Us and Them
Commentary
You have no doubt seen, as I have, the lingering effect of the songs that are sung at a loved one’s funeral. Certain individuals in my congregation reliably tear up during this hymn or that one, and I know that it’s because that song was sung at their parent’s, or spouse’s, or child’s service. And the experience of death and grief is so strong in us that that song, then, forever belongs to that occasion for that individual.
That has happened to me, as well. Indeed, you might say that I have a whole repertoire of such musical associations, for not only did we sing a lot of hymns at both of my parents’ funerals, a number of us had the opportunity to sing hymns together around my father’s bed the night before he died. And so I have a whole collection of songs that are connected for me to my parents’ passing.
One of the hymns that we sang at my mother’s service was William How’s majestic “For All the Saints.” At the service, I was able to sing the first several verses with the gusto of the hymn’s grand affirmations. But then I came across one phrase that choked me up. And that same phrase has continued to produce a catch in my throat each time I’ve sung it in the intervening seven years. And, candidly, I expect the same experience this coming Sunday morning when we sing it in church for All Saints Day.
“O blest communion, fellowship divine,” we sing, affirming the doctrine of the communion of saints. But then we continue, saying, “We feebly struggle, they in glory shine.”1 And that is where I stop to hold back the tears.
Some people die at or near full strength. Often, those are folks who have died tragically in accidents or suddenly by heart attack or stroke. I was fortunate that both of my parents lived long, full lives, each one into their 90s. But by the end, Alzheimer’s had diminished the one and cancer was consuming the other. And so when I hear — and sing — “we feebly struggle, they in glory shine,” both expressions make me think of my folks. I recognize the look of “feebly struggle,” and I cherish the promise and the prospect of “they in glory shine.”
As we sing and read and preach and pray on this All Saints Sunday, we will have opportunity to reflect on us and them. The scriptures point us to both groups in the grand communion of saints — both those of us on this side and those who have crossed over. And as I look in both the mirror and the newspaper, I concur with the hymn writer’s characterization: “we feebly struggle.” But I affirm and rejoice in the truth for the friends and loved ones that have gone before that “they in glory shine.”
Revelation 7:9-17
Human beings have a natural fascination with what is concealed or inaccessible. We are eager to hear stories from “the inside.” The documentary that gives us a glimpse of what it’s really like inside of a football team’s training camp or draft war room. The televised tour of Air Force One. The former staffer who was part of the inner circle in some government or business. The astronaut who can tell us stories about places we’ll likely never get to visit. We love to hear about what it’s like — whatever “it” may be — “on the inside.”
Accordingly, we should have a natural appreciation for much of the book of Revelation, especially passages like the one assigned to us this week. The Apostle John gets the ultimate peek, and then he does us the favor of reporting to us what he saw. And we discover that we have been given a glimpse into the very throne room of heaven — which, I suppose, is another way of saying the throne room, period.
Other celestial peeks are heavy on descriptions: we are told what things look like. Isaiah and Ezekiel both give us descriptive glimpses, as John does elsewhere in Revelation. In this instance, though, the issue is not so much the place as the persons. John tells us who is there and what they’re doing.
Central to the scene is the one who sits on the throne, the Lord God. All else revolves around him. Central, too, is the Son of God, here identified repeatedly as the Lamb (though later, in John’s fluid use of imagery, the Lamb is also the shepherd). Meanwhile, around the throne are angels, as well as the elders and the four living creatures introduced earlier in the book (see Revelation 4).
Yet it seems that the vast majority of the crowd in this scene around the throne are participants of a different sort. They are the ones mentioned by John first in this passage, and they are the ones explicitly identified and discussed later by one of the elders. They may be the ones of special interest to us, for they are probably the ones that look like us.
John tells us that they are a great multitude. He doesn’t even try to put an estimate on the crowd size: they are beyond numbering! And just as their number is vast, so are their places of origin. They come, we are told, “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.”
