By John Fisk
Micah 6:1-8; Matthew 5:1-12.

 If we were to write a set of beatitudes, which reflect the secular values of our culture, they would probably go something like this:

• Blessed are the winners for they are the only ones who count.

• Blessed are the beautiful and well-dressed people, for everyone will envy their style.

• Blessed are those with the best toys, for they will always have fun.

• Blessed are the successful, for they will inherit the kingdom of Wall Street

Martin Luther, the Reformer of the Church in the 16^th century, once said:  “the greatest and most universal religion on earth is faith in success”.  Things have not changed.  Success is still the number one goal for many.  But Jesus in his teaching in the sermon-on-the-mount and in the Beatitudes, tells us that success should not be our first priority.  Do what God wants first and that’s what counts, whether you are successful in the world’s eyes or not. 

Jesus was a teacher who challenged the status quo by lifting up its opposites.  He was a man who loved paradox: you are a success in God’s eyes when you are at the end of your rope; when you have lost what is most dear to you; when you are content with who you are and not pretending to be someone else; when you seek God with your whole heart and mind and strength; when you show people how to cooperate rather than fight; you are a success in God’s eyes even when people put you down and tell lies about you. 

As Christians we march to the beat of a different drum.  What the culture promotes as success is irrelevant to God.  Christ gives us here a few snapshots of what God’s new world looks like.  It’s an upside down world compared to the one around us.

I heard about the story of a man who, late in life, was afflicted by a debilitating spinal tumor.  This left him confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.  “It really does something to you to view the world from that level.  For one thing everybody looks down at you.  Everyone stares down at you and talks to you like you are a child.  I wish people would realize how good it is when they talk to someone in a wheelchair, to get down on their level once in a while.

“On the other hand you can see a lot down there.  I spend most of my time at parties and public gatherings talking to children.  Now I am on their level.  They come up to me, look me in the eye, and they ask me honest questions that only children can ask, such as, “Why are you in a chair? Are you sick?  Did you have an accident?”  These are questions adults would like to ask but can’t.  It takes someone down on my level to ask such questions.”

Most people want to spend their lives in a superior position.  They want to be on top, looking down.  They don’t want to be on the bottom looking up.  But that’s the way Jesus looks at things – from the bottom looking up.  Barbara Brown Taylor once summed up the beatitudes in this phrase: “Blessed are the upside down!”

“You are old, Father William,” the young man said, “And yet you incessantly stand on your head!” is the way Lewis Carroll put it in one of his poems.

One of those upside down experiences comes sooner or later to all of us in the form of death.  As we face the prospect of dying or as we go through it with someone else, we come to understand the Beatitudes at their most powerful.   “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.  Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”   I have not had what is known as a near death experience myself, but over the years as a pastor I have had the privilege of being with many people as they have coped with either their own death or the death of a loved one.  I have seen God’s comfort many times.  The comfort may come as a vision of angels or loved ones in heaven.  It may come in an incredible outpouring of love from friends and family.  The comfort may come as laughter in the midst of suffering or a shared memory of earlier days.   Or it may come in the tender touch of a caring nurse or doctor. 

In all these ways the victory of love is demonstrated.   In all these ways there is a foretaste of the resurrection to come.  In all these ways we catch a glimpse of the incredible compassion of our God.  We are made strong in the faith that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, who goes on forever.