Self-Sacrifice And Personal Suffering Reveal Life At Its Best
Sermon
Where Gratitude Abounds
Gospel Sermons For Sundays After Pentecost (Last Third)
Could one of the greatest mysteries of life be connected to whether or not one truly appreciates and values these Beatitudes of Jesus? Though these statements of Jesus probably draw more yawns from the world than tears of endearment and endorsement, each and every one strikes home for the heart and life that has come to choose God's view on sacrifice and suffering over the world's over-used and unexamined views. We show we are indeed children of the world's constructs of thinking more than we are of God's and Christ's, when we allow any, if not all, of our experiences of sacrifice and suffering to foster bitterness and disillusionment within us rather than praise, thanksgiving, and trust.
A lasting sense of the celebration of life, for many human beings appointed to "three score and ten years on earth" (i.e., seventy), is intimately connected to whether or not your faith and trust inspire you to celebrate, as life's "accouterments" are stripped from you one by one. Faith expressed while most conditions in your life are good is a faith untested; it may have more bravado than roots. Faith expressed when the fog is so thick that your worldly comforts are "out of reach" and/or "sold off" is a faith more kindred to Jesus' Beatitudes than to the world's bad attitudes. Take to heart the precious insights, the life-giving counsel and encouragement that go with embracing the truths of the Beatitudes. Know now, if not earlier, the life-giving truth that life is more alive in the arenas of sacrifice and suffering than it is in the world's efforts to deny and to escape them through the anesthetization of luxuries and pleasures.
Worldly life, apart from Christ, exacts certain predictable responses from us when life is harsh: self-protectionism, suspicion, mistrust, and self-sufficiency. New life in Christ calls forth an attitudinal and dispositional quality of living and perceiving that, while influenced by the adversities of poverty, grief, hunger, strife, and unjust treatment, we choose to remain buoyed up by a critically important conviction: We believe that, because Christ is richly and centrally present in our lives, we are always larger and greater than the sub-total of the adverse circumstances and events that visit us. Why? Because we've come to discover that God is incredibly resourceful in helping us overcome obstacles and in teaching us to perceive them all from His viewpoint more than from our own. The Beatitudes are timeless because they hold up to us those attitudes diplayed in and taught by Christ to believing people past and present.
In the words of Herbert Chilstrom,
... every Beatitude stands in bold contrast to what is seen as the ideal in our culture: Be rich, avoid pain and sorrow, hunger and thirst for power, reach your goals regardless of the cost to others.1
Hence our need to abide in Jesus and to adopt and to practice his approach to life, rather than succumbing to the pull of worldly gravity upon us to do otherwise.
Scholars tell us that we'd be well-advised to see these Beatitudes not as a single message, but as a summary of his teaching shared in various places, a distillation of precious teaching he gave to his disciples over a period of time. And we should see the blessedness, or joy, Jesus speaks of in each line as the kind and quality which, if we welcome and permit it, can abide in us throughout our pain, grief, powerlessness, and loss. To pull it off, so to speak, requires nothing less than wanting with all one's heart to be in the company and presence of Jesus as one moves through everything else in the course of a day, week, month, or year.
As we move into these verses, I have found it helpful myself to bear in mind the "two-partedness" of the Beatitudes, as Chilstrom has noted:
The first section is more personal. A disciple is one who knows poverty of spirit, sorrow, humility, and hunger for more of the life of righteousness. This one is sensitive to the winds of the Spirit, understanding that God alone can fill the deep longings of the heart. There is a call to contemplation, to reflection, to spiritual sensitivity.
The second section looks outward. Those "on the way" are also committed to a life that shows in word and deed that they are disciples. They show mercy, they seek to live above reproach, they work for peace in the world, and they are ready and willing to endure hate and persecution for the sake of truth.2
In verses 1 and 2, Jesus leaves the crowds for a spot on the mountain. Those he called as disciples gather around him. He teaches them a package of insights and principles only godly people can appreciate and come to practice.
In verse 3, we read that those "poor in spirit" come to reside in "the kingdom of heaven." Possibly they're better candidates for heaven because more of their needs have been met, and their "wants" have not been their main focus. Persons who are "poor in spirit" have come to the realization that God is their greatest resource, and they choose to abide in Him and not become bitter. While they're stripped of many privileges and have no high earthly rankings, they have learned truly to delight in God, His Word and community. Attachments to God counsel such persons to lighten up their grip on earthly possessions. Life's props aren't nearly as important to them as life's prop provider, God. They truly believe that He is the one who will always provide help, hope, and direction.
