1
“Anticipation”
Rev. Matthew Baugh
1 st Congregational Church – Lockport, IL.
August 19, 2007
(based on Matthew 5:5-8)
Have you seen many Jesus movies? It’s interesting how they all depict familiar scenes differently. For example, if you watch the Sermon on the Mount in King of Kings ,
The Greatest Story Ever Told and a few others back to back you’ll be amazed at how differently they all do it. My favorite movie version of the Beatitudes is in The Life of
Brian , a comedy about a man who lived at the same time as Jesus.
Brian and his mother are in the back row of the audience where they can barely hear Jesus words. When they miss one of the beatitudes a helpful bystander says,
“ I think he said, ‘blessed are the cheese makers .’”
That puzzles them until a scholarly looking man explains, “
It’s not meant to be taken literally. It refers to any manufacturers of dairy products
.”
A moment later they are struggling to understand why Jesus would say, “
Blessed are the Greek .” A fierce argument breaks out and nearly comes to blows before one woman realizes what was actually said.
“ Oh! It’s ‘the meek.’ ‘Blessed are the meek.’ That’s nice. I’m glad they’re getting something because they have a terrible time
.” 1
(When you go to hear a sermon, it pays to get the good seats.)
I like the movie because it does a good job of satirizing what happens when you hear the words, but don’t try to understand them. The characters in the movie are so concerned with petty things that Jesus’ teaching has no effect on their lives.
1 The entire scene can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiDmMBIyfsU WARNING, this scene contains some crude language.

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We’ve been trying to get to the heart of Jesus’ message. Last week we started with the Beatitudes to learn what they have to teach us about being truly happy in life.
There’s a Greek word, “ makarios
” that’s used there which can be translated as either
‘happy’ or ‘blessed.’
Now, we usually think of “happy” as meaning something very different than what Jesus is talking about. It has to do with having fun, doing something pleasurable or exciting, like this… a
Many of us have a tamer idea of happiness but there’s some common ground. When we find something that brings us comfort,
Figure 1 Bungee jumping pleasure, or excitement we tend to imagine that it things will also bring us happiness, but that doesn’t work. You can see that when you look at some of the things people often say they need to be happy. Here are a few prominent examples…
1. Excitement
2. Money
3. Possessions
4. Drugs/Alcohol
5. Sex
Now it would be easy to condemn all these things as sinful, and that’s often done in churches. The truth is that none of them are inherently evil. Excitement does add a zest to life, that’s what keeps the roller coaster makers and the scary story writers in business.
Money is really can help make people happier, especially if they’re really struggling and don’t know how they’re going to pay all the bills and provide food, shelter, medical care, etc. Drugs and alcohol are the most dangerous things on this list in some ways, but we

3 certainly wouldn’t want to do without medicine under a doctor’s supervision. Similarly
(as most married couples can attest) sex is a wonderful part of a loving and committed union that brings two people closer emotionally and spiritually.
None of these things are sinful by themselves. It’s all in how we use them. Studies have shown that enough money to move you from poor to middle-class can make you feel happier in life. You’d expect it to go beyond that, but it doesn’t. People who move from middle class to $100,000 a year or more actually report they are less happy on the average. The same with possessions, thrill seeking, and pleasure of other kinds. If they become an end to themselves they will always fail to bring happiness.
Mahatma Gandhi once said something very wise about that…
“ The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice
.” ~ Gandhi 2
All of these things that bring us pleasure are tools. Like any tool they can be very useful. They can also be very harmful is used unwisely. Without guidance they will bring emptiness instead of joy, and misery instead of pleasure.
The goals of life, the things that tell us how our tools are to be used have to be something greater. They have to be the things of God. Jesus tells us a lot about these goals in the Sermon on the Mount. If we understand his words, they can guide us to true happiness.
2 Quoted from http://www.snvoakland.org/gandhiquotes.pdf

4
It can be easy to misunderstand what Jesus says. For example, when he says,
“ Blessed are the meek ” we often think he’s praising the spiritless weaklings of the world.
We imagine that being ‘ meek’
is the same as being timid and inoffensive. That’s not it at all. You really get a better sense form the way The Message version of the Bible translates it…
“You're blessed when you're content with just who you are—no more, no less.
That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought .” (Matthew 5:5)
In other words, that you're blessed when you see yourself in perspective. You aren’t puffed up with false pride but you don’t have low esteem issues either. Being meek means you’ve accepted being the person God made you to be. When that happens, you can make a big difference in the world.
Seeing yourself as God sees you is the first step. From there you must also learn to see the world as God sees it. Where there is pettiness, bigotry, and division you understand that this is not the way God meant us to live and you work to mend those relationships. When you see lies and false promises pulling people into destructive ways of living, you speak up about it. You help turn others back to God’s ways. When you see the suffering and injustice in the world it creates a sense of wrongness in you. You have experienced God’s vision. Seeing the world fall so far short of that vision creates a deep longing in you to change it. That yearning to help is like a hunger inside of you. And when you hunger and thirst to see the world put right, you will be satisfied. That’s the

5 hunger that draws you closer to God, and drawing closer to God is the only thing that can satisfy us and bring us true joy.
It fits together pretty neatly. We want to find happiness in life but selfishly chasing after it doesn’t work. Satisfaction and joy only come from the one who is totally unselfish. To find them, we have to find him. To find him we have to learn to see the world as he does. We have to put aside false pride and feelings of worthlessness. We have to accept ourselves as God’s beloved children.
Then we need to look at the world and understand that everyone else is our brother or sister. We have to understand that their suffering is as unacceptable in God’s eyes as our own. We have to do everything we can to work for the vision of a just and compassionate world. When we do that we begin to see the world as Jesus saw it. We become aware of the presence of God all around us, all the time. That’s when you can really be happy. And that’s why our beatitudes today close with these words…
“You're blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right.
Then you can see God in the outside world.”
Or, to say it in more familiar language…
“
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God .” (Matthew 5:8) a Bungee jumping photo from http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/~cater/Extreme/BJumping/bungee.jpg