Matthew 5:1-12
1 When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2 Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying: 3 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4 "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 5 "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. 6 "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. 7 "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. 8 "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. 9 "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. 10 "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 "Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
When I was a kid we called it a number sign. The automated voice on the other end of the phone when I call about my car insurance, bank account, or student loan balance calls it a pound sign (“Please enter your account number followed by the pound sign”). I always thought it looked like a blank, slightly slanted game of tic-tac-toe. These days, however, folks around the world know that little symbol comprised of two, vertical, parallel lines interesting with two, horizontal, parallel lines as a hashtag. It’s a symbol used across social media platforms to categorize posts, tweets, and pictures, a sort of digital shorthand that labels such posts and even makes it easier to search for others who have used the same hashtag.
For example, the Super Bowl is next weekend and a lot of Atlanta Falcons fans have taken to using the hashtag #riseup (all one word). So, if I wanted to see what Atlanta Falcons fans are talking about on social media, all I’d have to do is search for #riseup, and I’d be able to see the thousands of posts on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram (I’m sure there are others even I’m too old to know about!). Or let’s say I wanted to know what was going on during the Specialty Equipment Market Association show in Las Vegas, all I’d have to do is search for #SEMA and I’d get pictures of the latest aftermarket performance parts, videos of new specialty vehicles from Chevrolet, Dodge, or Ford, stats about new high performance hybrids, and more from people who are actually there, sometimes live.
I’ve found this little symbol to be useful too in trying to discern how large groups of people see certain subjects. I’ve found that if I want to know how many people understand a particular matter, all I have to do is search for a hashtag and there before me are thousands of filed opinions, posts, blogs, pictures, and articles all with some connection to how folks understand the subject at hand. I’ll give you an example: if you were to go on Instagram (a picture sharing, social media platform) and search for #blessed you might find the results rather interesting. I did. Of the over 66.2 million posts a large number of them are selfies (think “self-portraits”) of folks wearing new clothes or heading to job interviews or getting new braces or getting their braces off. There are countless pictures of new cars, homes, or jewelry. And so many pictures of food! If people like to share with the world pictures of anything, it’s what they had for lunch. Then there are all the pictures of palm trees, painted toenails in the sand, and people lazily lounging on some beach in some exotic location. Every last picture tagged #blessed.
I can’t help but wonder though…is that what it means? Is that what it means to be #blessed, to have new designer jeans, a new sports car, to have eaten the best omelet on the planet? Are expensive, exotic vacations really signs of divine favor and the outpouring of God’s blessings? I can’t help but wonder, especially in light of Jesus’ words before us this morning—words many of us have no doubt heard more than once in our lives. They’re words, well, they’re words that almost read like a Twitter feed. Maybe that’s how Jesus would have delivered the Sermon on the Mount if he were beginning his ministry today.
I can see it now: Matthew would tell us, Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him, and Jesus pulled his iPhone from his pocket and began to teach them tweeting: “The poor in spirit, theirs is the kingdom of heaven. #blessed.” Maybe he’d even attach a picture, that iconic photo from Dorothea Lange of the “Migrant Mother,” a poor victim of the Dust Bowl who moved to California with her seven children to pick peas in hopes of having enough to eat, her tattered clothes, and furrowed brow showing a rough thirty-two years as she flanked by two of her exhausted, hungry children.[1]
A second tweet: “Those who mourn will be comforted. #blessed.” Maybe this time Jesus shares a link to the obituaries page of a local newspaper, highlighting one of the over 33,000 gun-related deaths in this country every year.[2] A third tweet: attached is the video of Omran Daqneesh, the five year old Syrian boy pulled from the rubble of a bombed building and placed in the back of an ambulance. Disoriented and perhaps too used to such horror at the age of five, Daqneesh (covered with dust) quietly looks around and places a hand on the sticky red wound on the side of his head: “The meek shall inherit the earth. #blessed.”
Perhaps Jesus would change up platforms, diversify his outreach strategy and take to Facebook. There, he might share pictures from this past Friday, images of young families, senior adults, single mothers, and disabled, middle-aged men lining up in our back parking lot to receive a box of food and bag of produce. Or maybe he’d share a link to the Feeding America website, where one would find statistics like “42.2 million Americans lived in food insecure households, including 29.1 million adults and 13.1 million children [emphasis added]” in 2015.[3] Perhaps he’d share such pictures and statistics along with the words “Those who hunger and thirst will be filled. #blessed.”
