Mt 5:1-12

30 January 2005

“The Good Life”

            One of the biggest banks—in fact, one of the wealthiest multinational corporations on the planet—runs commercials with messages that I consider curious.  One shows a man at retirement age, relaxing at his lakefront property.  Another commercial features zoom-ins on a toddler’s face as he’s being pushed in a swing.

            These are ads run by Citibank, and as the commercials go along, text appears on the screen.  “There’s more to life than money.  Live richly.”  I wonder:  am I the only one who’s struck by the irony of a company with more money than I can possibly fathom telling me that it’s really not that important?  Some might respond, “It’s easy for them to say!”

            Still, most people would agree with the literal message of the Citibank commercials, even if the underlying message is that one really does need money to live richly.

            When we ask the question, “What is the good life?”, we tend to get responses that, in one way or another, focus on the pursuit of pleasure—or the pursuit of happiness, which is related.  Granted, it may be the simple pleasures of relaxing by the lake or pushing a toddler in a swing.  But the idea is communicated that our pursuit of happiness is what the good life is all about.

            Our gospel reading in Matthew is the first twelve verses of what’s called the Sermon on the Mount.  Running through chapters 5 to 7, it’s one of the best-loved parts of the Bible.  Matthew has grouped together a good number of the best-known sayings of Jesus.  Many people consider this section of his gospel to be almost a manual for discipleship.

In today’s reading, Jesus presents his own vision of the good life.  It’s the list known as the Beatitudes; that’s from the Latin for “blessed.”  And blessed we are, says Jesus, if these things are true of us.

            The word that keeps getting repeated at the start of each verse is the Greek word makario" (makarios).  There’s no single English word that captures its meaning.  Most Bibles translate it as “blessed.”  Other words used include “happy” and “fortunate.”  Some say it also includes the meaning, “how honorable.”  A few centuries before Jesus, the word in classical Greek (like the writings of Homer) was used to describe the happiness of the gods:  they were “the blessed ones.”

            One writer says, “This blessedness is not something that can be attained by any ‘pursuit of happiness’; nor by any kind of social reconstruction that can be made the basis of political programs.…The satisfactions promised to the blessed are not of their achieving; they are the gift of God.”[1]  For the Beatitudes, the good life, besides not being narrowly focused on our own grasping for…whatever, is also not something we can grasp in the first place.

            As we look through the list of Beatitudes, we just might ask ourselves:  is this really a list of the blessed?  Check out the first four!  The poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness—you know, relaxing by that lake is looking better and better!

            Still, we can’t ignore that word makarios.  That’s a joy which is quite literally out of this world.  No form of entertainment even comes close to it.  Compared with the joy that Jesus speaks of, that lake seems like a water treatment facility.  Even still, the items in that list might have us wondering.

            There isn’t time to go into all of them, but there are some things we should look at.  In verse 3, the first Beatitude, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” differs from Luke’s version in chapter 6 of his gospel.  He simply says, “you who are poor.”  Matthew adds “in spirit,” possibly to show that Jesus isn’t just one more of the revolutionaries who were stirring the people up against the Romans.

            In any event, as Lutheran pastor Brian Stoffregen points out, “being poor in spirit, mourning, being meek, and hungering and thirsting for justice are not presented here as [qualities] that people should exhibit if they want to earn God's favor.  Rather, these are undesirable conditions that characterize no one when God's will is done.”[2]

Too often, the church has glorified and romanticized pain and oppression.  People have even been told that God wants them to suffer.  Imagine that!  Jesus isn’t saying, “Go suffer.  Seek out abuse.”  Instead, he pronounces a blessing on those who’ve already had that stuff dumped on them.

The last half of the Beatitudes, starting with verse 7, expresses qualities that are more easily seen as desirable.  For example, “the pure in heart” of verse 8 includes qualities like acting without pretense.  Still, purity of heart is more than avoiding impure actions or impure thoughts, whatever they may be.  (People tend to associate that with sexual images.)  Purity of heart is much more about a single-hearted devotion, “a single-hearted passion for God.  Many…people [today] have no passion for anything; or they have divided passions.”[3]

For those who think that Jesus’ vision of the good life has no relevance in the real world, here’s a good example where, as the saying goes, the rubber hits the road.  How many of us can honestly say that we have a passion for God?  Or that we have a passion for anything?

Our society is such that it doesn’t encourage passionate living.  The numerous commercials, TV shows, magazines, and what not that claim to show us how to live passionately only prove the point.  We’re pulled in so many directions that we’ve forgotten the simple truth of this blessing.  Somebody who wants us to buy what they’re selling may claim they can wake us up, but it is Christ who has come so that we “may have life, and have it abundantly” (Jn 10:10).

