How Blessed We Are!
Matthew 5:1-12[1]
If you asked someone to define what it means to live the
Christian life, you’d probably get answers as varied as the people you ask.
Some would likely say it means seeking to follow Jesus more every day. Some
would say it means becoming a part of a church family and participating in
their life and work. Others might say it’s about following the Ten
Commandments. Or perhaps the two “Great Commandments” Jesus identified: to love
God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself. And there would be truth
in all of those answers. But part of the truth of all of those answers is that
it’s no easy matter to live the Christian life!
As a matter of fact, in some circles, the answer to the
question about the Christian life would be to follow the beatitudes. In fact,
in one of the study Bibles I’ve owned, there was a whole “sermonette” in the
notes section on how the Beatitudes constitute a kind of “staircase” for living
the Christian life. Yes, in some cases, people have believed that practicing
the Beatitudes was a literal “staircase to heaven.” That idea actually goes
back centuries in the history of the church. It’s still the primary way that
the Beatitudes are taught in the Catholic tradition today in some places. Many
other Christians as well see the Beatitudes as a “blueprint” of what you have
to do to “make it” into heaven. The benefit of that answer is that it keeps
things pretty clearcut. The problem is that I would say Jesus’ teachings about
how his followers were to live are both simpler and harder than that.
That approach to the Beatitudes makes our relationship with
God based on what we do. And once we start down that path, we likely
will not stop with just the Beatitudes. We’ll add the Ten Commandments. And
maybe the whole Sermon on the Mount. And maybe more of the “laws” from the
Hebrew Bible. Essentially, the attempt to quantify our relationship with God in
terms of how much we “have” to do will likely lead us to an endless list of
demands. There are traditions around us in this community that practice that
approach to faith. I think that makes things a lot more complicated. And people
who practice their faith in those traditions do so in constant anxiety about
whether they’re doing enough to “make it” to heaven. I don’t think that’s what
Jesus intended!
That way of reading the Beatitudes misses the very wording
of the Scriptures. 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 those who
are humble.” It’s not about what you “become,” it’s about who you already are.
I think the first clue to being able to hear the Beatitudes is to understand
that they’re meant to reinforce the promise of salvation for all who open their
hearts to the good news of the kingdom Jesus came to proclaim! In Matthew’s
Gospel, we’re meant to read the Beatitudes in light of the statment that Jesus
was “proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and
every sickness among the people” (Mt 4:23). That’s important context for understanding
the Beatitudes. And Jesus 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 grace with everyone who came to him.
From that perspective, it doesn’t make any sense to read
the Beatitudes as a “blueprint” for the Christian life. Rather, they are a
beautiful way of spelling out the “good news of the kingdom” that Jesus was proclaiming.
The Beatitudes show us the blessings we find when we align ourselves with God’s
purposes in the world. 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—the “poor in spirit”—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.
We who seek to follow Jesus in this world, who may not be last
and least and left out and powerless, 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. 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.
At the same time, in Matthew’s Gospel, we’re meant to read
the Beatitudes as a kind of introduction to the Sermon on the Mount. Even
within the Beatitudes themselves, there’s a subtle shift that changes the
emphasis from who we are to what we do. Jesus says, “Blessed are the humble,”
but he also says, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy” (Matt
5:7). Being merciful is something you do. He says, “Blessed are the
peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (Matt 5:9). Again, being
a “peacemaker” involves action. The Beatitudes shift from assuring us of God’s
blessing, to calling all who have received God’s blessing to put that grace
into action in the way they live their lives every day. This pattern of grace
as a gift that demands we live in certain ways is one that’s found throughout
the Bible. Jesus adopts it in the Sermon on the Mount. When you move from the
Beatitudes to the rest of the sermon, you find that Jesus makes quite challenging
demands on those who would follow him.
I think Jesus knew that all who would try to follow him
would desperately need the assurance 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 our relationship with God is always based on God’s grace and
his unconditional love that never fails, not on what we do. And yet, I think
Jesus also knew that we would always need reminding that God’s grace always
demands all we have to give. He sums it up with the “golden rule”: “In
everything do to others as you would have them do to you” (Mt 7:12). We heard
something similar in our reading from the prophet Micah for today: God’s grace
demands that we “do what is right, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God”
(Mic 6:8, NLT). But in the Bible, grace always comes before demand; and
the demand about the way we live our lives is always based on God’s grace.
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 blessed we are by the gift of God’s grace.
[1] ©
2026 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 2/1/2026 for
Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
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