Blessed Are the Meek

Sermon manuscript for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists

February 23, 2013

Third in a series on the Beatitudes of Matthew 5

Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, For they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, For they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, For they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, For they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, For they shall be called sons of God

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

The meekest man I ever met was John Barletta. That's not a compliment. Meekness in John's life was a curse.

When we first met, I was fresh out of seminary, living and working in an evangelistic center in Times Square. My job was to do direct, personal outreach. I visited door-to-door in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood to the west. The neighborhood deserved its name. A half block east of the center was the famous intersection of Seventh Avenue and Broadway. That's where crowds gather to watch the ball drop on New Year's Eve. I would stand in the river of humanity on Seventh Avenue handing out fliers inviting people to Wednesday and Friday night Bible studies I led in the basement hall at the evangelistic center.

One of the first people to respond to my fliers was John Barletta. He came to the group studies for weeks, then indicated he might be interested in getting baptized. I was thrilled. He was going to be my first convert. This is what I had gone to seminary for.

When he showed up for his first study, I was ready. But I found it very difficult to make progress through my prepared outline. John needed to talk. About the problems he was having with his daughter and his son. About his hiatal hernia and his dandruff. About his dogged, and so far unsuccessful efforts to quit smoking. Above all, we talked about his job. It was killing him.

He worked for the transit authority, sitting in a booth selling subway tokens. Customers were often rude. His co-workers sometimes ripped him off at shift changes. They would “help” him count and cheat him in the process. His superior didn't like him. She made his life miserable.

He had fifteen years before retirement. He had too many years in to start over anywhere else and be able to earn a pension. Quite apart from retirement, he didn't have the skills, education or personality to get a job anywhere else that would pay anything like what he was making at the transit authority. So he he was stuck in a job he hated, a job where it seemed to him, he was hated. But what could he do?

He was helplessly stuck. This is the core meaning of “meek.” in our passage. When Jesus blessed the meek, he had in mind the words of Psalm 37:

Do not fret because of evil men

or be envious of those who do wrong;

for like the grass they will soon wither,

like green plants they will soon die away.

Trust in the LORD and do good;

dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.

Delight yourself in the LORD

and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Commit your way to the LORD;

trust in him and he will do this:

He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn,

the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.

Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him;

do not fret when men succeed in their ways,

when they carry out their wicked schemes.

Refrain from anger and turn from wrath;

do not fret--it leads only to evil.

For evil men will be cut off,

but those who hope in the LORD will inherit the land.

A little while, and the wicked will be no more;

though you look for them, they will not be found.

But the meek will inherit the land and enjoy great peace. Psalm 37:1-11 NIV.

David wrote this Psalm with his own experience painfully in mind. He spent years running from King Saul. David had on his side justice and the approval of God, but it sure didn't feel like it. He felt like a hunted rabbit, scurrying from one hole to another, wondering when he was going to run out of holes. David was meek, i.e. helpless. At this stage in his life David was “little people,” a “nobody.” He knew that what was happening to him was unjust. And since he wasn't willing to kill Saul, there was nothing he could do except keep running and pray that God would eventually step in.

God did finally step in. Things worked out for David. And his experience became a model of hope. It is the picture Jesus evokes in the Beatitude: Blessed are the meek, they will inherit the earth. Like David we may be hounded by injustice, bad luck, helplessness, powerlessness. If so, like David we can hope that God will finally act. And when God acts, he will act on the side of righteousness and justice. The meek will inherit the earth.

*See below for additional passages in Psalms that provide support for this perspective.

Those of you familiar with the King James Version of the Bible may remember the words of Numbers 12:3, “Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.” This reference to the meekness of Moses is clearly intended as a compliment. Moses does not fight for his privileges and prerogatives. He leaves his defense to God. This humble deferral to God is one meaning of the Hebrew and Greek words translated into English as “meek.” It is a meaning that is echoed in the usage of Paul and Peter. But Jesus clearly uses the word meek in light of its usage in the Psalms where meek refers not to a deliberately chosen humility, but an imposed state of helplessness. Jesus is offering consolation for those stuck in the state of powerlessness. He is not offering commendation for those who have acquired the virtue of humility.

Psalm 37 and Jesus blessing on the meek bring to mind a central theme running all through the Bible: The Grand Reversal. Evil may appear to triumph. The mighty may appear invincible, but God is going to work a Grand Reversal. The lowly can take hope. The mighty beware. Judgment day is coming and then we'll see who is on top.

This Grand Reversal is highlighted in words of the Magnificat (i.e. Mary's song) from Luke 1:

My soul magnifies the Lord,

And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.