Allow your helplessness and powerlessness to teach you to cherish, trust, and commune with God, your chief resource and prop provider in all situations. Such poverty of spirit will make you an excellent candidate for heaven-sent resources which earth knows nothing of.
In verse 4, we hear the pre-Kubler Ross teaching which centuries later she has brought loving detail to: if you are honest and willing enough to grieve, you will discover, to your own healing surprise, that God has built into that grieving process mechanisms bringing healing and wholeness again. The Greek form of the word connotes the deepest kind of grieving possible, the death of a loved one. The gift wrapped in the grieving is that you are a person willing to be vulnerable enough to get close to others. What is painful is also what is a privileged joy: to miss the one you so enjoyed loving and knowing. Because you were mature and vulnerable enough to love, God has put into the grieving process healing mechanisms to lead you to wholeness again -- and to loving again. The catch in all this, according to my university pastor, William S. Coffin, is that we must never die spiritually with those who die physically. To do so is blasphemy. To offer tribute and honor rightly to the one who has left us is to stay alive spiritually ourselves. So when the scripture of old says, "Let the dead bury the dead" (Matthew 8:22), it means, according to Pastor Coffin, that the dead must not bury the living!
Allow yourself to feel and to express whatever losses you are currently troubled over. Commit such concerns and losses to Christ, express them fully to him and to others whose presence and counsel you've come to value and trust. There's healing in the willing expression of loss, especially if you choose to do it in God's presence. He will embrace you in the midst of it all.
In verse 5, meekness needs to be appropriately defined, for it is sorely misunderstood. Many years ago, while in divinity school, I remember Coffin speaking about Moses being a "meek" man (Numbers 12:3). I don't immediately correlate the leader of a nation, standing before an eastern despot Pharaoh, with being meek. Pastor Coffin explained his point, as best as I can remember hearing it without printed aid: Meekness means you have no concern for your status in the eyes of men and women, concern only for your status in the eyes of God. There's a nobility in such a definition and in such a quality, isn't there? And if it abides in a person, it builds a certain character and a courage as well. It certainly did for Moses. He left his preferable position with his wife and father-in-law, enjoying being away from others, to go into a congestion of people and concentration of power, building courage all along the way to face and to speak boldly before Pharaoh. Such meekness gave God permission to further His plan on earth for Israel.
William Barclay also helps us at this point, as you and I seek to understand better this rare quality:
The full translation of this third beatitude must read: O the bliss of the man who is always angry at the right time and never angry at the wrong time, who has every instinct, and impulse, and passion under control because he himself is God-controlled, who has the humility to realize his own ignorance and his own weakness, for such a man is a king among men!3
Allow yourself to be freed by God to move from too much concern for the opinions of others toward you to the development of your character. We're underdeveloped, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually, because we're more concerned about the "grades" we get from others than the direction we get from God. Character and courage require meekness, as here defined, before we can truly get on with our lives on earth.
In verse 6, we read of a rare kind of hunger, by modern life standards: thirsting for justice and righteousness. What's a given in heaven is an all too rare phenomenon on earth. To hunger for justice and righteousness with all one's being is to have worked way past self-concern and self-aggrandizement. This is a remarkable quality for a human being to exhibit. And God promises to satisfy such rare hunger and thirst, and I believe it can be done, because such a person must have a larger dosage of God's presence and perception to awaken and to express such hunger.
My aching for goodness is more limiting than all-consuming because I allow too many self-interests to be the seat of authority in my life. Recently, as an antidote to exercising my self-centeredness, I have memorized and reflected on a couple passages, as they're expressed in the New Living Bible translation:
Your principles have been the music of my life throughout the years of my pilgrimage ...
I pondered the direction of my life, and I turned to follow your statutes ...
Evil people try to drag me into sin, but I am firmly anchored to your law ...
I have refused to walk on any path of evil,
That I may remain obedient to your word ...
Your decrees are my treasure. They are truly my heart's delight. -- Psalm 119:54, 59, 61, 101, 111
Obviously, the Psalmist had a consuming fire within him for God's goodness to abound in his life and in the world. We have so much of a passion for evil that our passion for good is noticeably dwarfed.
Which do you fear the most in your life, good or evil? When that question was asked of us students on Yale's campus by University Chaplain Bill Coffin, we answered "evil."
