The Topsy Turvy Kingdom of God

Matthew 5: 1-12
Hebrew 13:2 says, Do not neglect to show hospitality to
strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
Two traveling angels stopped to spend the night in the home of a
wealthy family. The family was rude and refused to let the angels
stay in the mansion's guest room. Instead the angels were given a
corner of the cold basement to sleep in. As they made their bed
on the hard floor, the senior angel saw a hole in the wall and
repaired it. When the junior angel asked why, the senior angel
replied, "Things aren't always what they seem."
The next night the pair came the house of a very poor, but
very hospitable farmer and his wife. After sharing what little food
they had the couple let the angels sleep in their own bed where
they could have a good night's rest. When the sun came up the
next morning the farmer and his wife were in tears. Their only
cow, whose milk had been their sole income, lay dead in the field.
The junior angel was infuriated and asked the senior angel: "How
could you let this happen? It isnt fair. The first family had
everything, yet you helped them," he accused. "The second
family had little but was willing to share everything, and yet you
let their cow die." "Things aren't always what they seem," the
senior angel replied.
"When we stayed in the basement of the mansion, I noticed
there was gold stored in that hole in the wall, hidden there by the
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previous owner of the house. Since the owner was so obsessed

with greed and unwilling to share his good fortune, I thought it
best to seal the wall so he wouldn't find it. Then last night as we
slept in the farmer's bed, the angel of death came into the
bedroom for his wife. I convinced him to take the cow instead.
Things aren't always what they seem."
The Kingdom of God is not what it seems to be. Religious
people think we have it figured out who is good and who is bad,
who is in and who is out, who is going to heaven and who is not,
who is right and who is wrong, what is true and what is false.
Jesus came on the scene and turned everything upside down,
telling us and showing us that things are not always as they
seem.
The first sermon of Jesus recorded for us in the Gospel of
Matthew is the famous Sermon on the Mount. The beginning of
this most famous sermon is the Beatitudes. The beatitudes define
who is in the Kingdom of God and what it means to live as part of
the Kingdom of God. There are eight brief statements which we
are going to be looking at today. Because there are eight I will do
them briefly.
I. The first four beatitudes tell us who is in the kingdom of
heaven.
1. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven. The world tells us what wealth is. It says that those with
money, power , fame, beauty and position are rich - the
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celebrities, the world leaders, the billionaires. They have got it all.
Those of us who consider ourselves to be above such crass
materialism say that the truly rich are those with friends, family,
and health, meaning and purpose. We religious people say that
the truly wealthy are those who are spiritually rich. Therefore that
is what we expect Jesus to say. But that does not seem to be
saying. He says, Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the
kingdom of heaven. What does this mean?
I think he is challenging the conventional wisdom of all
people, including those who would say they are spiritual but not
religious. He is saying that it is not those who think they are rich
by any standards who are the truly rich, but those who see
themselves as poor, even spiritually poor. I dont understand this
completely. Jesus is too profound for me, but I try not to make
Jesus words fit my beliefs. I think he is challenging me and all of
us to a life of spiritual humility. He is urging us to be very careful
about our views of who is in and who is out of the Kingdom of
Heaven.
2. Blessed are those who mourn, For they shall be
comforted, says Jesus in the second beatitude. Grief is one of the
most difficult emotions. It is a psychological response to loss. It
can be any type of loss. Most powerful is the loss of a person we
love. But it can be the loss of a pet we love, the loss of a home,
the loss of a job, the loss of our health or reputation. And it is the
loss of our own lives as we approach our own death. All types of
losses prompt us to mourn.
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Jesus says, Blessed are those who mourn. There is a

spiritual blessing in grief. That is hard to hear. We would rather
not have the grief and therefore forgo such a blessing. But the
fact is that we cannot avoid loss in our lives. We will have it no
matter how much we try to protect ourselves. How will we
approach it? I think that Jesus is saying that loss brings us in
contact with something fundamental in life. It shows us life in
stark true terms. It brings us face to face with ourselves, and the
spiritual reality of life. Loss brings us face to face with the Eternal
God. Somehow in that grief and loss, comfort is found.
3. Blessed are the meek, For they shall inherit the earth. I
think this addresses the modern cult of the self. We re obsessed
with the self. We make a religion of self-help, self-esteem, selffulfillment and self-realization. Self, self, self. Meekness, as I
understand it, is ant-self. Jesus instructed us to deny our self. This
is not beating ourselves up or putting ourselves down. It is not
even low self-esteem. It is seeing that the self is not who we really
are.
I talk about this regularly because it is an important aspect
of my own spiritual experience. I see a major spiritual problem of
human beings as being lost in our selves. Spiritual liberation is
being freed from our selves, freed from the tyranny of the self,
from the illusion of the self, to live openly and freely as children of
God. When that happens, suddenly we can live life here on earth.
Not waiting for a better tomorrow if this or that happens, nor
waiting for heaven to compensate us for a tough life here on
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earth, but living the Kingdom of Heaven here and now. I think that
is what Jesus means when he says that the meek shall inherit the
earth.
4. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for
righteousness, For they shall be filled. This beatitude hinges on
what the word righteousness means. I have also defined this on a
number of occasions. Righteousness is not a state of moral
correctness or perfection. Righteous means to be in right
relationship - right relationship with God, with our selves, and with
others. To be in right relationship we have to know who we are.
Scripture says we are made in the image of God. That is who we
really are. When we look at our true selves as God made us, then
we see God reflected as in a mirror. That mirror can get pretty
dirty. That is how I understand sin. Sin obscures the image of God
in us. The purpose of the spiritual life is to clean the mirror so that
when God looks at us, he sees himself reflected in our lives. And
when others look at us, they also see God reflected in our lives.
We should hunger and thirst for this righteousness, this right
relationship. Most people dont. They hunger and thirst for things
which will not satisfy. People look for love in all the wrong places,
and we are never satisfied with life. But those who hunger and
thirst for righteousness will be satisfied.
II. The second half of the beatitudes move from our identity
in the kingdom to how we are to live as part of the Kingdom of
God.

