Text used – Matthew 5:3; John 21:1-14

• I’m excited for today, all, because today we’re kicking off our summer sermon series – a series on the Beatitudes.
  • Each Sunday = one of Jesus’ famous blessings
    • Only exception = last Sunday (Sept. 3) → last 2 Beatitudes have such a similar theme that we’re going to combine them
  • Dig deeper into each Beatitude using another passage from Scripture
  • Each Beatitude paired with a one-word idea → that word = our centering prayer for the morning
    • E.g. – today’s = surrender
  • Variety of books that I’m using to flesh out these ideas
    • The Eight Doors of the Kingdom: Meditations on the Beatitudes by Fr. Jacques Philippe[1]
    • The Beatitudes: Eight Reflections Exploring the Countercultural Words of Jesus in Matthew 5 by Beatrice Smith[2]
    • Arise to Blessedness: A Journal Retreat with Eight Modern Saints Who Lived the Beatitudes by Jen Norton[3]
    • The Way of Beatitude: Living Radical Hope in a World of Division and Despair by Fr. Casey Cole[4]
    • Best part about most of these resources = they’re very interactive
      • Jen Norton’s = journal (and a beautiful one at that!)
      • Beatrice Smith’s = actually a Bible study
      • Casey Cole’s = book that includes both reflection questions and practical acts (a.k.a. – spiritual practices) for each Beatitude
        • Also where each of the focus words that will be our centering prayers came from
      • So if you find yourself wanting to do more with any of these this summer, I’m more than happy to photocopy a few pages out of one or more of these books so you can try some things at home from one week to the next.
• Before we start exploring today’s Beatitude, let’s talk a little bit about where they’re situated in Matthew’s gospel.
  • Words = beginning of Jesus’ public ministry in Mt’s gospel → This peculiar list of blessings form Jesus’ opening to his Sermon on the Mount.
    • Just prior to this in the arc of Mt’s narrative
      • Jesus calling the disciples[5]
      • Short introductory passage about Jesus traveling throughout Galilee teaching, healing, and “announc[ing] the good news of the kingdom”[6]
      • Verses leading into the Beatitudes: Large crowds followed [Jesus] from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and from the areas beyond the Jordan River. Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up a mountain. He said down and his disciples came to him. He taught them, saying …”[7] → So as far as we can tell, much of the public ministry that Jesus was doing before this Sermon on the Mount were smaller, isolated incidents of healing where he could and teaching in synagogues he encountered. This Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’ first large-scale act of ministry among the people, and he opens with the Beatitudes.
        • Scholar (descr. of Beatitudes): One of the last adjectives many of us would choose for the Beatitudes is “surprising.” Matthew 5:1-12 is among the most familiar passages in all of Scripture … When the Monty Python crew wriest into their movie Life of Brian lines like “Blessed are the Greeks” and “Blessed are the cheesemakers,” the gags work because the Beatitudes are so familiar to so many people. Twenty centuries of Christian repetition threaten to make them into a sage chestnut that we pick up and remember together with a knowing nod. Even Biblically illiterate twenty-first century Westerners recognize them as the kinds of words Jesus is supposed to say. All of this is profoundly ironic, because in the narrative world of Matthew’s Gospel the Beatitudes are not familiar pearls of wisdom. They are the astonishing words of an unexpected Messiah.[8] → And this, friends is exactly why we’re going to be digging deeper into the Beatitudes this summer – as a way for us to really engage with these astonishing, unexpected, countercultural words of a Messiah who charges us to not just hear them, but embody them.
• So let’s get started with the first Beatitude this morning: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.[9]
  • Gr. in most of this passage is pretty straightforward BUT interesting word = “poor” – carries usual implication of lacking sufficient means but also connotations of being miserable, oppressed, and inadequate → When we pair this meaning with the idea of being poor in spirit, it basically covers all the ways that we feel down … the ways that we feel defeated … the ways that we feel deficient.
• And it’s those feelings that caused me to choose our accompanying passage for this morning – this text from the end of John’s gospel. → story of Jesus’ 4^th and final recorded appearance to the disciples after his crucifixion and resurrection as Jn tells it (despite what our Scripture says this morning – v. 14: This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead.)
  • 1^st appearance = to Mary in the garden outside the tomb (Easter morning)[10]
  • 2^nd appearance = to disciples that same evening when they were behind closed doors (Jesus: “Peace be with you”)[11]
    • Maybe John counted those two appearances together when he called today’s reading the third encounter? Just a guess.
  • 3^rd appearance = Jesus’ infamous exchange with Thomas → began with doubt and ended with belief[12]
  • Culminate in this morning’s text – this last, odd story about Jesus encountering the disciples on the shores of the Sea of Tiberias (a.k.a. – Sea of Galilee) for a session of early-morning fishing, breakfast, and of course, another lesson
    • Disciples are all hanging out on the beach
      • Text tells us the majority of the disciples were there (8 of the remaining 11) → And I don’t know about you, but I picture them all sort of sitting around looking at their hands … wondering what to do next. I mean, they’ve been through a lot in the last week! Jesus’ arrest and torture and sham of a trial and horrific death. Then the whole whirlwind of the resurrection experience with Mary’s unbelievable story and then Jesus’ appearances. But these appearances are just glimpses. Flashes. Jesus doesn’t return and stay with them and teach them like he did before. He appears. He imparts a little wisdom or a blessing. And he disappears again. We can only imagine how much their minds must be spinning in this moment.