We were wrong! His response (paraphrase): Apparently what we most fear is not evil in the world, nor is it evil in ourselves. Rather, what we fear the most is the good in ourselves, because it demands so much from us if we're going to grow and to develop. How about that?!
In verse 7, we become reaquainted with the Christian theme of mercy. It presumes a love of the person that, in the midst of seeing a case for no mercy, chooses to show it nevertheless. Mercy never neglects the inherent value of a person, and that's what God's love through Jesus for us is all about! Human love, uninfluenced by God's love, is more calculating than extravagant. It thinks within the confines of the dispenser's heart and history with a person and what profits the giver or refuser of mercy. But a truly merciful person carries the other person's heart and condition into his/her own heart, and the intimate "dialogue" of heart-to-heart births mercy. God sees it, and others who are thoughtful see it too, and mercy is expressed to the person who is so willing to be merciful himself/herself.
In verse 8, that rare quality in some people's lives called "purity of heart" is a quality that opens one's eyes to God and His movement. One of Søren Kierkegaard's classic books, Purity of Heart, notes that we are fashioned by God with freedom of choice, but if we choose our will in matters over His, we will suffer with an illness called "the anxiety of irresolution." It's true we can choose freely, but to choose one's will over God's is to enter a state of double-mindedness, because in our heart of hearts God has placed a desire to know and to love Him. It's a bedrock desire, amidst many other desires that beckon us, and it's our will which chooses which desire it will seek to satisfy. To choose Him wholeheartedly is to move from double-mindedness to a purity of heart that wills only one thing: His will.
What makes a person have a purity of heart is to choose not to let one's contrasting motives compete. One motive overrides all others, the motive to love and to serve Him. When we will, with all our heart, to love and serve Him, it's like moving into a clearing from a misty area and being able to see much more clearly. When our motives are mixed and competitive, and we don't choose to override them, we're back in the mist, morally and spiritually speaking. And although it's certainly true that there is no such thing as a pure motive this side of heaven, it's also true that we willfully choose which motive sits on the "throne," while the other motives ride piggyback.
In verse 9, we hear of people bent on peace-making. It is not the same as refusing action because we're afraid or reluctant to pay the personal price to resolve something. It has more to do with handling relationships in certain ways. I have found William Barclay very helpful on this one:
There are people who are always storm centers of trouble and bitterness and strife. Wherever they are they are either involved in quarrels themselves or the cause of quarrels between others. They are trouble-makers. There are people like that in almost every society and every church ... On the other hand -- thank God -- there are people in whose presence bitterness cannot live, people who bridge the gulfs, and heal the breaches, and sweeten the bitterness. Such people are doing a godlike work, for it is the great purpose of God to bring peace between men and himself, and between (one person and another).4
The final verses of these Beatitudes (vv. 9-12) have a lot to do with our lives. Thinking, speaking, and doing what's right, and doing so in love, can get one into lots of trouble with the Devil and the world and its ways. Years ago, while still single, some divinity school buddies and I went to a singles social club and sat together. Before the evening was over, we were sitting with a table of fellow single women and having a good time conversing. The time came when they asked us what we were studying on a graduate level at Yale. We had already arranged to say anything but theology school. One buddy said law school, another psychology, another history, and so forth. When my response time was due I could not abide with the prearrangement. I said I was a theology student at Yale, preparing to be an ordained pastor. The gal I had coupled with around the table abruptly left her seat and never returned to our gathering. At that moment, I felt a little touch of that "persecuted for righteousness' sake." Years later, it proved it was well worth it, because I met the right gal, whom I then married.
When you and I have those times when we must choose between the right loyalty and a living, we show how much we're currently willing to suffer for stating or doing what's right. It's never an easy position to be in, but to pull it off, our heads and hearts must be more in heaven's values than in the earth's malpractices. And that's easier said than done. To choose loyalty to Christ over selfish activities is to give the world a gaze on Christ through you. And don't doubt that, while you may well be abandoned by others, you'll never be closer to Christ than you are at such times.