For He has regarded the lowly estate of His maidservant;

Behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed.

For He who is mighty has done great things for me,

Holy is His name.

His mercy is on those who fear Him from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with His arm;

He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He has put down the mighty from their thrones,

And exalted the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things,

And the rich He has sent away empty.

He has helped His servant Israel,

In remembrance of His mercy,

As He spoke to our fathers,

To Abraham and to his seed forever." Luke 1:46-55.

Those on the bottom are lifted. Those on top are brought low.

This reversal, this lifting of the lowly and abasing of the mighty is a constantly recurring theme in the Bible. The meek, the helpless, the ones without power and without an advocate will finally be exalted by God. They will finally receive the abundance they have earned by their hard work.

This grand reversal for the meek is celebrated in the passage from Psalm 37 we read earlier.

Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him;

do not fret when men succeed in their ways,

when they carry out their wicked schemes.

Refrain from anger and turn from wrath;

do not fret--it leads only to evil.

For evil men will be cut off,

but those who hope in the LORD will inherit the land.

A little while, and the wicked will be no more;

though you look for them, they will not be found.

But the meek will inherit the land and enjoy great peace. Psalm 37:1-11 NIV.

Hang in there. It looks like the wicked are winning. It looks like God is asleep, but wait. Keep watching.

A little while, and the wicked will be no more;

though you look for them, they will not be found.

But the meek will inherit the land and enjoy great peace.

Blessed are the helpless, they will inherit the earth.

John Barletta's helplessness reached all the way back into his childhood. Late in the afternoon when the kids in the neighborhood heard the elevated train pulling into the station on their street, they would run toward the station to see if their dads had arrived. John and his brother ran the other direction and hid until they were sure their dad was not coming down the street.

John repeatedly mentioned that he had grown up in the church. His dad had been a care taker at a Baptist Church in the Bronx. The family lived in the apartment at the back of the church. When John referred to growing up in the church he usually did so with a sad laugh. It was precisely life at church that had begun the destruction of his faith. Didn't anyone at church ever see how cruel his dad was? Did anyone care?

John's family lived in a church, and John's life was hell.

In the decade before John and I met, he had studied for a couple of years each with the Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons and Catholics. He read constantly trying to make sense of life.

How did it happen that he ended up like a piece of Styrofoam bouncing in the surf? Other people had some measure of control over their lives. People were friends with their children. They did jobs that they enjoyed. They worked hard and their work paid off. They made choices and followed through with them. How did John end up a victim at every turn. He couldn't even stop smoking.

John was powerless. That is the central meaning of the word meek in Jesus statement, “Blessed are the meek, they will inherit the earth.”

Jesus blessing, of course, assumes God exists. That assumption was problematic for John. When I asked what he had learned in all his studying with various religions and his reading, he said he realized a lot of smart people believed in God. When I asked him what he himself believed, he said he didn't know. Faith had been beaten out of him in that apartment at the back of the church in the Bronx.

With all our conversation about his job and his kids and his health, it's no surprise we made little progress through the doctrines of the church. I left Manhattan and became a pastor out on Long Island. I thought of John occasionally, but he pretty much faded from my mind. That's the way it is with meek people. They are easily forgotten. Frequently they are invisible.

Several years into our pastorate on Long Island, I began doing an outreach service on Sabbath afternoon's at a church in Manhattan. Within weeks, to my astonishment John Barletta showed up.

His life was about the same. The job was killing him. He was estranged from his daughter because she had defrauded him out of thousands of dollars that were supposed to be a loan. His son was AWOL from the Navy and John worried constantly they would catch him. He was seriously alienated from his wife. His cat died. And the best thing he could say about God was that a lot of smart people believed in him.

But John showed up every Sabbath afternoon for our Bible studies, and when we began regular Sabbath morning church services. John attended regularly.

The church grew dramatically. Most of the new people were young adults. Beautiful, professional, smart young people. New York is a dress up town. Church looked like a setting for a fashion shoot. John stood out. His dandruff clearly visible on his jacket in the winter. On hot summer Sabbaths, he wore a discolored tank top.

He stuttered severely, but somehow we learned that when he read, the stuttering disappeared. So, occasionally John in his sloppy clothes and dandruff and weird body odor would sit on the platform and read the scripture. He would stutter his way through the introduction: T-T-T-T-To-To-To-d-d-d-day, we are r-r-r-read-d-d-ding Ps-s-s-salm 1. Then he'd fluently read:

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly,

Nor stands in the way of sinners,

Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;

But his delight is in the law of the LORD,

And in His law does he meditate day and night.

