There is little question the Sermon on the Mount is the most well-known of Jesus’ teachings. Rev. Dr John Stott called it “the nearest thing to a manifesto that [Jesus] ever uttered, for it is his own description of what he wanted his followers to be and to do” [Stott, J. R. W., & Stott, J. R. W. (1985), The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7): Christian Counter-Culture. The Bible Speaks Today (14–15). Leicester: Leicestershire; Downers Grove, Ill.,: Inter-Varsity Press]. A manifesto is a public declaration of a person’s principles, policies and goals. What we have in this teaching in chapters 5 through 7 of The Gospel of Matthew is the essence – the ultimate standard -- of right or righteous living that Jesus wanted for every one of his followers, without exception.
The Sermon is so famous and powerful we can hardly underestimate its influence. The great poet and preacher John Donne of the early 17th century wrote:
“Our blessed Saviour, in these three chapters of this Gospel, hath given us a sermon of texts, of which, all our sermons may be composed. All the articles of our religion, all the canons of our Church, all the injunctions of our princes, all the homilies of our fathers, all the body of divinity, is in these three chapters, in this one sermon in the Mount.”Lutheran minister, scholar and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, hanged by the Nazis in 1945, based his classic book The Cost of Discipleship upon its teaching. And the influence of the Sermon on the Mount is not limited only to Christians. Anyone who is familiar with Mahatma Gandhi’s approach to political life understands Gandhi’s acknowledgement of Jesus’ teachings, especially in the Sermon on the Mount.
For those who want to be serious followers of Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount focuses on the kind of life Jesus wants for us. It highlights attitudes and behaviours found in those who confess their belief in Jesus as the One to whose extraordinary life and teachings they have committed their lives. While we won’t be dealing with the whole of the Sermon in chapters 5 though 7, we will spend the next five Sundays on the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount -- the Beatitudes of Jesus.
I have called this series “Be-Attitude Living.” Someone else has called Jesus’ Beatitudes “beautiful attitudes.” In these Beatitudes, we see the character and nature of the life Jesus sets out before us. We will see who we are – and who we ought to be – as people who confess we follow Jesus Christ. We are going to centre our attention on five of Jesus’ Beatitudes. Today, we will think about “Less Is More” as seen in verse 3: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” In the following weeks, we will consider “Loss Is Gain” in verse 4. We will see we need “A Good Appetite for God” in verse 6. We will be challenged to be people who “Act With Mercy” in verse 7. And then we will reflect on what it means to be people “Working for Peace” in verse 9 – an appropriate message, I hope, for the Sunday we celebrate Remembrance Day. These are the attitudes that are to characterize all followers of Jesus Christ.
For those who don’t have enough food to eat today or a bed to sleep in tonight, to hear that less means more would be seen as cruel, even ridiculous. So it’s important to realize that Jesus is not saying material poverty in and of itself is a good thing. The Bible Jesus read – which is the Old Testament -- says in the Book of Deuteronomy:
“If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor.… Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.” [Deut. 15:7, 11 NRSV]Jesus knew God’s compassion for those who were poor is so great that ignoring the plight of the poor is grounds for divine judgment. In the New Testament, we read in Galatians 2:10 that those who follow Christ are to “remember those who are poor.” In Acts 20:35, the Apostle Paul quoted Jesus who said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Today, many people give to a broad range of charities – some faith-based and some not – whose mandate includes helping those who are poor to receive the assistance they need and to get out of poverty if at all possible. So Jesus is not saying that living in a state of constant material poverty is what he wants or what God blesses either.
But Jesus is describing the kind of person God blesses. He wants us to know the character of the people who are on the receiving end of God’s blessing. The Good News Translation uses the word “happy” instead of “blessed.” It says “happy” are those who are poor in spirit or who mourn or who are humble or who are merciful. But when we think of being happy, we usually mean we feel happy. We feel good in ourselves. But in Jesus’ Beatitudes, he is not declaring how people feel. Rather, he is stating what God thinks of them. So Jesus says those who know they are poor in their spirit are those who find approval with God. They are the kind of people whom God blesses.
One of the most difficult hurdles some of us encounter in our relationship with God is to recognize we are spiritually bankrupt before God. For those of us who have everything or almost everything we need to live a good life, it is sometimes hard to believe we might be spiritually poor or spiritually poverty-stricken. That’s why some translations make this beatitude – “Blessed are the poor in spirit” – as clear as possible in its intent. For instance, the Good News Translation says: “Happy are those who know they are spiritually poor.” The New Living Translation says: “God blesses those who are poor and [who] realize their need for him.” And the New Century Version says: “They are blessed who realize their spiritual poverty.” So in the kingdom of heaven -- God’s kingdom – saying less is more means we acknowledge our personal spiritual poverty for that is the kind of person God blesses.
