Be-attitudes
Preacher: Revd Lindsey Sanderson, Moderator, United Reformed Church Synod of Scotland
Readings: Micah 6.1-8; Matthew 5.1-12
Come Holy Spirit, open our ears to hear, our minds to understand, and our hearts to love. May our living reflect your dwelling within us, enabling us to be people of love, joy, hope and peace. Amen.
We are making our way through the Epiphany season, a season of revelation, through which Christ is made known. The season begins with actions which reveal something of the person, mission and ministry of Jesus through the visit of the magi, Jesus’ baptism and the calling of the first disciples. Now in the second half of the season we begin to discover the content of Jesus ministry through his teaching. This continues to enable us to discover God revealed through Christ in Scripture and asks us to consider how we reveal God in our own lives and in our collective life together. Today we turn to the Sermon on the Mountain.
In picking the mountain, rather than choosing the plain as Luke does, Matthew’s Jesus continues to mirror Moses in important ways. As during the time of Moses, Israel suffers under an oppressive ruler. Like Moses, Jesus’ life is threatened in its earliest days. Like Moses, Jesus, and his family, have to flee the threat of death. Like Moses, Jesus emerges out of Egypt to follow God’s call to liberate the people. Like Moses, Jesus wanders in the wilderness and relies on God for sustenance.
On the mountain, like Moses at Mt. Sinai, Jesus interprets and proclaims God’s vision of a world aligned with God’s concerns. In this way, Jesus’ sharing and interpreting of the Beatitudes offers a guide to a life of wholeness in harmony with God’s creation and grace. Neither the Sermon on the Mount nor the Ten Commandments are rules, as much as they are visions for communal wholeness rooted in God’s liberation of the oppressed. Like the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount is narrated and imbedded within a larger story about the character of a faithful God. From Moses to Jesus, the call to live a life of holiness and righteousness is not moralistic as much as it is a response of gratitude for God’s grace and a call to live a life of God’s holiness.
So we can see that for Matthew Jesus’ teaching is not innovation but a vibrant recalling of tradition. Jesus’ words are not new so much as they are deeply rooted in God’s ancient promises and the ancient vision Moses shares on Mount Sinai. These are not new commandments so much as a rebirthing of ancient visions of God’s hopes.
The mountain, for both Moses and Jesus, is a liminal space, a crossroads of human life and divine encounter, a sacred place where the heavens and the earth meet. It is a place where we engage with the question offered by the season of epiphany: ‘where, or how do we discover God revealed in Christ through Scripture and in light of that how do we participate in revealing God today in our own lives and as a community of the church?’
On Mount Sinai God is revealed as the one who brings the people out of slavery, the Commandments begin with the affirmation, ‘I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery’. God is the one who offers freedom, real freedom, freedom from slavery in Egypt and a new life in a land which flowed with milk and honey and Jesus continues that promise of freedom in God’s kingdom, a freedom which is offered to those who are enslaved by the empire under whose rule they live, and a freedom denied by poverty and sorrow, violence and coercion. The teaching which Jesus offers, which we know as the Beatitudes, offers us a framework, a vision for a community where all will experience the freedom that is at the very heart of who God is.
In looking Jesus words then the first thing I notice is that are written in plural language, they concern societal visions, structures, and practices. They name oppressive situations which are the result and effect of empire which is the opposite of God’s empire, or kingdom. The transformative work of the kingdom is underway in the actions of Jesus and his followers but is yet to be completed, as the second half of the Beatitudes suggests.
So we should not spiritualise the experiences who are blessed in the Beatitudes. God’s blessing is upon those who are materially poor and whose spirits are crushed by economic injustice, deprived of resources, and who have few choices which was the experience of 70-80 per cent people living in the Roman Empire. The beatitudes recognize poverty’s corrosive and crushing impact on human lives even as they also declares that God’s empire is at work with the socioeconomic poor in their struggle for justice by transforming the imperial world.
The beatitude blessing the meek derives from Psalm 37, where the meek are promised that they will inherit the land. The psalm defines the meek not as the humble but as the literally powerless and poor who lack the life-giving resource of land; who have been plotted against by the wealthy powerful who have used violence to oppress them. The first four beatitudes declare divine blessing on situations and practices of exploitation, promising a reversal in both the present and the future.
The next five beatitudes name human actions that express God’s transforming and challenging work for a just world. They identify distinctive practices—doing mercy, being pure in heart, making peace, being persecuted and reviled—that further God’s justice. These actions mark the identity of the community of Jesus’ followers.
As we reflect on our world today – the rewriting of the rules of geo-politics and fragility of international alliances and global institutions, continuing war in Ukraine and a fragile ceasefire in Gaza, the ongoing effects of the climate emergency, and the challenges of the cost of living crisis for many in our own communities the beatitudes are as relevant, challenging and encouraging as ever. I find this reworking of the ancient text by Brian McLaren and Rob Bell helpful in placing this ancient framework for living into a form for today’s disciples.