He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water,

That brings forth its fruit in its season,

Whose leaf also shall not wither;

And whatever he does shall prosper.

Psalm 1:1-3

John did his best to avoid walking in the counsel of the ungodly. He read the Bible and all sorts of books exploring Christianity. But it was not true that whatever he did prospered. Sometimes it seemed just opposite. Whatever he did went sour. His best efforts produced unhappy results.

He came to church one Sabbath with casts on both wrists. He had been collecting the tokens from the turnstiles at work when some guys jumped him. They threw him down the stairs and ran off with the tokens.

I can still hear the plaintive tone in John's voice as he said to me, “I don't know why they would do that to me.”

His dog died. His son-in-law drowned. His hernia got worse. He could no longer sleep in a bed. He had to sleep in a chair.

Perhaps the most horrific event in John's whole life occurred on the job. It was a couple of years after he was jumped and thrown down the stairs. He shouted at some fare-beaters who jumped the turnstiles. The next day they were back. They poured gasoline into his booth and threw a match.

John escaped without serious burns, but his soul was seared beyond the power of words to express.

His OCD book shopping had filled his house with so many books you moved around the apartment through little canyons in the waist-high books. He asked my help getting rid of a truck load or two, but he worried he would simply fill the space again with books or something else.

He did manage to quit smoking. It took eight years of endless struggle. It was his one triumph. He still knew that a lot of smart people believed in God, but that was as close to faith as he ever got.

One Sabbath, I invited people who felt called to consider baptism to talk with me after the service. I was astonished when John came to me and said he wanted to get baptized.

When we met later that week, I asked him what had made the difference. What had brought him to faith. He began telling his life story again—about his abusive dad and his time in the army. I interrupted him. “Yes, John, I know your story. But when did you become a believer?”

Again, he began a wandering story, about studying with the Jehovah's Witnesses and with the Mormons and the Catholics and about the abuse at work.

Again, I interrupted him. “John do you believe in God?”

“Well,” he said, “I know a lot of smart people do.”

I tried a different tack. “John do you believe that God has forgiven you?”

“It would be nice to think so.”

I handed him a Bible and had him read 1 John 1:9. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

“John, have you confessed your sins?”

“Yes.”

“Does the Bible say that if we confess we are forgiven.”

Yes.”

“So, are your sins forgiven?”

“W-W-W-Well, it w-w-w-would b-b-be n-n-nice t-t-to th-th-think so.”

As far as I could tell, John's beliefs hadn't changed from what they had been years earlier when we first met at the center in Times Square. John was stuck at work. He had to keep working. He couldn't change the rude customers or the crazy-making boss. He couldn't fix his kids. He couldn't magically fix his marriage. He was powerless. He was meek—at the mercy of forces larger and more powerful than himself. He even did not power over his mind. He had been chasing faith for decades and the most he had accomplished was the certainty that some of the people who believed in God were smart.

As far as I could tell John was no closer to faith than he had been eight years earlier when we first met. It appeared to me the best he could say about the gospel message of forgiveness is that it lined up with his best wishes. So I asked the obvious question. “John, you don't believe in God and you aren't sure Jesus has forgiven your sins. So, why do you want to be baptized.”

“Because,” he said, “This is the first place where I have been safe.”

John had spent decades chasing God. He hadn't found him. He chased wholeness and well-being, without much success. But he had found a place that felt like what the house of God should feel like—a sanctuary, a refuge. He wanted to be part of it. It was a foretaste of the promised land.

Blessed are the meek—the lowly, the hopeless, helpless, powerless. They will inherit the earth.

One of the highest callings of the church is to give the lowly ones a taste of heaven now. If you are not powerless, if you are not one of the little people, the invisible ones, then Jesus calls you to work with him to create safe places. If you are one of the lowly ones, if you are one of the meek ones, we extend to you the blessing of Jesus: you will inherit the earth.

Those on the bottom are going to be placed on thrones. Those without power will receive authority. Those we hardly notice now are going to be somebodies.

It is our calling to practice now for that grand reversal.

*

For he has not ignored or belittled the suffering of the needy. He has not turned his back on them, but has listened to their cries for help. . . .The poor (KJV: meek) will eat and be satisfied. All who seek the LORD will praise him. Their hearts will rejoice with everlasting joy. Psalm 22:24-26.