William How captures the scene for us in poetry: “From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast, through gates of pearl streams in the countless host, singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: Alleluia, Alleluia!”2
The vast multitude around the throne, you see, are people. And, notably, all kinds of people. People from every possible place are there, gathered around the throne of God.
The magnificence of this observation may be lost on us, for we take for granted the notion that Christianity is one of the world’s great religions, that there are churches all around the world, and that Jesus loves “all the children of the world.” But imagine what this scene looked like to a Christian in the first-century Roman Empire. The gospel had not circled the globe. The believers in Jesus Christ were a small and persecuted minority, and taken all together they were probably a very countable number! For John to see evidence, therefore, of a great, global multitude around God and the Lamb was truly a glimpse into the future, for that was not the reality in the present.
The palm branches in their hands recalls both the triumphant welcome of Palm Sunday and its antecedent in Psalm 118. Meanwhile, “robed in white” speaks not only of purity, but of a people whose trials are behind them. And the source of their robes’ whiteness is revealed to us a few verses later: “they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”
The blood of the Lamb was vitally important to John’s audience — an audience that was no doubt expected to identify with that multitude robed in white. This was a time, after all, when faith in Christ was a dangerous business. The martyrs were shedding their blood for their faith, and the implication of “the great ordeal” is that these palm-waving worshipers had come through persecution. The fact that the Lamb’s blood had been shed first — that he, too, suffered unjustly yet faithfully — was no doubt an encouragement to those who were suffering for their faith in him.
Also encouraging is the assurance that the “ordeal” is behind them. “They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat.” Rather, they will be protected and provided for by the very one they lived and died for. It is a beautiful and magnificent prospect.
In my experience, American church folks tend to fall into two camps when it comes to the book of Revelation. On the one hand, there are those who avoid it, treating it as a rather undesirable part of the Bible. On the other hand, there are those who seem fixated on it, treating it as though it was the most important part of the Bible.
In the scenes and symbols of Revelation, people look for all sorts of characters and events from history and the present. Typically, though, readers are always looking for someone else. Perhaps for a change we should encourage our people to look for themselves in the book of Revelation. For I think John would say that you and I and the people in our pews ought to be a part of that vast, triumphant and adoring crowd in Revelation chapter 7.
1 John 3:1-3
At the church I presently serve, we begin each Sunday morning’s worship service with a “Call to Worship.” It is not so much a piece of liturgy as it is a way of framing the occasion for which we have gathered and an invitation to respond to the good news and the God who gave it. And as I read our selected epistle lection, I think that John has extended to us a marvelous call to worship.
“See what love the Father has given us,” he begins. It is an exhortation to open our eyes to the loveliest sight of all. You and I see a lot of things every day, of course. We pay attention to an uncountable number of things. Yet surely it is one of the tragic flaws of our fallen condition that we so often fail to see the things that are most important to see. And so John calls us to see — to pay attention to — this: “what love the Father has given us!” Let that be our call to worship multiple times each day!
John goes on to quantify that love: “that we should be called children of God.”
This is likely an underappreciated truth of the gospel for most of our people. For some reason, among those who believe in God in our culture, there is a prevailing assumption that we are — indeed, that all human beings are — God’s children. We see that status as a given rather than as a gift.
The underlying reasoning is either ironic or nonexistent. Do we presume that we are God’s children simply because he created us? By that logic, I suppose the moon, the Nile River, and the squirrel outside my window are also his children. In the beginning, you see, we are his creatures, not his children.
To make the situation even more dramatic, then, we happen to be the creatures who rebel. Accordingly, Paul uses the word “enemies” (Romans 5:10) to describe our dreadful condition in relation to God. That’s a far cry from some self-satisfied assumption that all people are God’s children.
