The Persistent Insistent Sermon

 

The Beatitudes, far from being a new set of virtues that further divide the religious haves and have nots, are words of hope and healing to those who have been marginalized.  James Bryan Smith.

 

When God wants to sort out the world, as the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount make clear, God doesn’t send in tanks. God sends in the meek, the broken, the justice hungry, the peacemakers, the pure-hearted and so.  N.T. Wright

 

“Jesus understood that God does not play by our rules. Jesus’ God is a generous God, who not only allows the sun to shine on both the just and the unjust, but also gives us the ability to live into what should be rather than what is. The parables help us with their lessons about generosity: sharing joy, providing for others, recognizing the potential of small investments. His God wants us to be better than we are, because we have the potential to be. We are made but a little lower than the divine (Ps. 8.6; see Heb. 2.7); we should start acting in a more heavenly matter. Those who pray, “Your kingdom come,” might want to take some responsibility in the process, and so work in partnership with God.  Amy-Jill Levine

 

Imagine a world in which people really tried to live by the Beatitudes. Well, we can do more than imagine it. We can help bring such a peaceful, loving world into existence by following the One who told us how we can be blessed. And we can begin today. May it be so.  Anonymous

 

The above quotes are offered, not to help you ‘solve’ or ‘resolve’ the Beatitudes.  Jesus’ words are not just speechifying but showing us the wayless way of life and faith mixed messily together.  There is no way one week of morning meditations or five days of re-reading the Sermon on the Mount will make everything more palatable and polite.  These words have a rawness to us, an unfinished/unvarnished edge that might give us splinters.  Yet, these words can be foundational to our faith.  These words can form and reform us as we re-read them.  In the coming weeks we will continue to explore the Sermon on the Mount.  For today, re-read chapters.  Revisit what you wrote down on Monday for what perplexed you and what inspired you.  Whereas Monday you might have been shouting, “Amen” to the line about “Blessed are the pure in heart.”  Today, you might be holding your wounded heart from someone trampling on it with their good advice for which you did not ask.  Maybe someone stomped on your idea at a meeting or generally decided to pass along their pain to you ~ and now you are lugging that in the luggage of your life.  We come back to the words of Jesus time and time again to let the words find us right where we are.  May God move in each syllable and sentence and in your very soul this day.  Amen.