The LORD builds up Jerusalem; He gathers together the outcasts of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted And binds up their wounds. The LORD lifts up the meek (NKJV: humble); He casts the wicked down to the ground. Psalm 147:2-3, 6

Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

Sermon manuscript for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists

Sabbath, February 16, 2013

Text: Matthew 5:4

Years ago, new in a parish, I was visiting folks, getting acquainted. Sylvia and Robert lived in a little house in a working class neighborhood. Robert had spent forty years in a Goodyear factory. Sylvia had worked as a bookkeeper. We sat in the living room to talk. Just minutes into our visit Sylvia began telling me a heart-breaking story. Her daughter had drowned. This was in the days before cell phones. It was hours before she learned the terrible news. Sylvia rehearsed the details: A beautiful, sunny day. The lake where they had often gone as a family. The group of girlfriends her daughter had gone with.

As I listened, I felt a certain cognitive dissonance. It was clear from Sylvia's anguish and the sharp details in her telling that this accident had happened recently, this past summer or maybe the summer before. It sounded like a story about a group of teenage girls on a picnic. But Sylvia was in her eighties. Maybe I hadn't heard right. Maybe it was Sylvia's granddaughter. I didn't get it. Then Sylvia mentioned this had happened three days after her daughter's sixteenth birthday. Sylvia had been mourning her daughter for forty years. And sitting there listening to Sylvia, it seemed to me her grief was as sharp and cutting as if it had happened yesterday.

* * * *

If Sylvia had been in the crowd listening when Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn, they will be comforted,” how would his words have helped?

Sylvia believed in the resurrection. She looked forward to the grand reunion of heaven. She did not doubt any of the promises Christians cling to in the face of death. But after forty years of believing in the resurrection, she was still waiting for the comfort.

So what was Jesus saying to Sylvia?

In the crowds who gathered around Jesus to listen to his wisdom and receive healing, most of the adults would have had direct experience with mourning. In Jesus' world more than half of all children died. Every mother was a grieving mother. Every dad was haunted by the memory of a son who had carried his dreams, had carried them until both son and dreams were killed by diarrhea or typhus or the plague or gangrene.

Jesus' world was full of early death. Children and teenagers, mother's in childbirth, dads in the prime of life with a gaggle of kids at home, depending on them. When Jesus looked out at the crowds, he knew they were achingly familiar with grief. So when he spoke of mourning, it was not theoretical. It was not “spiritual.” Jesus was not talking about mourning for their sins. He was talking about grieving for their children.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Some versions of the Bible translate Jesus' words as, “Happy are those who mourn . . . .” It's a very unfortunate translation. Using the word “happy” here, implies that Jesus trivialized human pain or maybe even worse, that he spiritualized it. Jesus did neither.

(According to the “spiritual” view, when Jesus spoke of mourning, he wasn't addressing the pain of losing a loved one. Rather he was speaking of people “mourning” for the effects of their sinful actions, grieving for the pain their sin has caused to the heart of God. In this interpretation, Jesus was commending people who “mourn” over the pain they have caused instead of offering consolation to people suffering great pain. The “spiritual view” disconnects Jesus' teachings from real life and contradicts the overall portrait of Jesus given in the Gospel of Matthew. When Jesus blessed those who mourn, he was talking about the loss that haunts our lives because of death, not the guilt that haunts our lives because of our own misdeeds.)

When Jesus pronounced a blessing on those who mourn, he was not, even for an instant, suggesting they were happy. He was not minimizing their pain. He did not spiritualize their pain. He honored their pain by acknowledging it and by speaking to it on behalf of God.

When we mourn, we feel cursed. The world goes dark. Life becomes tasteless and uninteresting. Pleasure becomes impossible. Every happiness is haunted by the keen awareness of our loss. God himself becomes part of the problem.

“Why did you allow it?”

“Why did you let me get my heart so wrapped up in that person?”

“Why didn't you avert the tragedy, the accident? Why didn't you cure the disease?”

“Why didn't you let me die instead?”

It is a short step from all this questioning to wondering why God is so mad at you. Why did God curse you? Grief feels like a curse.

Into these dark thoughts, Jesus' words come: Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed, not cursed. God notices your grief. He is touched by it. He has tender regard for you. You are blessed.

The heaviness of your heart is not the testimony of God against you. Rather, the heaviness of your heart is evidence that you have obeyed the commandment to love.

We mourn only those we love. The world is full of tragedies. Death stalks every corner of earth. But when someone we love dies . . . that is when we are stricken with grief. When you love someone, you never have enough time together. A life time is too short. When love is interrupted by death or other wrenching separations, we grieve. We mourn. The very fact that you are grieving is evidence of your courage to love. No wonder Jesus blesses you. No wonder Jesus says that no matter how intense your pain and dark your heart, God regards you with favor. This is what it means to be blessed.

