Transcript
Let us pray. Let the good news come now, our Father, not only in word, but in power, in the Holy Spirit, and with full assurance through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen. Hear the word of God as it is read from the Gospel according to Matthew, the fifth chapter, beginning at the first verse. Seeing the crowds, Jesus went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and
taught them, saying, 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 satisfied. 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 children
of God. This is the word of the Lord. Happiness is what? What is happiness? How does one achieve it? Three Europeans were discussing this question one day. The first was a Frenchman, the second an Englishman, the third a Russian. The Frenchman said, happiness is having dinner by candlelight on the Riviera with a beautiful mademoiselle. That's what happiness is. You French are too romantic for your own good, replied the Englishman. Happiness is coming home after a successful
day at the office to your favorite chair, your house slippers, a full pipe, and the evening newspaper at the fireside. That's what happiness is. You are both wrong, objected the Russian. Happiness is being awakened from a sound sleep at three o'clock in the morning by the secret police, being told that you, Peter Stefanovic, are under arrest, and being able to say, I am sorry, but Peter Stefanovic lives next door. Happiness is what? Is happiness, as
the song claims, merely different things to different people? Is that what happiness is? Jesus speaks to this question in the Sermon on the Mount. The sermon begins with eight affirmations from the preaching of Jesus concerning the nature of happiness and the way to achieve it. The Good News Bible offers us this translation of the first. Happy are those who know they are spiritually poor. The kingdom of heaven belongs to them. Notice carefully the form of the
pronouncement. It is composed of two lines, two phrases. The first reads, happy are those who know they are spiritually poor. The second reads, literally, because the kingdom of heaven belongs to them. Now the point is that Jesus defines what happiness is in the second line, and he describes how we achieve it in the first. If you missed that point, you missed the message. Jesus is not telling us that those who know they are spiritually poor are
thereby happy. Happiness is not the condition of spiritual poverty. He is telling us that happiness is the consequence of belonging to the kingdom of heaven, which in the Gospel of Matthew is a euphemism for the kingdom of God. Happiness is the result of your belonging to God in God's sovereign love and in God's sovereign love belonging to you. I want to emphasize the word consequence and the word result. For according to Jesus, happiness is not a
goal worthy of being pursued in itself. Happiness is a spinoff from something more important. It's a dividend that comes from investing your life in something else. In making this emphasis, of course, I realize that I'm cutting against the grain of the great vision of life which informs so much of our modern world and so much of the vision of the church in the modern world. Thomas Jefferson spoke for many when he wrote in our Declaration of
Independence that we have certain inalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I do not know whether Jefferson intended to be understood the way in which we have interpreted his words, but I do think that his declaration has been understood to mean that we live and we must have liberty, therefore, to pursue happiness, which becomes the goal of life. In other words, for many of us, the pursuit of happiness has
indeed become the aim of our lives, the purpose for which we exist, our very reason for being. Jesus challenges this understanding, and under the influence of Jesus, so does Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. In his now famous address to the graduating class at Harvard several years ago, this Nobel Prize winner declared, if humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task
on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot be unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth in that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. Let me ask
you an impudent but a serious question. Whose vision of life is closest to your own this afternoon? That of Thomas Jefferson or that of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn? Are you committed to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or are you committed to a life task that is of a spiritual nature, a life journey that is an experience of moral growth so that when you die, you will die a better person than you were born? And which vision
do you think most accurately reflects the vision of Jesus? Clearly, clearly, a choice is required of us. For these two visions are at cross purposes with one another. They work against each other. Like the story of the man walking down the street one day when he noticed a truck driver trying vainly to remove a large box from the back of his truck. In a generous mood, the man offered his assistance, which was gratefully accepted. And the
two of them put their shoulders to the crate. They grunted and they groaned. They strained and they perspired, but they couldn't budge the box. I'm afraid it's no use, said the helper finally. We'll never get this thing off the truck. Off the truck, roared the driver. I don't want it off. I want it on. Even so, we have a choice to make, you and I. We can be our own lords. We can pick and choose the
people and the powers that we will permit to lord it over our lives, or we can submit to the lordship of God in Jesus Christ. And the second option is what Jesus makes a live option for us. Jesus does more than preach to us about the reality of God's sovereign love. Jesus confronts us with that reality. Here's Mark's summary of his ministry and message. The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and
believe in the good news. Jesus preaches good news because Jesus is himself good news. The medium here is the message. And he mediates to us the reality of what he preaches. Jesus loves us for God. He the Son loves us with the Father's love. He invites us to receive God's love, to belong to it, and to let it belong to us. Let me now translate that first beatitude for you one more time. Happy are those who
know they are spiritually poor because the love of God in Jesus Christ belongs to them. Happiness is the spin-off, the dividend, the result, the consequence of knowing experientially that you are loved by God in Jesus Christ and not you alone. The way into this experience, according to Jesus, the condition which allows it to happen to us is described as spiritual poverty. Those who are poor in spirit, as the Revised Standard Version puts it, are not
those who are poor in courage or those who are poor in spiritual awareness or not even those who are poor in the Holy Spirit. They are those who recognize and acknowledge that they are inadequate to life without God. You see, so long as we believe that the purpose of our life is the pursuit of happiness, so long as we think we are adequate ourselves to the task, so long as we trust in our own achievements and
in our own wealth and our own status, yes, even in our own theological understanding, we cannot receive the love of God which is given only as a gift. That's why Jesus called his contemporaries to repentance. That's why he calls us to repentance. Repent and believe the good news. That means stop trusting in yourself and believe that God alone is worthy of your trust. It means stop bowing your knees to yourself and to the gods of this
world and believe that the living God alone is Lord of your life. It means stop trying to prove that you are lovely and that you are lovable and believe that God loves you and forgives you no matter what. Let me say it again for the sake of clarity. Jesus is not contending that spiritual poverty is happiness by a different name. Being spiritually poor is no virtue in and of itself. You remember in Fiddler on the Roof
Tevye prays, Dear God, I know that you made many, many poor people and that it is no disgrace to be poor, but I want you to know that it's no great honor either. It is no great honor to be poor and it is no great honor to be spiritually poor, but it is the condition that allows us to look beyond ourselves and beyond our own possibilities and beyond our own strength and beyond the world to the
one who is willing to love us. It is the way into the riches of life which God seeks to give. It is the recognition and the confession of an emptiness which allows God to fill us with the wealth of his redeeming love. It is an acknowledgement of our inadequacy to the task of life which permits Christ to empower us with his presence along the path of our pilgrimage. The person who knows the happiness of which Jesus
speaks, it is the happiness which Jesus gives, is the person who can say with the hymn writer, But though I cannot sing or tell or know the fullness of thy love while here below, My empty vessel I may freely bring, O thou who art of love the living spring my vessel fill. I am an empty vessel, not one thought or look of love I ever to thee brought, Yet I may come and come again to thee
with this, the empty sinner's plea, thou lovest me. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.