In closing, I'd like to share with you a statement made by Herbert W. Chilstrom:
It will soon be apparent that many of the qualities that seem to bring most immediate success in life are those which wither and are most quickly forgotten when one dies. In contrast, it is those selfless qualities -- the accents of the Beatitudes -- that endure and leave the most long-lasting impact. In the midst of our own turmoil -- personal and societal -- and in full confession of our own failure, we ask for grace to walk as living saints of God.5
____________
1. Herbert W. Chilstrom, "Saints Alive!" Emphasis, Volume 26, No. 4, November-December, 1996, p. 14.
2. Ibid., p. 14.
3. William Barclay, Matthew, Volume I, Westminster Press, p. 98.
4. Ibid., p. 110.
5. Chilstrom, op. cit., p. 14.
A lasting sense of the celebration of life, for many human beings appointed to "three score and ten years on earth" (i.e., seventy), is intimately connected to whether or not your faith and trust inspire you to celebrate, as life's "accouterments" are stripped from you one by one. Faith expressed while most conditions in your life are good is a faith untested; it may have more bravado than roots. Faith expressed when the fog is so thick that your worldly comforts are "out of reach" and/or "sold off" is a faith more kindred to Jesus' Beatitudes than to the world's bad attitudes. Take to heart the precious insights, the life-giving counsel and encouragement that go with embracing the truths of the Beatitudes. Know now, if not earlier, the life-giving truth that life is more alive in the arenas of sacrifice and suffering than it is in the world's efforts to deny and to escape them through the anesthetization of luxuries and pleasures.
Worldly life, apart from Christ, exacts certain predictable responses from us when life is harsh: self-protectionism, suspicion, mistrust, and self-sufficiency. New life in Christ calls forth an attitudinal and dispositional quality of living and perceiving that, while influenced by the adversities of poverty, grief, hunger, strife, and unjust treatment, we choose to remain buoyed up by a critically important conviction: We believe that, because Christ is richly and centrally present in our lives, we are always larger and greater than the sub-total of the adverse circumstances and events that visit us. Why? Because we've come to discover that God is incredibly resourceful in helping us overcome obstacles and in teaching us to perceive them all from His viewpoint more than from our own. The Beatitudes are timeless because they hold up to us those attitudes diplayed in and taught by Christ to believing people past and present.
In the words of Herbert Chilstrom,
... every Beatitude stands in bold contrast to what is seen as the ideal in our culture: Be rich, avoid pain and sorrow, hunger and thirst for power, reach your goals regardless of the cost to others.1
Hence our need to abide in Jesus and to adopt and to practice his approach to life, rather than succumbing to the pull of worldly gravity upon us to do otherwise.
Scholars tell us that we'd be well-advised to see these Beatitudes not as a single message, but as a summary of his teaching shared in various places, a distillation of precious teaching he gave to his disciples over a period of time. And we should see the blessedness, or joy, Jesus speaks of in each line as the kind and quality which, if we welcome and permit it, can abide in us throughout our pain, grief, powerlessness, and loss. To pull it off, so to speak, requires nothing less than wanting with all one's heart to be in the company and presence of Jesus as one moves through everything else in the course of a day, week, month, or year.
As we move into these verses, I have found it helpful myself to bear in mind the "two-partedness" of the Beatitudes, as Chilstrom has noted:
The first section is more personal. A disciple is one who knows poverty of spirit, sorrow, humility, and hunger for more of the life of righteousness. This one is sensitive to the winds of the Spirit, understanding that God alone can fill the deep longings of the heart. There is a call to contemplation, to reflection, to spiritual sensitivity.
The second section looks outward. Those "on the way" are also committed to a life that shows in word and deed that they are disciples. They show mercy, they seek to live above reproach, they work for peace in the world, and they are ready and willing to endure hate and persecution for the sake of truth.2
In verses 1 and 2, Jesus leaves the crowds for a spot on the mountain. Those he called as disciples gather around him. He teaches them a package of insights and principles only godly people can appreciate and come to practice.
In verse 3, we read that those "poor in spirit" come to reside in "the kingdom of heaven." Possibly they're better candidates for heaven because more of their needs have been met, and their "wants" have not been their main focus. Persons who are "poor in spirit" have come to the realization that God is their greatest resource, and they choose to abide in Him and not become bitter. While they're stripped of many privileges and have no high earthly rankings, they have learned truly to delight in God, His Word and community. Attachments to God counsel such persons to lighten up their grip on earthly possessions. Life's props aren't nearly as important to them as life's prop provider, God. They truly believe that He is the one who will always provide help, hope, and direction.
Allow your helplessness and powerlessness to teach you to cherish, trust, and commune with God, your chief resource and prop provider in all situations. Such poverty of spirit will make you an excellent candidate for heaven-sent resources which earth knows nothing of.
