Familiar words. Words that will become even more familiar
in the coming weeks. The Beatitudes. "Beatitude," as you
scholars all know, is a word that comes from the Latin, derived
from a root that means "blessed." The church has called this
series of Jesus' sayings "The Beatitudes" simply because of all
these "Blessed are's" that we find here.
But if I may, I would like to play with that word a bit.
The Beatitudes can be described as what life in God's Kingdom is
like. They are ATTITUDES which believers share. As we noted
last week, they are not so much descriptions of attitudes that
SHOULD be. Rather, I prefer to call them WILL-BE attitudes that
will characterize the lives of God's faithful people.
With that in mind, we consider the first one on the list:
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven."
Let us spend a moment with this word "Blessed." As we know,
in our day and age, when people hear or see BLESSED, they tend to
think of something holy, set apart and other-worldly. That is
not Jesus' connotation here. Actually, BLESSED is just another
word for HAPPY. Or it could also be translated CONGRATULATIONS
to you when this or that. In my Spanish Bible, each of the
Beatitudes begins BIENAVENTURADOS or FORTUNATE. Get the idea?
When Jesus says, "Blessed are you when..." he does not mean
that suddenly those who do this or feel that or have something
done to them without complaining will be wearing halos. He is
simply saying that life will take on a new look, and, in Martha
Stewart's words, "That's a good thing." No wonder he can call us
happy.
But why happy about being "poor in spirit?" This is where
things can get dicey. I have heard some really strange preaching
on this. One famous evangelist was expounding on this passage
and began fulminating against "spiritual poverty" and what an
awful condition that is and in need of immediate correction or
hellfire and damnation would be waiting at the end of this
earthly road. Somehow or other he had quickly forgotten that
Jesus, just a word or two before, had said this condition
deserved congratulations. Houston, we have a problem.
So what condition is Jesus congratulating? Obviously not
the condition of spiritual impoverishment that is shared by so
many in our day (or any day, for that matter) who have absolutely
no interest in spiritual things until disaster strikes - "Lord,
deliver me, and I'll be good." No! When Jesus speaks of "poor
in spirit," he simply means the opposite of proud in spirit, the
kind of spirit or attitude that, in the extreme, becomes rather
haughty.
I like the way Eugene Peterson's wonderful paraphrase of
scripture renders it: "You're blessed when you're at the end of
your rope. With less of you there is more of God and [God's]
rule." (1)
But wait a minute. Don't people say we need to take a
certain pride in ourselves? If we are not proud, does that not
show that we do not care? Is not pride the basis for
self-esteem? Don't things go downhill when people stop taking
pride in themselves and what they do? Don't we hear, "That's
what is wrong with our country today...not enough PRIDE?"
In Ruddigore, Gilbert and Sullivan' wonderful comic opera,
we get some advice which, though intended to be humorous, most of
us take rather seriously:
If you wish in the world to advance
Your merits you're bound to enhance,
You must stir it and stump it,
And blow your own trumpet,
Or, trust me, you haven't a chance! (2)
What does the scripture say?
- The Psalms: "May the LORD cut off all flattering lips and
every boastful tongue." (3)
- Proverbs: "Everyone that is proud in heart is an abomination
to the Lord." (4)
- Proverbs again: "Pride goes before destruction, a haughty
spirit before a fall." (5)
- The Epistle of James: "God opposes the proud but gives grace
to the humble." (6)
GULP! And we could go on and on. It is obvious that God
does not appreciate human pride.
The Church fathers took note of that. Last week we recalled
that list which was developed in the seventh century when Gregory
the Great was Pope called the Seven Deadly Sins. It tried to
summarize all the things that could come between us and God, all
the things that could destroy the relationship between earth and
heaven. The first one on the list? You guessed it: PRIDE.
