Sunday, February 2, 2014

Sermon: Don't Worry, You Are Blessed

Matthew 5:1-12
Don’t Worry, You Are Blessed
James Sledge                                                                                       February 2, 2014

Are you familiar with the catchphrase, “First world problems?’ It’s something added to a complaint, a light hearted acknowledgement that someone’s whining or fussing is not about anything all that significant. It’s popular as a “hashtag” on Twitter. Here are some actual examples. “Trying to find a way to make my snow boots look cute with every outfit is getting really old #firstworldproblems. I think every town in America should have free Wi-Fi all throughout. Would make my life so much easier. #firstworldproblems.” And I love this one. I’m pretty sure it’s a joke. “My phone died and I can't tell the time from my wrist watch because of all the diamonds. #firstworldproblems.”
Even if you’re not familiar with the hashtag, you’re likely familiar with something similar. Many of us have said something such as, “I locked my keys in my car and had to call AAA to unlock it. So I missed my doctor’s appointment and have to reschedule. But then I came and volunteered at Welcome Table and realized that my problems aren’t all that big.”
When we agonize over our cable service going out just before our favorite show comes on, we know such issues are relatively minor and trivial. But our problems are our problems. They’re the things impacting us, and so they’re important to us. Nothing surprising about that. But when we worry about such things, there’s a tendency to think they are the things God should worry about as well.
We live in a very individualized and personalized culture. That has led to some very individualistic and personal notions about God and faith. The phrase “Jesus is my personal Lord and Savior,” isn’t part of my faith heritage so I’ve never been exactly sure what it means. Still, I’m reasonably certain that no one in biblical times would have said such a thing. They did not live in an individualistic culture.
Insomuch as speaking of a personal Savior means to convey that God is concerned about each individual person, I think that’s dead on. But that is different from thinking that God is especially worried about whatever I or my culture happens to be worried about. Indeed, such a notion can lead to the trivializing of God and faith.
I’ve seen that happen with the Beatitudes, the opening portion of the Sermon on the Mount that we just heard. There is a book by Robert Schuller called The Be (Happy) Attitudes: 8 Positive Attitudes That Can Transform Your Life. It distills from Jesus’ words a handful of practices that will bring the happiness that many Americans chase after. Blessed are those who mourn becomes “I’m really hurting—but I’m going to bounce back, and Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake becomes, “I can choose to be happy—anyway!”[1]
But this not only trivializes Jesus’ teaching, it misses the point entirely. Jesus is not giving some program for self-improvement. He isn’t telling people how to be happy. He isn’t even giving a list of commands to live by. There are no commands in today’s verses. We may be able to infer some “shoulds” from these verses, but they are primarily a statement of how things are, wildly counter-intuitive statements Jesus makes to those who are drawn to him.
These folks are not the upper tier or elite of society. Instead they are fishermen and sinners, people with diseases and infirmities, people suffering with what we would call mental illness, and desperate family members and friends who have nowhere else to turn. They are Jews who find themselves subject to the might, power and often cruel authority of Rome. There is little about them to suggest that they are blessed or fortunate. But Jesus insists that they are.
Matthew also has Jesus address the author’s first century church community . That Jewish Christian community is most certainly struggling. Some of them have gotten kicked out of their synagogue, their home church, the place they grew up and learned about faith, because they followed Jesus. No doubt this has led some, perhaps many, to question the wisdom of following him. The hoped for new day that Jesus’ resurrection seemed to herald is terribly slow in coming, and it is hard to find much evidence that says they are blessed or favored or fortunate. But Jesus insists that they are.
Jesus isn’t suggesting a way for them to feel fortunate. Rather he is making a statement that despite appearances, even when they find themselves in terrible circumstances, longing for something better, hungering and thirsting for a day when the world is set right, they are recipients of God’s favor and blessing.

In the verses that follow the Beatitudes, Jesus will continue to teach, and much that he says will be strenuous and difficult. His teachings from the Sermon on the Mount will make clear that being a Christian is not so much about believing the right things as it is living the same sort of life that Jesus lived. But the Beatitudes provide a preamble to those instructions, reminding us that our efforts to be faithful and follow Jesus are not judged by the world’s standards of success and power, nor by its understanding of blessings.
Being blessed by God is not related to how successful we are, how wealthy we are, the school we get into, or the car we drive. It’s not about how good our grades are, how good our church programs are, or even how well our worship is done. God’s blessing is very often invisible to a world that does not see things as God does and so does not see Jesus as a model for how we should live. And when we try to fit Christian discipleship into the world’s understanding of success, power, and blessing, it gets terribly distorted.
Christian faith is about a God who loves all the world and seeks to embrace the world in that love. And it is about our lives being transformed so that they share that love with the world. Within those transformed lives, God’s blessing is the hope that nourishes and sustains us when we work for a transformed world that seems too long in coming. It is the assurance that when we live in ways that seek the good of others and the world, God honors and blesses our lives, even if we earn the ire of the world, even if we encounter the opposite of what the world considers blessings.
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In a few moments, we will come to the Lord’s Table, a table of grace and blessing. Here we meet the risen Christ. Here we are given spiritual food to strengthen us for lives patterned on Jesus. Here is assurance that God blesses and supports us in the difficult and sometimes thankless work of transformed living that shows the world another way.
Here at the table, Jesus says to us, “Do not worry if you do not measure up to the world’s measures of success or power or accomplishment. If your heart shares the longings of my heart, you are already blessed.”


[1] Robert Schuller, The Be (Happy) Attitudes, (New York: Bantam Books, 1985), table of contents.

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