Grace Always Comes First
Matthew 4:23-5:12[1]
A couple of months
ago, I told you the story of my relationship with a Scripture passage. I’d like
to do that for you again today with the Beatitudes. Of course, I grew up in
church, so the Beatitudes are just something that I seem to have always known,
like the Gloria Patri, the Doxology, and the Lord’s Prayer. But like many
scripture texts, the Beatitudes were just “pretty words” to me. As a matter of
fact, I think we all have to grow into our ability to really “hear” the words
of Scripture, and the Beatitudes are no exception. It took me a while to find
my way to be able to appreciate the true beauty of the Beatitudes: they remind
us that when it comes to how God relates to us, grace always comes first!
As beautiful as the
Beatitudes are, I have to be honest and admit that I found them intimidating
for many years. Some of the ideas are confusing. We live in a world where
“meekness” is viewed as “weakness.” So how can being “meek” mean that we’re
“blessed”? We all understand what it means to be hungry and thirsty. But what
in the world does it mean to “hunger and thirst for righteousness”? Do we
really have to be “reviled” and “persecuted” in order to “qualify” as Christ’s
faithful disciples? Perhaps the greatest stumbling block is the part about
being “pure in heart.” I think it’s pretty obvious that nobody is always “pure”
in heart! There’s enough here to intimidate even the best of us!
I guess it shouldn’t
come as a surprise that we may find the Beatitudes intimidating. The view that they
present us with the ideal of what it means to be a Christian is one that’s been
around for a long time. The ancient church viewed the Beatitudes as a kind of
pathway from repentance to perfection, a kind of “stairway to heaven” if you
will![2] This was the way the church read the Beatitudes for centuries. It’s still the
primary way that the Beatitudes are taught in the Catholic tradition today.
Many other Christians as well see the Beatitudes as a “blueprint” for how to
become a true follower of Jesus! They see them as steps you have to take if you
want to “make it” into heaven.
But the problem is
that makes our salvation all about what we do. “Making it” into heaven is
something we have to work for all of our lives. But it misses the very wording
of the Beatitudes. They don’t say “blessed are those who become” “poor
in spirit,” or “meek,” or “pure in heart.” They say, “blessed are the
poor in spirit,” “blessed are those who mourn,” “blessed are the
meek.” It’s not about what you “become,” it’s about who you already are.
I think the first clue to really being able to hear the Beatitudes is to
understand that they’re meant to be words of comfort. They’ re meant to
reinforce the promise of salvation for all who open their hearts to Jesus and
the good news of the kingdom he came to proclaim![3]
I came to this
understanding of the Beatitudes after I’d completed my PhD and was already
teaching as a Seminary Professor. I was asked to prepare a class on the Sermon
on the Mount for a campus organization, and it was my first time to really dig
into it. What I learned at that time was that, like every other passage of
Scripture, it’s crucial to read the Beatitudes in the right context. That’s why
our Gospel lesson began where it did today. In Matthew’s Gospel, we’re meant to
read the Sermon on the Mount, with all of its admittedly intimidating demands
on the lives of those who would follow Jesus, on the basis of the fact that
Jesus was “proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every
disease and every sickness among the people” (Mt 4:23). He didn’t check the
spiritual “credentials” of the people he healed. And he didn’t just heal Jewish
people. Matthew tells us that he shared the blessings of God’s kingdom with
people from all over.
From that perspective,
it doesn’t make any sense to read the Beatitudes as a “blueprint” for the
Christian life, but rather the Beatitudes are a profound way of spelling out
the “good news of the kingdom.” The Beatitudes show us what the blessings we
find when we align ourselves with God’s purposes in this world look like.
That’s particularly important for the kind of people Jesus was addressing.
Those who align their lives with Jesus’ “good news of the kingdom” often do so
at their own expense. Those who look to God and God alone for what they need in
this life aren’t typically the “movers and shakers” of our world. In fact, they
are often precisely the opposite: the last, the least, the left out, and even
the powerless.
And so we who seek to
follow Jesus in this world often find ourselves in the kinds of situations he
talks about in the Beatitudes. We mourn: we mourn the condition of a world that
thrives on greed and violence. We may even find ourselves “reviled” or worse
because we refuse to endorse the way things are. We hunger and thirst for God
to come and set things right. Because we’ve come to know God’s mercy in our
lives, we cannot help but extend that mercy to others, giving without any
thought of receiving, turning the other check, welcoming those whom others see
as outcast. And the good news that Jesus preached in the Beatitudes is that we
are blessed: blessed because we know that our lives rest securely on
God’s unfailing love for us.
I think Jesus knew
that all who would try to follow him would desperately need the comfort and
promise offered in the Beatitudes. I think he knew we would need to hear that
we’re supported and surrounded by God’s grace every hour of every day of our
lives. And so it is that in the Beatitudes, Jesus makes clear that grace always
comes first in our relationship with God. Yes, the call to follow him that we
hear in the Sermon on the Mount demands a great deal of us. But grace always
comes first. That’s why Jesus starts his most famous sermon with a striking
reminder of how much we truly are blessed. Before he instructs us about what it
looks like to follow him in some uncomfortably specific ways, Jesus spells out
for us just how richly we benefit from the gift of God’s grace. And God’s grace
always comes first!
[1] ©
2023 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 1/29/2023 for Hickman
Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2] Cf. U. Luz, Matthew 1–7, 188.
He names Hilary of Poitiers, Gregory of Nyssa and Ambrose of Milan, all from
the Fourth Century.
[3] Cf. Luz, Matthew 1-7, 189: “For Jesus
the unconditional assurance of salvation to people who are in a hopeless
situation is decisive.” I don’t agree with his assessment that Matthew is
responsible for shifting the emphasis to a blueprint for Christian living.
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