Of course, sometimes one may choose to post something quite opposite of the point one is making in order to emphasize the point itself. For example, Jesus might have posted something like an image of the millions of refugees huddled in camps like those in Greece and a link to a news story on the most recent ban on such refugees from entering the United States, and then post, “The merciful will receive mercy. #blessed.” Or he might share a picture of someone like Martin Shkreli, the CEO of the company Turing which acquired the rights to the drug Daraprim—“a sole-source medication for toxoplasmosis, that has been in circulation since 1953 and is used frequently by patients with compromised immune systems.”[4] When Shkreli’s company acquired the rights to this drug, he promptly raised the cost from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill (that’s a 5,000% increase). He stood to make a fortune from those who desperately needed this medication, and he truly didn’t care about the effects of such a dramatic increase. Maybe Jesus might share that story, then remind us all, “The pure in heart will see God. #blessed.”
Then, perhaps Jesus would take to Instagram to post a collage of the crumbling, bombed-out buildings of Syria, along with the image of a boy soldier from Sierra Leone, and any one of the countless images of young, homeless veterans on the street corners of our American cities, and along with those images, the words, “The peacemakers will be called the children of God. #blessed.” Maybe Jesus would even share those disturbing YouTube videos demonstrating the way Christians around the world are executed for their faith, the way they are imprisoned, tortured, and killed. Perhaps he’d share a quote from Hyeon Soo Lim, a South Korean-born, Canadian, Presbyterian pastor who has be imprisoned in a labor camp after being arrested for aiding in a humanitarian effort in North Korea.[5] “Those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, theirs is the kingdom of heaven. #blessed.”
Maybe Jesus could have shared a screenshot of his own Facebook wall, of all the posts of those spewing hatred and evil at him. Maybe he could have shown a snippet from an email he received from someone attempting to blackmail him, to spread awful lies and hate-filled rumors about him. Maybe he could have shared those sorts of things with the comment, “People will revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you on my account…they did the same thing to the prophets and they were #blessed.”
I know Jesus didn’t tweet these beatitudes, and I know Christ didn’t post them on a digital wall, share them on an app on his smartphone, or forward them through a massive group text, but the response to his words then would have been the same to such words now, for if Jesus did share such posts marked with the hashtag “blessed,” the comments refuting such ideas would be endless. After all, who in their right minds thinks being poor (in spirit or otherwise) is some sort of blessing from God? What fool would ever think mourning is something with which you have been blessed? Why on earth would we think someone who is meek would be blessed by God when bullies hold the highest offices in the land and things get done when the mighty take the wheel? Who would ever think an empty, growling stomach is a sign of God’s favor, or to be displaced from your home by war to have the door shut in your face means God is with you? Why on earth would the merciful be blessed? They’re naive, gullible, and will always give in to the most obvious sob story. That’s not blessed—that ignorant! Peacemakers are too soft, too gentle, and this world is too scary of a place for peace. God obviously blesses might and power—just look at the Old Testament! That’s what they would have said then, and it’s what people of faith even say today, but it’s wrong.
The Beatitudes—the first public words of Jesus’ ministry in Matthew’s gospel—show us the nature of God’s kingdom. They show us the upside-downness of the kingdom to which Christ calls us. It is a kingdom formed—not in the shape of a crown, nor a throne, nor conquering warrior—it is a kingdom formed in the shape of a cross. It is a kingdom not built on power, might, and strength, but a kingdom built on humility, compassion, and love! It is a kingdom that calls those who claim it to be people who bless the poor by helping them to rise out of their poverty by walking alongside them, not condemning them and pointing fingers and accusing looks at them. It is a kingdom that calls its citizens to bless those who mourn, not with empty platitudes about the “sweet by and by,” but by holding them up, giving them a shoulder to cry on, even if takes the rest of our lives. It is a kingdom that calls us to bless the meek, to raise our voices with those whose voices cannot be heard because they have been drowned out by the lust for power in others. It is a kingdom that calls us to bless those who are hungry and thirsty, to give food and water without asking for papers or keeping track of how many times we’ve given it to them. It is a kingdom that calls us to bless the merciful, for the rest of the world doesn’t have time for mercy, to bless the pure in heart for theirs are the hearts that are so easily broken, to bless the peacemakers for the world loves those who “keep the peace” by making everyone happy, but the world will crucify those who seek to make peace in places where we contribute to the violence. It is a kingdom that calls us to bless the persecuted—the truly persecuted, for they endure the horror of a world’s ignorance and sin, for they endure the suffering of saints throughout the centuries, for they endure that pain of imprisonment and torture and their heartbreak is piled on all the more when others count themselves “persecuted” simply because they can freely practice their faith in the same zip code as those of a different faith.
The “upside-down” kingdom of heaven outlined in the beatitudes is one that calls us to be more than those who claim Christ with their hashtags but deny him with their actions, for it is a kingdom whose king will say, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me…Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” That, my friends, is what it means to be #blessed. Amen.
[1] You can see this and other photographs of Dorothea Lange on the PBS website, here: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/dorothea-lange-biography-with-photo-gallery/3097/ (accessed 1/29/2017).
[5] http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/10/asia/hyeon-soo-lim-canadian-pastor-north-korea-interview/ (accessed 1/29/2017).
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