What Is Good

Scriptures:     Micah 6:1-8,  Psalm 15

            1 Corinthians 1:18-31,  Matthew 5:1-12

Tony Campolo, a Baptist pastor and professor emeritus at Palmer Seminary – formerly Eastern Baptist Seminary - and Eastern University, located in St David’s, just outside Philadelphia, often begins his talks to Christian audiences as follows:  “I have three things I’d like to say today.  First, last night while you were sleeping, 30,000 children died because of starvation and diseases related to malnutrition.  Second, most of you don’t give a shit.  Third, what’s more is that many of you are more upset that I used the word ‘shit’ than that 30,000 children died.”  Campolo uses this intentionally provocative language to jolt his audiences – often comfortable and complacent – into re-evaluating their priorities with regard to the gospel, leading them to question whether they may have been majoring in the minors, straining out gnats while swallowing camels. 

Today’s Gospel begins a three-week series of readings from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.  Some of this material is unique to Matthew’s gospel, though other parts of the Sermon on the Mount also appear in Luke’s gospel, where Luke presents Jesus’ much shorter Sermon on the Plain.  The Revised Common Lectionary links today’s Gospel reading to a key passage from the prophet Micah, in which the prophet asks what God wants, proposes an ever escalating series of sacrifices to appease God’s wrath – burnt offerings, calves a year old, thousands of rams, ten thousand rivers of oil, my firstborn son even -  only to sweep them away and conclude, “He has told you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.”  We could say that the Sermon on the Mount gives an extended, detailed description of what it looks like to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.  

As long as Jesus’ sermon is – three chapters of Matthew’s gospel – nearly every phrase is a gem.  Matthew’s gospel was written to a predominantly but not exclusively Jewish community of converts to the way of Jesus.  Torah, the teaching of Moses, was central to their thinking.  In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is presented as a second Moses, going up to the mountaintop,  just as Moses went atop Mt. Sinai, to deliver the wisdom he received from God.  And so the Sermon on the Mount has been seen as a kind of Christian wisdom literature, similar in some ways to the wisdom found in the Book of Proverbs or in Ecclesiastes, but with a difference.  While the wisdom in Proverbs, with its repeated warnings against laziness, drunkenness, or consorting with prostitutes, is firmly oriented toward helping the reader navigate the ways of this world as it is, the wisdom of Jesus as found in the Sermon on the Mount is oriented toward helping the reader envision – and live into – the reign of God.  One could say that Jesus was guiding his listeners toward building the new world – the reign of God – within the shell of the old world, the world as it was.

Today’s reading picks up at the beginning of the sermon, where Jesus offers a series of blessings.  And let me read these again - I think we can do with a second hearing:

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
"Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
"Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
"Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

“Blessed”, Jesus says – but he applies the term “blessed” precisely to those the world considers unblessed – the poor, those who mourn, the meek, those who seek justice, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted.   Look at those in political authority, and these qualities Jesus blesses are nowhere to be found, nowhere in evidence.  In our day, as in Jesus’ day, it is the wealthiest 1/10 of 1%, the scoffers and mockers, the arrogant, the crooks and shakedown artists, the cruel and merciless,  the warmongers, those who exploit women and traffic children – the Harvey Weinsteins and Jeffrey Epsteins of the world - the persecutors – those who make life miserable for everyone else - who run the show.  These are the ones who live by the golden rule that he who has the gold makes the rules, the ones who are convinced that those who die with the most toys win.  The blessings of Jesus contained in the beatitudes are deeply countercultural, deeply subversive, deeply destabilizing, and deeply offensive to the powers that be.  Truly, as Paul wrote in our reading from I Corinthians today, the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but the power of God to those who are being saved.