Dr. Ralph Sockman, that grand old preacher of an earlier
generation, once told of a questionnaire that was put out among
some school children in a New Jersey town. The teachers were
apparently trying to discover which students needed help in
developing their social attitudes. One question was, "Which
student in the class brags about him- or herself the least?" One
little girl put down her own name. Sockman noted, "That somehow
smacks of what St. Jerome said: 'Beware of the pride of
humility.'" (7)
Truth be told, in our way of thinking, pride and humility
are not necessarily opposite sides of the same coin. Anything we
would hold up for the world to see as a particular personal
accomplishment - even humility - is opposed to what Jesus means
by "poor in spirit."
As we said before, pride is something we consider essential
to the proper living of our lives. If you want to be a good in
sales, you have to give your customers an air of confidence and
assurance that indicates a pride in what you have for them. If
you want to be successful in a profession, you have to exude an
air of success. After all, success breeds success. If we would
move ahead in life, if we would grab for the brass ring, if we
would "go for the gusto," we have to take pride in ourselves! It
is only natural.
But that means "poor in spirit" is UNnatural. Bingo. As
we noted last week, these Beatitudes are counter-intuitive.
Upside-down, inside-out. They are foreign to our make-up,
particularly as self-reliant, independent, strong-willed
Americans. That puts us between the proverbial rock and a hard
place.
This is not the only thing in life like that. This week,
the sports world has its attention turned to Great Britain and
the British Open Golf Championship - one of the most prestigious
tournaments in the world. Golf is counter-intuitive. Think
about it. What score wins in most every game we play? The
highest, of course. Not golf.
As you know, I love golf - I am no good at it. I describe
my game as Golf according to Romans, chapter 7. I am convinced
that St. Paul himself must have been a golfer too because only a
golfer can appreciate what the apostle wrote in verse 15: "I do
not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but
what I hate I do." Well, golfers, does that sound like the game
we all know and love? The point I want to make here is that
there are things about golf that are most assuredly counter-intuitive.
For example, you would think that if you want the ball to go
a long way, you have to give it a mighty whack. Wrong. Ken
Holtz (8) and I played in a golf outing the other day. One of our
playing partners was, to be kind, not much of a golfer. He would
stand on the tee, address the ball, then flail away at it, then
watch it dribble a few feet forward or to one side or the other,
if he hit the ball at all. We explained to him that one must
swing easily if one wants to hit the ball far. Too much pressure
in the grip, too much effort in the swing, work against a
successful shot. If you want to play decent golf, you have to be
able to give up your conventional ideas about power. I would
love to report that, by the time we finished play, he had
internalized the concept, but... I would love to someday report
that I have internalized the concept, but... Anyway, success at
golf is an upside-down affair. Perhaps that is why I find it so
fascinating. But when someone figures it out - a Tiger Woods, perhaps -
it is glorious to behold!
Another intriguing illustration of the point comes from an
Anglican priest in New Zealand by the name of Charmaine Braatvedt
who offers this insight:
The other day a bird flew into our lounge. It was
a baby thrush and the minute it flew into the lounge it
knew it was in trouble and it started to panic. Now
this bird could fly and had some intelligence. It knew
it had to get out of the lounge and so it made a
desperate attempt to do so. Perhaps because it was so
very frightened it was not able to find its way out of
the door or windows. We were all the more concerned
for its safety because our cat was sitting in the
lounge licking its chops and looking very interested in
this bird. I suspect she thought it would make a tasty
snack! So, we tried to help it, but the bird did not
trust us, so it wouldn't let us help it, preferring to
try to get out on its own. What a mess it made!
Feathers everywhere and flying into bits of furniture,
etc. It even bit Julian when he nearly succeeded in
catching it. Man, was this one determined bird. It
fought against us and desperately tried to get out on
its own steam.
Finally Julian hit on a clever plan. He grabbed
a cloth and threw it over the bird's head so that it
couldn't see anything. Only then did the bird accept
that it couldn't save itself. Only then did the bird
realise that it was poor in its ability to negotiate
its way out of the predicament it found itself in.
