Worth Green, Th. M., D. Min.

In the 3rd Christian century, St. Augustine said that the Sermon on the Mount was “the perfect standard of the Christian life.” In the 15th century the Ancient Moravian Unity called themselves “Brethren of the Law of Christ.” They tried to live according to the Sermon on the Mount, which they interpreted in light of John 13:34 wherein Jesus says, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” The hymn we sang this morning captures this theology perfectly:

One our Master, one alone, None but Christ as Lord we own;
Brethren of his Law are we, “As I loved you, so love ye.”
Branches we in Christ, the Vine, living by his life divine,
As the Father with the Son, So, in Christ we all are one.

Non-Christians have admired the Sermon on the Mount, too.

Jesus was a Jew, and many Jews appreciate his teaching. The great 20th century Jewish scholar, Claude Montefiore wrote a commentary on the synoptic gospels from a Jewish perspective. He made it clear that he did not worship Jesus; yet, he called Jesus one of the greatest teachers of Israel, and he regarded the Sermon on the Mount as the absolute core of Jesus teaching.

Mahatma Gandhi was not a part of the Judeo-Christian tradition. He was a Hindu. He did not worship Jesus, but he loved and admired Jesus the teacher, and he took the teaching of Jesus literally. In Matthew 5:39 Jesus said, “Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” Gandhi took this word of Jesus, adopted it as his own, gave it to India’s independence movement, and said, “We will match our capacity to endure suffering against the capacity of the British to inflict suffering, and we will win.” They did, too, and on midnight of August 15th, 1947, the British gave India home rule.

Some have said, “Well, it is a good thing for Gandhi he was up against the British, and not up against the Nazi’s. That is true, and it gives rise to an important consideration. Without doubt, the Sermon on the Mount is one of the most important sermons Jesus every preached, but many disagree as to how it should be interpreted. Martin Luther, the Father of the Protestant Reformation thought that all Christians ought to seek to live according to the Sermon on the Mount, yet, he continued to be suspicious of those Christians who thought they were living by it fully. Luther believed that a primary function of the Sermon on the Mount is to drive us to grace. It is way up her, as far up as we can reach; and we are way down here, as if we were bending to touch our toes. Thus the Sermon on the Mount drives us to our knees, where we can receive God’s mercy and grace.

This morning we take up that section of the Sermon of the Mount known as the Beatitudes. There are nine Beatitudes; and, when we read them, it is easy to see that each of them is worthy of a sermon. As a matter of fact, some scholars, believe that each of the nine Beatitudes were originally used by Jesus to summarize a much longer block of teaching. In other words, Jesus may have taught for twenty minutes, or an hour, on what it means to be “poor in spirit,” and then summarized that lengthy instruction by saying, “Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.” Or, Jesus may have taught for thirty minutes on what it means to be meek, and then summed up that instruction by saying, “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.” One of my teachers at Princeton Theological Seminary, the late Dr. Bruce Metzger, believed this to be the case.

Of course, Jesus may have said all nine Beatitudes one right after the other, just as they are written down. The late Bishop Herbert Spaugh saw the Beatitudes as a premier example of what he called “cafeteria preaching.” He said that every congregation would always consist of a range of people with a variety of needs. Therefore, a preacher must put out a variety of edifying ideas, and then allow people to pick and choose what they need, just as they do when the pass down the line at the K & W Cafeteria. Bishop Spaugh said Jesus was a cafeteria preacher, and I should become a cafeteria preacher, too.

Along these same lines, not long ago, I heard Frank Crouch, the dean of Moravian theological seminary talk about how we interact with the Bible. He said, “When we read a selection from the Bible, and the fix upon a portion of the text, it is not so much that we choose the text, as the text chooses us.” That is right-on! The texts of the nine Beatitudes have been choosing people for almost 2,000 years. My father used to say that one of the Beatitudes was instrumental in the conversion of his maternal grandfather, John Easter. He said that Grandaddy Easter was was a farmer. He was not ignorant of the Bible, nor his need for grace; but, as he approached middle age, he knew that he had never really settled his life before God. One night Grandaddy Easter came in from a long day in the field, ate supper, then went into the parlor. He sat down on the sofa, took-up the big, old family Bible, and opened it to the fifth chapter of Matthew. Grandmother Easter sat by his side and he began to read:

“Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God,” he read. “That is not me,” he said. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted,” he read. “That is not me,” he said. “‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth,” he read. ““That is not you!,” she said. “No, that is not me,” he said. Then my great-granddaddy read the fourth Beatitude, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” “That is me!,” he said.

