Approaching this passage and preparing to write a sermon, I was amused in the selection of Proverbs 27 for our Old Testament reading. The first verse, you see, is my quotation for the yearbook; I selected it on a whim, opening the nearest quotable book to a random page and coming across something which sounded interesting. Four months later, reading a longer excerpt from the chapter, a deeper meaning has appeared where none existed in the fall.

At first glance, the writer who documented the Wisdom of Solomon seems to have copied aphorisms at random—listing them in the order dictated by the king. But what is God warning us of in general? Surely Solomon did not intend to list all the little wisdoms without God painting a big picture.

“Do not forsake your friend and your father’s friend;”

“Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; a stranger, and not your own lips;”

“Do not boast about tomorrow for you do not know what a day may bring.”

And with a closer reading, a message (or theme, or common idea) appears:

Reading Proverbs 27, I feel as though I fall into the trap God intends to warn us of: selfishness. But not the generic, greed-related selfish behavior; not the kind of greed that inspired Dickens to create Scrooge; this self-ish has a hyphen. The warning is of our undivided, unrelenting focus upon ourselves, ignoring the world around us and the people in our lives.

We are told not to forsake friends or the friends of family. All too often, we are selfishly caught up in the affairs of our own lives and forget the courtesy of asking someone how their day was or how they are feeling. Of the three specific warnings I’ve highlighted, I believe this is the one WE CAN avoid the most. While nosiness is certainly not God’s intention for us, there is a sense that we are meant to be aware of our friends and support them. Asking friends how they’re doing or whether they had a good weekend brings them closer and keeps us involved in the world around us.

Vanity is but another form of selfishness; the desire for ourselves to be made ideal and receive praise for our existence. Solomon extends two complementary ideas of how to deal with praise and avoid the unhealthy pursuit of self-worship. Do not look for praise (because an enemy’s praise is worse than a friend’s rebuke) and accept praise from another instead of the airs you give yourself. Like any person, I enjoy being told I did a good job or that I have excelled in something. But something a teacher of mine, Mr. Phelps, said helped ground me and mirrors what Solomon wrote. All too often, he said, we call things “awesome” or “incredible” that are just “good.” Although his advice does run the risk of showing little tact, he’s right. Sometimes we heap commendations upon one another because we want that feeling of excellence, regardless of our actual performance. God certainly does not want us to demean one another, but undue praises debase the message they intend to deliver.

But the greatest risk God warns us of is the fallacy that we can play God. “Do not boast about tomorrow for you do not know what a day may bring.” – in other words, “don’t think too much about the future’s plans, we cannot always make them right against the surprises that befall us.” We are not God and cannot control the outcome of everything around us. Personally, I often find myself pouring over my plans for the next day, week, or even month; sometimes when I catch myself doing this, I realize that anything could alter my meticulous schedule (sickness, bad weather, a sudden change of plans). Even though I realize this, the annoyance and disappointment of having a plan ruined is the same nevertheless.

All too often we look towards the future without regard to the present and to God. We can’t control the future beyond the choices we make today, and anything to the contrary suggests a self-ish view of the world; we do not control the little wrenches thrown into our plans, the hiccups along the road of life (our presence on this planet is too small in the vastness of existence for that) and Solomon begins his twenty-seventh proverb with God’s advice to accept this inability to control everything. God gave us the ability to make choices in life, to pick the path we set for ourselves; but we are not given all the choices or all the paths. We are not locked into an unchangeable fate. Instead, each of us makes the decisions given by God and from those choices comes our fate: the choice to go to this college instead of that; the decision to save that extra dollar today and spend it the next; the places we live, the friends we love, the things we do. Only God gives us those choices and we cannot make all of them to create a perfect existence.

I don’t think God is asking us to be saints, to never praise ourselves, to always let another speak well of ourselves; in fact, we are warned of the sweetness of an enemy’s praises in the very same chapter. Nor do I believe that looking forward to the next day is discouraged. God isn’t prohibiting us from doing anything but warning us of always gazing inward and ignoring the context and meaning of the world around us. As human beings, we are meant to think of ourselves and our well-being. Without this concern for the self, we risk losing our God-given individuality.  Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr believed we are at risk of becoming too consumed with selfish pride, but it was his successors who saw that the only worse fate for a person than becoming totally consumed with our sense of self is totally losing that sense of self.

