Sermon: Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Matthew 5:1-12, January 29, 2023Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

Sermon: Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Matthew 5:1-12, January 29, 2023

Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

Let’s think about those times when life as we thought we understood it has been turned upside down. Maybe it was an accident that completely altered routines and capacities. Or hitting rock bottom on the way to sobriety. Or getting married. Or divorced. Having children. Getting a new job. There are all kinds of both positive and negative experiences that can radically shift how we understand almost everything. Take a moment to review your life to call attention to occasions that turned your life upside down.

Probably the most significant world altering reality we have all shared and endured in one way or another has been the pandemic, now in its third year. The pandemic completely shattered our usual routines for over a year. And we’re still wondering how this international crisis may have changed the world permanently. The global health crisis exposed to the light of day many injustices and inequities and just how fragile our systems are. It’s altered how people work, creating a whole new work-from-home reality for many. It’s had a huge impact on the nature and extent of people’s participation in the life of the church. Mostly negative effects predominate, but the pandemic has also offered some silver linings, especially in revealing to us what’s most important in life.

With all of this in mind, let’s delve into our readings for today and consider where we find ourselves in the ongoing epiphanies, the ongoing revelations about Jesus which we encounter in our Sunday gospel readings and how all of this helps us make sense of our world.

Jesus’ appearing on the human scene introduced the nearness of the dominion of heaven in him. And the nearness of God’s dominion in Jesus Christ is all about turning the world upside down and radically altering how the world is to be understood.

It’s all about reversals that confound human logic and understanding. Such reversals are clearly seen in the Beatitudes which begin Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. That’s where we find ourselves in the story from Matthew’s gospel today as Jesus began his public ministry.

Jesus taught them, saying, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the dominion of heaven,” and on the well-known Beatitudes go.

To best understand the reversals that Jesus introduces in the Bestitudes, we are beckoned to look at the original biblical language. The Greek word commonly translated “blessed” is perhaps better translated, “happy.” As in, “Happy are those who mourn….” How can that be? How can grieving people be happy? That’s a contradiction in terms which seem mutually exclusive. Mourning and happiness are opposites. This is what confounds human logic and sensibilities.

This confounding kind of reversal is reinforced when we re-translate some of the the other beatitudes: “Happy are those who are persecuted… Happy are you when people revile you…” How can persecuted and reviled people be happy?

Moreover, the ones we expect to be blessed and happy are not mentioned at all in Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes. We humans, for example, might expect that the rich and powerful will inherit the earth, not the meek ones. And precisely the ones we least expect to be blessed and happy are the ones named as blessed and happy. Again, how can this be?

The Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount reveal the value system of the dominion of heaven, of God. Clearly God’s values are not typical human values. And God’s logic is quite different from the logic of us finite human beings.

Very simply, in Christ Jesus the world as we know it, the world as we think we understand it, is turned upside down. And this is not fake news, which seeks to call up down and down up. Rather, the upside-down divine reality that Jesus brings to us is good news. And it’s the truth – ultimate truth.

The old order of sin and death is being superseded by God’s new ways of life in the dominion of heaven come near in Jesus Christ. The new order of this gospel supersedes our old business as usual of the burdens of our brokenness and injustice as humans.

And the nearness of God’s dominion is most apparent and is closest to us in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the culmination and focal point of Jesus’ whole mission here on earth.

And Jesus’ death provides yet another reversal that confounds human logic and sensibilities. Consider what Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians, one of our readings for today: “The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scholar? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” (1 Corinthians 1:18-20)

Paul concludes, “For Judeans ask for signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Judeans and foolishness to gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Judeans and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” (1 Corinthians 1:22-25)

The key that ultimately unlocks all the blessing and happiness that the Beatitudes promise is Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, yet another reversal of our mortal business as usual. If Christ only died and remained dead, we would not be here today doing what we do. The Jesus movement would have died on the vine long ago, or would never have come to be in the first place. And our old ways of sin and death would persist into our present-day without any challenge at all.

So, it’s all about Christ’s resurrection and the death he died to destroy death. In terms of both the unfolding of the church’s calendar and the story in Matthew’s gospel, we are not anywhere near the celebration of Easter. But the truth is that every Sunday is a celebration of Christ’s resurrection. And even here in today’s reading from Matthew we have a hint of Jesus rising from the dead embedded, hidden in a single word from the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus concludes the Beatitudes with these words: “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven…” The word that points us to Easter is “rejoice.”

It’s the same word in the original biblical Greek that the resurrected Christ uses to greet the women at the tomb after he was raised from the dead. Here’s what Matthew says close to the end of his Gospel: “So [the women] left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy [having been told by angel that Jesus was alive], and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, ‘Greetings!’ And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him.” The word “greetings” here is the same word in Greek as rejoice in the Beatitudes. Thus, the greeting of the resurrected Christ is better translated, in my opinion, “Rejoice.”

In one word is all the good news that makes for blessing and happiness. Jesus has conquered death, thus beginning in greater fullness the dominion of heaven now, here on earth. And this changed the world forever, turning upside down mortal ways of understanding everything that goes on.

And this new reality of God’s dominion in Christ continues to change our lives even now in 2023. Consider this: also embedded in that little word “rejoice” is the root word for the phrase “giving thanks.” And that’s what Eucharist means – to give thanks.

In the Holy Communion, where we know the risen Lord in the breaking of the bread, this is our most intimate connection with and participation in the dominion heaven, a foretaste of the promised heavenly feast even now.

When we eat the bread and drink from the cup, that’s when those whom Jesus talks about in the Beatitudes know blessing and happiness. It’s at this holy table where those who mourn now can also know blessing and happiness. It’s at this table where the reviled and persecuted also know heavenly reward and thus rejoicing and gladness.

The sacramental table is where the apparent foolishness of the cross begins to make sense to us in the logic of the God who turned the world upside down by raising our crucified Lord Jesus from the dead.

The faith that the Holy Spirit generates in us through our participation in Christ through baptism and the proclamation of the word and our eating and drinking the holy supper makes it possible for us to perceive, apprehend and trust the promises of the Beatitudes that indeed those who mourn will be comforted, and the meek will inherit the earth. And those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled and more and more.

Note that the gift of the dominion of heaven is present tense in the Beatitudes, even as most of the other blessings are future tense. That’s what it means that the dominion of heaven is near in Jesus. When we’re close to Jesus, we’re close to God’s dominion not up there in heaven, but the heavenly realm come down to meet us where we are. Emmanuel, God is with us. Right now. Right here. Not just in the future somewhere up there.

And as we apprehend the truth of the logic of God’s heavenly dominion in Christ, we begin to enact and embody those values of God’s reign in what we say and do.

And we live out in fits and starts the reversals of the other divine logic contained in today’s first reading, that from the prophet Micah: “The Lord has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)

By way of conclusion, I invite you to think about our proposed congregation budget which we are about to consider in the congregational meeting after worship. Budgets are not just about numbers, for budgets reflect our values and commitments. Budgets put money where our mouths are. So, too, with the church. Congregation budgets reveal the true mission of the church.

As we embark on our final discernment about this year’s proposed budget, I invite you to reflect on and discern the extent to which our budget gives expression to the values of God’s dominion in Christ “to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with our God.” 

May God in Christ lead and guide us in faithful ways that our financial commitments are as consistent as possible with our embrace of the sacred call to justice, kindness, and humility. In the name of Jesus, who turns our worlds upside down with good news. Amen