In verse 4, we hear the pre-Kubler Ross teaching which centuries later she has brought loving detail to: if you are honest and willing enough to grieve, you will discover, to your own healing surprise, that God has built into that grieving process mechanisms bringing healing and wholeness again. The Greek form of the word connotes the deepest kind of grieving possible, the death of a loved one. The gift wrapped in the grieving is that you are a person willing to be vulnerable enough to get close to others. What is painful is also what is a privileged joy: to miss the one you so enjoyed loving and knowing. Because you were mature and vulnerable enough to love, God has put into the grieving process healing mechanisms to lead you to wholeness again -- and to loving again. The catch in all this, according to my university pastor, William S. Coffin, is that we must never die spiritually with those who die physically. To do so is blasphemy. To offer tribute and honor rightly to the one who has left us is to stay alive spiritually ourselves. So when the scripture of old says, "Let the dead bury the dead" (Matthew 8:22), it means, according to Pastor Coffin, that the dead must not bury the living!
Allow yourself to feel and to express whatever losses you are currently troubled over. Commit such concerns and losses to Christ, express them fully to him and to others whose presence and counsel you've come to value and trust. There's healing in the willing expression of loss, especially if you choose to do it in God's presence. He will embrace you in the midst of it all.
In verse 5, meekness needs to be appropriately defined, for it is sorely misunderstood. Many years ago, while in divinity school, I remember Coffin speaking about Moses being a "meek" man (Numbers 12:3). I don't immediately correlate the leader of a nation, standing before an eastern despot Pharaoh, with being meek. Pastor Coffin explained his point, as best as I can remember hearing it without printed aid: Meekness means you have no concern for your status in the eyes of men and women, concern only for your status in the eyes of God. There's a nobility in such a definition and in such a quality, isn't there? And if it abides in a person, it builds a certain character and a courage as well. It certainly did for Moses. He left his preferable position with his wife and father-in-law, enjoying being away from others, to go into a congestion of people and concentration of power, building courage all along the way to face and to speak boldly before Pharaoh. Such meekness gave God permission to further His plan on earth for Israel.
William Barclay also helps us at this point, as you and I seek to understand better this rare quality:
The full translation of this third beatitude must read: O the bliss of the man who is always angry at the right time and never angry at the wrong time, who has every instinct, and impulse, and passion under control because he himself is God-controlled, who has the humility to realize his own ignorance and his own weakness, for such a man is a king among men!3
Allow yourself to be freed by God to move from too much concern for the opinions of others toward you to the development of your character. We're underdeveloped, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually, because we're more concerned about the "grades" we get from others than the direction we get from God. Character and courage require meekness, as here defined, before we can truly get on with our lives on earth.
In verse 6, we read of a rare kind of hunger, by modern life standards: thirsting for justice and righteousness. What's a given in heaven is an all too rare phenomenon on earth. To hunger for justice and righteousness with all one's being is to have worked way past self-concern and self-aggrandizement. This is a remarkable quality for a human being to exhibit. And God promises to satisfy such rare hunger and thirst, and I believe it can be done, because such a person must have a larger dosage of God's presence and perception to awaken and to express such hunger.
My aching for goodness is more limiting than all-consuming because I allow too many self-interests to be the seat of authority in my life. Recently, as an antidote to exercising my self-centeredness, I have memorized and reflected on a couple passages, as they're expressed in the New Living Bible translation:
Your principles have been the music of my life throughout the years of my pilgrimage ...
I pondered the direction of my life, and I turned to follow your statutes ...
Evil people try to drag me into sin, but I am firmly anchored to your law ...
I have refused to walk on any path of evil,
That I may remain obedient to your word ...
Your decrees are my treasure. They are truly my heart's delight. -- Psalm 119:54, 59, 61, 101, 111
Obviously, the Psalmist had a consuming fire within him for God's goodness to abound in his life and in the world. We have so much of a passion for evil that our passion for good is noticeably dwarfed.
Which do you fear the most in your life, good or evil? When that question was asked of us students on Yale's campus by University Chaplain Bill Coffin, we answered "evil."
We were wrong! His response (paraphrase): Apparently what we most fear is not evil in the world, nor is it evil in ourselves. Rather, what we fear the most is the good in ourselves, because it demands so much from us if we're going to grow and to develop. How about that?!
