds like it was scribbled on a napkin in the middle of the night at a Denny's. Mean Jesus have you actually spent any time in the real world or is this just you and Biff trolling us?
Speaker 1:And so what happens is instead of trying to actually sit with what Jesus is saying, instead of trying to allow his imagination of the world to infect us, instead we work really hard in trying to fit his words, his dream into our world. We try to make sense of it and actually don't think that's how it works. Because the truth is I don't think Jesus is trying to make sense of our world. I think he's trying to upend our sense of the world. Try this one.
Speaker 1:Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. I read a commentary this week that tried to tell me that meek means strength under control. So they're really actually very powerful. They just know how and when to use it and that's why they'll inherit the earth when the time is right. Except that is clearly not what meek means, at least not in English.
Speaker 1:Meek means submissive or easily imposed upon. Now the Greek word here is pros but that doesn't mean strength under control either. It means not overly impressive or humbled. In fact the Hebrew equivalent is the word which comes from the root for bowed down or cowering. So there is nothing in the word meek whether you are reading it in English, Greek or Hebrew that should ever give you the idea of coiled strength just waiting to be let loose.
Speaker 1:The only reason to read it that way is to try to make Jesus make sense in the world that we're all familiar with. But what if Jesus isn't trying to be familiar? What if he's trying to be disruptive? What if Jesus is actually saying what he seems to be saying that the easily overpowered? That the not overly impressive, that the bowed down and cowering in the shadows, they will inherit the earth.
Speaker 1:You see, we tend to read the bible through our modern western assumptions And then we try to make Jesus make sense of the world that we live in, but if you're a Jewish person, particularly a poor rural Jewish person standing in the audience, you know exactly what he's saying here. Because this is actually a line from Psalm 37. The Psalm which speaks about the fall, the crushing fall of Israel and the people of God. And the victory of the wicked, a Psalm which ends with the line, salvation comes from the Lord. For God is a stronghold in times of trouble.
Speaker 1:The Lord helps and delivers. God delivers from the wicked and saves those who take refuge. See, the meek are not the powerful under control. The meek are not the strong waiting for the right moment to spring. The meek are those who have been crushed and depressed.
Speaker 1:They've been humbled and forced to bow down. They have had their land, their earth taken away from them by the more powerful. They have been forced to watch the world divided up and then divvied out by those who are more beautiful, more wealthy, more well connected, more strategic, more extra. And they don't know that they don't have the power to fight back and so instead they hope for a new world, a more just world. In the Jewish culture this was called the world to come.
Speaker 1:And so, if you're a Roman person from the Decapolis standing beside a Jewish person from Jerusalem listening to Jesus from Galilee, this is awkward. If you're a settler, standing beside an indigenous person reading about Jesus, this is awkward. If you're someone who looks the part and has it all together, someone who does project that strength under control that we all aspire to, and you're standing beside that parent whose child has their pants on backwards, It's not on their shirt and they barely made it into church on time this morning because their kid would not comply. This is awkward. Because we all have this sense at almost every level of our lives that the world is being handed out and those who have the courage and the strength and the power to get theirs will.
Speaker 1:And those who don't, won't. And to that Jesus says, maybe. I mean I know it looks that way, I know it seems like that but does it have to be like that? Does God dream of that? You see there's nothing in the word meek that is meant to correspond to the inheritance.
Speaker 1:That's not the point. Not in Psalm 37, certainly not here in Jesus' words because this isn't Jesus trying to explain why the meek deserve the world. This is Jesus saying maybe our imagination of who deserves the world is really the problem to begin with. Maybe that kid with their pants on backwards, maybe they're just fine the way they are. And you see, the sermon on the mount has some brilliant advice for us about how to live our lives but before that, it is a declaration of what Jesus sees waiting for us just below the surface of what we're used to noticing in the world around us.
Speaker 1:And once we get a glimpse of that, once we start to get what Jesus is doing here, that he's not trying to explain our world to us, he's declaring a new world among us, then all of a sudden this opening salvo, these beatitudes, these eight declarations of how the world could be, they actually stop needing to be sensible and they become aspirational. Jesus isn't explaining the world as it is, he's imagining the world as it should be. So now, we can start working our way back toward the start. Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. Well, this isn't about glorifying suffering.
Speaker 1:The blessing isn't in your mourning. The blessing is that God comes to you, God meets with you, God experiences your world with you. In a world that was absolutely convinced that prosperity meant God was on your side. Jesus says God is always on your side even when no one believes you. And then, and possibly the most important opening line in history, Jesus says, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Speaker 1:And in my opinion, this is possibly the most important statement in the entire corpus of Jesus' teaching. Because if we miss this, I think we will miss everything that follows. You see poverty of spirit is not something to aspire to. Poverty of spirit is nothing admirable. It does not mean humble.
