Bless your heart! - Matthew 5:1-12

I’ve been rather impressed with life down here in Georgia. I’ve been shocked at just how much I have felt right at home, especially these last few weeks of bitter cold and snow and ice, thanks for that. But one of the subtle things I’ve noticed is some of the slightly odd things you say down here. I’ve been called dear, hun, sir, and then down in Mobile, they asked me about my kin whatever that means. And then there’s the one that I still haven't figured out: “bless their heart.” See, where I come from, that’s a sincere compliment, “Look what they sent us, awww bless them!” But down here, it has a different connotation, sometimes. Sometimes it's a compliment, sometimes it's a sassy insult. It leaves a northerner like me scratching my head. What are you really trying to say?

Well in our sermon text for this morning, that’s kinda what we hear from Jesus. Jesus describes the life of a believer as one characterized by poverty, mourning, meekness, hunger and persecution but then he calls them blessed. To me, it sounds an awful lot like the way you say “bless your heart.” But unlike a backhanded compliment, when Jesus calls us blessed, he’s never being sarcastic. He means exactly what he says because to those who look to Christ, to those who imitate him and to those who suffer for him, Jesus says it and means it, bless your heart.

Jesus' sermon on the mount, recorded in Matthew chapters 5-7, is a kind of unique thing. We don’t really find many of Jesus’ “sermons” recorded in Scripture. We see a lot of his healings and encounters with his disciples and adversaries, but not often does Scripture include an extensive sermon. In that sense alone, these three chapters stand out. Today we are zooming in on the very start of this longer sermon of Jesus as we look at the portion often simply labeled, the Beatitudes. Now if you are like me you have probably heard this word a few dozen times, but maybe you still don’t exactly understand what it means. Well the word beatitude is a Latin word meaning supremely blessed. So here we are on a mountainside in Galilee and Jesus is preaching about those who are supremely blessed.

To that end, it's important to know his audience. Jesus is preaching to the disciples and to the crowds, people who the Bible says were following him. People like you and me, who believed in who he was. Jesus sees the opportunity before him and we’re told he sits down and begins teaching them. I told Pastor Lewis, I think we need a good preaching chair to set up right here for the sermons, but he didn’t like that change too much. So there he is teaching. And to tell you the truth, this section is difficult to handle. There’s a lot of good stuff jammed into these verses for us to unpack. But the way I see it, I see it dividing up into three parts. First I see in verses 3-6 Jesus calls blessed those who look to him. Second, in verses 7-9 Jesus calls blessed those whose actions imitate his own. Finally in verses 10-12 Jesus calls blessed those who suffer as he himself did. In this way we will handle this section of Scripture together.

But I can’t see a much more startling way for Jesus to begin this sermon to some of his closest followers than to open with verse three. “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” I mean just think about it. These people had given up their day to follow Jesus around waiting to see what he would do and hear what he would say, and then he opens with this, blessed are the poor. I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of a single scenario in which I would want to be identified as the poor, even as just the young vicar here. It’s completely backwards to our natural instinct. People of all time have desperately wanted at all costs to avoid that very label. So I’m gonna work harder than others. I’m going to save more than them. I’m gonna have the nicest things. I’m going to be respected in my community. I can’t imagine any of us wanting to self-identify as poor in anything. But notice Jesus' wording, he doesn’t just say poor, he says poor in spirit. 

That’s not an incredibly common phrase, ‘Hey, how are you today?’ ‘Yeah man, I don’t know, I'm feeling a little poor in spirit this morning.’ No, we don’t talk like that. And so to gain an understanding for this I wanna draw attention to verse 5, where Jesus says something similar, something more contextually relatable. He says, “Blessed are the meek.” Here Jesus is really addressing the reality that in this world we exist in a state of spiritual poverty and powerlessness. We are unable to further our own cause. Apart from Christ there is nothing overly impressive, or self-important about us. We are morally bankrupt. We know that we miss the mark time and time again. The reality is on our own we are spiritually helpless and we know it.

Jesus continues in verse 4, “Blessed are those who mourn.” Why would Jesus call those who mourn blessed? Well, who mourns? Typically it's someone who has come face to face with the brokenness of life. A sudden end to a relationship that once looked so promising brings mourning. The death of a loved one brings mourning. The sudden loss of something dear, a job, a home or I don’t know the vicar's beloved car can definitely bring mourning. There’s no shortage of examples in this life of hardships that peak behind the veil and remind us that we are spiritually powerless to undo the effects of sin. Scripture tells us, “The wages of sin is death” and death in its various forms of loss, decay and separation instill mourning as a common occurrence in our lives. We know that this is not how it was meant to be. We were created to enjoy a life in perfect paradise, and that’s not this. Yet Jesus says blessed is the one who mourns because the believer that mourns and looks to God does not grieve without hope. We look to Christ to bring us to that better place.