I agree with my father. Righteousness mean having a right relationship. Great Grandaddy Easter was hungering and thirsting for a right relationship with God. He did not have it, and he wanted it, so he claimed it, even as fourth Beatitude claimed him. Grandaddy Easter is a perfect example of something that St. Augustine said. Augustine said that each of us has a God-shaped space in our soul, and we are never truly satisfied until we fill it. I don’t know if Grandaddy Easter had ever heard that saying. I don’t know if Grandaddy Easter had ever heard of Augustine. I do know that he spent the rest of his life trying to fill his life with God. My father used to say that Grandaddy Easter lived to be almost 100 years old, and at the tag end of his life, he was so much aglow with God’s love, that he would drive out to his farm, just to bask in his presence, even as the Israelites once basked in the presence of Moses, whose face was aglow from his visit with God.

Now let me ask you a question: Which of the Beatitudes has chosen you?

Perhaps you know yourself to be “poor in Spirit.” In the Beatitudes, only two kinds of people possess the kingdom of God right now, the poor in spirit and the persecuted. The persecuted know that when life really let’s us down, only God can pick us up. The poor in Spirit know this even without persecution.

Or, perhaps you are mourning because you have lost someone, or something that you love, and you want God to comfort you. People mourn the passing of people, but individuals also grieve the loss of of a job, and married couples grieve when their children leave the house, and their nest is empty. You can grieve the loss of almost anything, from a valued possession, to a friendship, to your youth and physical health. My mother is in assisted living. Her thinking is not always clear, but when it is, she often grieves the loss of her independence. Not long ago she looked at me across the top of her walker and said, “I feel like I am in jail.” I told her I was doing the best I could for her, and reminded her than what Jesus once said to Peter was applicable to all of us as we grow older. Jesus said, “Peter, when you were young, you dressed yourself, and went wherever you wanted to go; when you are old, others will dress you and take you where you do not want to go.” Jesus says that those who mourn will be comforted. Over and over again, I find I am comforted when scripture gives me some special insight into my life.

My friend Ron S______ was attracted by to the third beatitude,   “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” Ron said that the meek were not like Casper Milquetoast who lacked the confidence to stand up for himself. He said that the meek have an uncanny ability to reflect reality, and use just enough force to get the job done. A meek person would never use a tack hammer when a sledge hammer was needed, and they would never use a sledge hammer when a tack hammer was enough.

Perhaps you are attracted to the fifty Beatitude, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.” The New Testament insist that if we are to be forgiven, we must be forgiving. A little later in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 6, Jesus teaches his disciples to pray saying, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Some of us do not take those words as seriously as we ought. Robert Louis Stevenson certainly did. When living in Samoa, it was his habit to share devotions with his wife every morning after breakfast. One morning, there were praying the Lord’s Prayer when he suddenly halted his prayer, put on his hat, and left the house. When he returned, his wife said, “What happened? Why did you leave so abruptly? Where did you go?” He said, “I went to see a man in town who did me an unkindness.I held a grudge against him, and I could not afford to ask God to forgive me of my trespasses, as I forgive the trespasses of others until I had forgiven him.” In James 2:13 we read, “For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy.”

Or perhaps you are attracted to the sixth beatitude, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” Soren Kierkegaard said, “Purity of heart is to will one thing.” The secret of success in life is to will one thing. Too many of us major in minors. We allow our energies to fall like a gentle rain upon the earth. The man or woman who wants to make a real impact must concentrate all of their force in one direction, like one of those great hydraulic hoses that can knock down a mountain. Jesus says that if we want to see the God, we must “will one thing.” After St. Paul came face to face to the risen Christ, he did just that. He wrote, “This one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind, and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

I have always found the seventh Beatitude attractive, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” Jesus does not say that the peace loving will be called the children of God. And Jesus does not say that the peaceful will be called children of God. Jesus said that the peacemakers will be called the children of God. To be a peacemaker requires effort and risk, and the effort we make, and the risk we take, will be dictated by the situation in which we find ourselves. It was Pope Paul Vi who said, “If you want peace, work for justice.”

Few people are want to be chosen by the final two Beatitudes. The eighth Beatitude declares, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” This Beatitude can be heard impersonally, but the ninth cannot. The ninth Beatitude is the only Beatitude that Jesus addressed to his disciples in the 2nd person:

“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

I think it is interesting that Jesus tells his disciples that our suffering will be like the suffering of the prophets. A prophet, like a philosopher, lives in advance of his age. A prophet does not look at the world and say, “This world as it is is good enough for God and humankind.” The prophet looks at the world points out its problems. Thus Isaiah the prophet considered his world and said, “Woe is me for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live in the midst of a people with unclean lips.” The prophet both fore-tells and forth-tells God’s new day. In the same way, Christians live in advance of our age, for we live from the future that is coming to us in Jesus Christ. The world is blind to this future, and that is the reason that prophets, and Christians, are often persecuted. I have never wanted to be a prophet. I doubt you have; but sometimes, that is what God calls us to be, for, according to the New Testament, all God’s people are prophets, for all of us possess the Spirit. (Romans 8:9)