Not necessarily happy, just regarded favorably by God.

Sometimes we want to hurry the blessing to completion. We want Sylvia to quit mourning her daughter. We want old friends to get over their inconsolable grief at the loss of their spouse of fifty years. We want to talk about the promise of resurrection, not about the reality of present loss. But this kind of hurry is a departure from our calling as agents of the kingdom of heaven. The model set for us by Jesus (in line with Jewish tradition going back a thousand years before him) was complete engagement here and now with real life as it happens in the real world.

In our world, we are much less likely to lose a child to death. But we are more likely to confront another grief.

A month or two ago I was listening to Steve Scher on Weekday. He was talking about parents of children autism disorders. I listened to a couple of mothers describe their efforts to secure proper service from the school system and adequate help from the various medical resources. Then a dad called in.

He, too, was a tireless advocate for his son, trying to get help, trying to create a life for his son. Then this dad described the eternal ache he carried for the son who would never be. He choked up as he described a dad's dreams of tossing a football with his son. He talked of dreams of going camping and teaching his son to fish. Dreams, that in the case of his son, could never turn into life. Dreams he had to give up, if he was going to be fully present for the son he actually had, instead of the son he had dreamed of.

He lived in the impossibly complicated world where the very exercise of his love for his son who was disabled kept constantly alive his grief for the son who never was. What a weight to carry. What heights of nobility. What depths of pain.

When Jesus speaks to this father, Jesus does not say: “How happy you are.” Jesus says, “You are blessed.” God sees your love and your grief. God knows all the complicated, topsy-turvy emotions of your world, the resentment and hope, the affection and weariness. The tears. God sees it and God's word to you is “blessing.” Grace and peace to you.

Then Jesus goes on to promise: You will be comforted.

One of the central claims of Christianity is that God is planning a bright future, a future so bright and sweet and rich and beautiful that all grief, all loss, even all injustice will finally be redeemed. The book of Revelation promises that God will wipe away every tear. Paul wrote that Jesus will gather all people into an eternity of bliss. Jesus himself foresaw a future kingdom ruled by righteousness, beyond death and loss and pain.

Jesus said to the thousands of grieving people listening to him preach—and in his audiences the vast majority of adults were grieving—you will be comforted.

Jesus did not pretend that they were happy here and now. The comfort he spoke of was future. Jesus did not trivialize or spiritualize their present loss. He recognized it for what it was: an incurable pain. Then he said to those caught up in the sharp pain of recent loss and to those carrying decades of ache: you are blessed. God is with you. God is for you. And some day God will provide comfort commensurate with the enormity of your pain.

It is the ultimate promise. The Book of Revelation pictures that bright future as a golden city, the New Jerusalem where it is forever bright.

I saw a new heaven and a new earth . . . I heard a loud voice from heaven shouting, “God will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!" Revelation 21:1-5

Adventists celebrate that future as the climax of the “Great Controversy.” We insist that beyond the chaos and trauma of this world is a future so rich it will be worth the journey to get there.

The entire universe is clean. One pulse of harmony and gladness beats through the vast creation. From Him who created all, flow life and light and gladness, throughout the realms of illimitable space. (Page 678, The Great Controversy by Ellen G White )

Blessed are those who mourn. They will be comforted. And the comfort will be sufficient.

These words were intended to offer solace, to offer encouragement and grace. They also describe our mission as agents of the kingdom of heaven. We are to bring blessing to those who mourn. How do we do that?

What is our calling the face of Sylvia's forty-year long mourning? How do we respond to that father's magnificent service and soul-bending grief? How do we touch lives now with the blessing Jesus pronounced?

When our youngest daughter was born, she had a twin brother. It was a crash C-section because he was in distress. He was resuscitated and raced to the NICU. A few hours later we were told the bad news. He was a trisomy 13. With aggressive medical intervention he might live for a year or two. Right now, he was being kept alive by a spider web of medical technology. What did we want to do?

We did not want to see this little, misshapen boy endure the torments of tubes and electrodes and breathing assistance when the only future was more of the same until he was gone. So we decided to end life support.

I sat in the NICU while they gently unplugged and untaped and disconnected. Finally, all the wires and tubes were gone, and the nurse placed him in my arms and I held my son while he died.

A doctor and nurse sat with me. They didn't say anything. They didn't go anywhere. They answered no pages. They didn't stir. They just sat with me while the minutes passed. For more than half an hour we kept silent vigil as Douglas slowly expired.