This, then, is what makes John’s statement — or, more to the point, what makes God’s love — so remarkable: “that we should be called children of God.” It is reminiscent of the truth introduced early in John’s gospel. Speaking of the coming of Jesus into the world, John writes, “He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:11-12 NASB). And it dovetails, also, with the Apostle Paul’s declaration of our adoption (e.g., Romans 8:15, Ephesians 1:5).
If the starting point of my understanding is that I begin as a child of God by virtue of being created by him, then I will miss the beauty of the good news that John is sharing here. When I recognize, however, that I begin only as a puny, finite creature, compounded by a rebellion that puts me at enmity with my Creator, then I am in a position to hear and understand the gospel message. What love God has shown me, that I should be called his child!
The parallel relationships between us and the world, on the one hand, and the Lord and the world, on the other, is a theme introduced in the Fourth Gospel. Jesus told his disciples, for example, “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you” (John 15:18 NASB). And it is part of the larger theme of agency that we see not only in John, but in all four Gospels. Specifically, this: the respect or disrespect shown to someone’s agent is effectively the respect or disrespect shown to the someone who sent that agent. Jesus establishes that connection between himself and God, as well as between himself and his followers (e.g., Luke 10:16). Accordingly, it is a truism for John that the world “does not know us,” because after all the world “does not know him.”
And then John looks ahead. “We are God’s children now,” he declares, and yet that is evidently not the whole story. No, for “what we will be has not yet been revealed.” He does not explain what comes next, but he does identify the source of what comes next. “When he is revealed,” John writes, “we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.”
It is a tantalizing mystery. We are reminded of the glow that came to characterize Moses from having been in the presence of God. Because he had been in the divine radiance, Moses himself became radiant. And so it is that the day will come when “we will see him as he is,” and seeing him will in turn change us from what we are to what we will be.
Matthew 5:1-12
For earlier generations of American church folks, this passage was a staple. These verses were memorized by children in Sunday school, and were apt to be found displayed on some decorative wall hanging in the church parlor. People knew the Beatitudes.
Now, in a much less biblically literate age, these remarkable statements by Jesus are only vaguely familiar to most folks. The contents may be shrugged off as nice sentiments, rather than recognized and embraced as revolutionary truths. Our people may require more of an introduction to this material, therefore, than was necessary 50 years ago.
Perhaps the very first order of business for us is to introduce a kingdom paradigm. We do not live in a context of kings and kingdoms, and so we may be somewhat insensitive to the kingdom language that pulses through the gospels. It’s an easy thing for a modern audience to write off the imagery as quaint and antiquated. But the fact is that God's kingdom was a central theme — arguably the central theme — of Jesus’ teachings. Indeed, when Matthew introduces in summary fashion Jesus’ public ministry, he characterizes it this way: “From that time Jesus began to preach and say, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’” (Matthew 4:17 NASB).
That prominent theme of the kingdom is explicit in our selected passage, for it is the expressed reward awaiting those identified in both the first and the last of the eight "blessed are the" statements. And even where the theme is not explicit, it is probably implicit, for the whole worldview of the Beatitudes presumes a change in the future. And that anticipated change is a polar shift that turns upside down the way things are in this world.
It is for precisely that reason, then, that the followers of Jesus — that is, the citizens of the kingdom of heaven (Philippians 3:20) who are aliens and strangers here (1 Peter 2:11) — are content to live in an upside down sort of way. They count themselves blessed to mourn and to hunger. They gladly make themselves vulnerable as ones who are merciful, pure-hearted peacemakers. They rejoice and are exceedingly glad when they are misunderstood and mistreated.
An interesting philosophical matter to ponder in preaching the Beatitudes is the role of cause-and-effect. It is a scientific truism, of course, that cause precedes effect. That is to say, causes and effects occur in time, and the causes come prior to the effects. Yet something about the Beatitudes suggests more of a two-way street.
On the one hand, there is the conventional understanding of cause and effect, to be sure. Each of the statements indicates that conduct in the present determines future experience. For example, “those who hunger and thirst for righteousness” is the present characteristic, and it is precisely that present reality that will result in the future reality of “be(ing) filled.”
