“Building Upon the Foundation of The Beatitudes”

Jesus has been on the move and on a mission. In the lead up he has recruited his disciples to be agents of transformation. Not long before, each of the disciples had made a life-changing decision, walking away from the familiar of their lives. He took them away from the crowds that gathered wherever he went. Ah, the CROWDS. People physically hungry; spiritually hungry. People sick. People healed. Matthew describes who makes up this crowd in the lead up to this text. They have been pressing in and Jesus with his fledgling disciples have been pressing on. Turn to this moment (Matthew 5:1-12) Jesus slows down, actually sits down and delivers the most significant sermon of his ministry. One that becomes the foundation for the new community. Jesus wants his followers to know what they are getting into. The Beatitudes reveal what the new community will look like. 

Teaching in beatitudes was not new to anyone in that time. They were common expressions, not only in religious circles. Think of them as expressions about the good life. Both the rich and the poor had everyday sayings about the “good life”, listing virtues that anyone would have been pleased to have. Blessed are the wise, for they will not be taken advantage of. Blessed are those with power for their enemies shall fear them. Blessed are those with power for their enemies will fear them. Blessed are the wealthy for they shall never go hungry. But Jesus took those conventional sayings then (that have a long tail into today and our culture -, and he turned them upside down. Typical of that Jesus. In God’s Kingdom it is the hungry and the oppressed and the people who are sick and who mourn who are entitled to God’s blessings.  

We all know what “blessed” means, don’t we? The word “blessed” is used so frequently in popular culture and in popular Christianity (what we know as the “prosperity gospel”).  Here faith is not so much a hope or trust but as a spiritual power that guarantees that God fulfills the desires of our heart. And as Dr. Kate Bowler of Duke University Divinity School writes in her book Blessed, a person who is “blessed” is a faith-filled Christian who knows their prayers are heard because of wealth and health which are signs of righteousness. But it is also more than that. To be blessed includes power, happy families, peace of mind, joyful marriages, and a total sense of victory (https://katebowler.com/blessed/). They are what we might call the “winners.” But as Jesus tells his disciples in his Sermon on the Mount that the conventional notion of blessed is not part of the foundation upon which God is building this new Kingdom. To put it simply, every single person who is called blessed in the Beatitudes is what some might call “the losers.”  The hungry. The oppressed. Those who mourn.  These words - born from the heart of Jesus - were gifted to people who were considered the refuse of the ancient world.  

I want to bring in Dr.. Raj Nadella of Columbia Seminary in Atlanta to help us here. He is credentialed as a professor of New Testament and knows the nuance of the original languages. That said, he starts with a key and basic question that you may be asking: “What makes them (the poor, the oppressed, the sick, and the people who mourn) blessed?” Surely, Jesus is not condoning their state in life or spiritualizing it.  “So what does it mean for the poor to claim the kingdom of heaven? And does it mean where it says in Matthew 5:4: ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted?’” Dr. Nadella contends that this translation does not fully capture the force of the Greek word at the end - parakleytheysontai - which is derived from the Greek word paraclete. In the first century Greek or Roman context, the word “paraclete” meant an advocate, specifically a legal advocate. A paraclete was someone you called to stand by your side and stand with you, in order to advocate for you. (Day1, Dr. Raj Nadella: “When Comfort Alone Won’t Cut It”, Published January 24, 20230

A lot of advocates come to my mind. (I named Avi Poster who died this past week. Fondly referred to as “the Mayor of Nashville” he was an advocate for all in Nashville who lived on the margins.) The advocates I have in mind are not in the business of bringing over a casserole in the moment of need of those who they are advocating for.  But they have your back and will go into the courtroom or to legislative hill and will fight for you.

There is a member in our church who is an advocate for doctors in light of the current extensive Tennessee law outlawing abortions following the overturning of Roe v. Wade. There is such ambiguity in the law on the Tennessee books when it comes to medical “exemptions” that doctors are caught in the crossfire when determining if they are practicing within proper medical protocol in providing healthcare to women or committing a crime in the case of, for instance, a woman facing a potentially life threatening ectopic pregnancy. The way it stands currently doctors can provide a defense of a performed medical procedure to save a woman’s life in cases where a mother’s life is in danger due to the pregnancy, but that’s after criminal charges are brought against the doctor leading to costing a physician’s career and making it too risky to provide healthcare for women. This advocate rightly fears that the outcome will be less medical care for women, particularly in rural areas - where there is greater poverty and fewer medical options. This individual is likely looking more at Tennessee legal statutes than Jesus’ beatitudes, but the point here is that this is an example of an advocate  who says “I have your back.”