But Jesus is not calling every meek person, every mourner, every poor soul blessed. His point is not that suffering itself merits blessing, but that those who have faith within crave what only Jesus has to offer. In verse 6 Jesus calls it a “hunger and thirst for righteousness.” Like food for our stomach we desire Jesus to fix what’s lacking in our lives. Jesus gives the perfect answer, bless your heart. Listen to the blessings he lists, he says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” To the poor meek and mourning Jesus addresses our inadequacies with blessings. To the poor in spirit Jesus blesses their heart with the promise of a lavish paradise awaiting them. To the meek in this life Jesus blesses their heart with a promise of provision for their daily needs. To those who mourn, Jesus blesses their heart with comfort that one day there will be no more tears or sorrow or mourning. To those who look to Jesus to be filled, Jesus blesses their heart.

If that’s what Jesus does for my heart, that’s naturally going to have some effect in my life right? Jesus says it will. Verse 8 summarizes the way we should live saying, “blessed are the pure in heart.” Is your heart pure? Would you say on your own your actions are pure before the God who sees all things? No sir. Our tongues pour forth filth. Our thoughts are far from clean. Our hands are dirty too. Our hearts are anything but pure. We, like David, rightly confess the words of Psalm 51, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love” and then later “create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”

And in that moment, to people like us again Jesus blesses our heart further saying, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.” Because Jesus was always merciful, always loving, always kind our hearts have been blessed with mercy. Because of his pure blood shed for us, we have been made pure before our God. God sees nothing but pure hearts when he looks at us now. So we get to live like it, imitating to others what he has done for us. As we have been shown mercy we get to show it to others. Don’t gloss over that. You and I have such a blessing to share with others, and you get to be the mouthpiece at times to literally bless their heart with the Gospel message. How amazing is that! Christ’s mercy shining through you as you show love to your neighbor. Christ’s peace-giving Gospel carried into other people's lives through you. God continue to bless your heart as you imitate Christ.

But a heart that imitates Christ’s can expect to be treated the same way he was. Verses 10 and 11 promise us that. “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness” and “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.” The world doesn't understand this sort of life. One that has peace in our own inadequacies and yet knows that they are filled by Christ. One that selflessly gives as Christ did first. To the world such a life is not blessedness, it’s foolishness. It’s weakness. It's where the world shrugs and says bless their heart, with the exact connotation with which it’s used down here.

But none of that’s new. They’ve done it before. This world has chewed up and spit out God’s prophets since the days of old. They did it to Jesus’ closest disciples. They did it to Jesus himself. They openly challenged, ridiculed and lied about him too. Even as he hung there dying, scoffers still took cheap shots as he paid for the sins of the whole world, even the sins of those who nailed him there. Yet Jesus was resolute all the way to the cross, nothing would hinder him from his life's mission, to set us at peace with God. If that’s how they treated the sinless Son of God, can we expect anything different?

No, we too can expect to be insulted, persecuted and lied about as well. So we have one of two options: either complain and whine about it or be as Jesus says we can be blessed by it. Verse 12 says in fact, we should, “Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” No it's not pleasant, he calls it persecution. But it’s something we can wear with pride, like a baseball player wears a curveball with pride. Boy does it sting for a moment, but that soon fades as he triumphantly jogs over to first cheered on by his fans and team. Christians are not called to be the world's punching bag, and we are not set up by God to fail. But sometimes being a Christian means we will take a hit for the sake of the Gospel. But here’s where my analogy limps, you don't need to go and win the game for our team, because the game’s already been won by Jesus. Our calling is simply to stand firm in the batters box boldly confessing Christ even in a hostile world. Suffering for the Gospel is a badge we get to wear with honor. It doesn’t gain us entrance to those exclusive clubs or attract us fame. It testifies to our reward waiting in heaven and nothing, not even death, can take that from you.

So brothers and sisters, be sassy yet optimistic Christians. The kind who no matter their circumstance in life look to Christ. The kind who imitate him even when imperfectly. The kind who suffer for him confident of your reward in heaven because then, to people like that, to people like us, Jesus rightly says, bless your heart. Amen.