Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit
Aug. 25/26 Matthew
4: 23-25, 5: 1-3
Recently in an online forum, a
former Navy flight instructor recounted teaching his pilots about maintaining a
disciplined focus while flying their aircrafts. “It’s relatively easy,” he
said, “to develop” what he calls “spatial disorientation.”[1] In
other words, the loss of intense focus could result in the pilots flying upside
down and not even know it. And if you were to do a quick Google search, you can
read reports of pilots who met unfortunate death because they were “upside
down” and never knew it. This week we are beginning a new sermon called
“Blessed: Finding the Good Life.” It’s based on the first of Jesus’ teachings
in what is known as the Sermon on the Mount, a group of eight sayings known as
“The Beatitudes,” or words of blessing. And we get the sense that these
beatitudes are Jesus’ effort to lead us out of potential spiritual disorientation
and into true victorious, Kingdom living. Would
you read with me?
The other day I sent my mom a text
message asking if she had made it safely home. She had left our beach house
earlier that day and I was surprised that she hadn’t called yet. She quickly
responded and said, “Well, we missed our exit and it’s pushed our arrival back
a few hours.” I came to find out later that mom had pulled a fast one on me and
was completely joking and was still on the right course, but it was a good
reminder that it’s easy to miss our signs. We all know that interstate zombie
feeling. You set the cruise, get into deep thought, and before you know it,
every town looks the same and you end up missing the all-important landmark.
Well, there’s something similar
happening to the crowd that day when Jesus begins to teach. There’s something about
the crowd that has become “zombie-like,” or “normalized” and it catches Jesus’
attention. He’s called a group of people to be his disciples, which simply
means he’s called them to believe, to follow and to obey him. They’ve been
invited into a new way of life, a different way of life, but even in the early
stages of that new discipleship life, there’s a dangerous expectancy, a
dangerous normalcy settling in. And this is important for us to hear. As Jesus
heals and ministers, everything around him begins to grow. His fame grows, the
crowd increases, and people are receiving miraculous healings. Every indicator
of success is on an upward trajectory. But yet Jesus’ response is telling. Instead
of celebrating, instead of continuing what has been wildly successful, he
begins to walk up the mountain, leaving the crowd behind, and inviting the
disciples to follow him.
Now, Jesus never says this, but I
believe Jesus’ motivation is to protect
these young disciples from spiritual disorientation, which is very real. In
a similar story from the Gospel of John, Jesus makes the sobering statement
that the crowds are growing, but not because they want Jesus, but because they
want what offers. It’s Jesus who is our biggest need, not what Jesus gives us.
So could it be that Jesus doesn’t want the disciples to falsely attribute
“blessedness” to the wild success they’ve just witnessed? Could it be that
Jesus wants the disciples to know that life doesn’t always look like this, and
in order to be a disciple, you have to learn to navigate this world differently?
Could it be that Jesus is trying to shield his disciples from flying the plane
upside down? The great devotional writer Oswald Chambers writes, “This is how
the Holy Spirit works in the heart of a disciple. The teaching of Jesus Christ
comes with astonishing discomfort to begin with, because it is out of all
proportion to our natural way of looking at things, but Jesus puts in a new
sense of proportion, and slowly we form our way of walking and our conversation
on the line of His precepts.”[2] This
is the goal Jesus has when he gives us the beatitudes.
At the heart of this passage is
Jesus’ concern with how we perceive God’s favor and God’s activity. Quite
simply, this is what he means by the Kingdom of God. When he says things like,
“The Kingdom of God is at hand,” Jesus means something very specific. He means
that God’s reign has been opened up to us, that God’s active role in our world
is here, and the good life, he offers is meant to be ours right now. Now, if we
were to define the “good life” by almost every other measure, it would look
like this: good health, a fat wallet, a good job, a nice family, very little
challenges in life. Never overworked. Never stressed out. And we know this is
true because these are the things that dominate our attention, our time and our
money. And so the danger is that we begin to associate God’s blessing and favor
with those who have those things and assume that those who don’t have those
things are somehow missing out on God’s best.