In verse 7, we become reaquainted with the Christian theme of mercy. It presumes a love of the person that, in the midst of seeing a case for no mercy, chooses to show it nevertheless. Mercy never neglects the inherent value of a person, and that's what God's love through Jesus for us is all about! Human love, uninfluenced by God's love, is more calculating than extravagant. It thinks within the confines of the dispenser's heart and history with a person and what profits the giver or refuser of mercy. But a truly merciful person carries the other person's heart and condition into his/her own heart, and the intimate "dialogue" of heart-to-heart births mercy. God sees it, and others who are thoughtful see it too, and mercy is expressed to the person who is so willing to be merciful himself/herself.
In verse 8, that rare quality in some people's lives called "purity of heart" is a quality that opens one's eyes to God and His movement. One of Søren Kierkegaard's classic books, Purity of Heart, notes that we are fashioned by God with freedom of choice, but if we choose our will in matters over His, we will suffer with an illness called "the anxiety of irresolution." It's true we can choose freely, but to choose one's will over God's is to enter a state of double-mindedness, because in our heart of hearts God has placed a desire to know and to love Him. It's a bedrock desire, amidst many other desires that beckon us, and it's our will which chooses which desire it will seek to satisfy. To choose Him wholeheartedly is to move from double-mindedness to a purity of heart that wills only one thing: His will.
What makes a person have a purity of heart is to choose not to let one's contrasting motives compete. One motive overrides all others, the motive to love and to serve Him. When we will, with all our heart, to love and serve Him, it's like moving into a clearing from a misty area and being able to see much more clearly. When our motives are mixed and competitive, and we don't choose to override them, we're back in the mist, morally and spiritually speaking. And although it's certainly true that there is no such thing as a pure motive this side of heaven, it's also true that we willfully choose which motive sits on the "throne," while the other motives ride piggyback.
In verse 9, we hear of people bent on peace-making. It is not the same as refusing action because we're afraid or reluctant to pay the personal price to resolve something. It has more to do with handling relationships in certain ways. I have found William Barclay very helpful on this one:
There are people who are always storm centers of trouble and bitterness and strife. Wherever they are they are either involved in quarrels themselves or the cause of quarrels between others. They are trouble-makers. There are people like that in almost every society and every church ... On the other hand -- thank God -- there are people in whose presence bitterness cannot live, people who bridge the gulfs, and heal the breaches, and sweeten the bitterness. Such people are doing a godlike work, for it is the great purpose of God to bring peace between men and himself, and between (one person and another).4
The final verses of these Beatitudes (vv. 9-12) have a lot to do with our lives. Thinking, speaking, and doing what's right, and doing so in love, can get one into lots of trouble with the Devil and the world and its ways. Years ago, while still single, some divinity school buddies and I went to a singles social club and sat together. Before the evening was over, we were sitting with a table of fellow single women and having a good time conversing. The time came when they asked us what we were studying on a graduate level at Yale. We had already arranged to say anything but theology school. One buddy said law school, another psychology, another history, and so forth. When my response time was due I could not abide with the prearrangement. I said I was a theology student at Yale, preparing to be an ordained pastor. The gal I had coupled with around the table abruptly left her seat and never returned to our gathering. At that moment, I felt a little touch of that "persecuted for righteousness' sake." Years later, it proved it was well worth it, because I met the right gal, whom I then married.
When you and I have those times when we must choose between the right loyalty and a living, we show how much we're currently willing to suffer for stating or doing what's right. It's never an easy position to be in, but to pull it off, our heads and hearts must be more in heaven's values than in the earth's malpractices. And that's easier said than done. To choose loyalty to Christ over selfish activities is to give the world a gaze on Christ through you. And don't doubt that, while you may well be abandoned by others, you'll never be closer to Christ than you are at such times.
In closing, I'd like to share with you a statement made by Herbert W. Chilstrom:
It will soon be apparent that many of the qualities that seem to bring most immediate success in life are those which wither and are most quickly forgotten when one dies. In contrast, it is those selfless qualities -- the accents of the Beatitudes -- that endure and leave the most long-lasting impact. In the midst of our own turmoil -- personal and societal -- and in full confession of our own failure, we ask for grace to walk as living saints of God.5
____________
1. Herbert W. Chilstrom, "Saints Alive!" Emphasis, Volume 26, No. 4, November-December, 1996, p. 14.
2. Ibid., p. 14.
3. William Barclay, Matthew, Volume I, Westminster Press, p. 98.
4. Ibid., p. 110.
5. Chilstrom, op. cit., p. 14.