Yet there is a sense in which the flow also moves in the other direction. That is to say, the future prospect is a motivating factor in the present. And in that sense, then, the cause is actually in the future, and the effect is in the present.
This is not a distinctively spiritual principle — we see it at work rather routinely. It is the hope of the future grade that prompts the student to be diligent and studious in the present. It is the prospect of a future nest egg that inspires industry, prudence, and frugality in the present. It is the vision of a more fit body that drives the diet and exercise in the present.
In short, it is precisely the conventional understanding of cause-and-effect — that is, what I do in the present will bear fruit in the future — that helps the principle to work in the other direction. For it is the future prospect that so heavily influences (determines?) my behavior in the present. And so the future becomes the cause of the present; my behavior in the present is the effect of what awaits me in the future.
This is a part of the logic of the Beatitudes. The followers of Jesus are encouraged by the promise of the future. God’s kingdom is coming in its fullness, you see, and the certainty of that future prospect inspires and encourages us to be all that God calls us to be in the present.
Application
As we celebrate the communion of saints, we may try to paint a sort of “group picture” for our congregations. And if it’s truly a picture of the whole group, then it will include both “us” and “them.” It will be a portrait that features both those in this Sunday’s worshipping congregation on earth and those who are participating in the worship of heaven!
In Revelation, John gives us a marvelous glimpse of the latter. The countless host robed in white is a picture of “them.” In our service this Sunday, we will read the names of those from our church family who passed on during the last year, and we will do well to think of ourselves looking for those faces in John’s crowd. And as John helps us to see them, we concur with the hymn writer, and exclaim, “They in glory shine!”
The Gospel and Epistle, meanwhile, help us to see ourselves more clearly in the group picture. We may, indeed, feebly struggle — poor in spirit, mourning, maligned and persecuted. Yet both Jesus and John help us to see the beauty of the generation on this side of the river. They — no, we! — are in good company, “for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” We are called children of God. We are cultivating the virtues of the kingdom — purity, meekness, mercy, and an appetite for righteousness. And, above all, we are marked by hope: happy in the present because of our future certainty.
It’s a profound group picture, for it has the features of before-and-after in a single view. Those who have fought and won now hold the trophy, while those of us who are still engaged in the battles are tear- and blood-stained. Yet the victory is assured. And so we sing with gusto the truths of the saints — both them and us — on this sacred Sunday.
Alternative Application(s)
1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12 — “Force Due to Hope”
In our reflections on the Beatitudes above, we raised the philosophical question of cause and effect. Is it possible that causes do not always precede effects? Is it possible that future prospects serve as cause, and therefore the effect is in the present even though the cause is in the future?
What is implicit in several of the Beatitudes — as well as perhaps much of the larger kingdom paradigm in Jesus’ teachings — is explicit in the excerpt from 1 John.
On the one hand, John expresses some things in conventional cause-and-effect language: that is to say, the cause precedes the effect. God’s love is the cause, and our status as his children is the effect. The world not knowing him, likewise, is the preceding cause, and the world not knowing us is the predictable effect.
But then John also gives expression to the reverse flow. He anticipates the day when the Lord will be revealed, when “we will see him as he is,” and we ourselves will be transformed and revealed at that time. And then John concludes, “All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.” There it is again, you see: a future prospect that yields its results in the present.
John puts a name on the phenomenon. Just as gravity is the name given to the force that pulls back down the thing that was going up, hope is what we call the invisible but immense force that manages to reverse the ordinary flow of cause-and-effect. Christian hope is so strong, you see, that it actually puts the effect ahead of the cause on the timeline. It’s an extraordinary phenomenon. And it is the state of being in which the follower of Jesus Christ lives his or her life: so focused on the prospect, the promise, the reward in the future, that it gives shape and direction to our life in the present. Blessed, indeed, are those who live the here-and-now in happy anticipation of the then-and-there!
