MEETING CHRIST IN THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT

The Way of The Beatitudes

Matthew 5: 3-13

Pastor Robyn Hogue February 17, 2013 Skyline Presbyterian Church

The one word Jesus uses nine times in the beginning of the sermon is translated in most English Bibles blessed. The same word in the Greek language means happy. Jesus might have given this sermon in Hebrew or in Galilean Aramaic. Or He might have taught in Greek, since most people in the Mediterranean world could speak and understand Greek. But whatever language He used, one fact is clear; the language that underpins His thinking is Hebrew.

Jesus lived in the Old Testament. His sayings are virtually incomprehensible unless we realize this. The Hebrew word for blessed or happy and our understanding of this Old Testament word will help us appreciate what it means in the Beatitudes.

The Hebrew word for “blessed” is ashr. Proverbs 3:13 says, “Blessed is the one who finds wisdom…Her ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths are peace.” Ashr in Proverbs means to find the right path. If you are surrounded by many confusing ways and find the right way to go, then you are happy, this Old Testament idea of happiness has to do with orientation, perspective, the discovery of what is meaningful in the midst of shallow, superficial options. Jesus gives nine proverbs on the way to happiness to draw us into His electrifying sermon. This nine-fold way of happiness (ashr) can be divided into three parts.

The first four beatitudes are reflective, intensely personal portrayals, which might be called the inner pathway:

1. Happy are the poor in spirit, those who are not spiritually arrogant, but know their help comes from a higher power.

2. Happy are those who mourn, those who feel deeply the sense of loss and the pain that goes with it.

3. Happy are the meek, or those who have a sane evaluation of themselves.

4. Happy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, those who have moved beyond the various false options of this generation and have decided to seek God’s truth and character.

The second part tells of three important life-style ingredients. Jesus teaches three specific marks of the way of happiness in these beatitudes:

5. Happy are the merciful, those who really love people, not in a theoretical sense, but in a concrete way.

6. Happy are the pure in heart, those who have simplified and uncluttered their affections, having chosen to obey the righteous will of God.

7. Happy are the peacemakers, that is, those who share the health and wholeness of peace with the people around them.

The third part concludes with two hard and terrifying beatitudes united in poetic parallelism.

8. Happy are those who are persecuted because of righteousness.

9. Happy are those who are persecuted on Christ’s account.

Jesus surprises us by using one of the harshest words in the Greek language, “persecute,” which means to run after, to pursue. He teaches that it is possible to find the right pathway even in the midst of a less-than-ideal setting; a Christian can survive within a hostile environment. Notice also the vital theological fact that Jesus has united righteousness with His own personal lordship: “persecuted because of righteousness ... because of Me.”

When we understand the rich meaning of the Old Testament background for the word blessed, we can make the deepest sort of sense of the Beatitudes. Jesus has not only drawn together a poetic tour de force, but there is also something profoundly realistic and significant in each of the apparently strange uses of the word happy. It seems strange by any ordinary standard to say that one who is profoundly thirsty, or who mourns, or who is persecuted should be happy! But Jesus is telling us that we are on the right path when we know of our own hunger, when we are sensitive to sorrow, and when our way of truth is under attack. In fact, Jesus teaches that in the deepest sense the nature of happiness is to be on that very pathway.

Have you ever experienced a perilous moment in your life when you felt particularly exposed to dangers, when you were most vulnerable, and yet you knew inside at a very deep personal level that you were in the right place at the right time? Perhaps at just such a moment you realized you were on the pathway where Jesus Christ was leading you. It may have seemed odd to others, but at that very moment in spite of its gravity, it was for you a joyous moment too. You experience in that mixture of gravity and joy the very heart of the meaning of the Beatitudes of Jesus. You experience a happiness not founded upon happenings or circumstances but upon a joy rooted in the deeper source of God’s grace. When it struck you that this was true, you surprised yourself and others around you but the shock of recognition that this very place, hard and difficult as it was, nevertheless was the place where you wanted to be. You were in that deepest of all ways, blessed and happy.

Do you remember Frodo and Sam on the dark pathways beneath the ominous tower in Tolkien’s The Two Towers? Do you remember that scene when they begin to wonder about the meaning of everything they are now experiencing on their journey? They wonder if future generations might remember their adventures which now are dangerously threatening and frightful. They wonder about some future moment when the friendship experiences of the two travelers will become more important than the dangers, and when their mission for good has won out against the devastating power of evil. Listen to the way Tolkien portrays that scene:

Frodo and his loyal friend Sam begin to imagine together about the stories that will someday be told about their dangerous mission. Sam speaks:

“Still, I wonder if we shall ever be put into songs or tales. We’re in one, of course; but I mean put into words, you know, told by the fireside, or read out of a great big book with red and black letters, years and years afterwards. And people will say; ‘Let’s hear about Frodo and the ring!’ And they’ll say: ‘Yes, that’s one of my favourite stories. Frodo was very brave wasn’t he, Dad?’ ‘Yes, my boy, the famousest of the hobbits, and that’s saying a lot.’”

“It’s saying a lot too much,” said Frodo, and he laughed, a long clear laugh from his heart. Such a sound had not been heard in those places since Sauron came to Middle-earth … he laughed again. “Why, Sam,” he said, “to hear you somehow makes me as merry as if the story was already written. But you’ve left out one of the chief characters: Samwise the stouthearted.”

Frodo and Sam have experienced the breakthrough of the word blessed.

Let evil beware of such laughter, of such happiness. It is a sign of the greater power of good overcoming the power of evil. Suddenly it dawns upon us that the Tower of Mordor is not as awesome as we thought. The laughter of the two pilgrims springs from their sudden awareness of the fact that they have been blessed. They are where they are supposed to be! They are on the right road.

Let me put this in another way. The only way the Beatitudes of Jesus make sense is if Jesus, the One who speaks them, is strong enough to make them really true. We are able to endure persecution and actually to believe we are on the right path if our companion in the middle of that persecution is the living Lord. These Beatitudes are the words of authority; they boldly challenge the dominant views of our culture.

The one thing we must see is that the Beatitudes, by which Jesus begins this sermon, are not a mild and sentimental collection of platitudes. They are a frontal challenge to almost everything we assume about “the way it is” in the world. The only way they make sense is if Jesus Christ Himself is able to sustain the blessings He pronounces. When that fact becomes our fact, and when we become convinced that Jesus Christ has the authority to support His promises, then the word blessed not only invites us to find the right path, but also to welcome the path we find.

We now have the biblical doctrine of success. Success is not measured in possessions or by the state of our health. Success means to be where I am supposed to be—the right place at the right time and for the right reason—because of the purpose for my life that has its origins in God’s love and faithfulness. If I am on the right road, then I am successful in this radical rearrangement of our ordinary value systems. Success for those who believe this amazing Sermon on the Mount is a word about relationship with Lord of the pathway and about our journey upon that path.