And I can’t help but think about Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative  down in Montgomery Alabama who has been an advocate for those who have been wrongly imprisoned in our broken criminal justice system and whose organization is responsible for freeing over 100 people wrongly imprisoned. His work is inspired by Micah 6:8 and this is a t-shirt (“Do Justice, Love Mercy”) I got from our recent impactful visit.

What an advocate! 

[Note to reader: You will find below in italics a powerful story Bryan Stevenson tells about how he was called to this work by a young man who was told by Bryan that there was a reprieve on the man’s execution which led to man singing a hymn and singing Bryan into his current work. It is an extensive story. I did not share this story during my sermon except an excerpt. Kate Bowler. https://katebowler.com/podcasts/bryan-stevenson-love-mercy/]

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A story Bryan Stevenson tells of how he started in his work. A powerful story he relates as a guest on Kate Bowler’s Podcast. Taken from transcript:

”I’d never met a lawyer before I got to Harvard Law School, but I had these aspirations, and after the first year I was so disillusioned, I actually left and I went to the School of Government to pursue a degree in public policy because I thought that would be more fulfilling. And I remember the day two months into that program when I woke up and I looked in the mirror and I thought, Wow, I’m even more miserable here than I was at the law school. And it seemed as if they were teaching us to maximize benefits and minimize costs. But it didn’t matter whose benefits got maximized, whose costs got minimized. And I  found that alienating went back to the law school and then took this course that did send me to the Deep South and eventually led me to a place that I felt very intimidated by death row in Georgia. And I was just supposed to tell someone that they weren’t at risk of execution any time in the next year. And I was so nervous and so overwhelmed when they finally brought this condemned man into the room. I remember he was burdened with chains in handcuffs on his wrists. He had a chain around his waist, shackles on his ankles. And I just was just overwhelmed by the visual of it. 

And when they had him in chains, I forgot everything and I just started apologizing. So I’m so sorry. I’m just a law student. I don’t know anything about the death penalty. I don’t know anything about criminal procedure, appellate procedures, civil procedure. And then I remember I said, but I am here to tell you that you’re not at risk of execution any time in the next year. And that’s when this man grabbed my hand and he said, wait, wait, wait, wait, say that again. I said, You’re not at risk of execution any time in the next year. And the man said, Wait, say that again. And I said, You’re not at risk of execution any time in the next year. 

And that’s when this man hugged me and said, Thank you. He said, You’re the first person I’ve met in the two years I’ve been on death row who’s not a death row prisoner or death row guard, he said, Because of you, I’m going to see my wife. I’m going to see my kids. I’ve been talking to them on the phone, but I haven’t let them come and visit because I was afraid they show up and I’d have an execution date and I didn’t want them to have to deal with that. 

And it really blew me away that just being in that place, I could have an impact on the quality of someone’s life, even though I didn’t know very much, and it just seemed like a special place where I felt for the first time, like being in the legal profession might empower me to do something. And then we started talking. Turned out we were exactly the same age. Had the same birthday, same month, same day, same year. 

One hour turned into 2 hours. 2 hours turned into 3 hours. And I was only supposed to be there for an hour, but I just kept talking and we were just lost in conversation. And then the guards came in after 3 hours, angry that I hadn’t ended the visit when I was supposed to. And they took it out on this man, threw them against the wall, pulled his arms back, put the handcuffs on his wrist tightly wrapped the chain around his waist, violently put the shackles on his ankles. And I remember begging them to be gentler, saying, look, it’s my fault. It’s not his fault. He didn’t do anything wrong. And they were shoving him toward the door. And I just felt so terribly. And then I remember how he planted his feet when he got in front of the door. And when they shoved him, he didn’t move. And then he turned around to me and he said, Bryan, don’t worry about this. You just come back. And that’s when he closed his eyes and began to sing a hymn. And he started singing, I’m pressing on the upward way. New heights I’m gaining every day, still praying as I’m onward bound. And then he said, Lord, plant my feet on higher ground. And it was just a moment of clarity. Even the guards stopped and then they recovered and started pushing him down the hallway. And you could hear the chains clanging, but you could hear this man singing about higher ground. And when I heard that man saying, that’s when I knew I wanted to help condemn people get to higher ground. But I also knew that my journey to higher ground was tied to his journey. And I realized that if he doesn’t get there, I don’t get there. And it just changed everything. 