1 William H. How, “For All the Saints,” UMH #711
2 Ibid.
That has happened to me, as well. Indeed, you might say that I have a whole repertoire of such musical associations, for not only did we sing a lot of hymns at both of my parents’ funerals, a number of us had the opportunity to sing hymns together around my father’s bed the night before he died. And so I have a whole collection of songs that are connected for me to my parents’ passing.
One of the hymns that we sang at my mother’s service was William How’s majestic “For All the Saints.” At the service, I was able to sing the first several verses with the gusto of the hymn’s grand affirmations. But then I came across one phrase that choked me up. And that same phrase has continued to produce a catch in my throat each time I’ve sung it in the intervening seven years. And, candidly, I expect the same experience this coming Sunday morning when we sing it in church for All Saints Day.
“O blest communion, fellowship divine,” we sing, affirming the doctrine of the communion of saints. But then we continue, saying, “We feebly struggle, they in glory shine.”1 And that is where I stop to hold back the tears.
Some people die at or near full strength. Often, those are folks who have died tragically in accidents or suddenly by heart attack or stroke. I was fortunate that both of my parents lived long, full lives, each one into their 90s. But by the end, Alzheimer’s had diminished the one and cancer was consuming the other. And so when I hear — and sing — “we feebly struggle, they in glory shine,” both expressions make me think of my folks. I recognize the look of “feebly struggle,” and I cherish the promise and the prospect of “they in glory shine.”
As we sing and read and preach and pray on this All Saints Sunday, we will have opportunity to reflect on us and them. The scriptures point us to both groups in the grand communion of saints — both those of us on this side and those who have crossed over. And as I look in both the mirror and the newspaper, I concur with the hymn writer’s characterization: “we feebly struggle.” But I affirm and rejoice in the truth for the friends and loved ones that have gone before that “they in glory shine.”
Revelation 7:9-17
Human beings have a natural fascination with what is concealed or inaccessible. We are eager to hear stories from “the inside.” The documentary that gives us a glimpse of what it’s really like inside of a football team’s training camp or draft war room. The televised tour of Air Force One. The former staffer who was part of the inner circle in some government or business. The astronaut who can tell us stories about places we’ll likely never get to visit. We love to hear about what it’s like — whatever “it” may be — “on the inside.”
Accordingly, we should have a natural appreciation for much of the book of Revelation, especially passages like the one assigned to us this week. The Apostle John gets the ultimate peek, and then he does us the favor of reporting to us what he saw. And we discover that we have been given a glimpse into the very throne room of heaven — which, I suppose, is another way of saying the throne room, period.
Other celestial peeks are heavy on descriptions: we are told what things look like. Isaiah and Ezekiel both give us descriptive glimpses, as John does elsewhere in Revelation. In this instance, though, the issue is not so much the place as the persons. John tells us who is there and what they’re doing.
Central to the scene is the one who sits on the throne, the Lord God. All else revolves around him. Central, too, is the Son of God, here identified repeatedly as the Lamb (though later, in John’s fluid use of imagery, the Lamb is also the shepherd). Meanwhile, around the throne are angels, as well as the elders and the four living creatures introduced earlier in the book (see Revelation 4).
Yet it seems that the vast majority of the crowd in this scene around the throne are participants of a different sort. They are the ones mentioned by John first in this passage, and they are the ones explicitly identified and discussed later by one of the elders. They may be the ones of special interest to us, for they are probably the ones that look like us.
John tells us that they are a great multitude. He doesn’t even try to put an estimate on the crowd size: they are beyond numbering! And just as their number is vast, so are their places of origin. They come, we are told, “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.”
William How captures the scene for us in poetry: “From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast, through gates of pearl streams in the countless host, singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: Alleluia, Alleluia!”2
The vast multitude around the throne, you see, are people. And, notably, all kinds of people. People from every possible place are there, gathered around the throne of God.