1. Blessed are the merciful, For they shall obtain mercy. Be

merciful. Another word for this might be love. But it is good to use
different words than love. Love can be so overused that it is good
to use different vocabulary like merciful. This means to be
gracious to people. Be forgiving to people. Be accepting of
people. Not to be judgmental of people. I see this as openheartedness.
We can either open our hearts and lives to people or we can
close our hearts to people. We close our hearts because we do not
want to get hurt by people. We especially do not want to get hurt
again after being hurt once. Once bitten, twice shy as the
saying goes. But God calls us to be vulnerable, to take risks, to
take chances. This is scary emotionally. It feels so much safer to
put up the walls and protect ourselves. To be merciful is to let go
of prejudices, to forsake retaliation, to treat others the way we
would want God to treat us. The golden rule is to do unto others
the way we would have others to do unto us. But the platinum
rules is to do to others are we would have God do to us. We hope
that God will be gracious to us, to overlook our faults and sins. If
we expect that from God, we are to give that mercy to others.
When we do, we find the mercy we desire.
2. Blessed are the pure in heart, For they shall see God.
This brings us even deeper into this movement into our true
selves. I dont know about you, but my mind and heart is filled
with all sorts of thoughts and emotions all the time. I have a
continual inner dialogue going on. No matter what I am going, I
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tend to be thinking of something else. Even when I am up here in

the pulpit preaching, every once in a while I will think, O look.
Here I am up here preaching. What am I doing up here? And my
brain will go off on some tangent even while my mouth is
speaking the words of a sermon. I am double-minded. And double
hearted. My emotions are the same way.
Jesus is calling us to simplicity of thought and intention.
Peace of mind, if we want to call it that. Most of our emotional
suffering is of our own making. It is not caused by something that
happens to us. We cause it to ourselves. It is our response to what
we imagine might happen to us. In other words, most of our
problems are in our heads. We need purity of mind and heart.
Calmness, peace. We are to relate to people and events as they
happen without all the inner drama. When we do this, it opens up
space for God. God is always present, but we are not present. We
are always somewhere else or somewhen else. We are in the
future or in the past or in some hypothetical scenario. No wonder
so many peoples lives are inner turmoil. Jesus calls us to purity of
heart. When we dwell in that purity of heart, we suddenly are
aware that God is present. God is always present waiting for us to
be present to Him. When we have some degree of this purity of
heart, then we see God, and we find ourselves living in the
Kingdom of Heaven here and now.
3. Blessed are the peacemakers, For they shall be called
sons of God. We live in the Kingdom as peacemakers. There are
so many different dimensions of peacemaking. Some people bring
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conflict, disagreement and trouble with them wherever they go.

Others seem to bring peace. As residents of the Kingdom we are
to bring peace. This is talking about interpersonal peace,
international peace, national peace. I think this has something to
say to the political bickering that seems to have settled into
Washington DC. And it is even talking about bringing inner peace
to others, which can only come about if there is inner peace in our
lives. Peace is contagious. We cannot make peace unless we have
peace. If we have peace, then we can bring peace into every
aspect of our lives.
4. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness
sake, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Jesus goes on to
expound on this final beatitude. Blessed are you when they
revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you
falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for
great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the
prophets who were before you. In short Christ is saying that this
path of the beatitudes is not easy. It will not be accepted by
people. It will not be accepted by the political establishment or by
the religious establishment. In fact Jesus is saying that a life lived
by the standards of the Kingdom of God will be persecuted. He
says, Dont be discouraged by this. Expect it to happen. He
even says to rejoice in it, which doesnt sound easy to do to me.
He says that this opposition is evidence that we are on the right
track, because people have always opposed the Kingdom of
Heaven. Why do you think they crucified Jesus? It was because He
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was the embodiment of the kingdom of Heaven. So the political

and religious leaders felt they had to get rid of him. We should not
expect it to be any different for the followers of Christ.
The beatitudes communicate for us profound teachings
about the Kingdom of God. Let us take them to heart.