        • Remember, Jesus has appeared to them and blessed them at this point, but he hasn’t given them any kind of indication or directive about what comes next
      • So into this uncertainty, Simon Peter reverts to what he knows. – text: Simon Peter told them, “I’m going fishing.” (And thinking that they had nothing better to do … maybe thinking that the familiarity of the water and the motions of fishing would calm their rattled minds, the rest of the disciples replied), “We’ll go with you.”[13]
    • Not exactly the uplifting experience they were probably hoping for – text: They set out in a boat, but throughout the night they caught nothing.[14] → So not only are the disciples still as perplexed as they were before, now they’re also frustrated by their inability to catch any fish and they’re sleep deprived because they’ve been out on the boat all night.
  • Into this wreck of an endeavor walks the resurrected Christ.
    • Appears on the shore
    • Calls to the boat and asks if the disciples have had any luck
    • Disciples response: “No.”
    • Jesus’ advice: “Cast your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.”[15]
    • Result: disciples catch so many fish in one single casting of the net that they can’t even pull it up into the boat
    • Text: Then the disciples whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It’s the Lord!”[16]
    • Disciples return to shore with 153 large fish
    • Breakfast on the beach with Jesus
  • We’re going to focus on that middle part this morning. The disciples are having a pretty awful time of it. And then Jesus arrives. And the second the disciples trust in Jesus’ instruction (even before they’ve recognized that it’s him!) … the second they trust in Jesus’ instruction and surrender their own plans and designs, their own control of the situation … that is when the abundance rushes in. And then … then they recognize Jesus. Then they recognize God at work among them. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
    • Cole: Our dependence on God must be so strong that we completely reevaluate what’s considered wealth and how we interact with it; that when faced with difficulties, we are not even tempted to look to the world because we have already been relying on God through the good times; that we have come to find the world and all its allurements so futile and unreliable that we actually prefer being poor, because it is in our poverty that we find the most strength in God.[17]
    • NOTICE: Scripture doesn’t say anything about God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit causing the lack of success for the purpose of teaching → This isn’t God creating a horrible situation just to make it all better in one flashy, didactic, overtly-revelatory moment. This is the disciples having a really horrible time – probably feeling exceptionally poor in spirit – and Jesus finding them in the midst of that struggle and providing what they need to get through. This is Jesus lifting them up when they need it most … but only when they have placed their full trust in him.
      • Surrender = key → And it’s also what’s so backwards, upside-down, inside-out, countercultural about what Jesus says here.
        • Beatrice Smith: Modern-day society is much like the society of Jesus’ day – humans are naturally wired full of ego. Our understanding of who is truly blessed is usually the healthy, wealthy and wise according to the current culture. Jesus, however, does not affirm these as the blessed. … When Jesus tells a crowd made up of poor fishermen, the sick and a bunch of hurting and insignificant people that if they feel poor in spirit, the kingdom of heaven is theirs, the listeners would have been scandalized. The very idea that somehow, in them, God could bring a sense of [God’s] presence for [God’s] purpose; the promise that God could come to them in their brokenness and their uncertainty; the fact that their incompleteness and fractured mess was the very reason for being given hope and grace: shocking.[18] → You see, with this first Beatitude, Jesus is naming that it is only when our own wayward ambitions, our own self-importance, our own insistent inner voice is silenced … only when we completely surrender our reliance on all those outward things that we think keep us afloat … only then can we truly hear the voice of God calling our names and speaking abundance, speaking hope, speaking grace. Truly, friends, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Amen.

[1] Jacques Philippe. The Eight Doors of the Kingdom: Meditations on the Beatitudes. (New York: Scepter Publishers), 2018.

[2] Beatrice Smith. The Beatitudes: Eight Reflections Exploring the Countercultural Words of Jesus in Matthew 5. (London: Spring Harvest), 2023.

[3] Jen Norton. Arise to Blessedness: A Journal Retreat with Eight Modern Saints Who Lived the Beatitudes. (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press), 2023.

[4] Casey Cole. The Way of Beatitude: Living Radical Hope in a World of Division and Despair. (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press), 2022.

[5] Mt 4:18-22.

[6] Mt 4:23.

[7] Mt 4:25-5:2.

[8] Allen Hilton. “Matthew 5:1-12 – Homiletical Perspective” in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary – Year A, vol. 4. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 237.

[9] Mt 5:3 (NRSV).

[10] Jn 20:1-18.

[11] Jn 20:19-23.

[12] Jn 20:24-29.

[13] Jn 21:3a (with my own embellishment).

[14] Jn 21:3b.

[15] Jn 21:6.

[16] Jn 21:7a (emphasis added).

[17] Cole, 12.

[18] Smith, 4.