I have some idea of the demands on medical staff. They never have nothing to do. They don't have extra half hours. I was astonished that this doctor and nurse would lavish this kind of time on me. And deeply touched.

There was nothing they could have said that would make the situation any less painful. Talking about the medical realities would have been beside the point. We had already covered those. Talking about the incidence of this particular birth defect would not have been illuminating. Discussing the ethics of our decision to withdraw life support would have been inappropriate at that point. And certainly talking about heaven would have been a mockery of the loss we faced.

So this doctor and nurse offered me the richest, most powerful blessing they could—their presence.

Jesus, looking at crowds of thousands who included a majority of people who had experienced loss, pronounced them blessed. We who do not have audiences of thousands—we have friends and neighbors and relatives who are mourning. Maybe they are living with a forty-year-old grief like Sylvia. Maybe they have lost a child. Maybe they are living with a child who is a constant reminder of the parent's dream that will never come true.

No matter the nature of the grief carried by the people around us, all of them need the reassurance Jesus spoke: you are blessed. And we can be most effective in making Jesus' words real by giving to those who grieve our presence, our gentle attention. As we do this, we will communicate the word of blessing, and we will convey at least a hint of the eternal comfort to come.

Blessed are those who mourn, they will be comforted.

Blessed are the spiritually bankrupt

Note: Last Sabbath, February 2, I got sick at the last minute and Andreas Beccai preached for me. He did a great job. Thanks, Andreas!!!

Sermon manuscript for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists

February 9, 2013

Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, For they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, For they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, For they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, For they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, For they shall be called sons of God

These blessings are recorded in the Gospel of Matthew as the beginning of the “Sermon on the Mount,” the most famous collection of the sayings of Jesus. This “sermon” has been a primary source for visionaries, humanists and radical Christians ??? for at least 1800 years.

Today, the first one: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Decades ago I pastored a church on New York's upper east side. It was a cool church. We were young and quick, smart and devout. But we weren't snooty. We welcomed all kinds of people, people like Alex. He could be a bit intimidating. Six foot four. And not quite right. You could see it in his face. He came to worship services off and on. Sometimes he came to prayer meeting on Wednesday evenings. I heard his story in bits and pieces. He grew up in an Adventist home in the Bronx. He knew about prophecies and the end of the world and the Mark of the Beast. His mother and grandmother raised him. They had kicked him out of the house a few years before I met him. So he began living on the street.

The women used to let him come home sometimes, he said, but lately they wouldn't open the door. According to Alex, they said he was unmanageable. He didn't understand why they would say that. He tried to be good.

He was supposed to be on medication for schizophrenia, but he didn't like the medicine. Social services had given him a place in an apartment with several other guys. It didn't work out.

So he was back on the street. Sometimes, old friends would let him sleep at their apartments for a night or two. On really cold nights he rode the subways until the transit cops kicked him off.

Alex learned I usually stayed overnight at the church several days a week, especially Wednesdays. So sporadically he came to prayer meeting then asked to stay the night. We had padded pews. I had an extra blanket. So I would settle him on a pew. Then I went down to my hide-a-bed in the basement and we would sleep peacefully through the night.

Occasionally I would be curled up in my sleeping bag at 4:30 or 5 in the morning and I would hear the door bell ring. I would drag myself out of bed, crawl upstairs and look out the window to see who on earth would be ringing the bell at such an unearthly hour.

It was Alex. He was cold. He had been riding the subway all night. Could he come in and sleep? I would fetch my extra blanket, settle him on a pew, then go back to bed.

I told Alex that when I stayed at the church it was because it was too late that night to drive home. So, I explained, “Alex, if you want to sleep here at the church, come in the evening. Even quite late in the evening is okay. But don't ring the bell in the morning. I need my sleep.”

Alex would promise. Then days or weeks later the doorbell would ring at 4 or 5 a.m.

I explained again and again. “Come at night if you want a place to stay.” Alex always promised. And sometimes he did come to prayer meeting and stayed for the night. But usually I met Alex at the door at 5 in the morning, dragging myself out of the warmth of my sleeping bag to climb the stairs to the freezing cold lobby.

Finally, I resolved I was going to show Alex tough love. The next time he rang the bell at 5 a.m. I would just ignore him. A few days later the bell rang. I burrowed deeper into my sleeping bag. He rang again. I pulled the pillow over my head. He rang again and again. I was resolute. Alex was going to have to learn to be responsible and come in the evening.