Speaker 1:It does not mean you have an awareness of your need for God. It does not mean anything but complete and utter confusion when it comes to the things of God. Jesus starts his ministry by saying blessed are you who have no clue. Or as Dalit Rulis says, this is the spiritual zeros, the spiritually bankrupt, the deprived and deficient, the spiritual beggars, those without a wisp of religion. That's who is blessed because that is the gospel.
Speaker 1:And so, when you've had your slice of the pie taken away from you and you've had suffering inflicted upon you and you have nowhere else to go and no plan for where to turn and all of your choices only seem to make everything worse and everyone knows it. The good news here is that God is still, God has always been for you. As Walter Brueggemann says, this is God bless you to the God awful. And the thing is, we really do struggle with this because it really doesn't seem to make sense to us. And so what we do is we keep searching for something meritorious in each blessing.
Speaker 1:Well, the meek are self controlled. Those who mourn, they're in touch with their emotions and the poor in spirit, least they're honest about their need for God, but that's not what Jesus is saying here. Jesus is saying your concept of the divine and who deserves God's attention is fundamentally broken. And so before I can tell you anything about you and how you can live your life, I need to tell you about God. Because I need to clear the table.
Speaker 1:I need to declare some things before we get going. And maybe you are a Roman person or you're a Galilean day laborer. Maybe you're a religious leader from Jerusalem, but let's get this straight from the start. God is on your side. Actually, let me clarify.
Speaker 1:God is on your side and God is on the side of the person beside you. God is for the religious fundamentalist who looks down their nose at you. God is for the worker who barely has time to rest, let alone contemplate the divine. God is for the Roman pagan that can't make heads or tails of this Jewish teacher and why everyone is so fascinated by him. God is for them and the more you argue with me, the more God is for all of us.
Speaker 1:Because that's Jesus' message. That in whatever way you have been told you are a failure. However you have internalized the narrative of the world around you, it is not true. The God of the universe is already on your side cheering you on because that's who God is. And there's nothing you can do to stop it.
Speaker 1:Blessed are those who don't have a clue because the divine has come to them. And look, if you can get this, if you can sink this somewhere deep into your bones, it will change everything about you. It will open up new life inside of you. It will invite you to journey with Jesus and follow Jesus and sink into the teachings of Jesus, and we've got seven more weeks to talk about all of that, but if we don't get this. If we don't get that we are already completely loved before we ever take a step toward God.
Speaker 1:Well then, we will just keep trying harder and the divine will seem farther and farther. Because here's the thing about this sermon on the mount. If you don't get at the start that God comes to you in your poverty and God loves you in your poverty and God will love you forever in your poverty, then you will read the rest of the sermon as rule after rule after rule to live up to and that is exactly the opposite of what Jesus is trying to say to you. Everything Jesus is about to say is predicated on the fact that the world is not what you think it is. Love is not what you think it is.
Speaker 1:God is not who you think God is because all of it so much better than you can possibly imagine and you are already, right now, perfectly beloved of God. Henry Nouwen once wrote, that the path of theological formation is the gradual and often painful discovery of God's complete incomprehensibility to you. You can be competent in many things but you cannot be competent in God. And Jesus begins his public ministry by saying that's all okay for blessed are the spiritually incompetent. You do not need to do the right things.
Speaker 1:You do not need to say the right things. You do not need to know the right things or believe the right things because God is near you already right now. And so as we begin this new season together, with all of the anxiety and the expectation that school and work and family place on us every day, All of that pressure that we all feel to measure up all of the time. May you learn this new season first to sink instead into your poverty. To know that you never measured up and that God never cared because God is like nothing you have ever experienced before.
Speaker 1:May you know yourself as God knows you today. As blessed and beloved, as welcomed and accepted, as invited into everything you might become if only you could begin to see yourself as beautifully as God sees you right now. Blessed are the poor in spirit for the kingdom of God has come near to you. Let's pray. God, of grace and peace, of infinite love who draws near to us.
Speaker 1:As we begin this new season with all of the anxiety and the stress that it brings, as we launch into this new series and move through this Sermon on the Mount, would you first take this idea and sink it somewhere so deep into our soul that it would change everything about us? That we do not need to carry this baggage. We do not need to strive for your love. We do not need to measure up or do the right things in the right order with the right people. We are already completely loved.
Speaker 1:And that when we are spiritually incompetent, lost in our poverty, this is when you draw near to us. That you search us out, and you track us down, and you pick us up, and you bring us back home. And that experience will change us, it'll transform us, it'll turn us into something we can barely even imagine right now, but first it begins with the awareness of our belovedness. That we are blessed and we are welcomed and embraced in your arms. Holy Spirit, may you help that knowledge, that experience of divine love to be rooted somewhere deep inside every heart here so that it might take root and grow and transform us into all the things you imagine for us.
Speaker 1:That may it all begin with your love. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray, amen.