All Saints Bulletin ↓ Our Savior Lutheran Church, Grants Pass, OR
↓ Faith Lutheran Church, Medford OR
Matthew 5:1-12 TRUE BLESSEDNESS. Blest Are You
PRAYER O almighty and everlasting God, who through Your Only-Begotten
and beloved Son, Jesus Christ, sanctifies all your elect and beloved: give
us grace to follow their faith, hope and love, that we together with them may
obtain eternal life; through Your Son, Jesus Christ, our LORD, who lives and
reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one true God, now and forever. Amen.
In the Name of the LORD Jesus, who calls His Church “blessed” by
virtue of His Holy Precious Blood, and innocent suffering and death,
fellow redeemed:
WHAT IS BLESSED?! Grace to you and peace from God our
Father and the LORD Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text for All Saints Day is
from Matthew Chapter 5, the Beatitudes. We focus on the word
“BLESSED.”
SHAKY GROUND Bible translators always tread on shaky
ground, but never so much as when they take on passages that are
familiar. For a time there was a trend in modern Bible translations to try
and better capture the meaning of the predominant word in our gospel
reading for this morning. So instead of “Blessed are the poor in spirit,”
you would find “Happy are the poor in spirit,” or “Truly happy,” or
“fortunate.” There was never really a great outcry against such
substitutions, but in the end all of them seemed a bit lacking, a little
shallow in meaning; and thus today, most translations stick with
“blessed” in the Beatitudes. Even that is really somewhat lacking, but no
other word comes close to conveying the meaning behind the beginning
to our LORD’s Sermon on the Mount. After all, it is obvious from the
lesson that Jesus here wishes to say more than, “Here, let Me tell you
how to be happy, or truly happy, or lucky.” Jesus here wishes to
communicate the state of being in God’s favor. In other words, the
important idea here is not that you are happy, but that God is happy with
you. That He should look on you and say, “There is what I created in the
beginning and called good.”
NOT THE 10 COMM.s And perhaps it’s the difficulty of trying to
capture this concept in a word, or the way the Beatitudes are lined up in
a nice, convenient list, or, likely, because of our sinful flesh, but we have
a tendency to misapply the Words of our LORD. We’re prone to take the
Beatitudes and turn them into a bookend of the Ten Commandments.
We think to exhibit the qualities listed in the Beatitudes or to work on
developing them within ourselves is to have the state of blessedness.
HARD 4 CHRISTIANS For Christians, this is often a source of
distress. Because when we look at ourselves, our relatives, friends and
our children, and those in the Church, we very often don’t see the
qualities listed here in St. Matthew. Indeed it is not unusual to hear the
accusation that the church is full of hypocrites. And when such
accusations are made, things like the Beatitudes are often called up as
evidence. “Look,” they say, “Here are people who claim to be good, who
claim to be Christians, and yet whose lives are not always the image of
the Ten Commandments or the Beatitudes.” The world often makes this
charge, because it looks at the Church and what does it see? Sin.
[YOUNG] CHRISTIANS?! We can hardly disagree, since we have
often made the same observation. We look around and say, “What are
we doing wrong? Here I thought we were a Christian church, and yet I
see gossip and envy and arrogance. What are we going to do about
this?” We may look at our kids and say, “What is our problem? This is
supposed to be a Christian community, and yet we have to deal with
revenge, misbehavior, talking back, unruly children. In the high schools
we see problems like theft and teen pregnancy and drug use! What are
we going to do about this?” We look at ourselves and think, “Here I am
supposed to be a Christian, and yet here I am condemning those
around me. I call myself a Christian, but I lost my temper with my
children. I used language that no Christian should use. I lied to my wife.
What am I going to do about this?”
BETTER[?] CHRISTIANS Unfortunately, our first reaction is often
that we are going to eliminate this sin through behavior modification.
We are going to make a real and better commitment to Christ. We
are going to become more humble, more merciful, more pure in heart.
From now on, I’m going to be more Christ-like, and thus show myself
and those around me that I am a real Christian.
BEATITUDES =/= FAITH It’s tempting for us to think the virtues
listed in the Beatitudes are a sign that the Church is among us, that
when we see people who go to church and are poor in spirit, and meek,
and merciful and pure in heart, then I can say here Jesus gives His
blessing. Or, on the other hand, when we see someone who seems to
be lacking in one or more of those categories, to question their faith.
BLESSED BY MERCY But the Beatitudes are not to “bookend the
Ten Commandments” or to state the Commandments positively, as if
God were saying, “You shall not kill, rather, blessed are the merciful.”
They are not a list of behaviors, as if God were making more demands
upon us and saying, “When I see you doing these things I will give you
My blessing.” The Beatitudes are Jesus’ declaration of a reality that
already exists, but which is invisible to us. It is Christ speaking to His
Church saying, “You are blessed.” And in saying we are blessed, He
blots out all thought of reward, every hope to earn, every expectation of
being paid for work well done…What man cannot reach, because it is
too high and lofty and sublime, this is brought near and actually placed
in his bosom as part of what he owns; and that now, not at some future
date, but now, in the ever-present eternity.” We may see pride and
arrogance and selfishness and hatred; and you mourn over your lowly
estate because of sin, yet in faith sees a living hope, and thus we are
blessed. In Christ we obtain mercy, we have seen God. In Christ, we
are called sons and daughters of God.
FAITH GRABS TRUTHS Christ must declare these truths to us,
because we cannot see it. Faith must grab hold of them, because
they are intangible and invisible. This is why we say in the Creed, “I
believe in the holy Christian Church,” because Faith Alone Sees the
One, Holy, Christian and Apostolic Church.
TRUE BLESSEDNESS This real blessedness that Jesus talks
about in Matthew 5 is something that we could never know apart from
Christ and His declaration. What we see of the Church is neither holy
nor Christian. When we look at ourselves and our children, we see little
evidence of salvation, but as Hebrews says, faith is the evidence of that
which we cannot see. It is faith which latches onto the true signs that
God is among us and that we are blessed. We come to worship and we
see water, we hear words, we taste bread and wine. We leave, and we
do not see any more holiness in us than before we came. But faith sees
God’s Word and Sacraments for what they are: Forgiveness that we can
feel, hear, taste and touch. That is why Jesus calls us blessed: because
we are forgiven. The Beatitudes are no bookend to the Ten
Commandments, but to Psalm 32: “Blessed is he whose transgression
is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the
LORD does not impute iniquity, and in whose heart is no guile.” It is the
blessedness that we receive in our Baptism, in the declaration of
forgiveness, in the LORD’s Supper. It is the blessing pronounced
upon us each Sunday at the end of the Divine Service.
APPLICATION It is because of this blessedness that we
are able to celebrate the Festival of All Saints’. What we celebrate is that
Christ, through His work and the work of the Holy Spirit, has made
US saints before God.
MASTER PAINTER In the Beatitudes Jesus appears as the
Master Painter, who with bold strokes and artistic skill has given us a
most striking reproduction of the Christian as he appears before God
and the Church: He is poor, because of the presence of sin, s/he
mourns because of the power of sin; s/he is meek because of the
humiliating filth of sin; but s/he has in the same moment a living hope
despite sin; S/He possesses a merciful heart that is clean before God
because it has been washed clean by the blood of Christ, and s/he
strives daily to live as an example of purity before his fellows; s/he is
called by God Himself a ‘child of God’ and given the height calling of
being the helpmeet of God as a peacemaker before God and men. As
such a child of God s/he owns the blessings of heaven and earth, the
favor of God, and the assurance that no man or devil can hurt nor harm
him against the will of the Father.” Gloria Patri… Amen. SDG