4 Epiphany A
January 29,2017
Micah 6:1-8 Ps.
37:1-18
1 Cor. 1:18-31
Matt. 5:1-12
What kind of advice for living would you give people
in a growing Jesus Movement? These were people who if they were Jews were
being excommunicated from the synagogue. Synagogues could be
known gatherings and communities for Jews who lived in the cities of the
Roman Empire, so even though Palestine had been occupied and every rebellion
had been put down by the Roman armies, the Jews had a long history of living as
a minority community within the great Empires, the Assyrian, Babylonian,
Persian, Parthian, Seleucid, and the Empires of the three generals of Alexander
the Great and then the Roman Empire. The Jesus Movement did not have the
advantage of being a community of people who had established ties throughout
the Roman Empire as part of the Jewish Diaspora. The members of the Jesus
Movement had to find a way to survive within the Roman Empire and not being an
established institution like the synagogue gave the Movement a stealthy
presence within the cities of the Roman Empire. The Jesus Movement was a
movement which met in private homes and as such it could "as it were"
fly under the radar. The fact that we have so little "secular"
historical records of early Christianity means that it must have been surviving
and growing under the radar. How could one live the lifestyle of guerilla
Christianity? One needed a recommended way of life appropriate to the
conditions and setting. Successful living in a given situation might be
called finding how to live, think, feel, act and speak in appropriate
ways. Such discovery of the appropriate way to live in life might be
called living the blessed life. We probably like to think that a blessed
life means being successful in health, material possessions and general
conditions of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
I think that the beatitudes are modes of the blessed state of
recommended attitudes for appropriate survival for the early Christians.
First of all they needed to believe in a larger world
and a higher power than the ones which affected their every day lives.
For their lives, they lived in the kingdom of the Caesar. That was their
every day reality. All of the Caesar's local armies and
governors enforced the rules of the Empire. One of the reasons
Christians were removed from the synagogue is that they were no longer active
opponents of the Caesars. Since the followers of Christ were increasingly
non-Jewish persons, they would have less of a bone to pick with the Caesar
since they were already accustomed to living with the Roman authorities.
How does one live in Caesar's kingdom while at the
same time acknowledging a higher power and a higher kingdom? One lived
cosmically and locally at the same time. One lives spiritually even as
one lives fully within one's body. The faith Christians were asked to
live by made them very presumptuous about their status. They lived as
children of God, they were citizens of a heavenly kingdom, not just a Roman
kingdom. They had the special vision to see God because their seeing and
vision was made clear from the conditions of their hearts. They could
live in the Roman Empire in Christian camouflage; appearing to be very poor in
spirit. They weren't full of themselves and didn't have to make waves in
the Roman Empire because they presumptuously believed that they were citizens
of a greater kingdom. They believed in the very difficult work of making
peace. The Christians had to learn to live together as a diverse group of
people within the urbanization processes of the Roman Empire. They had to
live in peace with each other and then as a local group of Christians they had
to negotiate their secret and private status within the Roman Empire without
raising political suspicion. Their situation required high levels of
trust. It also could be easy to fail one another because of the
pressure. They had to practice mercy and forgiveness with each other and
they found that mercy and forgiveness were reciprocal. One could know
mercy for oneself as one offered it to other. This quality of living was
required for being a successful community. The Jesus Movement survived by
losing reliance upon the nuclear family or the clan or the tribe. The
Jesus Movement was a mix of perhaps "unattached" people who were
nomadic and relocated. If people did not share blood relationship how
could they live together? Accepting themselves as children of God meant
that they had another basis for family relationship. The early home
churches would function like social clubs where people could meet and support
each other and find spouses who would share common values.
One of the most challenging tasks of the members of
the Christian community was to teach their member how to suffer and
survive. They had to be strong enough for non-violent maintenance of
their community. They had to learn how to deal with persecution.
They had to deal with the fact that people would lie about them and what they
believed and how they lived. Those in the early Jesus Movement could not live
totally under the radar and so when they were sold out as being a threat to
people in authority they could experience suffering and persecution. They
were taught the non-violent maintenance of their community.
They were like Jesus; they did not believe in armed
resistance to the Roman authorities. They knew that the message of Christ
had done an inside job of persuasion in their lives. No one forced them
to believe in Jesus Christ. They believed because the message got inside
of them and changed their lives. And this is how the kingdom of heaven
occurred, not with the force of armies but through the inward persuasion which
came through the message delivered by a dynamic loving community.
The wisdom of the Roman Empire was that a kingdom
existed by the force and might of armies. The method of the church in
contrast was what was called the foolishness of the message of the Cross of
Christ. The Cross of Christ, an event proving a powerless Jesus of
Nazareth, became a powerful interior event for people to die to what was
unworthy in their lives and bring them to the recommendable behaviors needed
for the maintenance of loving community.
The prophet Micah of old criticized his people for
replacing the basic required practice of life with religious cultic
behaviors. Burnt offerings and keeping religious rules could not replace
what the Lord required: Do justice, love kindness and walk humbly before
God. These are the recommended behaviors expressed in the beatitudes and
they were successful behaviors of the members of the Jesus Movement as they
formed these stealthy new social clubs called churches in the cities throughout
the Roman Empire. They practiced the non-violent maintenance of their
communities in the Roman World which would not have accepted them as open and
public competitors with the Roman Emperors.
How do you and I find "appropriate"
beatitude behaviors for us today. We are no longer a movement. We
are an institution. We have the favor of the great Empires of the
world. It is both easier and harder to be a follower of Christ
today. It is easier because we have so many freedoms to believe and act
in so many ways without people oppressing us. Since it is so easy to be a
public Christian today, it is rather easy to be less than committed to the very
values of Jesus and the values of those early Christians who had most
challenging settings.
We still need the values of the beatitudes
today. We need to believe in higher powers than America, Russia, Germany
and England. We need to believe in higher powers than democracy,
capitalism and socialism. We need to believe in a greater family than
just our blood relatives or our ethnic community; we need to believe that all
are children of God and so we have the basis for the family of the church which
will continue to welcome everyone. We need to be sure of God's actions in
our interior lives so instead of projecting pessimism on the outer world, we
will be able to project and see the life of God in our world. We need mercy
and forgiveness for successful Christian community. We need the grace not to over react when people criticize us for what we believe. We need to
believe in a future beyond our own limited life where the problems of today
will be resolved and viewed from a different perspective and where our fears
and anxieties will prove to have been wasted energy.
The beatitudes were the oracle of Christ which were
recommended for the church responsible for writing the Gospel of Matthew.
They were blessed because they were successful appropriate ways of living for
survival of the Jesus Movement in the decades after the destruction
of Jerusalem. The beatitudes had their own relevance and significance for
the ancient churches and they can have corresponding relevance for us as we
live each day by faith in trying to find the most appropriate way to act and
speak in our lives and build up the church and honor Christ. Amen.
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