Suddenly the bird became very still and quiet. So
Julian was able to pick it up and take it outside and
release it to safety and freedom. In this way [it]
allowed us to bless it with freedom. (9)
You know the story of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (or
the Pharisee and the Publican, in the language of the old King
James Version). Two men went to the Temple to pray. One was the
cream of society, upstanding, respected, and religious to a fair-thee-well. He obeyed the letter of the Law. No missteps! He
thought he was pretty neat, and in his prayer, he told God so:
"God, I thank you that I am not like other men--robbers,
evildoers, adulterers--or even like this tax collector. I fast
twice a week and give a tenth of all I get...I AM WONDERFUL!"
But over on the other side of the room there was another
man, this tax-collector. His own people hated him: they
considered him a traitor for working for the Romans. Somehow he
had come to realize the spiritual bankruptcy of his own life, and
now apparently he wanted to change. Too embarrassed to even lift
his eyes toward heaven, he just hung his head and prayed, "God,
have mercy on me, a sinner."
What did Jesus have to say about those two? "I tell you
that this man...this low-life...rather than the other, went home
justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be
humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom
of Heaven." We hear no more about that tax-collector, but if we
believe Jesus' words, we can assume that things went well for him
after that, that he was "blessed." The stories of a couple of
other tax-collectors, Zaccheus and Matthew, tell the same tale.
Even society's worst outcasts can be blessed - happy, fortunate,
worthy of congratulation - once they come to the place of seeing
their true condition before God.
What kind of blessing is it? Jesus said that the Kingdom of
Heaven belongs to them. We are not talking about pie-in-the-sky,
bye-and-bye. The Kingdom of Heaven is more than just some
celestial gathering place for the faithful. It is right here,
right now! As the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh likes
to say, "The Kingdom of God is now or never." The Kingdom of
Heaven (or Kingdom of God) is simply the place where God is King,
where God controls, where God rules. Those who are "poor in
spirit," or who are at the end of their rope, in Gene Peterson's
phrasing, are now in a position to experience God being in
control of their lives in a way they never could when they were
convinced that they themselves were in charge.
As we noted last week, we in America may be in as good a
moment to hear these words right now as we have been in years:
two wars going with threat of a third, $4-a-gallon gas, food
prices through the roof, American jobs headed to Beijing and New
Delhi, a horrible stock market and a worse housing market, and so
on and so forth. Who is in charge? Yes, we are ready for new
leadership in our nation. Perhaps we are ready for some new
leadership for our lives, divine leadership even. "Blessed are
the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
Again, this blessed experience of the kingdom is not
something we set as a goal for ourselves. This is too unnatural,
upside-down, inside-out. Instead, this will be purely and simply
a gift of God's grace. As Paul says, "Not I, but Christ in me."
It is when we truly sing with the hymnwriter, "Nothing in my hand
I bring, Simply to Thy cross I cling." (10)
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom
of Heaven" - the first of the Beatitudes. Not an attitude that
SHOULD be; rather the WILL-BE attitude for the Lord's faithful
people.
A blessed life, a happy life, is one which keeps things in
proper perspective. This can be your mantra for the week - when
you look in your morning mirror, get your day started as you look
at the image and repeat, "God is God and I am not...God is God
and I am not...God is God and I am not." Perspective.
"Blessed are the poor in spirit (is that us?), for theirs is
the Kingdom of Heaven."
Amen!
1. Eugene Peterson, The Message, (Colorado Springs : NavPress, 2002)
2. Quoted by Roger Shinn, "The Sermon on the Mount,"
http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=1113&C=1181
3. Psalm 12:3
4. Proverbs 16:5
5. Proverbs 16:18
6. James 4:6
7. Ralph Sockman, The Higher Happiness, (Nashville: Abingdon, 1950), p. 38
8. A long-time FPC member.
9. "Blessed are the Poor in Spirit," sermon preached at Holy Trinity Parish, Devonport,
New Zealand, 1/1/06, http://www.holytrinity.gen.nz/Pages/sermons/BlessedAreThePoor.htm
10. Augustus Montague Toplady, "Rock of Ages"
click and send us mail