Verse 9, with its word about peacemaking, goes to the heart of Jesus’ mission.  This is about more than having a peaceful disposition, a calming influence (though that is important).  It’s more about taking an active role in peacemaking, be it among individuals, here in the community, or around the world.

Jesus speaks against the backdrop of the Roman Empire’s idea of peace.  It’s been noted that Rome’s peace, known as the Pax Romana, “consisted of Rome's ‘gift’ of order, security, and prosperity, guaranteed by the emperor as commander of Rome's military.…’[A]lmost all the Roman writers agreed that spreading peace…meant subjecting other peoples [other nations] to Roman dominion,’ an expression of the ‘proud conviction’ that Rome had been ‘vested with the mission of imposing [its] laws and way of life on the rest of the world.’”[4]  The Romans believed that their way of life was to be held forth as an example to the rest of the world.

I don’t think I need to connect the dots.  The Pax Romana, which by the way was not all bad, in many ways resembles our Pax Americana.  This should be a warning to us to avoid the easy assumption, that so many do make, that our nation’s idea of peacemaking is Christ’s idea of peacemaking—of God’s shalom.

The last Beatitude, which stretches from verse 10 to verse 12, isn’t saying that persecution is a good thing.  The virtue celebrated here is commitment—perseverance in the cause of righteousness, tenacity in the quest for justice.  Here’s where the qualities of mercy, purity of heart, and peacemaking come together.

Well, there’s a quick—and in no way adequate—look at what Jesus calls the good life.  I only hope some idea of the depth of the word makarios has been conveyed.  To say it means “blessed” doesn’t do it justice, at least, not the way Jesus uses the word.  The Beatitudes may seem too beautiful, too lofty, for us to take them seriously.

The novelist Kurt Vonnegut has been quoted as saying, “For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes.  But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings.  And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus.  I haven’t heard one of them demand that…the Beatitudes be posted anywhere.”

Vonnegut continues, “’Blessed are the merciful’ in a courtroom?  ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ in the Pentagon?  Give me a break!”[5]

            You know, if the Beatitudes seem unrealistic, there is another list of blessings we might want to consider.  Here’s something I stumbled onto during my research:  the devil’s Beatitudes.  (The author was said to be unknown; I don’t suppose it actually was the devil!  Anyway, here they are.)[6]

“Blessed are those who are too tired, too busy, too distracted to spend an hour once a week with their fellow Christians in church—they are my best workers.

“Blessed are those Christians who wait to be asked and expect to be thanked—I can use them.

“Blessed are the touchy, with a bit of luck they may stop going to church—they are my missionaries.

“Blessed are those who are very religious but get on everyone's nerves—they are mine forever.

“Blessed are the troublemakers—they shall be called my children.

“Blessed are those who have no time to pray—they are easy prey for me.

“Blessed are the gossipers—for they are my secret agents.

“Blessed are those critical of church leadership—for they shall inherit a place with me in my fate.

“Blessed are the complainers—I'm all ears for them.

“Blessed are you when you hear this and think it is about other people and not yourself—I've got you.”

            That last one should make it clear to us:  there really is no alternative to the good life, as Jesus defines it.  He’s the only one who knows what life is.  We are the walking dead—we are zombies—unless and until he gives us life.  The Beatitudes are more a state of being than a checklist of stuff to accomplish.  They are the state of being in Christ.

How is it with us here at Westminster?  Are we overly anxious about money, the building, the number of programs we can offer?  If our primary focus is the truly good life, on Jesus, these other things will fall into place.  This isn’t naïveté; it’s a badly needed correction.  That’s not to say we disregard planning for those things.  If we love God with all our mind, as well as our heart and soul, we give them their proper attention.

Still, we have to be careful, or we symbolically wind up like the guy in the commercial, just relaxing by the lake.  Some might say that we should just close down the church.  I would beg to differ!  I don’t think God has given us permission to just quit, because the church is not the building!  The church is the people, and the Lord has done great and beautiful things with smaller numbers of people than we have here.

I’ll finish by reminding us of verse 8:  “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”  Whatever else that may mean, it surely speaks of a single-hearted, a single-minded, love of Christ.  When we’re not zeroed in on all the stuff that gets thrown our way, we are blessed.  When we keep our eyes on the prize, we have purity of heart.

And to the extent we have that, we see God acting in our midst—right now.  And isn’t it amazing?

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