Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
January 29, 2017
4 Epiphany A
When our older son Slocomb graduated from college, he and
his then-girlfriend, now wife spent a year teaching English in Cuenca,
Ecuador. Don, Caldwell, and I flew down
on Christmas Day that year to spend the week with them. We landed in Guayaquil at midnight, so we
didn’t see much between the airport and the hotel. But on the drive from Guayaquil to Cuenca the
next day, we saw both breathtaking beauty and heart wrenching poverty. We saw homes that were nothing but shells of
buildings-no windows or doors-with livestock roaming in and out of the yards
and the houses. We saw children who
clearly had little to eat or wear. In
Cuenca, people were begging in the aisle of the church during worship. When we returned to Guayaquil for a couple of
days at the end of the week, children as young as 2 or 3 years old would beat
on the sides of the taxi, begging for money.
Living in a part of Ohio poor enough for all children to receive a free
breakfast at school, I thought I had seen poverty. Our trip to Ecuador was a shocking eye opener
to the realities of poverty in countries with no safety nets for those without
food, education, decent housing, or medical care.
When I hear Jesus words this morning, my first thoughts are
of the children in Ecuador. Blessed are
the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for
righteousness, those who mourn, and the meek.
What is Jesus thinking? Is Jesus
glorifying poverty? Wouldn’t Jesus
rather children have full bellies and a place to live than some sort of
blessing? There is nothing glorious or
blessed about abject poverty. What could
Jesus possibly mean?
First, this morning we hear Matthew’s version of the
beatitudes, not Luke’s which are more familiar.
In Luke, Jesus looks at a great crowd of his disciples, and says
“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you
will be filled. Blessed are you who weep
now, for you will laugh.” Luke’s
beatitudes are about real, physical poverty because Luke’s focus is on bringing
good news to the poor. In Luke’s gospel,
the first thing Jesus says after his temptation in the wilderness is “The
Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has sent me to bring good news to the
poor.” But Matthew’s agenda is
different. In this gospel, the first
words out of Jesus’ mouth after the temptation in the wilderness are “Repent,
for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.”
Then Jesus calls his disciples, and goes through out Galilee teaching
and healing people of every disease and sickness. Huge crowds of people begin to follow Jesus
and bring him their loved ones who need healing. When we get to the beatitudes this morning,
Jesus has gone up on a mountain away from the crowds, with only his newly
called disciples, to teach them about being disciples. There Jesus describes the Kingdom of Heaven
that has come near.
According to Matthew, the Kingdom of Heaven, belongs to
those whose spirits are broken and who mourn, not because they are poor, or
physically hungry, or have lost a loved one.
The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who recognize that the Kingdom of
Heaven has come near in the person of Jesus, but they mourn because they know
that the reality of that Kingdom is so very far away. The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the
merciful, the peacemakers, the pure in heart because they are the ones working
to make the future kingdom a more present reality. Jesus is teaching his disciples both what the
Kingdom of Heaven looks like and what they need to do, as his disciples, to
live as people of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Micah teaches something very similar. In Micah, we hear God command the Hebrew
people to rise and plead their case as if they were in court. The people have forgotten God’s saving acts
through out their history- how God led the people out of slavery in Egypt,
through the wilderness, and into the Promised Land. Because the people have forgotten their story,
they have gone far astray from the life God would have them lead. We hear a frustrated God say “O my people,
what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you?” The people are confused at God’s anger, because
they are keeping all of God’s laws about sacrifice and worship. When the people wonder what else God requires
of them, Micah answers “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice,
and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”
The story
of God’s saving acts through out the history tells us the story of a God who
loves justice, bringing the Hebrew people out of bondage in Egypt, and who does
kindness and mercy sustaining the people in the wilderness and walking with
them to the Promised Land. What God
requires of God’s people is to behave towards others the way God has behaved
toward them-with justice and mercy, which they can do if only they will walk
humbly with God. When the people
remember their own story, they will see that the way they have exploited the
poor, the widow, and the stranger, and the way they have worshiped false gods,
does not in any way imitate the way God has acted toward them. God asks nothing of God’s people that God has
not shown them how to do with God’s own actions.
To
do justice means to have our spirits moved by the injustice of the world and
work for justice. To love mercy means to
recognize those places where the love of God needs to be shown and show that
love. To walk humbly with God means to
follow God, not the devices and desires of our own hearts. The beatitudes we hear this morning call us
to do the same. When we live as the
makers of real peace, rather than just keeping the peace, when we offer the
mercy of God to each other and the stranger, when we hunger and thirst for gospel
righteousness, we have treated others the way God has treated us. And the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn
near.
Amen.
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