Opening up our minds, emptying them of our daily routine and list of chores allows the grandness of now to imprint itself upon our minds. When we begin to think outwards and examine the life around us, all sorts of things become apparent: we notice when that friend of ours needs a kind word or a night out to cheer them up; we shake the hand of the one who got first place and say “congratulations,”; and we take a look at our planners and decide to play things by ear this weekend. A little less “I” and a little more “I’m listening” would do us all good.

Proverbs 27:1-10

Well Chris, I’m listening, (pause a moment in case of laughter) and what I hear the loudest is, “Well meant are the wounds a friend inflicts, but profuse are the kisses of an enemy.” And in that verse I hear not just words, but a message from the Lord. A message telling us that God wants us to be the friend who will keep each other on the right path in life, even if it hurts the ones we love.

The kisses from an enemy are not attacks from a person who feels some animosity towards us, but the sugar coating over the truth, the hiding of what is right by our friends and our families. The friend and the enemy in this verse are the same person. And while no one likes to cause pain to the ones we care about, it is sometimes necessary. Because hiding a lie or a mistake may cause even more pain in the end; hiding how you feel, or something that you have done. The profuse kisses of an enemy will allow for momentary happiness, but one lie leads to another and another bigger one and so on. The only way to escape its effects is to stop the “kisses,” stop the lies, reach out, be honest, and lend your shoulder as freely as you breath the air around you. God wants us to be honest, truthful, selfless, and caring, even when it hurts a little. 

Have you ever had a friend, coworker, or neighbor who would sugar coat information because they thought you couldn’t handle the truth? Those are the kisses of the enemy. To be the person God wants us to be, we all must trust each other and our abilities to cope with different problems, and then be there when they do.  For if our words do hurt, then we need to offer solace and comfort. 

Sometime ago a friend of mine, Emily, had a boyfriend who she was very happy with. The only problem was he was cheating on her, Paige had seen him with another girl multiple times, and it was obvious that they were not just friends hanging out. However, Emily wouldn’t believe that it was true; she didn’t want it to be true. It wasn’t until Paige and I and a few of Emily’s other friends sat her down and confronted her about everything; the cheating, the empty lies, the fact that she was not being treated the way she was deserved to be treated. She wouldn’t see the truth until everything was laid out before her with her friends right next to her giving her a shoulder to lean on. Emily cried for about a week…straight…it was bad, and although we hurt her with the truth, it was the right thing to do. And we were all there to take turns comforting her in her heartache. Emily eventually got over him and moved on, we all became closer friends and after seeing Emily’s smiling face again, none of us regret causing her the necessary pain to see the truth.

Always doing the right thing is difficult, but will bring us all closer to God and to achieving true happiness. There is nothing harder than to see someone we care about in pain, any kind of pain whether it is emotional or physical pain. But the choice to cause that emotional pain in order to achieve happiness in the long run is even more challenging. There are often times when God calls upon us to make that decision, the decision between momentary happiness and happiness in the long run; it could be anything from something menial like knowing someone cheated on a test or taking something from a sibling without asking, to circumstances more serious like a cheating boyfriend/spouse or even Jesus who was willing to suffer, die and seemingly abandon his disciples in order to rise again to save us and be with us in the long run.

If you have been giving profuse kisses, never be afraid to admit so, because the people around us will always forgive us because they love us and they care about us.  It will show to them that they too do not have to be ashamed to ask for forgiveness. Such a cycle is good for our souls, and for the world. It will help to keep us walking down the path to complete and irrevocable joy.

God wants us to be that friend; the friend who will tell another when they are doing wrong, when they aren’t being fair or seeing the whole picture. Let us be that friend who will have the confidence to tell someone when they are being unreasonable or that someone is secretly hurting them, and then stick around to help that person in their time of need; with God’s help and help from each other, we can all be the friend that God wants us to be. Amen. 

Matthew: 5:1-12

In an endlessly comical, yet insightful parody of the life of Jesus, author Christopher Moore examines Jesus' adventures and teachings in his novel Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal.  The reader gets an inside look at the first 30 years of Jesus' life (those that are not chronicled in the New Testament) as well as the last 3 Biblical years of life through the eyes of his fictional best friend "Levi who is call Biff.  Towards the end of the book, Biff helps Jesus compose the Sermon on the Mount, which we just heard Jill read from Matthew.