The poor, and those in solidarity with them – God is on your side.
Those who mourn and feel grief about the state of the world – God is on your side.
The non-violent, gentle and humble – God is on your side.
Those who hunger and thirst for the common good – God is on your side.
The merciful and compassionate – God is on your side.
Those characterized by sincerity, kindness and generosity – God is on your side.
Those who work for peace and reconciliation – God is on your side.
Those who keep seeking justice – God is on your side.
Those who stand for justice and truth as the prophets did, who refuse to be quiet even when slandered, misrepresented, threatened, imprisoned or harmed – God is on your side!
Seeking to live the beatitudes in everything we do, seeking to be a blessing to others, knowing that God is on our side, not with any sense of self-righteousness or self -importance, but trusting that the presence of God in us, and in our words and actions, will give that same offer and experience of freedom that Jesus’ first listeners experienced, that the Israelites experienced at the time of the Exodus. These are BE-ATTITUDES, not a moralistic set of rules but a response of gratitude for God’s grace and a call to live a life of God’s holiness.
Our need to hear and respond to Jesus words, and the need for our world to hear them grows ever more urgent. There are many in our world today who are actively advocating for, and implementing the power and control that comes with empire; who are feeding distrust in our communities, who continue to value the wellbeing of self over compassion for others, who see strangers as those who are to be feared not welcomed, who see difference as divisive rather than something to celebrate, who want to treat people as commodities rather than children of God. Those of us who actively resist that worldview need to work together to live the Be-attitudes finding common cause with all who share that commitment to the Beatitudes vision of the world.
As part of my role as Synod Moderator for the United Reformed Church in Scotland I am involved with both the Scottish Churches Parliamentary Office and the Scottish Church Leaders’ Forum. With the Holyrood election now less than 100 days away, many people’s thoughts are turning to the election and in particular the way we engage in public and political discourse, whether we are those seeking election or the voting public. A project has been launched by the International Futures Forum called Scotland’s Four Words of Hope, drawing upon the words engraved in the mace which sits in the parliament’s chamber. – The words are integrity, compassion, justice and wisdom – we shall be using these as a framework for our collective life in the Synod this year and the Church Leaders will offer a prayer resource in the weeks leading to the election using these four words as themes. In a world in which many people feel their voice is not heard, Scotland’s Four words of Hope affirms an unwillingness to be bystanders, and a determination to seek agreement on what might be the features of a society in which the values of the beatitudes are front and centre. For each of the four words have consequences in the real world. Integrity involves looking honestly at all the facts; compassion involves seeking to alleviate suffering for all those affected; justice involves seeking to impact fairly on everyone; and wisdom involves thinking realistically about the medium and long term. Four words which constitutionally and ceremonially are at the heart of our nation – can they also be at the heart of each one of us and the communities in which we live, people of faith and no faith working together for the common good.
Which leads me to a word on Micah, lest we forget his timeless rhetorical question of ‘what the Lord requires’ Micah calls the community to remember their past not for nostalgia’s sake but to reignite a corporate identity which is rooted in liberation. Micah, just like Matthew is making the links with Moses and the Exodus journey of the ancient Hebrew people.
‘With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high?” not burnt offerings, thousands of rams, rivers of oil, even the firstborn – for each of these things suggest that faith can be transactional and confuses ritual performance with moral integrity. No what God wants is neither mysterious nor inaccessible, it seems ordinary, even easy, but that would be a deception – “to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God”— In Micah’s vision, right worship cannot be severed from right relationship and the heart of the covenantal ethic made with the ancient Hebrew people is to be lived out in the moral action of justice, kindness and humility which outline a relational faith grounded in equity and compassion. Jesus may not refer directly to Micah’s questions and response in his sermon on the Mountain but we discover its influence weaving through his words and exemplified in his daily living.
So let’ return to our Epiphany questions what do we discover about God revealed through Christ in Scripture and what might we consider about how we reveal God in our own lives and in our collective life together?
In his sermon on the mountain Jesus reinvigorates the communal framework for living which recognises God’s desire for freedom from the domination of empire for all people. He affirms that God is with and is transforming the lives of those who are poor, marginalised, worn down by oppression and that the lives of those who are his disciples should be characterised by their commitment to furthering the kingdom of God, through their commitment to God’s framework for life. Micah talks about this in terms of justice, kindness and humility, Jesus talks about mercy, peace-making, righteousness and justice. As we continue that commitment today we have opportunities individually but more so as part of society to continue furthering the kingdom as we live the be-attitudes in our own time and context.
Living the be-attitudes we can be a force for good and for change in our community and our world. May it be so. Amen.