4th Sunday after the Epiphany
Texts: Matthew 5:1-12;
Micah 6:6-8; 1 Cor. 1:18-31
GOD BLESS AMERICA . . . AND
ALL THE FAMILIES OF THE EARTH
(This text is
part manuscript and part notes for extemporization;
it was also accompanied by notes distributed to the congregation)
In reading this week for preparation I ran across an insightful
commentator speaking on the third
Beatitude, "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth."
It's insightful not only for the
Beatitude itself but also for the motto I've been lifting up recently,
"Down is the new up." Instead
of what's considered the traditional emphasis on going up to
heaven, people of faith today are
noticing that the Bible's emphasis is in the other direction, namely,
God's power of love and life
coming down from heaven to earth. This commentator really
picks up this theme of, "Down is
the new up." He writes of those blessed in this third Beatitude:
...they are the meek, who
renounce
all rights of their own for the sake of Jesus
Christ. When they are berated, they are quiet. When violence is done to
them, they
endure it. When they are cast out, they yield. They do not sue for
their rights; they
do not make a scene when injustice is done them. They do not want
rights of their
own. They want to leave all justice to God.... What is right for their
Lord should
be right for them. Only that. In every word, in every gesture, it is
revealed that
they do not belong on this earth. Let them have heaven, the world says
sympathetically, that is where they belong. But Jesus says, they will
inherit the
earth. The earth belongs to these who are without rights and power.
Those who
now possess the earth with violence and injustice will lose it, and
those who
renounced it here, who were meek unto the cross, will rule over the new
earth. We
should not think here of God's punishing justice in this world
(Calvin). Rather,
when the realm of heaven will descend [Rev. 21], then the form of the
earth will
be renewed, and it will be the earth of the community of Jesus. God
does not
abandon the earth. God created it. God sent God's Son to earth. God
built a
community on earth.... But Golgotha, too, is a piece of the earth. From
Golgotha,
where the meekest died, the earth will be made new. When the realm of
God
comes, then the meek will inherit the earth.
(1)
What do you think? Any guesses about who wrote this? One of Pastor
Paul's favorite new
Emerging Church authors? It was written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in 1936,
as Hitler's power was
rising. I don't agree with everything here. Bonhoeffer had learned of a
contemporary, Mohatma
Gandhi, who was leading the people of India in a "meek" revolution in
the sense of nonviolent
and humble, but not in the sense of "leaving all injustice to God."
Gandhi very much claimed the
Sermon on the Mount in his nonviolent resistance to human injustice.
But I find it amazing that
Bonhoeffer was so ahead of his time in ringing out a "heaven on earth"
theme. He knew that
Hitler's politics were evil, and so he proclaimed the politics of the
kingdom of heaven to stand
against them.
What about our politics today? I'm not implying that our American
politics are evil in the same
ways as Nazi Germany, but neither are they yet the politics of the
kingdom of heaven, which is
why we continue to pray, "Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth
as in heaven."
Motto of earthly kingdoms (from Obama's State of the Union, quoting
Robert Kennedy):
"The future is not a gift; it is an
achievement."
True for both current parties, right? Each party holds out a
different path to the same goal:
enabling personal achievement.
But is this motto true? The word "grace" can substitute for "gift," and
we get:
"The future is not grace; it is an
achievement."
As Christians of the Lutheran tradition, who emphasize grace, do we
agree with this? It may be
the motto of earthly kingdoms, but is it the motto of the kingdom of
heaven? I don't think so.
It is also crucial to notice that in the old "up" tradition, we can
have our cake and eat it, too. We
can say that the eternal future of going to heaven when we die is a
gift, it's grace, but in the
meantime here on earth the future is an achievement. We separate the
futures for heaven and
earth, so that we can continue to live the 'gospel' of achievement here
on earth?
But what about if "down is the new up"? What if the earth itself and
all life on it is of supreme
importance to God, so much so that this whole creation is what God sent
Jesus to save? The
future is not about going up to heaven; it is about heaven coming down
to earth. And it is a gift.
Let's undertake an exercise of seeing life as grace, gift: On any given
day, as you place the family
meal on the table, how many people were involved in bringing that meal
to you?
Farmers/ranchers, food processors/packagers, markets, transportation at
every step. What about
the infrastructure? Gas for your stove, electricity for your microwave,
running water and sewage
for disposal, trash removal -- not to mention the table itself and the
house around you, keeping
you safe and climate-controlled. Now, go back along each step: what
about the farmer's seed,
fertilizer, equipment, help harvesting? Any immigrants involved along
the way? Finally, what
about Creation and life itself? Who made the earth to bear such bounty,
the rain to fall, the sun to
shine? Can we say that the future is an achievement and not grace? Yes,
all these people involved
is an achievement, but not a personal achievement. It is an
achievement we make together by
God's grace. When we have but a small role in the massive joint
achievement of everyday
survival -- the survival of God's whole family on this earth -- then we
sense that achievement
as grace.
It's also important to see, then, that I'm not simply pitting grace and
achievement against each
other as mutually exclusive. I think that's one of the mistakes of the
Reformation. We elevated
grace so much that we could no longer talk meaningfully about
achievement. The future is both
grace and achievement. It's not simply a matter of turning the human
motto around. "The future
is not a gift; it's an achievement" doesn't become, "The future is a
gift, not an achievement."
What has happened because of modern individualism is that we mess
ourselves up when we
think in terms of personal achievement. The future is a gift
because it's not a personal
achievement. Rather, it's designed by God our Creator to be a joint,
family
achievement with all
God's children working together.
And so in the kingdom of heaven, it is no achievement at all if anyone
is left out of the bounty, or
someone gets way more of their fair share. The Sermon on the Mount is
Jesus' State of Creation
address. We are called to be light to the world, bearers of the motto
of the kingdom of heaven:
The future is a complete and utter gift
of interdependence upon God and one
another; there is no common achievement in working together as long as
anyone
is left out.
One final word of blessing from the place and time when God began this
whole business of saving Creation: "Now the LORD said to Abram, 'I will
bless you, so that you will be
a blessing; and in you all the families of the earth shall be
blessed.'" (Gen. 12:1-3) What if our
Presidents, instead of ending their speeches with "God bless America,"
ended with "God bless all
the families of the earth"?
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Delivered at Prince of Peace Lutheran,
Portage, MI, January 30, 2011
Endnote
1. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship
[Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 4; Fortress Press, 2001], pp. 105-106.