Reflection by Rev. Tim Dayfoot (January 29, 2017)
Matthew 5:1-12
Their excitement took me by surprise. A group of us who lived together in residence at university were having supper together in the cafeteria. We were talking about this and that until one person said with excitement, “Are you going to watch The Wizard of Oz on T.V. tonight?” A few said yes; others no. As for me, I had to confess that I was not even aware that The Wizard of Oz was going to be re-run, for the umpteenth time, on T.V. that night. Yet, for some of my fellow students, the re-showing of the old movie was an exciting event. It was so exciting that it was even able to pull them away from their studies for a few hours that evening.
When the crowds came to hear Jesus there must have been excitement in the air. Matthew’s gospel says they came because Jesus` fame had spread throughout a large region. They had come to catch a glimpse of someone who was famous for his teaching, preaching and healing. Jesus saw a crowd gather around him and he must have put some thought and care into what he chose to say to them. He spoke about many things. And he began by holding up for them a marvellous picture of God’s blessings. And as he spoke Jesus turned around the way that the crowd was accustomed to looking at God’s blessings.
While we are busy working for and dreaming about a better world the gospel invited us to know that we are blessed here and now.
I’m sure you are all familiar with the story of The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy is a happy, well loved and carefree little girl. But she is plunged into a frightful search for a way to get home by a tornado that has taken her, house and all to the land of Oz. Home, for Dorothy, is a quiet farm in the mid-West where family and aunts and uncles make her feel wanted and loved. Once she is in Oz, she is told that the wizard is the only one who is powerful enough to help her get home. So Dorothy sets out in search of the wizard.
On her way, she is joined by three others. Like Dorothy, these three are also desperately searching for something they think they don’t have. For the Scarecrow, it`s a brain. The tin-man wants a heart and the lion thinks he has no courage.
We all know what it is like to be Dorothy, or to be the scarecrow, the tin-man, the lion, or, to be in the crowd that gathered to hear Jesus when he preached on the mount that day. We have something in common with all of them. What we have in common is a search. Dorothy and her companions were searching for a number of things. Jesus must have seen that many, if not all of the people that gathered to hear him were searching also. They were searching for God’s blessings.
How about you? What are you searching for? What is your idea of the good life? Does it have to do with a secure income – a high-paying job, a secure job, or, for the unemployed, any job at all? For some, the good life is a one-in-14 million chance at the jackpot numbers of Lotto 6/49.
But your idea of the good life may not involve money at all. For you, it may be inner peace – freedom from grief, guilt, or loneliness. Your idea of the good life may have to do with gaining a sense of your own importance, your own worth, and that you are loved and wanted. But whatever our idea of the good life is, all too often it is something that is out there, just out of reach. It is hard to get. The good life eludes us. The best we can do is to capture it briefly, maybe during vacation packages or some other brief adventure. The good life never seems to be fully ours.
For the crowd, God’s blessings were also just out of reach. Those who heard Jesus speak were probably already familiar with what their religious leaders taught about God’s blessings. The Hebrew scriptures contain many pronouncements about blessings, and the Jews of Jesus’ day would have been instructed by their religious leaders on how to obtain blessings. They were accustomed to hearing that blessings were available to those who followed certain rules. Blessings would be awarded after a degree of righteousness was achieved. There must have been many among the crowd who had given up hope of ever being blessed. The religious rules of the day were not easy to keep.
So, when Jesus began speaking about blessings the people must have wondered what new rule he would place on them. But as they listened, something was different. They were surprised to find that when Jesus spoke of God’s blessings he did not sound like the religious leaders they were used to hearing. Matthew tells us, at the end of the Sermon On The Mount, that when Jesus finished speaking “the crowds were astonished at this teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.” (Mt. 7:28-29)
What was so different? How did Jesus reverse the crowd’s idea of God’s blessings? How does the gospel free us to the good life? Let us take another look at the all too familiar beatitudes to find out.
“Blessed are the poor…..
Blessed are those who mourn…..
Blessed are the meek……
Blessed are those who hunger…..”
Jesus was saying that all the broken and hurting people of the world are blessed. It was not a blessing that would only be theirs sometime in the future, always just out of reach. Receiving God’s blessings did not demand that they first obey a long list of strict rules. Those who heard Jesus were able, perhaps for the first time, to think of themselves as blessed, right then and there. And I can imagine how they felt when Jesus asked them to look at themselves and to call themselves blessed. “You are blessed.”
After many adventures, Dorothy and her companions arrive in the Emerald City and are standing in presence of the Wizard of Oz. As it turns out, the wizard is an imposter. But at least he is smart enough to realize right away that the scarecrow, the tin-man, the lion and even Dorothy already have what they are searching for. The scarecrow had shown tremendous intelligence during the journey. The tin-man is in fact a warm and loving person. The lion had already showed great bravery. And Dorothy? Dorothy was at home all along. It was all a dream. Three clicks of her magic shoes and there she was, back at home.
For us, the good life is here, right now. This is the message of the gospel. The good life has been ours all along – a gift freely given.
There were not many whom Jesus left out when he spoke about blessings – the merciful, the pure in heart, the peace-makers, the persecuted. He called them all blessed. And he called them blessed for the very reasons why they may have thought God had forgotten them. Jesus did not tell the crowd to forget about their poverty or their grief in order to feel God’s blessings. He did not even say that they were blessed in spite of their brokenness. He told them that God blessed them because of their hurt.
Life, in all its goodness, is ours. It is ours here and now. It is ours together with its brokenness, its sorrow and its incompleteness. The good life is not what is found at the end of a search. The good life is not what you will get if you make it to your 90th birthday, or your 65th, or your 30th. The beatitudes invite you to look at whatever circumstances you live in right now, and to call yourself blessed by God in the middle of those same circumstances.
I remember hearing a lottery ticket buyer being interviewed on a T.V. news show. It was just a quick interview where the reporter was going from person to person while they were lined up waiting to buy their ticket. This fellow was asked what he would do if he won a million dollars. He sounded completely serious when he said that he would get himself a basement apartment somewhere, shut himself in, and live on Kraft dinner for the rest of his life. I hope he never wins. Even if he wins and does not actually follow that plan, it seems to me that his idea of the good life is life-destroying.
At the beginning of his sermon on the mount, Jesus asked the crowd to look at God’s blessings in their lives in a new way. While we are busy working for and dreaming about a better world, and happier lives for ourselves, and while we think, as we so often do, that these things are somewhere out there just out of reach, the gospel invites us to see that our lives are good and truly blessed, here and now.