Jesus says:

"Biff, I appreciate that you feel obligated to be an advocate for all of your favorite sins, but that's not what I need here.  What I need is help writing this sermon.  How are we doing on the Beatitudes?"

"Pardon me?"

"The Blesseds."

"We've got: blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, blessed are the poor in spirit, the pure in heart, the whiners, the meek, the-"

"Wait, what are we giving the meek?"
"Let's see, uh, here: Blessed are the meek, for unto them we shall say: 'Attaboy'."

"A little weak..."

"Yeah."

"Let's let the meek inherit the Earth."

"Can't you give the Earth to the whiners?"

"Well, then, cut the whiners and give the Earth to the meek."

"Okay, Earth to the meek.  Here we go.  Blessed are the peacemakers, the mouners, and...that's it."

"How many is that?"

"Seven."

"Not enough!  We need one more!"

"How about the wanders?  I can think of five or six disciples that would be really blessed."

"No wankers!  I've got it!  Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake."

"Okay, better.  What are you going to give them?"

There is silence as Jesus contemplates his friend's question.

"A fruit basket."

I don’t really think that this is how Jesus did it (though I kind of like to think that this is how the exchange took place…) I do like to think, however, that Jesus had a best friend that he bounced ideas off of.  I also like to think that Jesus wrestled with how to communicate the messages of God to God’s followers on Earth.  And what I know is that what Jesus did communicate to his followers then (and now, through what is recorded in the Bible) gives us little clues about who and what God is.  If we put all these clues together, we can get something of a picture of this great and powerful being that is our God, even if the picture appears distorted, blurry from all of the various interpretations and religious texts that exist.  The Beatitudes are one of those rare circumstances in which we are provided with a relatively clear idea of who our God is. 

If we think about it, it’s really no wonder that Jesus gained such a large following so fast among the so-called “lesser peoples” (women, criminals, tax collectors, lepers, slaves) of the ancient world.  In the Beatitudes, Jesus does the thing for which he gained the most notoriety in his ministry—he speaks directly to the “sinners” in the crowd.  And in speaking to them, he doesn’t blame them, damn them, or threaten them.  He passes onto them the message of hope and love.  Indeed, the interesting thing about the Beatitudes is that they are not a laundry list of do’s and don’ts (as many of the passages in the Bible tend to be, Proverbs, for example).  Similarly, I don’t think that all of the Beatitudes deal with death and the afterlife.  They are not “if…then” statements.  “If you’re good now, just you wait, you’ll get awesome things later from God.”  What Jesus is really saying is “If you are all of these things, here, now, then good things will come to you here, now, AND later.”  And it’s true!

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”: We can’t be perfectly faithful all the time.  If we were, we wouldn’t be human.  But as long as we try to be the most faithful we can be, we’ll find that our relationships (with our family, lovers, friends, and God) are much more rewarding—they will bring us bliss that is like heaven. 

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted”: we shouldn’t be afraid to show grief, because there will always be someone to comfort us, if not those same loving friends and family, then always, always God.  I believe that comfort for those who grieve is actually one of the most basic human instincts of all: It is the reason that you see your uncle’s second cousin twice removed and his roommate from college 40 years ago at his funeral…they are there, among other things, to comfort those who were particularly close to your uncle. 

As for the meek inheriting the Earth…I think that we can turn to the historic day that took place on January 20^th, 2009.  I can’t pretend to understand what it must have felt like to be an African American citizen living in the United States on Inauguration Day this year, but I do know that the election of Barack Obama to the presidency, whether or not you agree with his politics, is an historic day, and one that is symbolic of a race of people who had formerly been among the most meek in our country rising up and inheriting true influential roles in our world. 

And finally, “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.”  What goes around comes around: If you are just and caring to others, then surely, others will be just and caring towards you, including God.  Also, see “Inauguration Day 2009”, above.

It’s wonderful to think that Jesus, being human himself, would have understood the shortcomings of humanity, that it is in our nature to be all of these things.  What a great way to convey God’s message of hope to us: by sympathizing with our weaknesses and then giving us the hope that, despite them, God will not turn God’s back on us, ignore us, condemn us, but instead, bestow upon us the very greatest gifts of all, here on Earth and maybe even later on.         

Towards the end of the Beatitudes Brainstorming Session in Lamb, Biff gets frustrated with trying to come up with an eighth Beatitude and just comes out and asks Jesus:

“Come on.  Why can’t we have any powerful guys on our team?  Why do we have the meek, and the poor, the oppressed?  Why can’t we have, for once, blessed are the big powerful rich guys with swords?”