The magnificence of this observation may be lost on us, for we take for granted the notion that Christianity is one of the world’s great religions, that there are churches all around the world, and that Jesus loves “all the children of the world.” But imagine what this scene looked like to a Christian in the first-century Roman Empire. The gospel had not circled the globe. The believers in Jesus Christ were a small and persecuted minority, and taken all together they were probably a very countable number! For John to see evidence, therefore, of a great, global multitude around God and the Lamb was truly a glimpse into the future, for that was not the reality in the present.
The palm branches in their hands recalls both the triumphant welcome of Palm Sunday and its antecedent in Psalm 118. Meanwhile, “robed in white” speaks not only of purity, but of a people whose trials are behind them. And the source of their robes’ whiteness is revealed to us a few verses later: “they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”
The blood of the Lamb was vitally important to John’s audience — an audience that was no doubt expected to identify with that multitude robed in white. This was a time, after all, when faith in Christ was a dangerous business. The martyrs were shedding their blood for their faith, and the implication of “the great ordeal” is that these palm-waving worshipers had come through persecution. The fact that the Lamb’s blood had been shed first — that he, too, suffered unjustly yet faithfully — was no doubt an encouragement to those who were suffering for their faith in him.
Also encouraging is the assurance that the “ordeal” is behind them. “They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat.” Rather, they will be protected and provided for by the very one they lived and died for. It is a beautiful and magnificent prospect.
In my experience, American church folks tend to fall into two camps when it comes to the book of Revelation. On the one hand, there are those who avoid it, treating it as a rather undesirable part of the Bible. On the other hand, there are those who seem fixated on it, treating it as though it was the most important part of the Bible.
In the scenes and symbols of Revelation, people look for all sorts of characters and events from history and the present. Typically, though, readers are always looking for someone else. Perhaps for a change we should encourage our people to look for themselves in the book of Revelation. For I think John would say that you and I and the people in our pews ought to be a part of that vast, triumphant and adoring crowd in Revelation chapter 7.
1 John 3:1-3
At the church I presently serve, we begin each Sunday morning’s worship service with a “Call to Worship.” It is not so much a piece of liturgy as it is a way of framing the occasion for which we have gathered and an invitation to respond to the good news and the God who gave it. And as I read our selected epistle lection, I think that John has extended to us a marvelous call to worship.
“See what love the Father has given us,” he begins. It is an exhortation to open our eyes to the loveliest sight of all. You and I see a lot of things every day, of course. We pay attention to an uncountable number of things. Yet surely it is one of the tragic flaws of our fallen condition that we so often fail to see the things that are most important to see. And so John calls us to see — to pay attention to — this: “what love the Father has given us!” Let that be our call to worship multiple times each day!
John goes on to quantify that love: “that we should be called children of God.”
This is likely an underappreciated truth of the gospel for most of our people. For some reason, among those who believe in God in our culture, there is a prevailing assumption that we are — indeed, that all human beings are — God’s children. We see that status as a given rather than as a gift.
The underlying reasoning is either ironic or nonexistent. Do we presume that we are God’s children simply because he created us? By that logic, I suppose the moon, the Nile River, and the squirrel outside my window are also his children. In the beginning, you see, we are his creatures, not his children.
To make the situation even more dramatic, then, we happen to be the creatures who rebel. Accordingly, Paul uses the word “enemies” (Romans 5:10) to describe our dreadful condition in relation to God. That’s a far cry from some self-satisfied assumption that all people are God’s children.
This, then, is what makes John’s statement — or, more to the point, what makes God’s love — so remarkable: “that we should be called children of God.” It is reminiscent of the truth introduced early in John’s gospel. Speaking of the coming of Jesus into the world, John writes, “He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:11-12 NASB). And it dovetails, also, with the Apostle Paul’s declaration of our adoption (e.g., Romans 8:15, Ephesians 1:5).