Then I remembered the doorbell also rang in the caretakers apartment. I slithered out of my sleeping bag and dragged myself up the stairs to the freezing lobby. I opened the door and began hollering at Alex. “Alex, why do you do this to me? I'm happy to give you a place to sleep. I'm trying to be nice to you. But why don't you come in the evening like I've asked? How come you show up in the morning, waking me up?

Alex looked at me with his great big eyes. He blinked a couple of times. Then he explained. “I don't have anywhere else to go.”

I groaned and beckoned him in, fetched my extra blanket and settled him on a pew.

Robert Frost who wrote: “Home is the place where when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

Jesus said, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Alex came to church because when you have nowhere else to go, you go home.

One of the recurring visions among young Christian radicals and—and occasionally among older people who have lived as rapscallions and come late and dramatically to Jesus. Think Tolstoy—is an ambition to create a pure church, a holy community. An entire society comprised of devout, zealous, faithful people. No riffraff. No halfhearted, lackadaisical, cultural Christians—like the church of their parents. Instead they'll create an entire community of people who believe the right way, act the right way. A community of strong, good people committed to God and one another.

It's a compelling vision. It fired the Brethren of the Common Life in the Netherlands in the 1300s. IT was the essential vision of the Anabaptists in the 1500s and the Quakers in the 1600s. This vision of a radically pure church was formative in the birth of the Mennonites and the Amish, Adventists and Nazarenes, certain Pentecostal denominations. The so-called “Holiness Churches.” It informs some of the Emergent Church writers.

These radical visionaries dream of forming the kind of church that care for Alex on a cold, rainy February morning. They would take deep satisfaction in the fact that Alex would look to their church for help. After all wasn't Jesus about helping people?

Radical Christians, people who see themselves as the special forces of the kingdom of heaven, would gladly open the door for Alex on a cold morning. But eventually Alex would force them to confront a complicated question: Is Alex part of us? We're happy to provide shelter for Alex, but is this his home? Does the church belong to Alex?

If Alex is received as a member, as someone with an insider's claim, that necessarily dilutes the radicals' vision of themselves as the special forces of the kingdom. Now that Alex is part of the family, it's clear that their church is not just strong, competent, good people ready to give. Their church is also people needing a warm place to sleep. Their church is no longer theologically pure, it includes someone whose theology is a confusing scramble, the fusion of Adventist orthodoxy and schizophrenic inventions. Alex brings mental illness inside.

When you're in your twenties and you are bright and strong and beautiful and devoted to Jesus, you naturally want to join the company of bright, strong, beautiful Christians who are going to fix the world. You do not imagine that your children would be anything other than bright, strong and beautiful. Autism, schizophrenia, and the heart-breaking array of dysfunction possible for the children of good people never enters your mind—except maybe as the targets of your benevolent professionalism.

Alex made himself at home in our church. On Sabbath morning and occasionally during the week. He did not see himself as a stranger begging for charity from some institution called the church. He sought help with the naturalness and unselfconsciousness of a kid calling home about a ski trip.

Decades ago, in a young adult church in New York, Alex messed with our image of ourselves. We were a cool church. We certainly wanted to be appropriately kind to people like Alex who struggled with mental illness and some of its concomitants. But when Alex made himself at home among us, it forced us to think again. Now we were cool and educated and generous AND we were mentally ill and weird and destitute. We did not just serve the needy. We were the needy.

Jesus captures this perfectly with his words, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Alex was poor in spirit. The kingdom was his.

Dreams of a pure church continue to haunt Christianity. They are a distortion of the vision of Jesus. To the extent that the church is an expression of the ministry of Jesus, the idea of the church as a community comprised of highly functional, devout, sincere, self-disciplined, generous, respectable people is an unfortunate and inaccurate narrowing of vision.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Jesus' ambition for his kingdom includes the spiritually bankrupt.

Thirty years ago it was Alex who played with our conception of ourselves.

More recently, for me it was Jeremy and Sean.

Jeremy grew up Catholic. During a very dark time when he was a teenager he attended my church for several years. We got acquainted. He went to a Catholic University and became a zealous, evangelistic Catholic. He regularly sent long quotations from Catholic apologists and theological heroes. He was in love with God and with God's church.

Jeremy took his vibrant faith and headed to an Ivy League grad school and finished his masters with his faith intact. He poured himself into a profession that touches kids in a community that is somewhat short on functional male role models. He's good. We stayed in touch.

