I. Discipleship and Virtue 00:04
You are present with us now. We pray that you would transform our hearts, not by knowledge, not by might, but by the power of your Holy Spirit. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Today we’re going to continue the theme we’ve had this year, discipleship, and the Gospel reading is the central text of discipleship. It’s the Beatitudes, and they introduce Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, this beautiful height, this pinnacle of explanation of the Christian life, the Christian way.
As we go into this, I want to start by clarifying something. What’s fascinating about the way Jesus taught us to live is that it’s not by commands, although he gave plenty of those, really hard ones, like “Love each other like I loved you.” That one’s up there with the more difficult ones. And “Take up your cross and follow me.” That one hurts, but it’s good. But then you look at the Beatitudes, and they’re descriptions, not commands. They’re descriptions of what it looks like to be a disciple of Jesus.
If you remember, our definition of discipleship is the process of becoming like Jesus. When you hear “discipleship,” maybe you have all these thoughts and opinions about what it might be. That’s it. It’s the process of becoming like Jesus, learning from him, following him. It is the Christian life. In fact, you don’t do the Christian life without discipleship. That’s exactly what we do. We are followers of Christ.
It’s been summarized like this: Be with Jesus, become like him, do as he did. It’s our whole life. I love that, because it starts with being with Jesus. In fact, his presence is fullness of life, and in his presence are pleasures and goodness forevermore. So cultivate his presence. And as you do, just like an apprentice learning from a master, you learn to do the things he did, to be like him. You’re shaped by him.
So when we look at the Beatitudes, we have to start with the understanding that they’re a description of Jesus. They describe who he is, and therefore who we are called to be.
I’m a real nerd when it comes to these things, these ethical theories. There’s deontological ethics, there’s utilitarian ethics, there’s evolutionary ethics, and they all have their ways. You’re either following rules, or you’re minimizing harm and maximizing gain, or you’re finding an evolutionary advantage, and that’s the point of morality. And we look at the world and say, “That just doesn’t make any sense. That’s not the world I live in.” Instead, we live in the world of Jesus, which some might call the world of virtue. Because the question of virtue isn’t “What rules am I following?” or “How am I maximizing profit?”
The question of virtue is: what would a good person do? That’s the question in any context. What would a good person do? So I like to rephrase it in the clichéd way: WWJD. What would Jesus do? That’s literally the question of virtue. How do you develop yourself so that in any given circumstance you would do what Jesus would do? That’s some foundational bedrock. We just had a class on philosophy, and you all passed.
II. What "Blessed" Means 03:25
Now we can talk about the Beatitudes with that understanding: our job is to become like him. Our job is to cultivate the virtues that make us like him.
So we dive into the Beatitudes, and let’s start with the definition. I know you’ve probably heard that word a thousand times. Maybe somebody said it’s all about your attitude, and that’s great, that’s fine. But beatitudes just means blessings. A series of blessings. But not the blessings you might be used to if you live online. It’s not, “Oh, they made two of my Starbucks lattes, hashtag blessed.” Or, “Look at this beautiful sunset, hashtag blessed.” Or, “Look at me, I’m out traveling around the world, hashtag blessed.” No, that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about something far more fundamental. The position in which Jesus has placed us by his death and resurrection is the blessed life. It’s the life full of blessing, which means favor from God forever. And what we want, when we look at these Beatitudes, is to come more in line with that reality. We want to be more like who Christ has made us to be. That’s what we mean when we say beatitudes.
We’ll start in chapter 5:
1 Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. Matt 5.1
What are we talking about? Discipleship. So what are you all doing this morning? You’ve come to Jesus to sit at his feet and learn from him. That’s what we do in our worship songs. That’s what we do at the Eucharistic table. That’s what we do when we read the Scripture and when we talk about the Scripture. We’re learning from Jesus.
Now, like I mentioned, the Sermon on the Mount is considered the greatest ethical treatise in the history of the world. And like I mentioned, that’s really not what it’s about. Metaphysically, it’s about a transformation God is doing in us, making us like him. We’re called to be in Christ, not just to follow his example, although following his example is one of the ways you learn to be in him.
III. Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit 05:41
2 And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: 3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Matt 5.2–3
Starting off strong. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like being poor. I actually despise poverty in my life. I would love not to be poor. Wouldn’t all of you agree? We want to be wealthy. We want to be rich. What do you mean, “Blessed are the poor in spirit”?
Well, it reminds me of when Jesus challenged the Pharisees, because they were giving him a hard time for hanging out with tax collectors and sinners. What did he say to them? “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2.17). Of course, we all know he was giving them a backhanded insult: you are not as well as you think you are. And when you put that in the context of “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” the reality is that all of us are poor in spirit. The question isn’t whether you’re poor in spirit. The question is whether you are looking for help, whether you are positioning yourself to receive what God has for you.
