Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven

Kurt Vonnegut was not a friend of Christianity, the way that we practice it in America, but he was a brilliant observer of life the way we practice it, and he was a fan of the Beatitudes. He once wrote: “For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.”

And he is right in several ways, not of which is connecting the dots between the Commandments and the Beatitudes, they stand together, or they should, in the shaping of our lives.

The problem is, with both of them, that they are so familiar that I am not sure that we even hear them and their remarkable message anymore. Words like Sabbath Day and Peacemakers, Adultery and Pure in Heart just seem to slide off of our ears We love them, but they don’t impact our lives any more than all of the sweet sentiments in the Christmas cards we recently received.

So I want to spend some time this morning just wallowing in the beatitudes and trying to imagine them as the second half of the law, trying to imagine them written on the walls of government buildings or more importantly, trying to imagine them written on the walls of our hearts where we would confront them each morning as a challenge and use them each night as a measuring stick of how well we lived the day.

And in order to do that we need to shake the notion that they are promises for the future, they’re not. You see, Jesus wasn’t concerned with what was going to happen to his listeners, or to you or me, someday, instead he invites us to be a part of a broad tapestry of relationships and communities, he is not presenting a collection of future possibilities, but rather it is a collection of present realities.

And I want to pay attention to three words that he used: “blessed” “are” and “is”.

First “blessed”.

It’s a good word, although I’m not sure we know what it means but we use it all the time and most of us like the idea of being blessed and we offer it up at the drop of a hat or the sound of a sneeze.

But the word “blessed” itself is best translated as “happy”.

That is what God wants for us, our happiness

Not happy in the “good mood” sense or the empty headed giggling sense, but a far deeper and more pervasive, even a defining aura, of contentment, fulfillment, serenity, joyfulness.

This is the plan and promise of God for our lives: Happiness. Micah gives us the raw ingredients for happiness, in contrast to the strict ritualistic rules of life, he tells us to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God and this will create in us a life that is happy.

You see, contrary to popular belief, there are no miserable Christians, there are some miserable people in churches, I’ve known more than a few and I’ve even been one on occasions, but there are no miserable Christians.

For when we are miserable, not when we are truly in misery but when we are miserable – and you know the difference, don’t you? – at that moment we are denying the source of our happiness, the presence of God in our lives.

That doesn’t mean that we can’t be sad when it is appropriate, we can mourn, Jesus wept.

It doesn’t mean that we can’t be angry when it is needed, we can speak the hard word, Jesus trashed the temple courtyard in Jerusalem.

It doesn’t mean that we can’t be bluesy at times and feel out of sync with the world, especially in this season of short, cold and nasty days, Jesus withdrew to quiet places when his sorrow was great.

But what it does mean is that those are only transient emotions, what it does mean is that our baseline attitude toward life and people and God is – and must be – joy, we are created for a contagious shared joy.

If we aren’t showing and sharing the joy of our lives we need to back off and reexamine those lives.

Now some of you know me well enough that you may be thinking, in the words that were hurled at Jesus by those who knew him so well in his hometown, “Physician, heal yourself!” for you have seen me lingering in my sadness, nurturing my anger, wallowing in my blues, and I have.

But I have always fought my way back from that darkness, with the help of the prophets Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, who urged us decades ago to take on the responsibility of changing the world, rearranging the world, from a world of war to a world of peace, from a culture of selfishness to a culture of sharing, from hate to love, from death to life and they told us this truth that echoes Christ: “If we can’t do it with a smile on our face and if we can’t do it with love in our hearts, then we have no right doing it at all”.

That is what it means to be blessed.

It means to live with a smile on our face, to live with love in our hearts, to live in the realities of our lives, to live with the community that God has given us, to live with the patient contentment, fulfillment, and serenity, the happiness that leaves the measuring of success and failure to God.

That’s what blessed means.

Rejoice and be glad,

And the second word is “are”.

Are doesn’t mean someday, it means right now, today.