If the starting point of my understanding is that I begin as a child of God by virtue of being created by him, then I will miss the beauty of the good news that John is sharing here. When I recognize, however, that I begin only as a puny, finite creature, compounded by a rebellion that puts me at enmity with my Creator, then I am in a position to hear and understand the gospel message. What love God has shown me, that I should be called his child!
The parallel relationships between us and the world, on the one hand, and the Lord and the world, on the other, is a theme introduced in the Fourth Gospel. Jesus told his disciples, for example, “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you” (John 15:18 NASB). And it is part of the larger theme of agency that we see not only in John, but in all four Gospels. Specifically, this: the respect or disrespect shown to someone’s agent is effectively the respect or disrespect shown to the someone who sent that agent. Jesus establishes that connection between himself and God, as well as between himself and his followers (e.g., Luke 10:16). Accordingly, it is a truism for John that the world “does not know us,” because after all the world “does not know him.”
And then John looks ahead. “We are God’s children now,” he declares, and yet that is evidently not the whole story. No, for “what we will be has not yet been revealed.” He does not explain what comes next, but he does identify the source of what comes next. “When he is revealed,” John writes, “we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.”
It is a tantalizing mystery. We are reminded of the glow that came to characterize Moses from having been in the presence of God. Because he had been in the divine radiance, Moses himself became radiant. And so it is that the day will come when “we will see him as he is,” and seeing him will in turn change us from what we are to what we will be.
Matthew 5:1-12
For earlier generations of American church folks, this passage was a staple. These verses were memorized by children in Sunday school, and were apt to be found displayed on some decorative wall hanging in the church parlor. People knew the Beatitudes.
Now, in a much less biblically literate age, these remarkable statements by Jesus are only vaguely familiar to most folks. The contents may be shrugged off as nice sentiments, rather than recognized and embraced as revolutionary truths. Our people may require more of an introduction to this material, therefore, than was necessary 50 years ago.
Perhaps the very first order of business for us is to introduce a kingdom paradigm. We do not live in a context of kings and kingdoms, and so we may be somewhat insensitive to the kingdom language that pulses through the gospels. It’s an easy thing for a modern audience to write off the imagery as quaint and antiquated. But the fact is that God's kingdom was a central theme — arguably the central theme — of Jesus’ teachings. Indeed, when Matthew introduces in summary fashion Jesus’ public ministry, he characterizes it this way: “From that time Jesus began to preach and say, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’” (Matthew 4:17 NASB).
That prominent theme of the kingdom is explicit in our selected passage, for it is the expressed reward awaiting those identified in both the first and the last of the eight "blessed are the" statements. And even where the theme is not explicit, it is probably implicit, for the whole worldview of the Beatitudes presumes a change in the future. And that anticipated change is a polar shift that turns upside down the way things are in this world.
It is for precisely that reason, then, that the followers of Jesus — that is, the citizens of the kingdom of heaven (Philippians 3:20) who are aliens and strangers here (1 Peter 2:11) — are content to live in an upside down sort of way. They count themselves blessed to mourn and to hunger. They gladly make themselves vulnerable as ones who are merciful, pure-hearted peacemakers. They rejoice and are exceedingly glad when they are misunderstood and mistreated.
An interesting philosophical matter to ponder in preaching the Beatitudes is the role of cause-and-effect. It is a scientific truism, of course, that cause precedes effect. That is to say, causes and effects occur in time, and the causes come prior to the effects. Yet something about the Beatitudes suggests more of a two-way street.
On the one hand, there is the conventional understanding of cause and effect, to be sure. Each of the statements indicates that conduct in the present determines future experience. For example, “those who hunger and thirst for righteousness” is the present characteristic, and it is precisely that present reality that will result in the future reality of “be(ing) filled.”