It’s also a beautiful revelation of the poverty of Jesus. I said the Beatitudes are about him. How is Jesus poor in spirit? If anybody on the face of the planet had a strong spirit, it must have been him. But that’s the beauty of what he did when he came. He did not count his equality with God as something to be grasped, but instead emptied himself and took the form of a servant and was clothed in flesh (Phil 2.6–7). He embraced poverty of spirit. He who had the right to be all-powerful embraced weakness.
So when you think, “How am I poor in spirit?”, there are people… I’ve been talking about him a lot, but I love this guy, Bishop Jones. He is strong in spirit, a giant among Christian men. I look up to him. He’s a role model. And yet he always positions himself… he talks about it; just talking to him, he’s so desperate for God to live through him. It’s not about him.
If you think about the hierarchy of the kingdom of heaven, it’s “go low to get high,” as some people put it. The higher you are elevated, the more you serve, like Jesus. He’s the example: the guy who took the towel and washed his disciples’ feet. The King of the universe, who made the very atoms that come together in the form of a towel, who spoke it all into being, is washing his disciples’ dirty feet. So “Blessed are the poor in spirit” means that we come without anything of our own. We are not adding to him. He is our everything. We acknowledge our poverty.
IV. Blessed Are Those Who Mourn 08:30
4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Matt 5.4
Once again, I don’t know about you, but I’m not a fan of mourning. I’ve done plenty. It’s not fun. So what are we talking about here? “They shall be comforted.” First of all, this is not an empty promise. In fact, it describes Jesus himself, who entered into our mourning. It says in Isaiah 53:
3 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Isa 53.3
So what is the promise in this beatitude? The promise is that when you mourn, Christ is there. He entered into grief. He took on the burden of our pain, all of it. So there is no level at which you can mourn where you don’t find more of him. That’s the comfort of Christ: he is with you.
And furthermore, the promise is that he is redeeming all things. I’ve brought this up several times, but it always encourages me to think about the totality of suffering in the world. If you listen to the pundits online, to all the people on all the YouTubes and podcasts, you’ll think the totality of suffering in the world far outweighs the goodness, that the light is being crushed by the darkness of our culture. Whether it’s the Christian nationalists or the Nazis or the evil communists or the wicked terrorists, all these bogeymen we use to scare ourselves into submission and fear and anger, you would think we’re living in a depraved world, empty of goodness, and we’re just fighting to hold on.
That’s a very small-minded perspective. It’s not the perspective of heaven. In the span of eternity, God wins. All that is lost shall be restored. All that is broken shall be healed. Every tear shall be wiped away. And if you had the ability to see how good everything really is, you would see that the scales are infinitely tipped in our favor, and in his. So when we address our mourning: the problem with mourning is that it can lead to despair. But the comfort of God is that all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.
V. Blessed Are the Meek 11:01
5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Matt 5.5
This is one of those words that has fallen out of use. Meekness is not something we talk about very often, except when we’re talking about Scripture. One of the definitions I found was “to not be overly impressed by a sense of one’s self-importance.” That’s pretty good. Don’t be overly impressed by your own self-importance.
Once again, let’s tie it to the mystery of Christ Jesus. The most important person who has ever lived was not overly impressed with his own importance. He was meek. He was humble. He was lowly. Think of this in contrast with the values of his time. The Roman values were that the proud shall conquer. The proud, as long as they can enforce their will, have every right to do so. And if you had weakness, your job was to cover it up, because it didn’t matter what was inside. It mattered what other people saw. So Jesus brought a completely upside-down worldview. And guess what? The Roman Empire doesn’t exist anymore, but the kingdom of God expands and grows to fill all the earth.
“Blessed are the meek.” And let me point out that there’s at least one type of person that, throughout all of Scripture, God resists, and that’s the proud. You may have the favor of Christ, but when you practice pride, you will encounter the resistance of God. That’s so that he can discipline those whom he loves. He wants to make you like him. So don’t fall into pride. And you know what? It’s one of those insidious ones you’ll probably be learning to let go of for the rest of your life. It finds ways. How proud are we of our humility? How great we are, right?
So, “Blessed are the meek.” And what happens to the meek? They inherit the earth. That’s exactly contrary to the lesson that the strong conquer and win. It’s actually our meekness. It’s the meekness and weakness of Christ that conquered all the world. His weakness on the cross, his meekness on the cross, is the strength that conquers every other power.
VI. Blessed Are Those Who Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness 13:33
6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” Matt 5.6
This is the heart change at the center of discipleship. We have all these disordered desires and opinions, and we want to be hungry and thirsty for righteousness instead of wickedness. It’s like when he said, “I will replace your heart of stone with a heart of flesh” (Ezek 36.26). That’s what he’s doing. He’s transforming us so that we actually want to do the good thing. That’s the virtue project: to be so shaped and formed that you want to respond the way God would respond, so that it becomes a part of who you are.