Sean grew up on the remote outer edges of Adventism. Then as a teenager he attended my church along with Sean. He went to an Adventist high school and became a devout, evangelistic Adventist. He graduated from WWU and went straight into the IT workforce earning more than I did. Sean and Jeremy were in town for an event, and as was their custom when they were in town, they invited me for lunch.

Over noodles they updated me on their lives and Jeremy let slip some snide remark about the failure of God. Whoa, what was that? I asked. I knew that Sean had become an atheist, but the last time I checked facebook Jeremy was still a devout and even somewhat combative Christian.

Sean laughed. “You're behind times. Jeremy here has taken quite a slide.”

“Okay Jeremy, what's happening?” I asked.

Jeremy poured out a classic tale of heartbreak. He had been in love, had bought a ring. God had been blessing in the relationship. She wasn't Catholic, but he thought they could work that out. Then this good Christian girl, with utmost courtesy, blasted his heart and left him devastated. And God let it happen. Then after it happened God did nothing to help.

Bottom line according to Jeremy: We better take care of ourselves, because for sure God isn't going to.

Sean laughed. “He really fell for her. I never saw him so over the moon.”

Jeremy just shook his head.

We spent the next three hours talking. A little about women. A little about work. Mostly about God. And church. And community.

Jeremy was no atheist. He still bristled at Sean's casual statements that we know how the universe works and we don't need God as part of the picture. But both young men had consciously left the convictions they had held so warmly just a few years earlier.

And both talked about how helpful church community had been for them. Sean, the atheist, talked about trying to find an atheist substitute for the community he had found so beneficial in church. Both talked about the spiritual and social refuge they experience in a particular Adventist congregation in their teen years. They talked about how valuable it was to have a pastor even though they were obviously no longer model believers.

The longer they talked, more I thought I heard an echo of Jesus' words: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Sean and Jeremy were certainly poor in spirit. Jeremy's heart was raw with heartbreak, with disappointment with God and women. It's hard for a man to be more spiritually destitute than that!

Sean's spiritual emptiness was not painful. He is intensely cerebral in his engagement with life. He had heard faith articulated by the brightest, most sophisticated theological minds in the church. He understood their words and he found their arguments unpersuasive. He was not “anti-god.” He simply found materialism adequate as an explanation for everything.

From the point of view of classic evangelistic Christianity, Sean is genuinely bankrupt spiritually. He is cheerfully and contentedly non-spiritual.

From the point of view of anthropology, Sean is impoverished. For a hundred thousand years, according to archeologists homo sapiens have been religious. The most ancient human sites known to anthropologists include hard evidence of ritual. Having no spiritual sensibility is like being tone deaf or color blind. It is a human deficit which commonly occurs in people with hyper-development of other parts of their brain.

The common Christian response to people like Sean is condemnation. We regard people whose brains make complete sense of the universe without any reference to God or spirituality as evil, people to be scorned. But what did Jesus say about people like Sean: Blessed are poor in spirit. They, too, own citizenship in the kingdom of heaven. God's plans for the world include them.

Like Alex, when Jeremy and Sean come to church, they are coming home.

The Puritans of a distant era and the leaders of GYC and the Emergent Church movements of our own day intend to honor Jesus by purifying the church. But in their work of purification, they inescapably run into people like Alex and Jeremy and Sean: people who do not fit any model of ideal Christianity spirituality, people who are spiritually poor. To reject people like these young men, would be to cut off from the church, people that Jesus explicitly included in his kingdom.

This saying of Jesus issues a couple of different challenges. First, if you have a sweet, confident, pure faith, you are summoned to join with Jesus in offering the welcome of heaven to the poor in spirit. The more convinced you are of a person's spiritual poverty, the more emphatically you are charged to extend welcome on Jesus' behalf.

This saying offers a second, perhaps even richer challenge: If you are one of the poor in spirit, Jesus challenges you to participate in the mission of the kingdom. Your lack of faith or spiritual vitality is no excuse. Whether you are a believer or not, you are called to participate in the mission of the kingdom which is above all serving the world. Jesus asks you to join in the grand mission of easing pain, limiting pollution, expanding joy, furthering the potential of children. Just because you don't have the warm, confident faith of someone else is no excuse to allow yourself to sink into narcissism. Jesus was not picky two thousand years ago when calling people to participate in goodness. He is no more picky now. Whatever your situation, a person living with schizophrenia or the blessing of hyper intelligence, beauty or physical disfigurement, social skills or lack there of, no matter where you're presently located in the range of human function and capability, Jesus calls you to participate in the mission of the kingdom of heaven.

The mission of the kingdom of heaven is so expansive, it calls for the engagement of us all.