Matthew 5:1-12 New International Version (NIV)
1 Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2 and he began to teach them. He said:
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Help me out with a few phrases. If you really love someone, you have to… (let them go). In relationships, opposites…(attract). Great. Now, for those who drive in icy conditions, when you skid, you are supposed to steer into the skid. A common drug for people with ADHD is Ritalin, which is a stimulant.
All of these examples are counterintuitive. They go against our initial impulses; they go against our nature. If you love someone, you want to hold them close and never let them go. You want to slow down someone who is hyperactive so they can focus. Here, kid. Have another Red Bull. No! And if you really want to receive God’s blessings, you need to have it all together.
But we find just the opposite in the opening verses of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus offers us these counterintuitive teachings on who is blessed in a passage known as the beatitudes, which is a name we get from the Latin word for blessed.
We will be taking the next few weeks to walk through the Sermon on the Mount. I spoke last week on this exact passage, and we will circle back to it in a few weeks when I have a friend here to give some more of the cultural and historical aspects of this teaching. For those who weren’t here last week, there may be a few things that I move over quickly this morning because I covered them already, so I would encourage you to go back listen to or read that sermon to get that background information. I’m going to jump over “blessed are those who mourn,” and we will come back to “blessed are the peacemakers” in a few weeks. What I really want to focus in on today are the two weird ones. The confusing phrases, “blessed are the poor in spirit,” and “blessed are the meek.”
Before we get there, I want to start with a rhetorical question. How would you feel if I told you I have some really good news for you today? God loves you. God loves you, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t make God love you more, and you can’t make God love you less. God loves you unconditionally. And if that is the first time you have ever heard that message, I’m sorry. The church has failed you. But please know now that you are loved.
Now what if I kept going with that. God loves you unconditionally, but if you really want God to bless you, you need to stop smoking and drinking. You really shouldn’t dance, either. God loves you, but God will bless you if you would stay off “those” websites. God would bless you if you would just vote in the right way, or if you would just figure out that women and men were created to have different jobs and roles in this world. God will bless you if you give this much money to the church. God will bless you if you spend this much time in prayer or reading your Bible.
That’s the message we often hear in the church. God will bless you, if you get your stuff together. This has been the message of religious people throughout time, not just in the modern Christian church. Get it together, then God will bless you.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a firm believer in ethics. I believe we should all be making changes in how we live and moving toward the example of Jesus. What I’m trying to point out is that we too often tell people that they must change, and then God will bless them. But that’s not how Jesus begins his Sermon on the Mount, is it? He starts off with this counterintuitive statement: blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Last week we discussed what it means to be blessed. Yes, the Bible talks about financial blessings, health and wellness blessings, but physical stuff isn’t the only way to understand what it means to be blessed. That seems obvious when we read the beatitudes. There is a lot of suffering going on here. Blessed are the persecuted? Blessed are the insulted? As I mentioned last week, I think it is better to think of blessings as God being on your side. God is in your corner. God has your back.
So what does this mean, practically? There is a lot of debate about what it means to be poor in spirit. And if you read Luke’s version of the beatitudes, Luke just has “blessed are the poor,” with no reference to the spirit. We know what it means to be poor. That means you don’t have any money. Which is itself a counterintuitive statement. In our 21st-century world, we tend to think of monetary riches when we think of blessings. But I think the blessing of the poor in spirit is even more counterintuitive.
We’ve probably all been in worship settings where the energy level was high. The music is inspiring, the people are swaying to the beat, yelling “amen” as they wave their hands. You get that feeling of adrenaline pumping through your veins. And people might call that a “spirit-filled” worship experience. If felt as if God was right there with you, right beside you. If felt like God was real.
That’s spirit-filled, or spirit-led worship. But Jesus says “blessed are the poor in spirit.” This suggests the spirit is lacking. It feels as if God is absent.
A few years back, there was an entertainer known as Elvis. I don’t need to tell you about Elvis, even my children know about Elvis, the king of rock and roll. If you watch old footage of Elvis you will notice the crowds all whipped up into a frenzy. Mostly, you notice the young women all whipped up into a frenzy. The quivering lips, the shaking hips. You don’t have to be an Elvis fan to know that he was a great showman.
There are stories of Elvis performing at concerts and the members of the audience refusing to leave when the show was over. They kept cheering, yelling for an encore for hours, thinking they might be able to convince the king to come back out and sing another song or two. Other times, when there were other acts to follow Elvis, the people would continue to yell and scream, making it difficult for the second act to come out and play. So it became common for Elvis to complete his last song, sneak out a side door, get in a limousine, and drive away. And when he would do that, an announcer would come on the P.A. system and say, “Ladies and Gentlemen, Elvis has left the building.”
I think those who are poor in spirit are the ones who feel as if God has left the building. Maybe at one time you felt something. Maybe there was excitement and energy at one point in your life. Maybe you were cheering for an encore. But now it feels as if someone has just announced, “Ladies and Gentlemen, God has left the building.” Or even worse, maybe you are questioning if God was ever there.