Yet there is a sense in which the flow also moves in the other direction. That is to say, the future prospect is a motivating factor in the present. And in that sense, then, the cause is actually in the future, and the effect is in the present.
This is not a distinctively spiritual principle — we see it at work rather routinely. It is the hope of the future grade that prompts the student to be diligent and studious in the present. It is the prospect of a future nest egg that inspires industry, prudence, and frugality in the present. It is the vision of a more fit body that drives the diet and exercise in the present.
In short, it is precisely the conventional understanding of cause-and-effect — that is, what I do in the present will bear fruit in the future — that helps the principle to work in the other direction. For it is the future prospect that so heavily influences (determines?) my behavior in the present. And so the future becomes the cause of the present; my behavior in the present is the effect of what awaits me in the future.
This is a part of the logic of the Beatitudes. The followers of Jesus are encouraged by the promise of the future. God’s kingdom is coming in its fullness, you see, and the certainty of that future prospect inspires and encourages us to be all that God calls us to be in the present.
Application
As we celebrate the communion of saints, we may try to paint a sort of “group picture” for our congregations. And if it’s truly a picture of the whole group, then it will include both “us” and “them.” It will be a portrait that features both those in this Sunday’s worshipping congregation on earth and those who are participating in the worship of heaven!
In Revelation, John gives us a marvelous glimpse of the latter. The countless host robed in white is a picture of “them.” In our service this Sunday, we will read the names of those from our church family who passed on during the last year, and we will do well to think of ourselves looking for those faces in John’s crowd. And as John helps us to see them, we concur with the hymn writer, and exclaim, “They in glory shine!”
The Gospel and Epistle, meanwhile, help us to see ourselves more clearly in the group picture. We may, indeed, feebly struggle — poor in spirit, mourning, maligned and persecuted. Yet both Jesus and John help us to see the beauty of the generation on this side of the river. They — no, we! — are in good company, “for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” We are called children of God. We are cultivating the virtues of the kingdom — purity, meekness, mercy, and an appetite for righteousness. And, above all, we are marked by hope: happy in the present because of our future certainty.
It’s a profound group picture, for it has the features of before-and-after in a single view. Those who have fought and won now hold the trophy, while those of us who are still engaged in the battles are tear- and blood-stained. Yet the victory is assured. And so we sing with gusto the truths of the saints — both them and us — on this sacred Sunday.
Alternative Application(s)
1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12 — “Force Due to Hope”
In our reflections on the Beatitudes above, we raised the philosophical question of cause and effect. Is it possible that causes do not always precede effects? Is it possible that future prospects serve as cause, and therefore the effect is in the present even though the cause is in the future?
What is implicit in several of the Beatitudes — as well as perhaps much of the larger kingdom paradigm in Jesus’ teachings — is explicit in the excerpt from 1 John.
On the one hand, John expresses some things in conventional cause-and-effect language: that is to say, the cause precedes the effect. God’s love is the cause, and our status as his children is the effect. The world not knowing him, likewise, is the preceding cause, and the world not knowing us is the predictable effect.
But then John also gives expression to the reverse flow. He anticipates the day when the Lord will be revealed, when “we will see him as he is,” and we ourselves will be transformed and revealed at that time. And then John concludes, “All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.” There it is again, you see: a future prospect that yields its results in the present.
John puts a name on the phenomenon. Just as gravity is the name given to the force that pulls back down the thing that was going up, hope is what we call the invisible but immense force that manages to reverse the ordinary flow of cause-and-effect. Christian hope is so strong, you see, that it actually puts the effect ahead of the cause on the timeline. It’s an extraordinary phenomenon. And it is the state of being in which the follower of Jesus Christ lives his or her life: so focused on the prospect, the promise, the reward in the future, that it gives shape and direction to our life in the present. Blessed, indeed, are those who live the here-and-now in happy anticipation of the then-and-there!
1 William H. How, “For All the Saints,” UMH #711
2 Ibid.