I went back to Harvard Law School. You couldn’t get me out of the law school library. I needed to know everything. I was deep into understanding the jurisprudence necessary to help condemned prisoners learn in comedy and federalism and appellate procedure and habeas corpus. And all of these doctrines, for me, was something I had to do. And today, even some 35, almost 40 years later, I really do believe when people say, you know, if someone asks me, how have you helped people or how I tell them it’s not because I’ve worked hard. It’s not because I’m smart or anything like that. I really do believe it’s because I heard a condemned man sing and in that song understood things about the humanity of all of God’s children, about the yearning and the need to be an agent of redemption and change and restoration and freedom for all people. And so it did it came to me in a song. I think that’s an absolutely fair characterization. 

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So back to this notion of advocate in the Beatitudes. And in particular Matthew 5:4: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be advocated on behalf of.” That is, Raj Nadella says, “blessed are those who mourn because someone will advocate for them.” Comfort is good. Comfort is necessary. Think of it as a first response. But, let’s follow Nadella as he keeps drilling down with his work, “ if someone consistently substitutes comfort for advocacy, we need to be asking the questions: whose needs are being served in the process? And whose needs are being undermined? As Walter Brueggemann says recently (Church Anew): ‘We should refuse to be comforted in the face of social failure.’” Nadella concludes: “If we apply his insight to the Beatitudes, it would mean refusing to be in the business of comforting the oppressed when they actually need something more than comfort. If we consistently privilege comfort over advocacy, we will end up comforting the oppressor rather than the oppressed. Turning one’s weeping into joy takes advocacy. Not advocacy instead of comfort, but in addition to it” (Nadella, “When Comfort Alone Won’t Cut It”).

Then we ask: who will fill the hungry? Who will show mercy to the merciful? Who will call the peacemakers “the children of God?” And who will advocate for those who mourn? Looking more closely at the texts and the verb tenses we can say that God is the agent of these actions. We have been witnesses to how God can make a way when there was no way.  But note here how Jesus speaks, allows, even calls for, the human agency. Not instead of the divine agency, but in combination with the divine agency.

The human agency in the Beatitudes takes on additional significance when one reads the text within the context I described at the start of this sermon where Jesus had been calling people to repent, healing diseases, and the crowds had gathered and Jesus in his teaching, invites the disciples to promote the ethos of the new kingdom. 

And this leads Nadella to conclude and this is timely for the week our nation and state has just witnessed: 

“The emphasis on the human agency – that is, the church and the larger community – suggests that, when we see oppressed people, the question should not be: Where is God when people are mourning, hungry, treated brutally by the police, and denied justice in the courtroom? Rather, the question should be: Where is God’s community and what is it doing to address the situation of suffering? The Beatitudes offer a promise of liberation to those at the margins. They also invite everyone with privilege and power to make the liberation a reality.” (ibid)

John spoke about what this might mean for us to advocate, given our context, the perplexity and the complexity. And then he made the transition to connect Matthew 5:4 to the issues we have faced this week and addressed what we are feeling.

This week we are grieving and we are mourning many things: what may be happening in our individual lives.  The continued gun violence we have witnessed in 2023 stands at 39 mass shootings with over 60 deaths and it is only the end of January. 

As Tennesseans we are shocked and outraged by the senseless beating death of Tyre Nichols by a suppression unit of the Memphis Police Dept called Scorpion. Tyre Nichols, a 29 year old father, avid skateboarder, photographer who worked the 2nd shift at FedEx, was stopped and beaten by police. “I am just trying to get home” he said to the police. He was beaten and then did not receive aid just hundreds of yards from his mother’s home. The Memphis community is grieving and mourning. And we join them. We pray for them. We pray for pastors and churches in Memphis this morning dealing with this trauma and feelings of sadness, disappointment, anger. All of them. I was touched by Tyre Nichol’s mom, RowVaughn Wells, when she said she’d pray for the police officers who killed her son, along with their families. It’s a spirit of compassion and dignity we desperately need right now. 