But that’s the counterintuitive part of the beatitudes. When it feels like God is absent, Jesus tells us that God is with you. Jesus says, “blessed are the poor in spirit,” God is at your side, and God is on your side.
You hear well-meaning people say things like, “If you feel distant from God, it is because you pushed him away.” I think that is silly, as if we could push the maker of heaven and earth away. Silly humans, thinking we have such power. The beatitudes are a promise that even those who have done everything possible that stands in contradiction to who God is, God is with you. God is on your side. God is your biggest cheerleader. Jesus showed that in who he spent his time with in the Gospels. As Christians, we believe that Jesus was God in human form. And God in human form spent his time with the prostitutes and the sinners. He spent his time with the tax collectors and society’s rejects. If being blessed means that God is with you and for you and on your side, well that’s exactly what we see in the incarnate God, aka Jesus Christ.
I don’t know if we have any prostitutes out there today, but we have plenty of sinners. (Please, don’t point.) We are all sinners. And for those of you who have never felt distance from God, that’s great. But for me, and I’m going to guess most of us, there are times when it feels as if God has left the building. The good news is that God is with you. Jesus proclaimed it when he said, “blessed are the poor in spirit,” Jesus lived it when he spent his time with the prostitutes and sinners.
This would be a good time to remind everyone that the beatitudes are not a “how to” book. This isn’t 9 steps to discovering God’s blessings. Some of these teachings are things we should strive for. We should try to be merciful, righteous, and peacemakers. I even think we should try to be meek, after we figure out what that means. But I’m not encouraging you to become poor in spirit in order to enjoy God’s blessings. These counterintuitive teachings of Jesus are a proclamation. This is how things are. When you are poor in spirit, God is not absent. God is on your side. We could say that all of the beatitudes are descriptive, and only some of them are prescriptive.
Even when we don’t feel God’s presence, Jesus tells us that is precisely when God is for us; God is on your side.
But what are we to do with verse 5, where Jesus says, “blessed are the meek”? Meek doesn’t even sound like an English word to me. It sounds like Beaker from the Muppets talking. (by the way, check out Beaker’s “Ode to Joy.”
The Greek word here is praoos. It has the connotation of being gentle and kind. A sheep is praoos. Jesus is described as being praoos. The Common English Version offers another word in verse 5; the CEV translates praoos as humble.
As the old country song says, “Oh Lord it’s hard to be humble/When you’re perfect in every way./I can’t wait to look in the mirror./Cause I get better looking each day.”
I think that is kind of the point. The humble realize that they aren’t perfect in every way. Sometimes I’m afraid to look in the mirror because I get grayer and older each day.
To be humble doesn’t mean to think poorly of yourself. Those of us in the church often like to remind one another to love our neighbor. Well Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself. That implies that you don’t hate yourself. Loving your neighbor as yourself means you treat others the way you want to be treated. It means you show the kind of love for your neighbor as you would like them to show you.
When I think of humility, I think of Paul’s words in Romans 12:3, “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought.” Well, how much ‘ought’ I think of myself? This isn’t a total disregard for yourself. You aren’t supposed to think of yourself as trash, worthless, lowest of the low. But you also aren’t supposed to think of yourself as better than others.
Sometimes the best examples of something are found in their inverse. I’m not a real political person, and when I do talk about politics, it is usually to critique both sides. Case in point: Last week was the annual State of the Union Address. When President Trump came out to make his speech, he approached the front desk, and handed a copy of his speech to Mike Pence and another to Nancy Pelosi. Video shows Pelosi extending her hand to shake Trump’s hand, and him turning away. Then, after the speech, other videos show Pelosi ripping up her copy of the speech.
I don’t identify as either a Republican or Democrat, but this is embarrassing for everyone. Where is the humility? I don’t know exactly what “meek” is, but I know that isn’t it. Humility means not putting yourself before others. It means loving your neighbor and yourself.
New Testament scholar, Scot McKnight takes this in a little different direction. In his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, McKnight says, “The ‘meek’ are those who suffer and who have been humbled…” According to McKnight, the meek are not meek by their own choice. It was not a decision that they made, or a position they would desire. They have been humbled. Someone else brought them down a few notches. Someone else showed them up. Someone else has embarrassed them in public.
Now we are getting real. I’m of the opinion that most people in the world already suffer from a lack of self-confidence. Regardless of what front people may put on, we are always comparing ourselves to others, and often, we fail to measure up.
So when someone else bests you, when you get dunked on, or out performed. When you get passed up for a promotion. When you get left off the roster, or the guest list. When you are embarrassed. When someone else brings you down a few notches…
God is on your side.
The poor in spirit and the meek, by these definitions, aren’t in a position to envy. At least not by most standards. But notice, there is an accompanying promise to those who don’t have it together, and those who get brought down a few pegs. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”
The poor in spirit get the kingdom of heaven, the meek get the earth. I’m not sure what else there is. When you don’t have it all together, when society knocks you down, don’t fret. Heaven and earth are yours. Heaven and earth are yours, because God is with you, God is for you. God is on your side.
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