Time was that in old King James and Revised Standard Version bibles, the words of Jesus were printed in red ink.   It was the publishers’ way of saying, “These are Jesus’ own words.  They matter.  A lot.  Pay attention to them.”  Many, perhaps most, white evangelical Christian leaders, though, have left the red letter words of Jesus behind, preferring to invoke Leviticus against those they oppose and to bestow misapplications of Paul’s words on grace for themselves and for those politicians they support.  Because the dirty secret is that for many, perhaps most, of today’s evangelical Christian leaders, “Jesus” is a code word for their real god, which is political power, a code word completely divorced from Jesus of Nazareth, the Jesus of the Bible.  As Jesus teaches elsewhere, by their fruits shall you know them…and many of these misleaders will hear from Jesus the chilling words, “Depart from me, you workers of iniquity; I never knew you.” (Matthew 7:23)  There actually is a small evangelical movement called Red Letter Christians, who call on the wider evangelical Christian community to return to the words and the ways of the savior.  They have a website, redletterchristians.org.  Some of the founders of this Red Letter Christian movement – Tony Campolo, Shane Claiborne – are based right here in Philly.  Tony Campolo I told you about earlier, and Shane Claiborne leads a community called Simple Way in Kensington, on Potter St right at K&A, that tries literally to live according to the description of the early church in the book of Acts, sharing all things in common.  Lately, in response to our city’s epidemic of gun violence, his group, in the spirit of Isaiah’s words about beating swords into plowshares, has been heating up guns – unloaded, of course – in a furnace, putting them on an anvil and beating them into garden tools.   Shane grew up in the south, and his heavy Tennessee accent is a bit jarring down at K&A – and while his dreadlocks fit in fine at K&A, they stick out a bit – literally - among some of the well-dressed church groups to whom he speaks - but that Simple Way community has changed lives, has saved lives.  And the writings of Campolo and Claiborne are transformative.  Check them out.

The words of Jesus’ beatitudes, these blessings, are descriptive, not prescriptive.  In other words, Jesus isn’t laying down a bunch of commandments:  “thou shalt be poor in spirit, merciful, meek, and so forth.”  Rather, Jesus is describing what under God’s reign looks like, what people living in that way look like.  Each of the beatitudes is a stroke of a paintbrush or a piece of stained glass that’s part of a larger picture, describing a way of life.   And Jesus invites his readers to opt into the blessing. 

There are some of the Beatitudes that may need to be unpacked a bit.  In Matthew, Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit”, while the parallel passage in Luke says, “Blessed are you poor”…and later, “woe to you who are rich.”  I think Matthew’s phrase “poor in spirit” certainly includes the economically poor, but also those who may have some limited resources but who are vulnerable to prejudice and discrimination, those whose safety can be snatched away any moment by a bigot with a baseball bat.  “Those who mourn” certainly includes those grieving the loss of family and friends, but also those who mourn and are sickened by society’s injustice and the suffering of the vulnerable that never seems to end, those who mourn the 30,000 children who died of hunger last night while we slept.  Jesus’ blessings on the meek is not an invitation to be a punching bag, but does lift up those who are not movers and shakers, but who rather are moved and shaken by those in power.   “Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness” are those who seek justice, definitely including social justice – so those who think social justice has nothing to do with the gospel may want to have a serious conversation with Jesus.    “The pure in heart” are those who are undivided in their devotion to Jesus, as opposed to those who live in compartments, who follow Jesus here but not there….which unfortunately is most of us, myself included, and I’ll be the first to confess that God is still working to get into some locked closets and cubbyholes in my life.   “The peacemakers” are those who work to resolve conflict not only at a personal but at a community and even national and international level.   “Those persecuted for righteousness’ sake” were present not only in Jesus’ day and are present not only in totalitarian countries elsewhere, but are present in our country as well, such as those who have been arrested for feeding the homeless, or, for example, Scott Warren, who was arrested on felony charges – and eventually acquitted -  for leaving food and water and other aid for refugees near our southern border.  Interestingly, those commentators who are constantly claiming to be persecuted for their beliefs by the use of phrases such as Happy Holidays had nothing to say in defense of Scott Warren, who actually was persecuted – arrested and threatened with serious prison time - for living out his understanding of Jesus’ words. 

From Micah:  “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”  From our Psalm today, Psalm 15:  “Those who do these things shall never be moved.”  From I Corinthians, “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God….we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”  And in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus blesses those considered by the world to be unblessed.  May God use these words of Scripture to shape and form our lives, to transform our lives from worldly ways so that we can be conformed to the ways of the Christ we call Savior.  Amen.