Matthew 5:1-12, Psalm 1
A Sermon Prepared for the Hollywood Presbyterian Church
January 30, 2011
Rev. Stephen A. Herring
Today we are going to look at what it means to be blessed. Our scriptures give us several different ways we can look at being blessed.
In the Hebrew, the word translated as “blessed” comes from a root meaning to be strong. To be blessed is to find strength in adversity by walking the path of righteousness. The believer is as strong as a tree planted by streams of water because he or she follows the directions of God in order to live in a right relationship to God.
The Greek word translated as “blessed” in Mathew 5 is makarios. It comes from a root meaning large, or enlarge, as in the prefix “makro.” In classical Greek, we are blessed by having the good things in our lives increase. Our holdings, our property, our family, our friends, our personal influence, and our power all increase and so we feel blessed.
Right away we see a distinction between Greek and Hebrew language and culture. Hebrew people are blessed by being strong in relationship to God and by walking the path of righteousness provided by God in the Torah. Greeks are blessed by being enlarged in relationship to each other. The Hebrew concept of blessing comes from spiritual righteousness, and the Greek concept of blessing comes from material success. To this mix we must add the Latin concept of blessing. The Latin word used to translate both the Greek and the Hebrew is “beatus”. In many old music books, the first Psalm has been known as “Beatus Vir” “Blessed be the man.” This is where we get our word “beatitude.” This is also related to our word “beauty.” We are “blessed” by what is beautiful as opposed to what is ugly. This word is often translates as the word “happy.”
If we take all of these translations together, we can see this idea of being blessed as coming from a strong, right relationship with God, a large, prosperous relationship with each other, and with being happy emotionally. Being blessed is being stronger than our enemy. Being blessed is being larger in life than our neighbor. Being blessed is having a sense of emotional wholeness inside. If we look at this huge definition of the concept of blessedness, we can see right away that we are going to have a problem with being blessed. To clarify this, let me make a list of the characteristics of blessedness we find by looking at all the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin roots.
- Blessed means being in a proper relationship with God by following the path of Torah.
- Blessed means being strong.
- Blessed means enlarging ones resources in the form of property, money, power, relationships, family, etc.
- Blessed means being emotionally happy.
Clearly every one of us is going to come up short in one of these areas. One way or another, at one time or another, we will not feel like we are in a good relationship with our creator. We stray from the path of righteousness and we feel the sting of sin. We soon discover that we can’t lead righteous lives without forgiveness.
We try to be strong, but we often fail. Weakness seems to win out. As a man I know that few things are as frustrating as not being strong enough to do some task. Our resources often shrink. We might not be as wealthy as we once thought we might be. We might find in some conflict situation that we do not have the power we once thought we had.
This is a common problem we have as parents of teenage children. When we are parents of teenagers, we are in a power struggle. Nature doing what nature does, they are growing stronger every day as we grow weaker. If we rely only on our own strength we will be defeated and we will fail miserably.
Finally there is this elusive ideal called emotional happiness. The entire world has been working for thousands of years to figure out what makes a person emotionally happy. We still do not know. You can take a dose of morphine or opium and feel happy for a short period of time. We know though that that state of happiness is temporary and likely to give way to greater sorrow. In so many ways the harder we try to make ourselves happy, the less happy we are.
So the bottom line is that we think we know what blessedness is but we do not truly experience it very often. This is where our Lord Jesus turns everything upside down. Jesus tells us we are blessed if we are poor in spirit. He says we are blessed if we grieve, or if we are humble. Jesus tells us we are blessed if we hunger and thirst for righteousness. He says we are blessed if we show mercy to others. He tells us that blessedness is to be found by being pure in heart and by making peace. He also tells us that oppression and persecution will lead us to blessings.
This pathway to blessing which Jesus offers us is the same path as is laid out for us by the Psalmist. True blessings are to be found if we submit our own will to the higher will of God. Blessedness is not about worldly success. Blessedness has to do with being in line with the larger master plan which is the will of God. Blessedness is found in the moment when we breathe the words; “Not my will but your will be done.” (See Luke 22:44) Blessedness comes from our unreserved, unlimited submission to the will of God. All we need to do is to stop obsessing about all the things we do not have and simply fall down before the Lord and turn our lives over to God. In this moment of surrender we will find our lives gradually lining up with the purpose of the Almighty. We will become instruments of God’s will, and as such we will all be truly and eternally blessed.
In our total surrender to God we will find something amazing happening. If we go back to that Hebrew root of the word blessing, we will find that in Jesus Christ we are way stronger than we think we are. I can truly tell you that I have been blessed, truly blessed by having gone through some terrible times in my life. The lesson I have learned is that we are all a lot stronger than we ever thought we could be. Sometimes our circumstances beat us up. When they do we learn that it is OK to take a shot. We will not break in conflict. We are tougher and stronger than we ever thought. This is especially the case if we enter a conflict knowing that we have completely submitted ourselves to a higher, more noble cause. Our relationship with God strengthens us in conflict, not by assuring us the victory, but by assuring us that all things really do work together for good for those who love God who are called according to God’s purpose. (See Romans 8:28) We can be strong in the Lord. We can be brave in the Lord. Being strong means knowing that we are going to be OK. Being brave means that, even if we are afraid, we simply walk forward and do what needs to be done.
If we go back to the Greek root of the word “makarios,” meaning “blessed,” we will find that we have more in our possession than we ever thought possible. We are larger than we thought because we are the children of God. If we totally give ourselves over to Jesus, it all belongs to Him. If our resources truly belong to the Lord, we can use them accordingly to do the work of God. If our resources only belong to us, we will cling to them as long as possible. The problem with thinking that we really own anything is that the things we think we own actually own us. If everything is submitted to Jesus, he frees us from attachment and allows us to use what is ours to do his work in the world. This is the blessing of true freedom in Christ. This is the blessing of knowing that we have the power to use our vast resources for a higher purpose.
The idea of blessing as happiness, or emotional health comes from that Latin word beatus as in beautiful and in beatitude. Here we face the truth that true beauty comes from our submission to the will of God. What is truly good and truly beautiful is a world that unfolds like a flower in line with the perfect will of Almighty God. We only make beautiful things when we work in harmony with the larger purpose of God. This is how great composers, great sculptors, great painters, and other great artists all work. They flow in alignment with the glorious purpose of God. They channel the Spirit in such a way as to create a form that lines up with the harmony of the heavens. In the tangled web of our emotions and our emotional health we can see that happiness is not something we make outside ourselves. Happiness has nothing to do with the circumstances and conditions of our lives. Happy is something we decide to be in spite of the imperfect reality of our lives. Once again this is a matter of complete and unconditional submission of our lives to the greater power of God. We are happy when we see our lives, our imperfection, our failures, and all the mess that we have lived through as being woven like a beautiful tapestry, perfectly woven into the amazing will of God.
So today, let us be strong in the Lord. Let us have courage in the Lord. Let us celebrate the blessings of our own spiritual strength. Let us live large in the Lord. God has already blessed us in amazing ways. If we submit our blessings to the Lord, the fountains of blessing will continue to flow through our lives. Let us submit our emotional problems, our bad moods, our bad thinking, and all the imperfection of our lives to the amazing transformative power of Jesus Christ. Jesus can use all of us, including the imperfections of our lives to do His will in this time and place. Jesus calls us. Jesus calls us to be blessed. Amen.
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