Thomas J Parlette
“What New and Better World Awaits?”
Matthew 5:1-12
11/1/20
In 1987, the band REM released a song that could have been written yesterday. You probably know it. It’s called “It’s the end of the world.” It contains a refrain that seems to sum up our world today:
“It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it.”
Sure feels like it. It sure feels like REM looked into a crystal ball and saw into the future back in 1987.
In the most recent issue of Christian Century, Layton E. Williams writes, “I’m not sure the world has ever felt as upside down as it has in 2020.” And he is right. This whole year deserves one big asterisk. A global pandemic, economic crisis, political division and discord, protests for justice and a better world for all people, and every week it seems, some new catastrophe or news story that makes us roll our eyes and think – “Now what? What else can possibly happen?”
A year ago, life included parties, happy hours, and travel. It’s more mundane activities included public transportation, workdays in an actual office, going to church, shopping for groceries, picking the kids up from school not located at the kitchen table and hugging other people. That world is gone now. Every single one of those elements of normal life we once took for granted has been disrupted, destroyed and turned on its head. The world we inhabit now is strange, unfamiliar, scary and just downright exhausting. We don’t know what the future will hold or how long this season of upheaval and uncertainty will last (1).
Many times in recent months I have thought that the world is broken. Ending, even. That everything has become messed up. I have longed for the world I knew pre-pandemic. Despite its imperfections and injustices, it was a world that was largely comfortable for me. I know, I know – my white privilege is showing.
But the beatitudes we have before us today offer us hope. In this series of blessings, Jesus reminds us that the world as we have generally encountered it is not at all the world that God intends or desires for us. Indeed, in many ways God’s desired world is an inversion of the world we expect and feel comfortable with and perhaps even entitled to – particularly those of us who benefit from privilege.
With these eight strange and unexpected blessings, Jesus of Nazareth begins his epic Sermon on the Mount, throughout which he offers instruction, parables, promises and commands to his followers about the ways that God intends for us to live and the world God calls us to work toward. It’s significant that Jesus begins here, with these upside-down blessings. And to be honest, there’s a sermon in every verse here today – but we’ll save some for another day.
Jesus begins by centering on those who suffer, those who remain faithful in the face of hardship, those who focus themselves on compassion and care for others, on justice and righteousness and on making true peace for a better world for all.
These are not the groups of people that our world tends to favor or exalt – in fact, it’s just the opposite. In our dog-eat-dog world, the spoils go to the victor, the glory to the powerful. We celebrate those who are dominant, aggressive and competitive. We reward those who prioritize themselves above all else, who win at any cost.
Meanwhile, we avoid suffering, we reject calls for justice and peace and we see self-emptying concern for others as weakness.
Our misaligned and unholy priorities have been painfully and devastatingly evident over the course of this pandemic. As a result, we have a great many more names and lives to remember on this All Saints Day than we should, with over 220,000 deaths nationally as I write this and there’s no doubt the number has grown by the time you watch this online.
In the Beatitudes, Jesus makes a promise: that regardless of how this world fails us, God’s commonwealth or kin-dom, if you will, will ultimately comfort and lift up those who are faithful and good. At the end, in verses 11 and 12, Jesus speaks directly to his hearers, not only naming abstract groups, but also reassuring those listening that if they also seek to be faithful and good, no matter what the world throws at them, God will ultimately be faithful to them, as any good parent is faithful to their child. And as we heard from 1st John, “We are God’s children now.”
In verse 11 of this passage, Jesus turns the Beatitudes from a lecture into an invitation – an invitation to live the blessings he describes. Jesus frames the Beatitudes into a description of the kind of people we ought to strive to be,
After all, those who mourn do so because they love someone who has been lost, or something that has been lost. Do we care enough about those who have died in this pandemic to mourn them? Will we care mercifully for those being hurt by this situation, whether in terms of health or finances or safety? Will we let ourselves feel the pangs of hunger at the persistence of unrighteousness and the pervasiveness of systemic racism? Will we do the hard work of making real and holy peace – instead of settling for the comfort of keeping a false peace that allows injustices in this world to continue? As Ken Bailey points out, biblical peace is not just the absence of violence and war, but the presence of true reconciliation and spiritual health.
In times of crisis, our impulse is to shore up our defenses and do whatever it takes to keep ourselves alive. But God has created us not simply to be mortal but to be moral as well. Our call from God is to have a broader vision of care for all people. Those who do this, Jesus says, are blessed. Perhaps not in the world that we know – the one that props up powers and principalities, that celebrates individual freedoms over collective flourishing – but certainly in the kin-dom of God (2)
Our world has been turned upside down for 8 months now, with no real end in sight – and that upending has meant immense suffering and struggle. I don’t imagine any of us would identify a global pandemic as good, nor do I believe God would call it so. I believe God is as deeply grieved at the situation as we are. Our faith tells us that God doesn’t keep these things from happening – but God suffers with us along the way.
But while we have been shaken up, while we are in this space of upheaval, perhaps we can see our reality from a different vantage point.
Ken Lindner is CEO of Ken Lindner and Associates and the author of the book Crunch Time: 8 Steps to Making the Right Life Decisions at the Right Time (2004). He is also a championship Paddle Tennis player.
A few years ago, Ken’s team lost in the final round of a national Paddle Tennis tournament. Ken was determined to learn from this disappointment. So he decided to go up into the stands and watch the winning team play a few rounds.
Ken got an entirely different view of the game and of his opponents when he saw them play from up in the stands. From up there, he could see the Big Picture. He recognized the other team’s techniques, their strategy and their weaknesses. As Ken sat there and soaked up a whole new perspective on his opponent’s game, he realized that he could apply this wisdom to every part of his life. As he writes in in his book Crunch Time, “The lesson was: Far too far too often, while fighting our day to day battles on the ground, we never look beyond ourselves, or the immediate moment, situation, need or craving at hand. Therefore, we fail to view things from the fuller, richer, wider context of the Big Picture.”(3)
Perhaps we might consider the Big Picture as we lean into the discomfort of asking ourselves why we were so comfortable with the world as it was before. Why was that world in so many ways the inverse of the world Jesus illustrates in the Beatitudes, and was it ever right side up in God’s eyes?
For those of you who know that song from REM, “It’s the end of the world”, you know I left out a vital piece of the refrain. It goes like this:
“It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.”
If this is the end of the world as we knew it, I wonder, what new and better world might lie ahead? We can feel just fine, as the song says, because we can be confident that God is leading us somewhere. We are God’s children, and a new and better world awaits. A world closer to what Jesus describes in this passage for today.
May God be praised. Amen.
1. Layton E. Williams, Christian Century, Oct. 21st, 2020, p22.
2. Ibid… p22.
3. Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXXVI, No. 4, p11.