     Blessed are the poor in spirit,
     Blessed are those who mourn,
     Blessed are the meek,
     Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
     Blessed are the merciful,
     Blessed are the pure in heart,
     Blessed are the peacemakers,
     Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake,
     Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

How can that be?

How can people who are poor in spirit, mourning, meek, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, persecuted and reviled be blessed, happy, right now, today?

The answer is simple: because Jesus is blessing them.

You see he wasn’t just teaching them about blessings that day, he was blessing them.

Time after time Jesus said “the kingdom of God is at hand” – right here, right next to you - and yet, even we, more than 20 centuries later, even we think of the Kingdom as a future destination, it’s not. It’s here, it’s now and the people – then and now – who come to Christ with an honest view of themselves have already received the blessings, have already stepped into the Kingdom.

Think about that.

Think about the greatest negative reality of your life as the entranceway into God’s kingdom.

The blessing you receive is not a result of your condition, not a reward for you to battle your condition with, the blessing, the happiness, is God’s presence with you in the middle of your condition whatever it may be.

God’s promise is to travel with us and to bless us and she tends to do that where we don’t expect it: with the poor rather than the rich, with those who are mourning rather than celebrating, with the meek and the peacemakers rather than the strong and victorious.

This is so very hard to believe that I’m going to say it slowly and as clearly as I can: God already loves you and adores you, God wants the very best for you, God thinks that you deserve to be blessed, to be happy, to live with contentment, fulfillment, and serenity.

Let me say it again, because sometimes we are so used to hearing the words that they don’t sink in and sometimes we don’t think that we deserve God’s blessing, we think we have to earn it: God already loves you and adores you, God wants the very best for you, God thinks that you deserve to be blessed, to be happy, to live with contentment, fulfillment, and serenity.

Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven

Ah, but wait you may be thinking, isn’t this still just the reward that will be ours in heaven, someday?

Might be, except for that little word: “is”: your reward is great in heaven.

It is already ours, the whole Magilla is ours, all we could ever want is already ours, listen again:  theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

And what happens in the kingdom of heaven?
     they will be comforted.
     they will inherit the earth.
     they will be filled.
     they will receive mercy.
     they will see God.
     they will be called children of God.
     for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

All of that happens in the kingdom of Heaven and the kingdom of Heaven is already ours!

In the OT, when Micah spoke of the quarrel God had with his people, it was on this very issue. The people all wanted to keep score, they wanted to know how many barrels of oil they needed to offer, how many sacrificial animals, even how much of the lives of their children would be enough to change God.

For that was the question they asked: “How can we change God? “

And the answer was clear and should be just as clear to us: you don’t.

You need to change yourself, your heart, you actions, your words, your priorities, you need to change yourself.

God, speaking through Micah said, it’s not a game, you don’t keep score. What I want, God said, is for you to be happy, I’ve told you how to that: do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with me.

To do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God, these are not items on a list that can be crossed off, this is a way of life that we are talking about, a life of happiness, contentment, fulfillment, and serenity.

Read the Beatitudes again, some time this week when you have a few minutes.

Oh, heck, let me read them once more now:  
     ‘Blessed are you when you are poor in spirit, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.
     ‘Blessed are you when you mourn, for you will be comforted.
     ‘Blessed are you when you are meek, for you will inherit the earth.
     ‘Blessed are you when you hunger and thirst for righteousness, for you will be filled.  
     ‘Blessed are you when you are merciful, for you will receive mercy.  
     ‘Blessed are you when you are pure in heart, for you will see God.  
     ‘Blessed are you when you are peacemakers, for you will be called children of God.  
     ‘Blessed are you when you are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for yours 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.

Go find them in your Bible or on line sometimes in the middle of the week, when we’re getting the next snowstorm and I’m busy cancelling meetings and read them. They are good, they remind us – and oh, we need that reminder – they remind us that we are created, hard-wired, for joy, nor for sorrow, for life, not for death.

Read them and smile because they describe what is true and real about life and the blessings, the happiness, that God has already given and will continue to give, to us.

Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven