SERMON TEXT - The Adventus of Christ - First Sunday of Advent

Today is the first Sunday in the season of Advent, which marks the four Sundays leading up to Christmas.

The English word advent comes from the Latin word ‘adventus’ and speaks of the coming or the arrival of something, or someone that is important or note-worthy. 

Within the Greco-Roman world of the early Church, the Latin word Adventus had a very specific cultural meaning relating to the Roman Emperor.  It referred to the ‘second coming’ of the Emperor to a part of the empire that had been rocked by some kind of disaster. 

Much like our politicians today, if there was a natural disaster in some part of the Empire, like an earthquake or volcanic eruption, the emperor would make a visit to the city to survey the damage and to give encouragement to the people of the area.  In doing so, he would bring with him a large sum of money to be used for the rebuilding of the city.  This would do two things, it would maintain the loyalty of the people of that region to the Emperor, and also ensure the ongoing strength and stability of the Empire itself.  Everyone knew that the emperor would one day return to the city in order to see what the people of that city had done with the money in order to rebuild what had been damaged. 

This return, or second coming of the Emperor was described with the Latin word adventus. In Greek, the word would have been parousia. 

When word was sent out that the Emperor was returning to the area there would obviously be a surge in work and activity to make sure everything was ready for his arrival. And as he drew closer, a lookout would have been placed in a strategic place to sound the call to tell the people that that the Emperor Caesar was near. And when the Emperor would arrive, it was marked with the sound of a loud trumpet blast.  As Marty Solomon writes, the city would not want to be caught napping with the Emperor knocking on the city gates. 

When the Emperor arrived at the city, the first thing he would do would be to pay his obligatory respects to the dead, stopping at the graveyards that could normally be found outside the entrance to most Greco-Roman cities. 

After the Emperor had paid his respects, honouring the dead and those who had gone before, the people of the city would then go out to meet him.  Marty Solomon writes that this meeting between the Emperor and the people of a city was referred to in Greek with the words 'eis apantesien'.  And the purpose was to go out from the city to meet the emperor with joy, taking him metaphorically speaking by the hand to show him the great work that had been done in restoring the city. 

In our passage from Thessalonians today the Apostle Paul speaks of the return, the parousia, or the adventus of Christ, and in doing so, Paul borrows imagery of the return, the parousia or adventus of the Roman Emperor. You can hear the Greco-Roman imagery echoing through the passage in 1 Thessalonians 4 

For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.

The context in which Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians was written was to a Church community that was expecting the immanent return of Christ. And as a result, a number of people in the community had become lazy.  If Christ was soon going to return, what use was there in engaging in any work at all, whether physical labour or work for the Kingdom of God? 

Paul’s purpose in describing the return of Christ as an adventus or as a parousia was intended to communicate to the Thessalonian Church that they had work to do. As Marty Solomon writes, “...because God left them with a deposit and expected them to use it to restore, heal and rebuild.  
In the passage from Thessalonians, in the same way as the people of a city would go out to ‘eis apantesin’ (pronounced ‘ice apantaysin’) or meet the Emperor and to show him the work that had been done in his name to rebuild and restore, so Paul suggests that when the trumpet sounds for the return of Christ, so the Christians  of Thessolonica would get caught up to ‘eis apantesin’  the Lord, to meet Christ and to show him the work that they had done in his name to restore, reconcile, heal and rebuild. 

Marty Solomon makes an interesting observation, that many of those Christians who speak today of the immanent return of Christ, and what they would call the rapture, when Christ will supposedly swoop down to take up all the true believers up to heaven have a similar theology of disengagement from life in this world. If Christ is to return and rescue Christians from this world, why bother with engaging in healing, reconciling, restoring and rebuilding work in this world.  But, as Marty Solomon writes, this is exactly the idea that the Apostle Paul is teaching against in his letter to the Thessalonians. 

As Marty Solomon writes: “Paul is not arguing for a disengaged theology… This is not a theology of disembodied evacuation; it’s a theology of physical participation.”

The early Christian’s expectation of the immanent return of Christ did not materialise.  At different times in history various Christian groups have revived the expectation that the return of Christ is just around the corner. The coronavirus pandemic may have been another of those occasions that has fueled such an expectation.  But I’m not so sure how helpful or healthy it is to live with the immanent expectation of Christ’s return. I think there is a danger that it can cause people to mentally check out of living responsibly in this world and prevent us from making wise long term decisions.  But I do believe that the symbolism of the Second Coming of Christ still has value for us in fueling a wider and deeper hope within us; that hope and belief that despite the upheavals that often take place in this world in some overall and ultimate sense, God is still in control and will bring the deepest hopes and dreams of the human heart to completion, and that in the meantime, there is work to be done: healing, rebuilding, reconciling and restoring work, empowered by the spirit of Christ’s love in our hearts. 

Over the centuries, the word Adventus came to be used for that Season of four weeks in the Christian Calendar leading up to Christmas. Advent has traditionally had a triple role…

1. Preparing the hearts of Christians for the remembrance and the celebration of the birth of Christ into the world 2000 years ago.

2. Secondly, the season of advent, has been seen as a focussed period in which the hearts of all Christians can be nurtured and cultivated, rebuilt and restored so that that the presence of Christ’s love and wisdom might shine ever brighter in our hearts, lives, words and actions. Preparing the ground for Christ’s presence to metaphorically be born within us again enabling the return of Christ into the world through the lives of those who bear his name: Christians. 

3. Thirdly, the Season of advent, and particularly the first Sunday of Advent have been an opportunity for fixing the sights of Christians on the ultimate hope when God will bring all things to their completion in Christ’s love, when God’s Presence and Kingdom would be known in all it’s fullness, the hope of the day when God will be “all and in all”, when every tear will be wiped away and all things restored in Christ’s infinite light and love.

Over the past 20-30 years, as Christmas has been more and more been secularised and as it has been hijacked by a materialistic and commercial agenda, the call has grown in some quarters for Christ to be put back into Christmas. Just this week I was quite challenged by a meme on Facebook. It read as follows: Want to keep Christ in Christmas? Feed the hungry, comfort the afflicted, love the outcast, forgive the wrongdoer, inspire the hopeless. 

And so, on this first Sunday of Advent, as we journey towards Christmas, celebrating the coming of God’s love in the birth of Christ, seeking for that love to be born again within our own hearts and looking forward to the day when all things will be brought to completion in that Love, as Marty Solomon writes, may we be reminded that we have work to do here – today. Amen. 

​SERMON TEXT -  Blessed are the Persecuted, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven

Outside Westminster Abbey stands a statue of Oscar Romero which stands alongside a number of other significant modern Christian witnesses. Oscar Romero was born on the 15th August 1917 in the country of El Salvador. 

At the age of 14 he felt a call to go into the priesthood and after a period of training and seminary was ordained a priest.  He was apparently a very good preacher but also did work outside of his normal parish work visiting those in prison and working with others in the Church to help provide help and food for the poor. 

His compassion for the poor earned him a great amount of admiration from many Salvadoreans. 

In 1970 at the age of 53 Oscar Romero was made a bishop. Just 4 years later, violence in El Salvador began to increase as the government and army began killing poor people who began to stand up for their rights in an oppressive situation. 

After the army killed three people in a village within his diocese, Oscar Romero sought to comfort the families while also writing to the President of El Salvador to protest at what had happened. 

In 1977 Oscar Romero was elevated to the position of Archbishop of San Salvador.  Initially the rich people of San Salvador were happy about his appointment as Archbishop because they believed that he would pull his priests into line and stop them standing up for the poor.

But a few weeks after becoming Archbishop, his friend Fr. Rutilio was shot and killed along with two other companions.  The following Sunday, Oscar Romero cancelled services across the whole diocese, holding only one service at the Cathedral. Having got the attention of the media, he spoke out at the service against the murders.  Over the next three years, every Sunday, with his sermon broadcast by radio, he continued to speak out against the military violence and oppression.  This was not taken too kindly by those in government and the rich and powerful who benefited from the Status Quo. Over the period of 1977 to 1980, he began to receive numerous death threats. The atmosphere was charged. Archbishop Romero realised that death was coming, and he had come to accept it. 

On the 23rd March, on national radio, Archbishop Oscar Romero chose to speak boldly and directly to the army with these words: “In the name of God, and in the name of this suffering people, whose cries rise to heaven more loudly each and every day, I beg you, I implore you, I order you, in the name of God, stop the repression!”

The next day, 24th March 1980, The Military Major Roberto D’Aubuisson secretly gave orders for Oscar Romero to be eliminated. At 6.26 pm, while standing at the altar celebrating communion,  Oscar Romero was shot with a single marksman’s bullet and he fell, one could say significantly and symbolically at the foot of a huge crucifix before the image of his Lord, who had also been brutally murdered at the hands of the Roman military machine. 

We come to the final beatitude today in Matthew 5:11 which reads:  “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Some commentors suggest that this is the blessing that nobody wants, the blessing of persecution for doing or standing up for what is right and just, loving, merciful and good in the world. 

Some in fact have suggested that this beatitude was never in the original list of Jesus but was perhaps added by the writer of Matthew’s Gospel as he wrote his gospel to an early Christian community that was experiencing persecution.  Some would suggest that the clue is to be found in verses 12-13 where the wording changes from “Blessed are those...” to “Blessed are you...” almost as if the writer is directing these words to his readers or listeners, seeking to interpret the spirit and the meaning of Jesus into a new situation. 

Regardless of whether they were spoken directly from the mouth of Jesus or whether they were Matthew’s attempt to make the spirit and the teachings of Jesus relevant to a new situation of persecution, this verse resonates with the story of Jesus own life. 

While a number of the New Testament writers sought to interpret the reason for Jesus death, through the sacrificial metaphors of the Old Testament, suggesting that Jesus’ death was part of a divine plan to bring about forgiveness and salvation, and certainly that is a dominant view in most of the Epistles in the New Testament, there is also another perspective that is represented in the Gospels, that Jesus death was a consequence, a consequence of a life lived for goodness, love and mercy that began to upset and deeply threaten those who held religious, cultural and political power in Jesus day. . 

Mark’s Gospel is the first of the Gospels to have been written, and very early in the story, we see a plot to take his life after he heals a man on the Holy Day of the Sabbath, apparently breaking the rules as understood and held by the Pharisees and teachers of the law. 

An early attempt on Jesus life is also reflected also very early in Luke’s Gospel in Luke 4. At Jesus opening sermon in Nazareth, while preaching in his home synagogue about God’s grace and mercy shown to foreigners, the insular and narrow minded nationalist Jews of his home-town took offence and attempted to throw him off a cliff. 

Jesus’ values and his love were apparently too large and expansive for many who held authority in the Jewish culture of his day. 

-Firstly, he had a different interpretation of the Old Testament laws than many of his religious opponents. Jesus interpreted the laws through the lens of love and mercy.  For Jesus, the laws were a means to an end, and that end was love, goodness and mercy.  But for the Pharisees, the laws were and end in themselves and they were interpreted with no flexibility and certainly not in the name of love. When combined with the fact that Jesus was attracting the attention of the crowds who followed him, the Pharisees and Sadducees and teachers of the Law, all for different reasons saw Jesus as a threat to their authority.  He was too radically redefining the boundaries of their culture and religion. If he had had only a few followers that would have been ok, but the fact that he had so many followers, left those who held the reigns of religious and cultural power threatened and worried. 

-Secondly, Jesus hung out with all the wrong people. In effect, Jesus loved beyond the boundaries of what was socially acceptable. He showed love and care towards prostitutes and other sinners and spent large portions of his time with the poor crowds. Again, if he didn’t have such a large following, this would have been ok, but because he was so popular, those who benefited from the status quo were worried that he was destroying the foundations of what they believed it meant to be Jewish. 

-Thirdly, it would seem that the final act that precipitated Jesus death was the cleansing of the temple.  In cleansing the temple he was not just reacting to the use of the temple as a kind of market place.  He was more specifically reacting to the way the religious elite were exploiting the poor for their own selfish economic gain. He was reacting against injustice.  Again, for those with power and authority, this was a threat not only to their position in society, but also an economic threat. It was a threat to an economic system that was working for their own benefit. 

Jesus vision and heart were too large for those in authority in Jesus day.  He was too threatening to to both their own authority and to their comfort. 

And that is the problem with humanity as a whole, we all prefer comfort to the truth.  We don’t like our comfort threatened, even when it is threatened by goodness, fairness, mercy and love. 

John’s Gospel puts it a different way… “the light came into the world, but people preferred the darkness” (John 3:19)  

The reminder of this last beatitude is that to be a follower of Jesus and seek to live truly in his way of truthfulness, goodness, mercy and love will almost certainly at some point get you into trouble. 

But where is the blessing in this?   Where is the blessing in being persecuted for doing the right good and honourable thing in life? 

The beatitude says “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness, for there is the Kingdom of heaven? But what exactly does that mean? If you are persecuted for doing what is right, good merciful and loving, it is surely a sign that you are already living as a citizen of the Kingdom of God and that you are already in touch with a love that is deathless, a love and a goodness that not even death can rob from us.  

The apostle Paul new of this deathless love of God that nothing in this world could take from him.  In Philippians he writes For me to live is Christ. To die is gain (Philippians 1:21).  This is a person who has found the freedom of God’s Kingdom that transcends this life. 

As Paul writes so powerfully in the book of Romans 8:31-39

31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? ...Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies.  Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?  As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;
    we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for they have already found the treasure, the pearl of great price  that neither death not life can take away from them.  Amen. 

SERMON TEXT:  Blessed are the Peacemakers

I was really moved this past week to read the story of Albert Goering.  Albert Goering was the brother of Hermann Goering, one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party who had famously vowed to destroy the RAF.  Albert was however, quite different from his brother Hermann. Albert never became a Nazi. While Herman Goering was found guilty in 1946 of being complicit in the Holocaust,  Albert by contrast often risked his life to save those the Nazi’s were bent on destroying. 

When the Nazi party rose to power in Germany, he moved to Austria and spoke out against the Nazi Party.  

When Germany however annexed Austria in 1938, Albert rushed to distribute visa’s to Jewish residents to try and get them out and save them from what he could see was surely coming. He was also reported to have confronted Nazi soldiers in the streets who were forcing elderly Jewish people to do degrading things in public, such as washing themselves in the street.  These were acts of bravery which could easily have resulted in him being shot on the spot. 

During the second world war, Albert Goering managed to save hundreds of Jews as well as many anti Nazi dissidents.  He also used his connection and influence  with his brother Hermann to persuade him to release many prisoners of concentration camps under the pretext that they were “good Jews”. 

During this period, Albert was in fact arrested on a number of occasions by the Nazi’s. Each time however he was fortunate to be released due to his connection with his brother Hermann. 

Ironically however, after the war, Albert was imprisoned for 2 years for the very same reason, that he was the brother of the infamous Hermann Goering, and when he was finally released, this same fact of being the brother of Hermann Goering made him unemployable despite the fact that he had risked his life for so many. Although he died penniless, Albert Goering was looked after by many of those he had helped and saved during the war. 

In our 8th Beatitude today, we hear the words of Jesus, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

What the story of Albert Goering reveals is that being a peace-maker is often a costly thing. Many people in this world like the idea of peace, but there are not as many who are willing to pay the price, working for peace in this world.  Albert Goering was one of them. And to those who were recipients of his help in a time of terror and violence, to them, he must truly have felt like a son of God, one in whom God’s likeness could be seen. 

Returning to the beatitude, in Matthew 5:9, the word that is used for peace is the Greek word  (i-ray'-nay) eiréné from which we get the English name Irene.  The root word is eirō, which means "to join, or tie together into a whole".  Instead of dividing the world into categories us versus them, the peacemakers of this world are those who often risk their lives to bring people together, to join them into one whole.  Peacemakers are those who see beyond our human divisions to see the common oneness of our humanity. 

The word that Jesus would have used would have been the Aramaic word ‘shlama’ or ‘shaloma’ which in Hebrew is word Shalom. The word Shalom speaks of a peace and a wholeness that encompasses the whole of life.  It refers firstly to a deep inner peace that comes from a life that is in alignment with God, a heart in which the deep peace and presence of God dwells, a heart that has learned the art of being still and becoming aware of the Presence of the Great I Am who dwells at the heart of all of life. The heart of Shalom or inner peace, is a heart that has given up all forms of inner conflict within oneself and towards others.  And from those still quiet waters within, that peace is able to radiate outward towards the rest of life, so that the person of Shalom, radiating God’s Peace, is brought into alignment and right relationship with our fellow human beings and with creation itself, in relationships with others that are fair and just, loving and caring so that those who live in the shalom of God seek the highest benefit not just for their fellow human beings but also for God’s creation as well. 

The life of Jesus is a supreme example of a life lived in God’s Shalom. And so according to Paul, Jesus life reveals God’s secret plan from the foundation of the world, to bring all things together in oneness and unity and thereby in harmony and peace.  But again, Paul recognises that this is costly work for which Jesus sacrifices his life.  Paul writes in chapter 2:14 “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility… his purpose was to create one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body, to reconcile both of them to God, by the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.”

Getting back to the beatitude, William Barclay points out that the blessing of this beatitude is on the peace-makers, and not necessarily on the peace-lovers. It is not enough to just love peace as an idea and do nothing about it in practice. There are many peace lovers in this world, but very few peace-makers, very few who actually put their desire for peace into the kind of actions that actually make for peace.   

I heard on the BBC news this week that a recent survey shows that a lot of people like the idea of saving the planet and building a cleaner more sustainable world, but more than half of those interviewed indicated that they were not willing to make changes to their own lives to make that possible. 

On this Remembrance Sunday, as we pause to remember the sacrifice of those who chose not to simply live for themselves, but who were willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of protecting the world from a cruel and violent Nazi Empire, so I believe their witness asks of us today whether we like the idea of peace or whether we are willing to make sacrifices in order to help it to become a reality. Do we like the idea of a clean, peaceful and stable planet, or are we willing to make sacrifices for the sake of the peace, wellness, wholeness and well-being of the planet?  

To truly live in the way of Shalom, the peace of God, and the peace for which Jesus lived and died and sacrificed his life, it means that we cannot simply aim for our own little private peace, but that we should desire and actively seek this peace for others too, that we should desire the health and well-being of the whole and not just our little part and that inevitably incudes the whole of creation. And not just that we should desire it, but that we should translate that desire into actions, even if it is costly to do so. 

The second half of the 8th beatitude tell us that those who are peace-makers will be called children of God.  William Barclay writes that in the Hebrew and Aramaic languages there are not a lot of adjectives. He writes that often when ancient Hebrew speakers wished to describe something, they used not an adjective, but rather the phrase “son of…”.  And so Barnabas in Acts who must clearly have had a warm, empathetic and comforting way about him, is called “a son of comfort” or a “son of consolation”.  As William Barclay puts it when this beatitude says: “Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the sons of God”, what it means is: “Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be doing God-like work.”   

A few months ago I came across the following story: Two senior British officers were surveying the carnage of the battle field at the end of one of the great battles of WW1. One was an atheist and the other a Christian. The atheist said to his Christian comrade, 'Where is your God in all this?" (Where is your God in all of this conflict, violence, destruction and death. Just then two British soldiers staggered into view carrying a badly wounded enemy soldier, and the Christian replied, 'There is my God'.

It is a fascinating story.  Even in midst of a situation of conflict, those two British soldiers, as they rescued from the battlefield, not just the fallen and wounded soldiers from their own side, but also the fallen and wounded enemy soldiers, they were engaging in God-like work. 

Peace-making always begins as an inside job. If there is war and hatred and division within our own hearts, how will we be peace-makers in the world?

What an amazing thing that those two British soldiers could engage in a terrible war without hatred in their own hearts.  Their desire was not just for the life and well-being of themselves and those they were fighting with, but somehow, miraculously, their desire was also for the well-being and the health and wholeness even of their enemies. 

In that act of rescuing wounded enemy soldiers who had fallen on the battlefield, those two British soldiers were acting in God-like ways, engaging in God-like work, paradoxically living as peace-makers in the middle of one of the greatest conflicts the world has ever seen, 

“Blessed are the peace-makers” says Jesus, “for they shall be called children, sons and daughters of God.” 

'SERMON TEXT Matthew 5:8 - Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God

I’d like to begin by telling the story of Joy Davidman. Joy Davidman was a well known and prominent person in her own right, but today, most people would know her as the wife of C.S. Lewis. They were married for only 4 years before her death in 1960. 

Before meeting CS Lewis, Joy Davidman was a well known American poet and writer in her own right who had often been referred to as a child prodigy. 

She came from a Polish Orthodox Jewish background.  Although her grandfather was devout, her father was an outspoken atheist. Her father instilled within her not only his own commitment to atheism, but also a self-confidence and a high sense of self-esteem that combined with her great intelligence, enabled her to be become a high achiever in life, earning a Masters Degree from Columbia University at the age of Just twenty. Some suggested in fact that her self-confidence and hi self-esteem bordered on an arrogance and an egotism, something that she herself would have admitted later in her life. 

Despite her early success, Joy’s life was however shaken by a series of events in her life revealing that beneath her self-confidence and arrogance was in fact a deep fear of loneliness and failure.  Her life came to a crisis point when she discovered that her first husband had been unfaithful to her, after which his life collapsed in an alcoholic breakdown. She was left on her own with two small sons and a very inadequate income. Her own sense of pride prevented her from going back to her parents. Such an act would have been a humiliation for her, because they had advised her against her marriage. 

After receiving the news of her husband's breakdown, she found herself alone in her New York apartment with her children asleep in bed, with no-one left to call. In the stillness and quiet of the night, where she was confronted with her own fears and her own aloneness for the first time in her life, she writes that all her defences – the walls of arrogance and cock-sureness and self-love behind which she had hid from God – momentarily went down– and God came in. 

She described her experience of God as follows: 

“It is infinite, unique; there are no words, there are no comparisons. Can one scoop up the sea in a teacup? Those who have known God will understand me; the others, I find, can neither listen nor understand. There was a Person with me in that room, directly present to my consciousness – a Person so real that all my precious life was by comparison a mere shadow play. And I myself was more alive than I had ever been; it was like waking from sleep. So intense a life cannot be endured long by flesh and blood; we must ordinarily take our life watered down, diluted as it were, by time and space and matter. My perception of God lasted perhaps half a minute.”  

During that moment, Joy was stunned to find herself, on her knees, praying. She later wrote how on that day she became world’s most surprised atheist.’ In that moment she later wrote:  ‘God came in’,’ and ‘I changed. I have been turning into a different person since that half minute’.”

In Matthew 5:8 We read the words of Jesus “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God”.

I don’t believe that Joy Davidman would have suggested that strictly speaking her heart suddenly became pure, but in that momentary lapse of concentration, when all her egotistical arrogance and cock-sureness slipped for the first time and her defences were down, a crack appeared through which the light of God could enter, and in a metaphorical sense, in that half a minute, she caught a glimpse of God that changed her life forever. It didn't remove the arrogance once and for all, but re-oriented her life in a whole new direction that would have lasting consequences for her, a process she referred to as an ongoing ‘conversion of life’, slowly but surely turning into a different person under the influence of God. 

“Blessed are the pure in heart” says Jesus “for they will see God”. 

In our passage today, the Greek word for pure in this passage is word ‘katharos’. 

The word katharos is the root word of our English word ‘cathartic’ which is a process of purging in order to facilitate healing.  It could mean, emptying and cleansing of the bowels, but is also used in a psychological sense of releasing of strong emotions so that inner psychological healing and letting go can take place. 

In its ancient usage, it could simply mean to be clean as clothes that have been soiled with dirt have been washed clean. In its ancient meaning, it was also used most especially as referring to a substance like milk, wine or even a metal that was not mixed with another substance or impurity. 
 
And so the basic meaning of Katharos is for something to be unmixed, unadulterated, unalloyed, in its most pristine and untainted state and thereby for something to be clean and pure. 

One of the best descriptions that I have read of a pure heart is from Stephen Mitchell’s book “The Gospel of Jesus” 

He writes: 

“What is purity of heart? If we compare God to sunlight, we can say that the heart is like a window. Cravings, aversions, fixed judgements, concepts, beliefs – all forms of selfishness or self protection – are, when we cling to them, like dirt on the windowpane. The thicker the dirt, the more opaque the window.  When there is no dirt, the window is by it’s own nature perfectly transparent, and the light can stream through it without hindrance. 
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Or, we can compare a pure heart to a spacious, light filled room. People or possibilities open the door and walk in; the room will receive them, however many they are, for as long as they want to stay, and will let them leave when they want to. Whereas as corrupted heart is like a room cluttered with valuable possessions, in which the owner sits behind a locked door, with a loaded gun.”

And so, Stephen Mitchell describes those with pure hearts as having a radiance about them, a lightness, a brightness and an openness.  He goes on to suggest that as we read the Gospel stories about Jesus, we see a radiance in him, and a large hearted openness that was able to welcome and create room for both sinner and saint alike.  Those who encountered Jesus whose own hearts were open enough to perceive it found in his presence, a deep peace and a sense of respect and reverence for him that far exceeded what they had seen or experienced in any other human being.  In giving up his self-preoccupation, Jesus became filled with the vivid reality of the Unnamable.  His personality became like a magnetic field. Those who were drawn to him had a hunger for the real; the closer they approached him, the more they could sense the purity of his heart and the radiance of God shining through him. 

Joy Davidman’s experience reveals that the pure heartedness of Jesus, is in fact accessible to all of us.  For a moment, her defences were down, and the light of God shone through, and then a moment later her defences went up and the fullness of her experience of the Divine was shrouded again. But for half a minute, she experienced the Reality that Jesus lived in as a permanent state. She had caught a glimpse of God. Jesus lived in that radiance of God’s presence as an ongoing experience, and ongoing reality. And in this 6th Beatitude, Jesus suggests that this is an experience that is open to all of us. It is in fact the birth-right of every human being made in the image of God. We all have a bright and clear window in our soul,  which is capable of allowing the fullness of God’s light and radiance to shine through, giving us a new vision of the world as radiant with the Presence of the Divine. The only thing preventing the light from shining through is the dirt and grime of our own egotism, our fixed, rigid beliefs and ideas, our self-preoccupation and self-concern that prevents us from seeing clearly.

One of the theological strands in the Old Testament asserted that it was not possible to see God and yet still to live. In Exodus 33:20, God says to Moses, "You cannot see my face, for a human being shall not see me and live.”  There is a great spiritual truth expressed in those words. In order to truly see God, there is a dying to self that needs to happen.  A giving up of the self, until all that is left is the clear bright window of the soul, through which God’s light, goodness and love can shine.  The dying crucified Jesus is perhaps one of the most profound religious symbol of that process of self-emptying and dying to self, a self-emptying that gives rise to that other great symbol of spiritual transformation: The Resurrection, the unhindered light of God shining through our humanity.  

William Barclay suggests that this beatitude invites us into a life-long process of self-examination in which we become more and more aware of our mixed motives. The pure of heart are those who have given up all hidden agenda’s and are motivated only by the purity of God’s Divine love.  The more we become aware of our own hidden agenda’s, our self-protectionism, our self-preoccupation, our rigid beliefs and judgements, the more God is able to clean away the dirt from the windows of our souls, helping us to see the Divine Radiance that is shining all around.

There is a line from one of Leonard Cohen’s songs that I quoted on the day of my installation in Dromore:  “There is a crack a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.”

For Joy Davidman, the initial crack which let the light in, came when her defences were down and she had become acutely aware of her own emptiness, loneliness and vulnerability.  I have come to believe from my own life, that it is often through our failures and our weakness and vulnerability, the cracks of our well defended lives, that the light of God can come through.  What God is looking for is not perfection from us. All God needs are a few cracks.  When we become increasingly aware of our imperfections, our flaws and our cracks, and we are able to become honest with ourselves and others about those flaws, then God’s light is given space to shine through us.  But as long as we deny that there is any dirt on the windows of our souls, and as long as we sit in the crowded room of our own hearts sitting behind a closed door with a weapon trying defend ourselves, to that extent, God’s light is hindered from shining through us and our ability to see God’s shining radiance all around us is blocked. 

The first step towards a pure heart, is simply becoming honest about the dirt and grime on the window pain. 

“Blessed are the pure in heart, says Jesus, for they shall see God.”

SERMON TEXT - Blessed are the Merciful 

We are just two weeks away from remembrance Sunday and so I thought it might be of value to share the following World War II story with you: 

Charles Brown a B-17 pilot in the US army, was a 21-year-old West Virginia farm boy on his first combat mission.  His bomber had been quite seriously damaged as he and his crew encountered a swarm of Nazi air-planes as they flew in the skies above Germany dropping bombs on a German city below.  Half the crew in the plane were wounded and the tail gunner had been killed. They had lost the ability to defend themselves. 

Just then a German fighter plane flew up behind them, and At that moment, Charles Brown thought this was the end for him and his crew. 

But what happened next was completely unexpected.  The German didn’t pull the trigger. Instead, a few moments later the German plane drew up close beside them just three feet from their wing-tip,  he nodded and smiled at Charles Brown and his co-pilot Spencer Luke. 

Bob Jones writes that what then unfolded was one of the most remarkable acts of mercy recorded during the second world war. Bob Jones writes that “...the German ace pilot Hanz Stigler had every reason to shoot down the American B-17 bomber in front of him. Enemy forces had already killed his brother early in the war and were now bombing German cities. Not only that, if Stigler took down this particular bomber...” due to his record in the air, he would have secured the German equivalent of the Medal of Honour or the Victoria Cross. 

In the moments before this incident, as Stigler had prepared to squeeze the trigger, he had thought that it was strange that the bomber wasn't firing back at him. And so, flying a little closer, it became evident that the gunner was dead and most of the crew clearly wounded. The plane had been riddled with bullets, and it was clearly struggling to stay aloft. In that moment, Stigler knew in his heart that if he pulled that trigger, he would be killing the crew in cold blood. 

Instead, he opted to do the merciful thing. Stigler signaled to the shocked American pilot and he duly escorted the bomber to prevent it being targeted by anti-aircraft fire, until they reached the North Sea, where he broke off and saluted his adversaries one last time. (Story taken from Bob Jones, quoted from Revwords.com)

At the end of recounting this story, Bob Jones quotes Shannon French: “There is something worse than death, and one of those things is to completely lose your humanity”.  Hanz Stigler could have lost his humanity that day, but instead, he chose to act with mercy. 

In the 5th Beatitude in Matthew 5:7 we read “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy”. 

The first thing this beatitude reveals is the centrality of the value of mercy in the teachings of Jesus.

In John’s Gospel Jesus is reported to say, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father” John 14:9. And in Colossians 1:15, Paul writes of Jesus when he says “he is the invisible image of the invisible God”. If there is one thing that Jesus’ life reveals about God is that God is mercy.

It is perhaps one of the key things that distinguished Jesus from the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law in his own day. Theirs was a religion that had grown rigid and uncompromising in their obsession with following rules that in the process had become decidedly unmerciful and un-compassionate towards anyone they regarded as failing to live in accordance with God’s requirements.  They had forgotten that many of the laws they were following were meant to point them in the direction of mercy. But instead their religiosity had made them rigid and hard hearted.

By contrast, mercy was a central value in the way Jesus treated other people, whether it was prioritising the healing of a crippled man on the Sabbath, or saving the life of a women who had been caught in adultery, or responding to the request of the enemy Roman Centurion to heal his servant. It was in fact Jesus’ mercy towards sinners that made him so offensive to many of the law abiding Jews of Jesus day, and that became a large part of the reason for his eventual torture and execution.  In Matthew 12:9-14 we read that it was as a direct result of Jesus act of mercy towards a man with a crippled hand, whom he heals on the Holy Day of the Sabbath, that the Pharisees began to plot against him, discussing how to destroy him.  

The religion of the Pharisees had led to a loss of their humanity. Not only did their religion leave them with no mercy or compassion towards the man with the crippled hand, it led them to plotting to destroy the life of the one who had acted with mercy. Jesus act of prioritising mercy above the Sabbath law was such an offense to them that they were willing to break another of the commandments: Thou Shalt not murder.

It is a good question: Does our religiosity make us more merciful towards others? Or does it leave us less merciful?  If our religion leaves us less merciful, then our religion has become more like the religion of the Pharisees and less like the religion of Jesus. 

Blessed are the merciful…. Why? Because according to Jesus when we are merciful, we are living in alignment with the very nature of God whose Name is Mercy. 

But what are we to make of the second half of the beatitude?  Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy?  Is it suggesting that if you don’t show mercy to others, God won’t show mercy to you? 

There are many who might interpret it in that way.  But the example of the apostle Paul suggests otherwise. 

The Apostle Paul was utterly convinced that God’s love and mercy towards us, was and is, not dependent on our mercy towards others. Why was he so convinced of this? Because it was his own experience.  

According to the book of Acts, when he was still known by the name of Saul, we read that he was on his way to brutally oppress and murder the followers of Jesus in Damascus.  He was in effect what we would call today a religious extremist. He was engaged in acts of religious violence and  terror. He had already stood at a distance watching over the brutal stoning of Stephen and giving his approval. 

And now he was on his way to Damascus to do the same to others. There is no other way around it but to admit that Paul had lived as a religious fanatic. If he had had access to bombs as religious extremists do today, you can be sure that the apostle Paul before his conversion, would have been planting bombs and blowing Christians up. 

And yet Divine mercy was shown to him on the road to Damascus. A light shone upon him and a voice was heard “Saul Saul, why do you persecute me.” And in that moment, he discovered and experienced the grace of God; that God is merciful towards us even when we are not merciful towards others.  And in this experience of Divine Mercy expressed towards him, Paul changed from being a violent religious extremist to becoming a religious extremist of another kind… he became an apostle of grace, of God’s underserved kindness and love.  For Paul, God’s mercy is not dependent on our mercy. Rather, Paul would have suggested that we are only capable of acts of mercy, love and compassion because God has first acted mercifully towards us. 

What then might it mean to say: Blessed are the merciful, they will be shown mercy? 

I have a sense that what Jesus is referring to here is not primarily about God’s mercy towards us, but rather about our human relationships with others. If we treat others with mercy and compassion, we are far more likely to have mercy and compassion reflected back towards us.  

This is true to some extent even of snakes, tigers and crocodiles. Snakes tigers and crocodiles will always be dangerous. But if you are aggressive towards them, they will become even more dangerous and aggressive back. But if you treat them mercifully and compassionately, even while keeping proper distance protecting yourself from them, their level of danger will be drastically reduced.  Over time a degree of rapport might even develop. 

There are some people whose level of consciousness is not very much higher than a snake, a tiger or a crocodile. They are best treated like dangerous animals. You might want to keep a little distance. You might want to put various levels of protection in place. But if you treat them with a level of care and respect and even mercy, while they might still be a danger and still pose a threat, they are are likely to be less of a danger than they would be if dealt with with unnecessary aggression.  

If you wish to receive mercy from others, you are far more likely to receive it if you are merciful towards them.  If you are unmerciful to others, unless they have been touched in some profound way by the mercy and grace of God, it is rather likely that they will be unmerciful to you in return. 

In closing, I wonder, how that unexpected experience of receiving mercy from a Nazi German pilot changed Charles Brown life, and that of his co-pilot Spencer Luke that day?  I wonder if it changed their perspective on the war in some way? I wonder what it must have been like for them, the next time they flew off on a mission to bomb another German town or city? I wonder if on that day they may have grown a little more conscious of the common humanity of their German enemies? I wonder, after that incident, if they were more likely to show mercy to an enemy themselves than they may have been before? 

What I do know, is that after an extensive search by Charles Brown, the two pilots eventually met each other in person again 50 years later. Hanz Stigler was now living in Canada. As a show of thanks, Charles Brown made Hanz Stigler the guest of honour at a reunion he had planned with his crewmen. At the event, they showed Stigler a video of their children and grandchildren, people who would not have lived were it not for his act of mercy.
 
For the next 18 years, between 1990 and 2008 Charles Brown and Franz Stigler became close friends and remained so until Stigler's death in March 2008. Brown died only a few months later, in November of the same year. 

“Blessed are the merciful”, says Jesus, “They will be shown mercy”.

​SERMON TEXT: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, they will be satisfied. Matt 5:6

In 1980, Bruce Springsteen came out with a hit song called “Hungry Heart”.  The chorus section is one I’m sure you will recognize: 

Everybody's got a hungry heart
Everybody's got a hungry heart
Lay down your money and you play your part
Everybody's got a hungry heart 

It is one of those songs that has become an all-time great, one that you are likely to hear on the radio on quite a regular basis.  What makes it so popular? It definitely has a catchy tune, but you need more than a catchy tune to give a song enduring value. 

The reason it is popular I believe is it that it also speaks of a fairly universal human experience: We all have hungry hearts.  What are you hungry for… what does your heart reach out for? What entices your heart?

I must confess that I’m one of those people who seldom knows the lyrics to a whole song… just the chorus will do… la la la la la la la Everybody's got a hungry heart….

And so I was interested this week to read the rest of the lyrics of the song:  It is about a man who has a wife and kids in the city of Baltimore. He leaves them behind on a road trip and he never goes back. He takes a wrong turn and falls in love with someone he meets in a bar. It doesn’t work out but instead everything they had ends up ripped apart and so he ends up back in Kingstown, alone with a hungry heart… perhaps one might imagine, more alone, empty and hungry than before. 

Everybody's got a hungry heart
Everybody's got a hungry heart
Lay down your money and you play your part
Everybody's got a hungry heart

Bruce Springsteen’s song suggests that not everything we hunger and thirst after necessarily leads to satisfaction.  Our hungry hearts can sometimes lead us astray. Sometimes our hungry hearts can leave us feeling even more broken and even more empty than before. 

The prophet Isaiah knew the truth of this: “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?

Our text from Matthew 5:6 today is also about a hungry heart and reads: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, they will be satisfied.” 

In doing so it suggests that there is another way; another way of living and being in the world that does bring satisfaction. The word that the NIV version uses is righteousness. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.  

The Greek word  dikaiosuné (dik-ah-yos-oo'-nay) comes from the word dikaios (dik'-ah-yos) which can mean to be upright, just/fair, equitable. It comes from the root word díkē, which means judicial approval or a verdict of approval.  Ultimately it means to be in right relationship with God, to be at-one with God, to live a life in harmony with the Divine Life. But what exactly does that mean? 

In Matthew’s Gospel, the word righteousness is in fact a disputed word. It means different things to different people. Part of the purpose of Matthew’s Gospel is to clarify the true meaning of the term righteousness, the true meaning of living at One with God of what it means to live a life in harmony with God. 

The first person to be referred to as righteous in Matthew's Gospel is Joseph, the future husband of Mary.  In Joseph’s case, his righteousness seems to hang in the balance.  Is it just like an outward pasted on righteousness that has more to do with social respectability, or is his righteousness something deeper? Is he going to quietly call things off with Mary so that he saves his own face and reputation, or will he remain faithful to her and stick with her despite the moral questions that will be thrown in their direction?  In Joseph’s case, his true righteousness is revealed in his willingness to stick by Mary, to be faithful to her and to love her, and in doing so to risk having society question his moral integrity in doing so.  True righteousness, living a life in harmony with God’s life, is about doing the right thing no matter the consequences. It is therefore not concerned with social respectability and what others may think of you. 

The second place we encounter the word righteousness is when Jesus comes to be baptised by John in the Jordan. John tells Jesus that it should be the other way around.  Jesus should be baptising him. But Jesus says, let it be so for now so that all righteousness can be fulfilled. In this context, true righteousness, being at one with God and living in harmony with God is about willing to put away pride. It is about being willing to humble oneself before another and not insist on one’s own importance. If Jesus had insisted on his own importance, he would never have let John baptise him. 

A little further on in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus suggests that the righteousness of his followers needs to surpass the righteousness of the Pharisees.  What could that mean? To first century Jews, the Pharisees were the most righteous people of all?  They kept all the minute details of the law? What could it mean that followers of Jesus need to exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees? Later on, in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus accuses them of self-righteousness instead of real and true righteousness. Their righteousness consists of public displays of righteousness. Dressing up and making great displays of their generosity and their prayers so that others might be impressed by them. Jesus accuses them of being like white-washed tomb stones. Clean on the outside, but full of all sorts of hatred, anger, lust and scheming on the inside. Jesus also accuses them of being nit-picking about paying a tithe of their herbs and spices from their kitchens to the Temple, but failing to act with mercy and compassion towards fellow human beings. 

The truly righteous, those whose lives are in harmony with God, according to Matthew’s Jesus in the sermon on the mount, are those who are upright in secret when nobody can see. They’re not in it for egotistical reasons to boost themselves in the estimation of others. Rather they have given up the self, they are happy to quietly get on doing the right, good, merciful and compassionate thing without anyone knowing – no ego, no self. This is seen most especially in Matthew’s Gospel the parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25.  The parable is about the righteous and the unrighteous. In it, Jesus describes the sheep as the righteous, who are separated from the goats who are labelled as the unrighteous.  What does righteousness look like in the parable?  It looks like this: 

Visiting with mercy and compassion, those in prison.  Giving a cup of water to someone who is thirsty and food to those who are hungry. It is about reaching out to welcome and receive a stranger.  It is about helping to provide clothes to those who do not have. 

But even more than that, in the parable, those who are labelled as the righteous are not even conscious of being righteous.  Their acts of mercy and compassion have not been calculated to impress others or done so that they feel superior to others, but come from hearts overflowing with love, compassion and mercy towards others, especially to those in need. “They will say” says Jesus, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you? When did we see you thirsty and give you a drink? When did we see you a stranger and make you welcome, lacking clothes and clothe you? When did we find you sick or in prison? And the King will answer: “In truth I tell you, in so far as you did this to one of the least of these, you did it to me.” 

And so true righteousness is forgetful of the self. No thought of patting oneself on the back with how good one has been.  As we read in Matthew 5 the truly righteous give with the right hand, and not even the left hand knows that they are doing so.   And so, in seeking first, God’s Kingdom and God’s righteousness (as we read in Matthew 6:33) the truly righteous have emptied themselves of all but love. To be righteous is to live in a state of harmony and one-ness with God and to become channels of that Divine Love which according to Matthew 5 constantly pours itself out on good and evil alike.  Love given to all without without question or discrimination. 

And according to Matthew’s Gospel, this true righteousness of a life lived in harmony and in Oneness with the Divine Love is ultimately seen in Jesus who is willing to pour out his own life in love as a ransom for many as he is crucified.  In giving away his own life so freely, as he reveals the full extent of Divine Life expressed through him, he ransom’s us from the slavery of our own self-concern and selfishness. As we sang in that hymn a week or two ago “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.” That is why in John’s Gospel Jesus is called the Bread of Life. He has become the Bread of Life for us, because his life points us in the direction of true satisfaction, becoming channels of love, blessing, mercy and compassion towards others. 

In Acts 20:35 we read of one of the sayings of Jesus that never made it into the four Gospels: “It is more blessed to give than receive”.  I think many will be able to identify that some of their most satisfying moments in life have come in seeing the joy or the gratitude in some-one else's face. Such moments are little reminders of the nature of true righteousness, when we have become channels of love and blessing to others it is one of the most satisfying things in the world.  A little bit like that Dr at the Newcastle United game about a week ago. When he ran over to help one of the fans in the stands who was having a heart-attack, he responded spontaneously and freely. He wasn’t asking if he would receive a reward of any kind. And when the fans in the stands afterwards chanted “hero, hero, hero”, he said it was the best feeling he had ever had. In that action, he had unknowingly done an un-calculated act of true righteousness, in that moment, his life had expressed itself in harmony and in one-ness with Divine Love, and the crowds could see it and responded accordingly. 

Jesus, the truly righteous one, who has become the bread of life for us tells us: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Not the phony pasted on righteousness. Not the righteousness that seeks a reward. Not the righteousness that is constantly calculating who is deserving and who isn’t, but the righteousness that is a flowing of love, compassion and mercy from the heart. They will be satisfied says Jesus.   In contrast, a life lived for self-gratification, self-promotion, self-aggrandizement, self-interest is like a great empty hole that will never be filled. 

Blaise Pascal once wrote: “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every person, and it can never be filled by any created thing. It can only be filled by God.”

Jesus says: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for a life lived in harmony with God’s Divine Love: they will be satisfied.”

Blessed are the Gentle – Sermon Text

Today as we come to explore the third beatitude, the first observation I would like to make is that the phrase “Blessed are the meek, they will inherit the earth” is almost a direct quotation from Psalm 37:11.  The only thing that is missing is the phrase “Blessed are…”

In Psalm 37:11 it is phrased as follows: “The meek will inherit the land and enjoy peace and prosperity.”

The essence of Psalm 37 is a warning and a caution not to fret when you see unjust, wicked or untrustworthy people prospering.  The opening verses of Psalm 37 sets the tone for the whole psalm. 

1 Do not fret because of those who are evil
    or be envious of those who do wrong;

The Psalm goes on in verse 3:

3 Trust in the Lord and do good;
    dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.

And then Verses 10 and 11 in a way form something of a punchline for the entire Psalm. 

10 A little while, and the wicked will be no more;
    though you look for them, they will not be found.
11 But the meek will inherit the land/earth
    and enjoy peace and prosperity.

And so in the context of Psalm 37, the meaning of ‘meekness’ is really about trusting God, the Great Wisdom that holds us. It is about not fretting, or giving in to anger when you see the unjust, the unrighteous or the devious prospering. 

To be ‘meek’ according to Psalm 37 is to trust that there is a Higher Wisdom at work. It is to trust that in God’s time and in God’s way, God’s justice and ultimate Goodness will somehow prevail; that God’s universe is not chaotic or ultimately unjust but rather that the God who is Love and Goodness, is also Truth and Light and that perfect justice ultimately rules the world, even though we may not always be able to see it or perceive it clearly. 

How much energy do we burn up and expend bemoaning the sins, faults and the wickedness of others, especially those in positions of authority and power. The meek according to Psalm 37 have left all those cares and concerns into the hands into the Divine, Cosmic Wisdom and having done so they can direct their energies into more constructive places, lighting candles instead of cursing the darkness. 

“Blessed are the meek, they will inherit the earth”... “Blessed are those who trust in the higher Divine wisdom and justice, they will be enabled to live on earth with greater inner freedom.”

A second observation I would like to make, is that the English word ‘meek’ is in fact no longer the most helpful translation. I read one commentary that suggested that the meaning of the English word ‘meek’ has changed over the centuries since it was first used by the early English Reformers when translating the Bible into English.

Whereas the original meaning of ‘meek’ would have been – being humble, patient and gentle, it has today come more and more to mean to be submissive and easily imposed upon, and therefore as being weak. 

But the original Greek word praus in our text would have been far closer to the idea of being gentle and humble. 

Quite a number of modern translations of Matthew 5:5 therefore use the word gentle. 

“Blessed are the gentle, they will inherit the earth”

What is interesting is that in most other places in the New Testament where the Greek word Praus is used, it is translated as gentle and on some occasions as humble. In fact, I found it quite astonishing how often the word gentle is used through-out the New Testament.  The value of gentleness is dotted all across the New Testament. 

Phil 4:5 Let you gentleness be known to all

Titus 3:2 urges Christians “...To speak evil of no one... [but] to be gentle, and courteous toward all people.”

2 Timothy 2:24-26 tells us that an elder in the Church must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone...correcting his opponents with gentleness.

In Galatians 6:1 Paul writes of restoring others who have sinned in a spirit of gentleness 

It seems that in the New Testament, gentleness is consistently described as being a key attribute of Christian conduct and behaviour. In Matthew 11 Jesus even describes himself as gentle. 

“Come unto me, all you that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble of heart: and you shall find rest for your souls.” Matthew 11:28

And as Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, quoting from Zachariah, Matthew 21:4-5, Jesus is described as gentle and riding on a donkey.  He is gentle as he welcomes children and blesses them. He is gentle as he responds to the woman caught in adultery as well as the women who anoints his feet. He reaches out and touches with gentleness the man with leprosy. 

But as we read the Gospels in all their fullness we see that the gentleness of Jesus is anything but weak. There is a strength in Jesus that enables him to stand his ground and even confront religious authorities whose religiosity have made them hard-hearted and uncaring. There is a strength in Jesus as he walks resolutely to Jerusalem even though he knows he is walking to his death. The gentleness of Jesus is born of an inner strength, not from weakness. 

I found a quote online from Leo Rosten. He writes:
 
“I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.”

And Andy Mort, who describes himself as a Coach for Gentle Rebels writes:

“...There is nothing strong about the person who is quick to lose temper and resort to aggression and violence in their spirit, words, and action. This is anything but strength, it is in fact a display of profound weakness...”

In contrast, those who are gentle are strong and full of self-control. In fact without the inner strength of self-control, there would be no true gentleness at all. 

And so another Christian writer, Gayle Erwin writes that “Gentleness is not apathy but is an aggressive expression of how we view people. We see people as so valuable that we deal with them in gentleness...”

Blessed are the gentle, says Jesus, they will inherit the earth. 

Thirdly, I would like to briefly wrestle with this question of the meek inheriting the earth. It has never quite made sense to me. In probably over three thousand years or more since Psalm 37 stated that the meek will inherit the land,  it would seem that our world is still structured in a way that benefits the aggressive, the greedy, the pushers and the exploiters? 

What could it mean then that the gentle will inherit the earth? As I was chewing on this question during the week, it struck me that in fact there is in fact very profound truth within it that we all need to hear.

If our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are going to inherit the earth from us, then we are all going to need to learn to walk more gently upon it. Unless we all learn to live more gently on the earth, there is not going to be much left to inherit.  In Psalm 37, the wicked are described as those who borrow from others and do not repay.  Our current way of life is living off resources borrowed from future generations, our children and grand-children and great grand-children. Has the time perhaps come for us to begin to repay what we have borrowed?  And if we had to all use our imaginations what might life begin to look like? What would need to change in our way of life if we were to all to learn to live with more gentleness on the earth? 

It was wonderful to hear Prince William this week questioning those billionaires who are jetting off on private trips into space. He said the time has come for us to stop trying to find other places to live in outer space, but rather to use our resources to instead fix this world.  Everyone needs to learn to live with greater gentleness, even our millionaires and billionaires. 

And what might it mean to begin to live more gently on the earth?  It doesn’t necessarily mean gluing ourselves to motorways… it could be as simple as as considering how we spend our money, what we spend it on and how much we’re willing to waste.  In what way are you and I being asked to become gentle revolutionaries. 

Blessed are the gentle, says Jesus, they will inherit the earth. 

I would like to close with a brief story that my father shared with me that encapsulates something of the both the strength and the power of gentleness: 

At one of the theological colleges in England where my father taught, the principal of the college, a minister, reflected on the meaning of the phrase “the wrath of the Lamb”. You might recognise the phrase from our preaching series on Revelation. It is found in Rev 6:16. 

In reflecting on this phrase: “the wrath of the lamb”, the minster told of how he had got home from work one day, tired, withdrawn and irritable. And in this state of unpleasant irritability, he had been abrupt and even rude to his little 4 year old daughter who had come over to spend time with him as he arrived home. 

After having dealt with her rather abruptly and rudely, he got up and went off to his study to be by himself.  A few minutes later, he heard a little knock on the door. It was his daughter. As she opened the door and stood at a distance in the doorway, she simply said: “I love you daddy!”

He said in that moment, through the innocence and gentleness of his four year-old daughter, he had come to understand what the book of Revelations means when it speaks of “the wrath of the lamb”. 

“I love you daddy!” she had said. And in that moment, he was pierced to the heart. 

There is power in gentleness.  In Proverbs 15:1 we read “A gentle answer turns away wrath,
but a harsh word stirs up anger.”

“Blessed are the gentle”, says Jesus, “they shall inherit the earth”. 

Matthew 5:4  Blessed are those who mourn. They will be comforted. 
Jeremiah 31:1-10

Today we come to reflect on the second beatitude, and as we do so, and as we come to wrestle with what sounds like an oxymoron, that there is a blessing and a comfort to be found in mourning and grief, I recognise that as we reflect on this verse today, we all find ourselves standing on holy ground… sacred ground… It is best that we tread with great caution and with great care lest we find ourselves insensitively stomping around on one-another’s broken hearts, and walking arrogantly or carelessly through each others pools of tears. 

In preparing for today’s sermon, as I normally do, I spent a bit of time reading through other people’s reflections. One pastor wrote of how he had preached on this verse at a major conference. And after the session was over and people were mingling and chatting, one delegate came over to him and asked him “Have you ever suffered? Have you ever lost someone? Have you ever really mourned?”.  The pastor paused a moment to think and found himself having to admit that he hadn’t. “I thought so,” was the response of the person who had come up to speak to him. 

In this beatitude of Jesus, we are faced with a paradox: Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.  The great danger of a preacher, in trying to find a fresh, clever, interesting and novel perspective on these words is that one might end up speaking without knowledge and spouting forth something trite and superficial. 

And so today, I feel indeed that I walk where angels fear to tread, because angels might be more deeply aware than I of the pools of tears that sit beside those who will be listening to this sermon today. 

Blessed are those who mourn. They will be comforted. 

What could these words mean? What truth is hidden within the paradox?

Today, rather than trying to come up with some clever and fresh perspective on what these words might mean,  I thought it might be better to reflect on two stories of grief and hopefully allow those stories to shed light on the possible meaning of our text today. 

The first story is one that I think I have told before in Dromore, perhaps in the first few months of arriving. It is the story of a colleague in the ministry in South Africa. We were serving together in a large church on the east of Johannesburg.  He told how some years earlier his father had passed away. Being a minister, his family looked to him for direction, and very soon he got into practical mode as he made arrangements for the funeral which he ended up conducting the  himself. He said it was so busy and intense at the time that he never had the opportunity to grieve his father’s passing. He was so busy trying to be a minister to his family, trying to provide a container for his own families grief that he never really had the opportunity himself to just sit down and cry and to feel personally for himself the sense of pain and loss of his fathers passing.

Under the circumstances trying his best to holds things together for his family, he had put a lid on his grief. In effect, he had forced himself to just suck it up and keep going. 

He went on to tell how a few years later, on one ordinary Sunday morning, as he mounted the stairs up into the pulpit, ready to lead a service or worship as he did every Sunday, just as he was about to start the service, he found himself suddenly overcome and overwhelmed by a flood of tears that he had absolutely no control over. Up there in the pulpit, in front of the whole congregation, he found himself weeping and sobbing uncontrollably for no apparent reason. 

It was with a sense of embarrassment that he had to leave the pulpit and leave the confused and obviously concerned congregation just sitting there wondering what was happening. He went into to the vestry where for the next 15 to twenty minutes the tears just flowed as he continued to sob and weep uncontrollably. 

In reflecting on it, he said he hadn’t realised how much grief he had been carrying inside since his father’s passing. And he hadn’t realised how emotional heavy that grief had been. All he knew was as the grief welled up and as he sobbed and sobbed and sobbed uncontrollably on that Sunday morning, when he should have been leading his congregation in worship, something of the great weight and burden of that grief that he had been carrying for so long slowly began to lift from that day.  It wasn’t that the grief suddenly now vanished, but that perhaps the beginning of a process of grieving had begun. 

In out text, the Greek word for mourn,  comes from the Greek word penthéō which means to "mourn over a death" and refers to "manifested grief"  – a grief  so severe it takes possession of a person and cannot be hid.

Is it possible that our verse today could mean something as follows: Blessed are those who cannot hide their grief any longer they will find relief from the great burden they have been carrying”.

On that day, that colleague found could not hide his grief any longer. He could not keep the lid on it any longer. And from that moment, his journey through grief had begun. 

When I was still in training before I was ordained, I went with a group of other trainee ministers and spent the day at a hospice where a hospice nurse spoke to us about the grieving process and the work they do in the hospice, working with both those who were dying and their families. I will always remember her description of grief. She said grief is like digging through a mountain with a teaspoon. 

A second story I would like to share is of a women that Wendy and I met while we were living and working at a retreat centre about an hour north of Johannesburg.  Her name was Margie, and she had come to lead a retreat on the spiritual benefits of walking… walking in silence… walking alone… and in the process of walking, finding space to get in touch with and to work through the jumble of thoughts and emotions that we often carry with us but that we are not always aware of. 

The weekend made a big impact on me. But it was not so much the retreat itself that made the impact, but rather it was Margie.  There was a transparency about her, and a gentleness and a care and a love that was immediately evident. She seemed to possess an ability to see into a person, to see their vulnerabilities and their weaknesses and as she spoke with them, to hold them in a loving and caring presence. 

Margie also seemed to have an ability to be very easily and quickly moved to tears. As she was moved by the presence and vulnerability of others during the course of conversation, she did not try and hold back, as tears would well up in her eyes.  It was clearly an expression of the tenderness and the love she was experiencing that moment as she saw into the person who was standing before her and as she was draw in close to them.

At one point she apologised for the tears. Or perhaps it was not so much an apology as an explanation for she was clearly not embarrassed by the tears as many of us are. She told a little bit of her own story… how 30 or 40 years earlier her teenage son, aged about 18 years old, had taken his own life and how in that moment her life and her heart had shattered into a million and one little pieces.  Hers had been a long and arduous journey through grief. But the long term effect of that grief was that it had made her very sensitive to and tender towards the pain of others. In a word, it had caused a deep and tender love to grow within her towards other people. 

The death of her teenage son had shattered her heart into a million pieces, but in the end it was not a breaking down of her heart, it turned out in the end to be a breaking open of her heart in a soft, gentle and tender love for everyone who crossed her path. 

Although she still grieved the loss of her son, she said her tears were no longer so much tears of sadness, but rather tears of love. 

And I wonder if that is perhaps the answer to the paradox of Jesus teaching: Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 

Why is it a blessing to mourn? Where is the comfort in weeping and grieving? Perhaps the answer is that at the heart of grief is in fact the seed of love. You only grieve that which you love and where there is great love, there will surely also inevitably be great grief. And so grief is an expression of love.  

The danger is that if you try and limit your grief, to contain it, hide it, or put a lid on it, the inevitable outcome is that you will also end up containing your love, hiding it, limiting it, putting a lid on it. To cut oneself off from grief is therefore unfortunately also to cut oneself off from love. 

M Scott-Peck, the American Psychiatrist and Spiritual writer suggests that the source of all our psychological suffering is trying to avoid legitimate and unavoidable pain. 

Is it possible that if we allow ourselves to grieve fully, to really feel the pain of our grief, that over time we might begin to experience our tears of sadness and grief being transformed into tears of tender love… or perhaps rather, that our tears of sadness that have always contained the seeds of love within them, have simply become the moisture that was needed in order for the seeds of love to grow. 

The Greek word for comfort is the word parakaleó.  Pará, means "from close-beside".  Kaléō, means "to call or invite”.  Putting those together one has the sense of being invited or called from close beside, "close-up and personal”.  And in a way that is what it felt like being in the presence of Margie. Being in her presence was a feeling of being invited in, invited, called close beside, into her warm, open and tender presence and lovingkindness. Paradoxically, Margie had found comfort, an openess and a closeness to others through her grief. 

Margie was not a professing Christian. Her journey had in the end taken her on a different spiritual path. But her life had become like a transparent window through which the light and love of God could shine.  What Jesus is teaching in this verse is not Christian doctrine but rather a universal truth that expresses a universal human experience, open to all people. 

Blessed are those who mourn, they will be comforted… blessed are those who allow themselves to grieve, they will enable others to come close and in turn become a soft and tender presence where others can feel themselves invited in also. 

I’d like to end with two quotes. Firstly one by  by Marcel Proust “We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.” 

And a quote from a contemporary spiritual teacher, Adyashanti: Grief un-resisted, becomes grace.