Jesus exasperatedly says: “Because they don’t need us.”

This is the message of hope that our God sends to us through the Beatitudes and all of the rest of Christ’s teachings.  Whether we hear it from Matthew or Levi who is called Biff, the message is the same.  We can’t be perfect, we are human.  But we were lucky enough to inherit a portion of those characteristics which God has in endless abundance: the ability to be faithful, responsible, comforting, loving, meek, just, and mournful.  All that we can do is share them with each other as much as we can and know others, and God, will do the same in return.

Alex Host

Matthew 5:1-12

The Beatitudes have always been one of the most recognizable passages of The Bible.  Even people who have never opened a Bible have heard that the meek will inherit the earth, and the merciful, as well as a host of other people, are all blessed and will all receive something because of it.  Still, these words were a surprise to many people when they were first spoken, and their meaning can still be unclear.

The second four Beatitudes are somewhat more intuitive than the first four Ellen talked about because they all support moral values that our society agrees with.  There are few people who would argue against the rewarding of anyone who is merciful, pure in heart, a peacemaker, or persecuted for righteousness’ sake.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”  This is the most straightforward of all of the proclamations, reminiscent of many common terms such as “do onto others as you would have them do onto you” or other versions of the Golden Rule.  These values are very easy for any upstanding person in our society or the church to relate to and identify with.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”  This one, while not surprising, is a bit confusing.  What exactly “seeing God” entails is never made clear but, in essence, the pure of heart are being rewarded, and who is to say they shouldn’t be?

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”  Now just a minute, I thought that the Bible called all people “children of God.”  In Sunday school we are always told “we are all God’s children,” but according to this passage, it seems only the peacemakers qualify.  While this works out quite well for Mary Ellen Lloyd and the other members of our Peacemaking Committee, I would like to think that the Good News doesn’t end with them.  The God I have been told about doesn’t seem like the type to just disregard all of the good people who haven’t taken their goodness to the next level by making peace in the world.

Still, isn’t there something fundamentally “peacemaking” about being good?  There are people and conflicts all over the world that desperately need help and attention, and there are excellent people who are doing everything they can to help them.  At the same time, however, there has to be “peacemaking” going on at every level.  A good country is very reliant on its leader (in President Obama’s case, its wise and strong leader) but it also needs the local police and shop owners to keep things running smoothly.  The same goes for Peace.  Not everyone can go out in the world and reconcile ancient disputes between hated enemies, but there are always countless small things to be done.  And, this is one of those times where the thought really does count.  I don’t mean the thought as in “I really wish there was less conflict and that there was something I could do” but more the genuine, very real thought that if or when an opportunity presents itself you or I need to do whatever we can to make either our immediate surroundings or even the world a better place.  I think that decision, that mindset, is what makes a person a true peacemaker.

So, the last one we have here is: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  This line, as well as the remainder of the passage, would have, I think, made more sense in the time it was written.  People who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake are certainly of the highest caliber, but when Jesus said this, that group of people did happen to include all of Christianity.  In our more comfortable modern lives, it is common to be an active Christian and not have to worry at all about persecution.  Still, in the same vein as the last one, this line is not just God’s insurance policy for anyone who suffers; it is an understanding that anyone who would be willing to undergo such extreme hardship in the name of what is right truly belongs in God’s kingdom.

In general, the Beatitudes can seem fraught with hyperbole.  They make very broad generalizations, and then designate very specific rewards to each of several categories.  Still, they demonstrate what a good way of living is.  Again, being merciful, being pure in heart, being a peacemaker, and being persecuted for righteousness’ sake.  With the exception of persecution, perhaps, these really aren’t all that hard.  I think, honestly, if you feel you’ve been living a good life, you’re probably doing quite well in several of those categories.  Of course, there’s always room for improvement, and if everyone got just a little bit better, well, it’s hard to imagine just what the world could be like, but I’d like to find out.

And since all of the rewards, whether seeing God or inheriting the kingdom of Heaven, are in essence quite similar, maybe that means we just need to work on fitting into one of these categories to start with.  The Beatitudes are moral guidelines, and they do not separate the good from the bad.  Instead, they emphasize what is good and provide direction so that children of God, like we all are, might be blessed.  Amen.