A Gift to Receive: A Sermon for 4 Epiphany

Today marks the beginning of the lectionary’s three-week jaunt through the most famous sermon in history - the Sermon on the Mount. I’ll never forget the day I heard this sermon preached in its entirety during a worship service. I was in seminary, and guest preacher who was scheduled to preach that day didn’t show up. But instead of cutting the service short and letting us out of chapel early, the seminary president chose to instead read the entire Sermon on the Mount. About halfway through, when I realized that she was going to read the whole thing in one sitting – not just a chapter to us - I was thinking “blessed are those who skipped chapel today.”

Much has been analyzed, written, preached, and taught about the Sermon on the Mount. Some of it helpful, some of it not so much. Whether or not Jesus really delivered this entire collection of sayings in one sitting like our seminary president did that day isn’t what I am interested in right now. What I am interested in today is the Beatitudes, which is where both Matthew and Luke say that Jesus began his most famous sermon.

Looking at Matthew’s version of the sermon, it is unclear to me whether Jesus was delivering the message to a large crowd of people or just to his twelve disciples. I have always assumed the former, particularly because that is how Luke portrays it. But in my sanctified imagination this week, I began to meditate on the idea that after his 40-day temptation in the desert, followed immediately by a preaching, teaching, and healing tour throughout Galilee, Jesus climbed the mountain to get away from the crowds and prepare for the next journey.

Our text tells us that “when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him.” Typically, it has been interpreted that he climbed the mountain so that the crowds below could better see and hear him deliver his message. But again, this week, the text took me to a different place. I imagine that Jesus saw the crowds and actually wanted to escape for a while.

Just prior to this moment, Matthew tells us that “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. So, his fame spread throughout all of Syria, and they brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases, and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, and he cured them. And great crowds followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.”

Y’all, that was quite a preaching, teaching, and healing tour coming on the heels of forty days of grappling with Satan in the desert, all on an empty stomach. So, I am wondering if the retreat up to the top of a mountain was an escape from the spotlight rather than stepping into it. We must remember that Jesus was fully human, and like so many of us, suffered from compassion fatigue and needed some time to recharge and regroup.

As I imagine it, after the grueling missionary journey that immediately followed his calling of the disciples, Jesus needed some time alone with his new disciples. They needed to rest, and Jesus used this moment alone with them to minister to them, as well as to share with them his “core values” so to speak. After all they had witnessed on that first preaching, teaching, and healing tour, the disciples must have had a lot of questions for Jesus. This was his opportunity to answer those questions.

Perhaps one of their topics of conversation was the sheer amount of suffering they encountered on that first missionary journey. These fishermen no doubt had seen and experienced suffering and illness in their own communities. But just like those of us who have gone on mission trips, their eyes were likely opened to the breadth and depth of suffering, perhaps even in their own backyards.

Perhaps the disciples were surprised that Jesus – the Messiah for whom all of Israel had been waiting – spent so much time with sick, suffering people. Perhaps they were surprised that Jesus spent so much time preaching and teaching. Is this what ushering in the kingdom of heaven looks like? Will their whole mission consist of preaching to, teaching, and healing the ordinary people of their communities? Why not go straight to Jerusalem, the location of both Jewish and Roman power and influence?

And it was perhaps these questions that led Jesus to begin with a lesson on to whom their immediate focus would be. It would not be the powers and principalities in Jerusalem. It would be to the poor in spirit; the mourners; the meek; the merciful; the peacemakers, and the like. In other words, ordinary people like you and me who might find ourselves simultaneously grieving and trying to make peace in our homes in our day-to-day lives. Who among us here hasn’t felt “poor in spirit” – or depressed before? Who among us hasn’t mourned?

I think a common mistake we make when we hear the Beatitudes is that we tend to romanticize the “other” in our call to follow Jesus. If we are fairly well-off in our first-world, American, privileged context we might hear the Beatitudes as only Jesus’ call for us to minister to those other people who we perceive to have more problems than we do.

Perhaps Jesus needed to remind his disciples – and us – that Jesus’ ministry was extraordinary indeed, but it was aimed at transforming all people, not only the poorest of the poor or those is positions of great power and influence. His disciples themselves were ordinary people. Yes, they had encountered and healed those “afflicted with various diseases.” But aren’t we all afflicted one way or another, namely by the disease of sin? Aren’t we all afflicted by things both within and beyond our control?  Aren’t we all in desperate need of Jesus’ ministry to us? Don’t we all need to be healed? Don’t we all need to be made whole?

What this realization can do for us first and foremost is to realize that the Good News of new life in Christ isn’t something for us to possess and hand out to other people, as if they need it more than we do. It is a gift for us to receive. As such, the Beatitudes are an invitation for us to recognize that we too are among the blessed. Instead of trying to be the Messiah – instead of trying to fix all the world’s problems on our own terms - what might it be like for us to take a moment to get away from the crowds and rest in our own blessedness? What might it be like to receive God’s grace as a gift that we don’t have to earn or work for? What might it be like to let go of our need for control or action or problem solving, and just rest in our blessedness in spite of it all? What might it be like to take a moment to receive the gift of God’s grace, mercy, love, and justice, and rejoice in it without having to pay him back by going and doing something important?

My friends, I am preaching to myself as much as I am preaching to you. I hold a high standard of Christian discipleship for myself and for others. We all know that to be true. But such a standard can be exhausting if we don’t find a balance in our walk with Christ. I think Jesus climbed the mountain to get away from the crowds, not to address them. And I think Jesus invited his twelve new disciples to join him so that he could model for them that after a rigorous mission trip of preaching, teaching, and healing, they needed to rest – both physically and spiritually. The spiritual rest was to simply to practice the discipline of receiving the gift of God’s presence. And recognizing that they too were blessed. They too needed God’s mercy, grace, love, and forgiveness. And, thanks be to God, they didn’t have to do anything extraordinary to receive that. And thanks be to God we don’t either.