4th Sunday after the Epiphany Sermon

Probably most of you recognized the gospel reading we just heard. It’s commonly known as “the Beatitudes,” which refers to that word that’s repeated over and over: “Blessed are the poor… Blessed are those who mourn… Blessed are the meek,” and so on.

These beatitudes – these assurances of blessedness or “of being fortunate” – are how Jesus launches his famous “Sermon on the Mount,” this long discourse he gives his followers at the beginning of his ministry in Matthew’s gospel.

And for the next few weeks, we’ll keep looking at different sections of Jesus’ sermon. But I’ve got to warn you: The Sermon on the Mount can be a little intimidating, a little off-putting, because it’s the “gold standard” of what faithful living looks like. More often than not, whenever I’m referencing it, it’s some kind of statement like, “Well it’s not as if any of us is actually living out the Sermon on the Mount!”

Which is all to say: the values and the principles articulated in the Sermon on the Mount are the ideal; they’re the pure vision of how God functions and what we’re shooting for in this life. Our mission statement at St. John’s, to “be like Jesus,” is way more aspirational than it is a description of who we actually are. And that’s okay. In fact, I’d prefer it that way. I’d rather hold a pure vision of what God wants for us in this life, than to settle with some smug, little justification of how we’re actually living.

So the Sermon on the Mount is both a vision of what we’re after and a kick in the pants for what we’re not. And we need it to do both!

And it all begins with these Beatitudes.

To use the language and imagery from Matthew’s gospel, there are two options of how we can live this life: we can follow the Kingdom of this World or we can follow the Kingdom of Heaven.

The first is the one we all know, the one we’ve all been trained to trust. The Kingdom of this world tells us to use whatever we’ve got at our disposal to protect ourselves and provide for ourselves. It was beneath every temptation Satan laid out for Jesus on the eve of his ministry. For Jesus, it was the temptation to grasp ahold of worldly authority: economic authority, religious authority, political authority.

On the surface, those temptations might not resonate with us, but only because we’ve ceded authority to whatever systems we identify with that promise to secure our well-being. And those are tenacious loyalties indeed. We’re absolutely loyal to economic policies that assure us a comfortable, secure life; to religious systems that assure us “we’re in” with the Big Guy Upstairs; to political systems that promise to protect us from all our perceived adversaries, without and within.

The Kingdom of this World is to grab whatever we can to make us feel safe and secure against all those competing forces we fear. And all of us are disciples of this kingdom.

But Jesus offers an alternative: the Kingdom of Heaven. For the remainder of the gospel of Matthew (which we’ll be reading most Sundays for the rest of this year), everything he’ll preach; every act of healing and mercy; every act of obedience and sacrifice – all of it – is Jesus revealing the Kingdom of Heaven.

And to be clear, the “Kingdom of Heaven” isn’t principally concerned with the promise of an afterlife. For Jesus, the Kingdom of Heaven is how God is living, right here and everywhere; right now and always. And for us to choose the Kingdom of Heaven is to lay down our dependence on all those things we’ve gathered to protect ourselves and to keep ourselves secure, and to choose instead, this open, vulnerable, gracious posture of peace and union with God and with everyone.

And should we choose this path of righteousness – where it’s okay to be humble and honest and unpretentious, where it’s preferable to choose mercy and peace – Jesus’ promise is that we can know a new kind of happiness, right now, even when the cost is high, because we’ll be on the same path – in the same place – where God is. Now, that path might be really rocky, and that’s okay. Because if we are living as God lives – in charity and love – fortunate are we, happy are we, blessed are we. For we are with God. And God is with us.

This, I think, is the wisdom of the Beatitudes. All that misplaced striving for security and safety was really a searching for the stability and peace that comes when we are walking in step with the heartbeat of God. Blessed are we.

But, beware, it comes at a cost.

And it all shows up in the ninth beatitude. That one stands out different from all the rest. It has a different structure. It’s a lot longer. It’s the only one with an instruction built into it. And it’s the only one addressed to “you:” “Blessed are you,” it says, “when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.”

Now, on the surface, this reaction doesn’t make sense. If living out the values of the Kingdom of Heaven is all about love and peace and mercy, why would anyone have a problem with that? Why, indeed. Go ask Jesus and Martin Luther King and Oscar Romero and any number of peace-making martyrs over the centuries.

Jesus is preaching to the crowds, but especially to those first disciples he called to follow him. And what he’s telling them – what he’s telling us – is there is a cost to discipleship: When you get out of steps with the ways of this world, the world is not going to like it, and the world will try to stop you.

Now, it’s unlikely in our days that we’ll be fed to the lions in the coliseum or brought before the Spanish Inquisition. No. Who do you think the resistance will come from if you change how you’re living, if you try to adopt the values you’re learning from Jesus? Your families. Your friends. Those who love you most. If you’re young, the reaction will come from your parents. If you’re old, it’s your kids who are going to try to stop you!

Any change is a threat to the system, whatever that system may be, because it’s human nature to trust only those things we already know and have found to be dependable (or dependable enough!) to get us through the day, even if they’re not good for us. An alcoholic may know his addiction is killing him, but if it comforted him last night, he can trust it today to comfort him again.

And we’re all the same. Our families, our churches, our friendships – every community develops its own little system, its own set of rules to follow, with roles to keep filled. And we trust what we know.

But, woe to the person who breaks the rules, who sets out to do something different, to function in an unfamiliar way. It makes the system unstable, so the whole system rebels.

I remember growing up. My mom and I were both pretty vain when it came to clothes. I remember in high school, there were times I’d lie on my bed, looking at my open closet. I’d start listing where I’d bought each outfit: Macy’s, Macy’s, Nordstrom. (I had one or two from Neiman Marcus, that really made me feel good about myself.) It was snobby. Obviously. But beneath the snobbery was my need to be exceptional, was my need to have more class and more style than my peers. In the face of all the fears and inadequacies that filled my teenage world, at least this much I could count on as true: Macy’s, Macy’s, Nordstrom.

But as a young adult, I began to take my faith more seriously. And I remember one day, there was a knock at the door. Someone was collecting winter clothes for the homeless. Now of all my clothes, I prized my sweaters the most, most of which my mom had bought me. What would Jesus do? So I picked out one sweater, put it aside, and gave all the rest to the stranger at my door.

It felt daring, and faithful, and really good.

But do you know who it upset? My mom. I don’t remember how she found out. But when she did, she was hurt. It was a kind of betrayal – not only of her generosity – but more so, of this value we’d shared together. And now I’d broken the rules. And the message was clear: I’d done something wrong, and should feel bad about it. And I did.

Being like Jesus is going to require change. At a fundamental level, we’re shifting our values from self-preservation – for us and those within our circle – to giving our lives away for the well-being of those beyond the perimeter. Because, in Christ, everyone is our neighbor. Everyone’s well-being is our concern.

And, honestly, do you know what that will cost us to begin with? We’ll need to give up our human pastime of mocking all the wrong people in our lives – the wrong liberals, the wrong conservatives, the wrong gun owners, the wrong Christians, the wrong this, the wrong that. There’s no longer much allure in mocking the ones we’re seeking to love.

But our friends and families won’t like it. They’ll want you to keep up the party line. And if you try to explain that you’re trying to follow the values of the Kingdom of Heaven, what will they say? They’ll mock you. They’ll accuse you of trying to be “holier than thou.” As if holiness were the problem.

Holiness is a problem, in fact, for those still choosing the values of this world. For holiness is the way of heaven.

“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”