It may feel strange to connect God’s approval or blessing with being spiritually poor. However, Jesus wants us to see there is a connection. Let me come at it this way. In the Oxford Dictionary, the first definition of the word “poor” is “lacking adequate … means.” In the New Testament the word “poor” bears something of the idea of a poverty so deep that the person who is poor is fully dependent on the giving of others. People who are poor do not have enough of what it takes to survive. In this case, people who are poor recognize they do not have enough goodness of their own to stand before God. So if we connected this meaning of “poor” with the words “in the spirit,” we have the idea of “Blessed are those who know they cannot stand before God on their own merit.” Or “Blessed are those who are so desperately poor in their spiritual resources that they realize they must have help from outside sources.”
Of course, being “poor in spirit” does not mean that we have no value as persons. It does not mean we should have no self-worth. It does not mean we are merely shy or we lack spiritual interest or energy. Being “poor in spirit” means we simply acknowledge our deep need of God’s goodness rather than relying on our own. Being “poor in spirit” means we come to God with open hands and heart to receive God’s loving grace rather than thinking we have enough goodness in ourselves to present to God. When we come to God this way, we recognize we cannot survive without “help from the outside” – without expressing our dependence upon God. That was a major issue between Jesus and religious leaders in his day. They prided themselves in their own goodness and were unwilling to acknowledge their dependence -- not on their own efforts but -- simply on God and God’s grace.
Do you remember the story of the Pharisee, a respected religious leader, and the publican or tax collector, regarded then as a notorious sinner? Both went into the temple to pray. In Luke’s Gospel 18:10-14, The Message Bible puts the story this way:
Jesus told this story to some who were complacently pleased with themselves over their moral performance and looked down their noses at the common people: “Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax man. The Pharisee posed and prayed like this: ‘Oh, God, I thank you that I am not like other people -- robbers, crooks, adulterers, or, heaven forbid, like this tax man. I fast twice a week and tithe on all my income.’
“Meanwhile the tax man, slumped in the shadows, his face in his hands, not daring to look up, said, ‘God, give mercy. Forgive me, a sinner.’
Jesus commented, ‘This tax man, not the other, went home made right with God.’ ”
Actually, being “poor in spirit” is no respecter of persons. We can be respectable or not. We can have money in the bank or not. We can have a nice home or not. We can be a churchgoer or not. What matters is having an openness of spirit and a willingness to come to God realizing we have no spiritual resources of our own or within ourselves to commend ourselves to God. That’s the kind of person Jesus says God blesses.Dr. Perry Buffington, a licensed psychologist, author and columnist, in an article titled “Playing Charades” [Universal Press Syndicate (9-26-99)], wrote about various situations in which we often fool ourselves. He concludes with this comment: “And, finally, as we take our seat in church or synagogue, we try to fake out the Almighty that we’ve really been good all week.”
You may recall hearing this next true story in a previous message but I believe you will sense in it an acknowledgement of being spiritually poor.
Dr. Helen Roseveare was the only doctor in a large African hospital. Because of the constant interruptions and shortages of medical supplies, she became increasingly impatient and irritable with everyone around her. Eventually, one of the African pastors asked Helen to come with him. He drove her to his humble house and told her that she was taking a personal retreat -- two days of silence and solitude. She was to pray until her attitude adjusted. All night and the next day she did pray and she struggled. She said her prayers seemed to bounce off the ceiling. Late in the evening on the second day, as she sat with the pastor around a little campfire, with humility and desperation of spirit, she confessed she was stuck. With his bare toe, the pastor drew a vertical line on the dusty ground. “That is the problem, Helen: there is too much ‘I’ in your service.” He gave her a suggestion: “I have noticed that quite often you take a coffee break and hold the hot coffee in your hands waiting for it to cool.” Then he drew a horizontal line across the first one making a cross. “Helen, from now on, as the coffee cools, ask God, ‘Lord, cross out the “I” and make me more like you.’” And that became a daily routine in Helen’s life.Helen Roseveare is a follower of Jesus whose spirit reflects the be-attitude of less is more. This is the kind of person The Message Bible depicts this way: “You’re blessed when you are at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.”
“Be-Attitude Living,” according to Jesus, is an attitude of life that God desires to see in all those who call themselves Christians. Being “poor in spirit” means acknowledging our total dependence on God to help us live our lives God’s way. We need the help of the Holy Spirit to live the way Jesus taught – we cannot live his way on our own. That open attitude to God’s involvement in our lives is the kind of character Jesus loves to see in his people. And that is the kind of attitude that takes God seriously. Less really is more when we cross the “I” of our lives with the cross of Jesus. Then God is able to bless us – fill us -- with more love, more hope, more joy, more patience, more kindness, more goodness, more faithfulness, more humility and more mercy than we could ever imagine. When we rely on God like that, Jesus says, the kingdom of heaven will truly belong to us!
May this be so for you and for me.
Rev. Chris Miller
October 10, 2010
OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto
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