And righteousness here is not just rule-following. I’ve made this point before. Righteousness is right relationship with God and with mankind. Basically, righteousness is when everything is good. You are in exactly the right place, doing exactly the right thing, and God is happy with you. You’ve grown in favor, and even the people who reject you are standing counter to reality. You’ve been aligned. A couple of weeks ago I was talking about discipleship as re-centering and refocusing. Righteousness is where Christ really is your center and your focus. It’s a heart change. It’s a change of perspective, and it transforms our life.
Could you imagine if you just didn’t want to sin anymore? If all you wanted was to be right and good? If all of you were transformed that way? We can imagine it in the small sense. I don’t have any temptation to steal Big Bucks from the teacher’s office anymore. Once upon a time, that was a great temptation for me. But now I hunger for righteousness, and I want to pass that on to my children. We can see this happening. That’s the project we’re on, the path we’re on, and you cannot imagine how much better it can be. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”
VII. Blessed Are the Merciful 15:57
7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” Matt 5.7
We’re going to skip ahead. Later in this same sermon, in the same address, the chapter after this, Jesus says:
14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Matt 6.14–15
Who do you get to hold to account? Only one person: yourself. You aren’t in charge of holding anybody else to account before God, except your own soul. That’s why Paul says, “Seek your salvation in fear and trembling” (Phil 2.12). It’s all about us.
And yet we have a long list of people who need to be corrected. “If they could just be changed, then I could love them, then I could forgive them. If they could just stop doing this thing or saying this thing or believing this thing or being in this place, or if they could just stop breathing so loud, I could forgive them.” Whatever it is, we find all these petty grievances, and they build up into something that can endanger the salvation of your soul. “If you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” That is a scary thought. “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.”
We should walk around just forgiving everyone. Look for opportunities to forgive people. That’s how important this is. In fact, Saint Francis… sorry, a biographer of Saint Francis wrote that he walked the world as the pardon of God. That’s a pretty good goal: to bring God’s forgiveness to the world.
VIII. Blessed Are the Pure in Heart 17:45
8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Matt 5.8
How beautiful is that song? Audrey Assad wrote the song on the Beatitudes we were just singing before I came up here. It’s a meditation on the idea that the kingdom and our heart posture are completely connected. The kingdom of God comes insofar as we align our heart with his.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” What an invitation. Who wants to see God? I do. Could you imagine? And we get to see him more and more every day. He is revealed to us in the purity of our heart.
So what does purity have to do with it? What does purity mean? I was reminded of a verse that’s one of my mom’s favorites, Philippians 4:8. She would remind us of it, and as a teenager it was not my favorite verse. But I’m starting to like it more:
8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Phil 4.8
“Mom, can I go see that movie?” “Jesse: whatever is true, whatever is pure, whatever is commendable.” Fine. The Hangover Part II is probably not on my list anymore. The joke is that The Hangover Part I was already… you know, I already watched the wrong one, I guess.
But here’s the thing. There is no end to the goodness of God. There’s nothing you can give to him that he can’t use to bring goodness into your life. We have these little arguments: “Okay, I’ll give you this if I get to hold on to this.” And he’s like, “Whoa. The person who holds fire to his bosom will be burned. It doesn’t make sense. Just give it to me. I’ll take it.” You have no idea how good it can be, because you can see God.
We are so distracted. One aspect of purity is moral purity, of course, but there’s also just a purity of mind, an ability to focus, an ability to see, that is so robbed from us in our attention economy, where everyone is pumping billions of dollars into advanced technology like we’ve never seen before. And the whole job of it is to keep your eyes from looking at Jesus, to look instead at this god or that little god: spend your money over here, get your pleasure over there, be entertained. We are so distracted. But purity of heart allows us to see God.
You can see this a little bit in children. It’s not quite the same thing, but it’s like when Jesus says, “Become like a little child.” Father Powell was talking about it the other day. There’s a clarity of purpose. They’re there, they’re doing this thing, and that’s it. That’s the whole of their world. Today, Malcolm was getting a bottle of sparkling water while I was writing my sermon in the garage. He’s not supposed to be in the garage, and he’s getting the sparkling water, which he’s also not supposed to get. He’s about a year and a half old. And I say, “Malcolm, come here.” He drops the sparkling water and runs to me. In that moment, the most important thing was that he saw his dad, and his whole world was full of that. We need that kind of love for our Father. Drop that thing and run to your Father. He was just full. He didn’t care about the sparkling water anymore. He saw his dad. That’s what it means: the pure in heart shall see God.