And so Jesus, knowing that the
Kingdom of God doesn’t always equal good health and great jobs and a perfect
life, calls his disciples up the mountain and essentially says, “Let me tell
you where you can find God’s kingdom activity in this world.” And then he goes
and begins to pronounce blessings in head-scratching ways. “Blessed are the
poor in spirit,” he says, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
That statement alone should shock
us. And if it doesn’t, it should at least give us reason to pause because anything
associated with the word “poor” doesn’t tend to conjure up images of
blessedness and God’s presence. Admittedly,
if most of us weighed the desire to be poor or rich, we wouldn’t think twice.
We would choose to be rich because poor is not a virtue in our culture. Poor is
not a standard to live up to. In our culture, rich is a word of access. Being
rich grants us access to stuff, to opportunities, to a life we think we can
control and manipulate, to great doctors and great restaurants and great
lifestyles. Being poor doesn’t allow for any of that. But in God’s economy, according to Jesus, mind you, it is the poor who
are most accessible to God’s kingdom, because it is the poor above all who stand
in need of what God does.
We could be talking about finances
here, but we’re not. When Jesus talks about being “poor in spirit,” he’s not
talking about a financial condition or social situation, he’s talking about a spiritual
reality, a state of the soul. One writer calls it “spiritual poverty.” That’s what it means to be poor in spirit. And
who are the poor in spirit? All of us. The poor in spirit are not just the poor
guys and gals in the valley praying for more miracles. The poor in spirit are
also those faithful disciples who have helped bring about some of those
miracles. And Jesus isn’t about to let them forget it. This is what makes the
Sermon on the Mount so revolutionary. Jesus announces the availability of God’s
activity, to a bunch of spiritually destitute people: to The know-it-all
Pharisees who are certain that they know exactly how to interpret God’s word,
to the fisherman who has no idea what Jesus means to drop his or her net to
“catch people,” to the random person in the crowd who can’t tell the difference
between Peter and Paul.
And this is good news. In fact,
this is better than good news; this is great news. Because with this first
“beatitude,” this statement of blessing, Jesus announces to the entire world that
the Kingdom of God is now open for
business for all. To all who are
worried that they’ll never have enough faith to please God, the Kingdom of God
is for you. To all who think they fully understand God, the modern day
Pharisees, the Kingdom of God is for you. To the spiritually puffed up and
arrogant, who might be the most spiritually deprived of all, the Kingdom of God
is opened to you. To all who aren’t even sure they want to believe, or if there
is something to believe, the Kingdom of God has even been opened to you. And to
all who can’t believe there are people in this world who don’t believe, the
Kingdom is opened up even to you.
In his loving way, Jesus means to
tell us that, whether we know it or not, we are all a people of spiritual poverty,
a people “poor in spirit.” And how can we disagree? When we stand before Jesus,
the only one who isn’t poor in
spirit, the only one who truly sees
with the eyes of God, we find ourselves a bit like Adam and Eve: spiritually naked, our true heart condition
revealed. And that’s uncomfortable. No one likes to be naked. No one likes to
be found out. But when Jesus is the standard, we just don’t have the resources
to convince ourselves that we are better than we actually are. And in most
cases, that humility would be enough to take our ball and go home. But this
spiritual reality is not enough for God to throw in the towel and keep the good
life of the Kingdom to himself. No, in a
great reversal of “the way it’s always been done,” the Lord of the Kingdom
plunges himself right in the midst of a spiritually diverse and destitute
people and says, “I have come that they may have the good life.” And all we can
do is receive what God wants to give.
The good life, friends, isn’t about
having stuff, working hard, having strong relationships or even enjoying life.
I know Solomon said something about that, but Solomon isn’t Jesus. Those things
are good, but they aren’t quite what Jesus has in mind by the blessed life. The
good life is the confident assurance that even though God peers into the depths
of our hearts and rightly diagnoses our spiritual health as “poor,” he embraces
us nonetheless and still offers us
what only He can give. You could make another argument if you’d like, but THAT is truly the blessed life.
So how can you live into that this
week? I won’t give you a spiel about trying harder or being more faithful-
those things will happen supernaturally
as we allow the Holy Spirit to grow us. Rather, your job is to radically
believe that God’s Kingdom has been opened up to you, the poor in spirit, and that
everything that is God’s Kingdom (the fruit of the Spirit, victory over sin,
joyful life) is meant to be yours if you so desire. Amen.
[1] https://www.quora.com/How-can-a-plane-fly-upside-down-without-the-crew-noticing
[2]
Studies On the Sermon On the Mount, Oswald Chambers
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