In light of Jesus’ words “blessed are those who mourn” (Matthew 5:4) and in light of the events of this week, I have been thinking about grieving and mourning. There is a difference between grieving and mourning. Grief, I have concluded, is the sorrow and sadness that envelops you in the midst of living because something dear to you - a love of your heart - is taken away. Mourning is part of the same fabric of grief. But it seems different; it is the intentional work to address what is broken in us and in the world.  In that sense, I think what Jesus says is, if we know things are broken around us, and our response is, indignation and then we move on as though nothing happened or if our response is “Well, that is just the way of the world,” there is nothing blessed about that. But if we know things are broken and we lean into participating in making right what we can make right, it’s holy. It’s blessed.  Mourning and advocacy joined as strong links.

As followers of Jesus, we are called to advocate for the oppressed and seek to reverse their situation of suffering. When we see people weeping because of hunger, police brutality, or gun violence, our response cannot be limited to words of comfort. Words of comfort - and our mourning - should become catalysts  for action rather than substitutes for action. I hope you will read that story of Brian Stephenson’s calling. Here is the part I don’t want you to miss. His visit with the prisoner ended and the prisoner was chained and manhandled by the guards. The prisoner started singing “I’m pressing on the upward way. New heights I’m gaining every day, still praying as I’m onward bound. Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.” Stevenson said: 

“And it was just a moment of clarity. Even the guards stopped and then they recovered and started pushing him down the hallway. And you could hear the chains clanging, but you could hear this man singing about higher ground. And when I heard that man saying, that’s when I knew I wanted to help condemn people get to higher ground. But I also knew that my journey to higher ground was tied to his journey. And I realized that if he doesn’t get there, I don’t get there.” (https://katebowler.com/podcasts/bryan-stevenson-love-mercy/)

[Note: You Tube clip of this gospel hymn , click here]

I knew that my journey to higher ground was tied to his journey. And I realized that if he doesn’t get there, I don’t get there. Doesn’t that sum up Jesus’ sermon that day? The oppressed, the hungry, those who mourn are not objects of our compassion or passive recipients of help that receive our turnstile attention. They themselves have an agency in the process of realizing their blessings as the prisoner sang. Rather than turn the oppressed into objects of compassion, those of us with power must acknowledge their agency and work with them to facilitate the blessings that Jesus promised. 

Because aren’t we like Tyre Nichols said, “I am just trying to get home.” And home in this case means the higher ground of a life lived reflecting Jesus’ Beatitudes. Jesus followed them and lived out his own life based on these sayings and died for it: meek, not violent to the end; loving, forgiving even the ones who were hanging him up to die. You have to decide whether you want to take him seriously, even bet your life on it, this One who death did not defeat him; nor the power of the Empire; nor the power of human hatred, cruelty, and bigotry; the One who three days later was resurrected and established God’s infinite Reign of love. Of course you have to decide if you want to trust them and make them foundational to your life.

May God give us the strength to follow. To advocate. To mourn. To join. To get to higher ground. 

Closing Blessing (a blessing  from Jessica Richie’s and Kate Bowler’s Book The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days)

Oh, God. I am done with broken systems that break the very people they are meant to serve. Harness this anger, channel it into worthy action, and show me what is mine to fix and what boundaries to patrol to keep goodness in and evil out. 

Blessed are we who are appalled that brute ignorance can so easily dominate over decency, honesty and integrity. 

Blessed are we who choose not to look away from systems that dehumanize, deceive, defame and distort. We who recognize that thoughts and prayers are not enough. We who stand with truth over expediency. Principle over politics. Community over competition. 

Oh, God. How blessed are we who cry out to you? Empower us to see and name what is broken. What is ours to restore. Guide us to find coherent and beautiful alternatives that foster life, hope and peace. Help us use our gifts with one another in unity. Blessed are we who choose to live in anticipation, our eyes scanning the horizon for signs of your kingdom. Heaven come down as we wait in hope and act with courage. https://katebowler.com/podcasts/bryan-stevenson-love-mercy/