IX. Blessed Are the Peacemakers 21:22
9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” Matt 5.9
That reminds me of the one about mercy. Imagine Jesus, who is literally right about everything, walking around with a bunch of people as stupid as you and I, and holding his tongue. How many times could Jesus have jumped in and proven somebody wrong or gotten his way, and he just kept the peace?
I know this is a problem. Okay, I’m bringing up my kids again. They’re just like me: thank the Lord, and God have mercy. They want everybody to know that they know what they’re talking about, and that’s not right. One of them will be talking and won’t get through a single sentence before a sibling jumps up and says, “Well, actually.” And it goes back and forth, and eventually they’re biting and punching and kicking, and then I have to get involved, and it’s a whole mess, and I just want to tell them, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”
Or sometimes I’ll say, “Rowan, is it better to be right or to be good?” Now, it’s a bit of a false dichotomy, because goodness and truth are right in line with one another. But it makes a kind of sense. Why do I have to be right about this thing when I could be good? That’s what I think of when I think of the peacemakers. How many fights are you starting because they need to clean up their act, or they need to know what’s right or good? Trust God with their salvation. Strive for peace.
Jesus did not walk around looking to fix people. You’d think that’s what he would do. He was on a mission; he has the answer. Why doesn’t he walk around trying to fix people? Instead, he just invited people to encounter him, knowing that’s how they get fixed. So if we walked around like Jesus, we would be little images of Christ, loving people and knowing that God is using that to align them properly, to fix what’s broken. When people came and asked Jesus questions, he answered them. But he wasn’t walking around saying, “Hey you, I know about your sin. Hey you, I know where you’re wrong. Hey you, let me fix your problems.” Jesus is constantly inviting. He’s a peacemaker.
And ultimately he took that so far that when he was falsely accused, abandoned, and betrayed by the very people he came to save, instead of fighting them he accepted it. Every bit they threw at him, he took onto the cross: all anger, all striving, all contention, all strife, all falseness, all violence and war, all the consequences of human sin and brokenness. He took it and bore it to the cross.
And the invitation is not to say, “Thank you, Jesus. You did a great job. Take some more.” The invitation is to be like him and to take it on yourself, in Christ. In fact, Paul goes so far as to say, “I complete in my body what was lacking in the suffering of Christ” (Col 1.24). Nothing’s lacking in the suffering of Christ, so what do you mean? He wants us to join him, because he knows the cross is actually the place of our salvation.
So when you join him, you just take it. That guy cut you off, or that person misjudged you, or that person treated your friend poorly. Oh man, we love getting offended for our friends: “I’m really gracious when it comes to me, but God forbid he says something bad about my coworker buddy. I will fight for him. I’m a justice warrior.” Or do you want to be a peacemaker? Because all justice is in his hands. If you just walk around like Christ, taking it, taking up your cross with him, you could bring peace to this violent world. Turn the other cheek.
X. Blessed Are the Persecuted 26:10
And all of this blessing will lead to one thing, one thing that’s so wonderful:
10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Matt 5.10
In case you thought, “If I find a way to do all the things that came before, everything will be good,” at the very end we’re reminded that the result of being a peacemaker, the result of being hungry and thirsty for righteousness, will be persecution. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it. “You will face trials in this world. Do not fear; I have overcome the world” (John 16.33). That’s what Jesus tells us.
And when you look at this last verse, I love that he changes from “Blessed are the persecuted,” looks them in the eyes, and says (in case you didn’t hear that):
11 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” Matt 5.11–12
What are we supposed to do in that moment? Fight back? Prove them wrong? No. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. What did I say about suffering earlier? You can look around and feel the burden of a broken and dark world, or you can take heaven’s perspective and have an eternal mindset. Your reward is great where? In heaven.
Now, don’t feel too bad. There’s a heck of a lot of heaven that God can bring to earth through you. You get to experience heaven in this life, now. Today you get to experience joy and peace and goodness and kindness. But don’t mistake our present circumstances, our present frustrations, our present suffering, for the end. Rejoice, for great is your reward in heaven.
I think the West, big capital W, has experienced a lot of Christianity being widely accepted, widely appreciated, widely practiced. There are people in Nigeria right now who, when they go to church, might just get rounded up and beheaded right there. That happened a couple of months ago. There are thousands of Christians around the world who are literally being murdered for their faith. And we get in our car, the engine light comes on, and all our faith goes out the window: “What the heck? The stinking car!” Again, I’m being a little silly to lighten the air. But let’s take our faith seriously, because there’s so much goodness we could have. The more seriously you take Jesus, the more goodness you will bring into your life and the lives of the people around you.
And the world needs us. It needs us desperately. It needs us to be the meek mourners who are poor in spirit, hungry for righteousness, merciful, pure in heart. It needs us to be the persecuted peacemakers. It needs us to bring God’s forgiveness to the world. That’s discipleship: becoming like him, responding like him, being Jesus to the world. Amen.