Sermon Tone Analysis
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Take out a blue card, or a scratch piece of paper and think about and answer the following question...
What is something that has happened in your life recently (week, month, year) or that you are currently going through that makes you feel NOT blessed?
I can re-state that a little differently.
The opposite of blessing is a curse.
So, I can restate the question as, “What is something that you are going through that makes you feel cursed?”
Loss of job
Girlfriend broke up with you
A family member died
Can’t pay the mortgage or rent
Or you can’t find a place to live...
Difficult schoolwork
Parents divorcing
We are beginning our Lenten Study a little early this year.
Lent is the 6 Sundays and a partial week leading to Easter.
We are taking the next 8 weeks (including today) to go through the Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew 5, 6 & 7. We are going to take a quick survey through these words of Jesus - in 8 weeks we won’t be able to discuss everything.
It would take months to unpack it all.
But, as we prepare for Easter and the celebration of Resurrection we will go through, briefly, what Jesus has to teach us.
In the backdrop of our reading and understanding of the Sermon on the Mount is an encounter Jesus has in Luke 4. Jesus is in Nazareth and on the sabbath he went to the synagogue.
He was invited to read and provide a Rabbi’s interpretation of a passage of the Jewish Holy Texts (for us the Old Testament).
Jesus found the Isaiah scroll and turned to these words...
Again, these words are a quote from Isaiah and we read them earlier.
They were words about someone who would come and bring God’s Kingdom, Grace, Justice, Righteousness with Him.
In the story in Luke, after Jesus has finished reading these words from Isaiah everyone looked at Jesus wanting to know what His interpretation of the text would be.
To them, Jesus said,
Jesus said that He came to fulfill that promise in Isaiah 61.
He came to be God representative of God’s Kingdom.
He came to bring God’s grace, Justice, Righteousness with him and to bestow that Grace on those in the world.
The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5, 6, 7) is an expansion of what Jesus said initially in Luke 4. And, it is a message of who we are, as Christ’s Disciples, as God’s grace works in us and through us.
So, let’s look at what Jesus said about the things in our life that we think are a curse...
The first thing to note … this is for Jesus’ Disciples.
Yes, the crowds can hear what Jesus has to say.
And, some in the crowd might enjoy what Jesus has to say, and they might decide to follow Jesus.
However, what Jesus has to say here is NOT for the crowds, it is NOT for the world.
Jesus is speaking to His disciples - to those who have answered His call to follow Him.
He is using this time to teach them about what it means to be a disciple of the One who declares that God’s Kingdom has broken through in Him.
This section is called the beatitudes
The term comes from the Latin meaning “happy”, “fortunate”, “blissful”.
Some say that this is the beatitudes because it shows what our attitude ought to be.
However, that is not exactly the case...
Jesus doesn’t say you OUGHT to be hungry, etc… He says blessed are those who ARE hungry.
It’s not about striving to be, it’s about who we already are as God works through us.
Here Jesus gives a list of things that most people would consider a curse
Poor, mourn, gentle, hungry, thirsty, merciful, pure, peacemakers/peaceful, insulted, persecuted...
No one strives to be any of these!
Not in our world.
Not in Jesus’ world either!
“Oh but Pastor,” you say, “Jesus wasn’t actually talking about real hunger or real poverty or real thirst etc… He’s talking about a spiritual condition.”
WRONG!
Yes, Jesus mentions a spiritual condition.
But, he is actually talking about real hunger.
Here’s why.
The people who gathered to listen to Jesus most likely felt hungry, thirsty, poor.
They would have heard Jesus use that word and their ears would have perked up.
They were actually hungry and thirsty etc… And because of that they could see a spiritual condition at work.
They were hungry and thirsty because no one acted justly and righteously to help them.
So, not only were they hungry and thirsty physically, they were hungry and thirsty for someone to act righteously.
It’s the same with poverty.
Their spirits were broken and poor because no one had a kind and compassionate spirit to assist them in their physical poverty.
So, Jesus is not just talking about a spiritual condition.
He is talking about a physical condition that has spiritual overtones.
But, no one strives for these conditions.
“Oh, but what about those who go on that reality show “Survivor.”
They go hungry and thirsty and they become poor.”
What are they striving for?
They are striving to win MONEY!
And even when I was a youth pastor, the youth would do what is called the 30 Hour Famine and we go hungry, the end goal is not hunger, the end goal is that our hunger leads to righteousness.
The end goal is to raise money to END HUNGER!
No one volunteers to be poor.
Think about our valley and the number of businesses looking for employers.
There is a labor shortage.
Now, I am told a lot of it has to do with the number of people who have retired, and no one is wanting to replace them - or there are not enough people in the labor pool to replace them.
But, I also know that many people are willing to walk off of jobs where they work 40 or more hours a week and are still poor.
People have realized, given various different things/reasons, that they can exit the labor pool and although they are still “poor” they have enough to get by and they aren’t slaving for someone for 40 hours to get paid a poor salary.
No one wants a job that provides a 2% cost of living increase a year, when inflation is almost 6% (no one wants to receive a 2% COLA when Social Security is paying out 5.9% as a COLA… People are walking off of jobs because they don’t want to be poor...
The world we live in, and the world Jesus lived in, views all these things as things that didn’t bring blessing.
So, they viewed them and the things on our cards as things that are curses.
Why?
Because they are uncomfortable.
Because if someone was going through these situations it meant that something was missing.
Someone who is poor is missing money.
Someone who is hungry is missing food.
Someone who is thirsty is missing something to drink.
Someone who is gentle, merciful, peaceful was viewed as being that way NOT by his/her choosing (these weren’t qualities Romans viewed as acceptable) but they were that way because they were WEAK and WIMPS!
Everyone in the world is out for himself, so why would you be gentle and meek and peaceful by your own choosing?
It must be because you are the wimp.
So, no one strives for this!
These things are all considered a curse.
These things are all uncomfortable.
But, Jesus flips human thought upside down.
He tells us that we are blessed when we are hungry, thirsty poor, peaceful, insulted etc…
YEAH RIGHT!!
But remember, people of faith have a different perspective.
And Jesus makes that perspective clear.
The things that we consider a curse DO NOT HAVE TO BE a curse.
We CAN consider them a blessing.
How?
Because we have a different perspective!
We have the perspective that even in the midst of a crummy curse feeling situation God is at work.
Blessing is not always a feeling - it is often a faith perspective.
This is why in the midst of something that feels like a curse we can say we are blessed.
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