Beatitudes pt 2
Notes
Transcript
Handout
In order to understand the Beatitudes we have to understand what Jesus came to do.
And that only He can do it.
Start with the end of last week. What did Jesus come to do?
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
This is the crux of His ministry
Because of what He came to do it changes what kind of life we are called to do.
Last week we looked at the position for the blessed life. That it is not those who have it all who are blessed. It is those who have nothing who recieve blessing.
The Position of the Blessed life
The Position of the Blessed life
This is the position of the blessed life. It does not matter what you have or don’t have, it does not matter where you start. It is about the poor in spirit.
That means you are poured out, that you don’t have much in your tank, so to speak.
But it equally means that you are open to receiving. This is why you receive mercy, and the kingdom of God.
It is the ability to remain open to what God is offering you.
We are given the position of the life Jesus calls us to,
Now we are going to look at the posture of the blessed life
The Posture of the Blessed life
The Posture of the Blessed life
This week we are looking at the posture of the blessed life. Because of who God is calling us to be, we are called to posture our lives a certain way.
Ill: Posture matters. Any sport we play or instrument we play or most anything we do, it matters how we hold ourselves. It is the way that we best sustain the activity that we are in.
When I do a wedding I take time to work through how to stand. Why? Because posture matters, locked knees means you can pass out.
(tpi Anna riding a horse i(p Anna riding a horse c(pi Anna riding a horse i(p Anna riding a horse
Any sport.
How we hold ourselves matters.
Jesus calls us into a posture. IF we are receivers of His kingdom and His divine grace, we are called to live a certain way. Now, because it is a life installed by God Himself, it is the most natural way to live. We have been living off center forever, Christ calls us back to normal living.
That’s why this isn’t a picture of a stupendous Christian life, this is the picture of a normal life in Christ.
And it is a reflection of life in the Creator, it is the best expression of how it is we are called to live.
The reason it looks so hard is because we have believed so many lies about it.
We have believed that we are called to do what we can to get ahead, to run faster than the other person. To accumulate until you can’t get any bigger.
But that is not the good life. IT is a life with some good things but to run faster and faster is not a good life.
We are called to live out the divine life of Christ in our own contexts. This is where we begin, understanding the goodness of God that leads to expressing that goodness in our own lives.
Three postures
Three postures
The posture of the kingdom of those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, those who show mercy and those who are pure of heart.
The first three beatitudes are not things that you can always see. You may be able to see parts of what poor in spirit looks like or part of what mourning looks like, but they are not postures, they are positions.
The postures are ways that we carry our lives that become unmistakably Christian. Meaning to exhibit hunger and thirst for righteousness, and to show mercy and to be pure in heart is a certain posture,
that when we enact it, it sets us apart from the world.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
If It is true that we are now vessels who are poor in spirit and need more than we think, we have to recognize what it is we are after. What is is that we desire. Jesus uses the most base forms of desire, hunger and thirst.
Again this is on purpose because Jesus isn’t setting forth unattainable goals. He is using hunger and thirst as the most basic form of understanding how we desire.
Ever been hungry? Good
Every been thirsty? Good.
Now you can understand.
For what?
Righteousness. Jesus doesn’t define for what so we can assume all things. Righteousness means right standing or right relationships.
When we live in Christ we are made right before God. We are righteous before God. Jesus does what we have not been able to do.
But that is not the only form of righteousness, just the most important one. We are also called to live right between our neighbors and our world.
Living righteously does not mean that everyone agrees with us or that we say things that everyone agrees with. It means we take stands on issues that would misform righteousness. We agree with Christ’s move to reconcile all things to Himself, which means that righteousness is moving toward one direction: Jesus.
To live right before people is to live in a way that desires and honors God as the means to live right before people.
Augustine says that this is a means to hunger and thirst for justice is to those who “love the true and unshakable good.”
What is the righteous life look like? One that is always making moves in the divine live of Christ to reconcile our life in Christ and our lives with each other. We live justly with one another.
Is there anywhere where your life is unbalanced? That there is something in between you and God or you and another person?
Hunger and thirst for righteousness until that is reconciled. Christ promised that we will be satisfied in it because all of human activity desires righteousness and justice.
And Jesus order is not accidental.
Because once we understand righteousness and justice we can talk about mercy.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
This might be the one of the more obvious statements or at least the one that is most easily lived?
But true mercy is shown at the tail end of righteousness
Because it is through righteousness that we understand mercy.
The concept of mercy can be a strange animal. Because we often struggle to show it but we love more than anything receiving it.
But the image of the right side up life does not start with receiving it, it begins with showing it.
What is mercy? It is the act of compassion on another.
Why is mercy important? Because mercy offers the space in another’s life to choose differently.
Mercy is the gift we have recieved to not be blocked in by our own sin and brokenness. Mercy offers us agency to choose differently in the world.
We see this powerfully in the book Les Miserables. Good thing it has been countlessly made into musicals and movies. In the opening scene of the 2012 movie we see Jean valjiean released from prison but because he isn’t a proper citizen has no place to go. He is sleeping on the doorsteps of a church and interacts with a local priest.
Show clip.
This is the picture of mercy. This is the offer of agency and life within a life that sometimes feels blocked in with no other options
Mercy offers options
We know that because if you are in Christ this morning you have been shown mercy.
We all want mercy, and that is part of the flourishing life, but real and true life is found in being merciful.
To show mercy is to be quick to forgive and quick to show compassion.
When we live this and offer this, we practice a form of devotion.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
The sotm is not just about ways to act in the world, they are about inner postures as well. The pure in heart is a posture of devotion. This goes back to the idea of the word perfect. Be wholehearted.
This is the call and reminder that we are not just called to be morally better. This list is not just about things to do, though the sotm will fill a lifetime on what it means to follow Christ well in the world.
Again Jesus is telling us, this is how life works. If you want to see what flourishing looks like, it looks like this. If you want to see God, it will mean a purity in heart. A whole heartedness.
The Sotm is not just a way to act in the world, it is a way to interact with God Himself.
This is the flourishing life. we understand that all life comes from God, He has come to us in the person of Christ, and right in the middle of the beatitudes He calls us to interact with Him.
This is, to me, miraculous. Christ has come to us and has invited us to know Him and to be a part of what He is doing in the world. And He is calling us to live in such a way that we will be able to see Him.
The way we live out these postures is to ask the question
What are we paying attention to?
The concept of paying attention is necessary in the sermon on the mount. Because to pay attention means that we are able to focus in ourselves for that which Christ is doing.
Jesus Himself is pointing to life, pointing us to what is flourishing, where and how to find it.
The sermon on the mount teaches us that the good life is not hard to find but it can be hard to do.
And one of the ways we can attend to it is by figuring out what we are paying attention to?
Where are you looking for information, for comfort, for convenience these days?
In other words, what are you paying attention to?
The SOTM seems impossible, not because it actually is, but because the things that we are paying attention to are often in resistance to the flourishing life.
Culture makes massive demands on your attention. They are coming for all of it. News networks make massive demands on your attention. Social media makes massive demands on your attention. All of them promise a form of the flourishing life.
And what we need to figure out is who is telling the truth and who will we pay attention to.
The good news is Christ cuts through all of it. We see God when we attend to Him, when we look to Him.
That is the promise always offered to us in Jesus words. He is waiting, communicating, promising and fulfilling His promises. Our role is to begin to pay attention. That is our posture.