Finis

On Friday we installed a new President, President Donald Trump. Every citizen of this nations should pray for President Trump, and all the leaders of our nation. I was not at the inauguration. If I had been, I would show you a picture. The picture that leads this article, is the picture of a former President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, teaching Sunday School. I took it myself, because, recently, I was in his Sunday school class. It is an interesting story, and we will get to it, as a part of this sermon…

This morning, I want to talk about building, mending, and removing walls. The Bible records that there is a time to do all three.

Let’s talk about building walls. In Nehemiah 2:17 we read that when Nehemiah came back to Jerusalem from Babylon, he said to the people:

“You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer suffer disgrace.” Nehemiah 2:17

The Bible teaches that there is a legitimate time for added security.

People sometimes need added security. When I was a boy, we never locked our doors at night. Now, I always do. Likewise, when my son was small, he sometimes put up a tent and slept in our back yard, and we thought nothing of it. We are in the same house, but I am not sure I would let my grandchildren do that today, at least, not without adult supervision.

Individuals need security, and so do nations. There is a time for locking our doors, and a time for fortifying our borders. President Trump wants to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. There is a history of walls in our world. The Great Wall of China was built to keep people out. The Berlin Wall was built to keep people in. I have no doubt that the United States of America is blessed to be isolated from the east and west with something even better than walls. On our east cost we have the Atlantic Ocean, and on our west coast, we have the Pacific Ocean. These oceans are highways of trade, but they are also moats of protection. Until the age of terrorism, these two oceans isolated us from many of the world’s great conflicts. Our northern and southern borders are not as formidable. The border between the United States and Canada is the longest unfortified border in the world. I say “unfortified” rather than “unguarded,” because in the age of terror we cannot afford to let our guard down. The border between the United States and Mexico is a greater cause for anxiety. It has always been semi-permeable, sometimes more and sometimes less able to protect our nation from things like illegal immigration and drug trafficking.

People cross southern borders, going from Mexico and to Mexico because we are richer than Mexico. People will always go where the money is, and companies will always go where labor is cheap. That means we will always get some of our workers from Mexico, and we will always loose some of our jobs to Mexico. And the only real fix for that is economic parity for both countries. That is a hard fix; and I don’t pretend to know how to do it. Drugs and violence cross our borders from Mexico, because we are addicted to drugs, especially our young people. As long as we want drugs, somebody will sell them to us, because there is money in drugs. I think I do know how to fix this. First, we must have zero tolerance for drugs. We need to be hard on drug dealers, and drug users. Second, we must give all of our children the hope of making a better future for themselves. If we do not help the least of our children with a good education, we will do harm to all of our children. We need strong public education in this country. It is the hallmark of our democracy. Third, we have got to train our children and grandchildren in the dangers of drugs, and alcohol and tobacco, and all addictive substances and behaviors. We have got to teach our children sooner rather than later that we make our choices and our choices make us. We are fools to use anything or do anything, that from the first used seeks to enslave us. It is o.k. to build a wall, but it is even better to address the reasons that make us want to build it.” If we build a wall and fail to address the reasons we build it, it will sever not to keep other out, but to keep us in, and that is a tragedy.

Now let’s talk about mending walls. There are many instances of mending walls in scripture, including the text from Nehemiah 2:17. However, my inspiration is a poem by Robert Frost entitled, “Mending Wall.” It describes an annual ritual that took place between the poet and his neighbor. Once a year they would pick a day to walk either side of the stone wall that separated one farm from the other. As they walked, keeping the wall between them, they would replace the stones that the frozen ground swell and the sun combined to spill into their fields. Frost said that the whole process was like some kind of outdoor game, one on a side. At some point in the ritual, Frost tired of playing the game, and says to his neighbor:

“We do not need the wall; (You are) all pine and I am apple orchard, and my apple trees will never get across and eat the cones from under (your) pines.”

And his neighbor responds, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Frost responds by telling his neighbor that his saying is more applicable to to people raising cattle than to people raising trees. Frost then tells his reader that:

“(My neighbor) will not go behind his father’s saying, and he likes having thought of it it so much than he says it again: ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’”

I love this poem because it is practical, deep, and insightful. It is practical because it admits that good fences make good neighbors among cattleman and the like. It is deep because people need good fences, too. People become co-dependent because they allow the fences that separate us from one another to fall down in disrepair. Healthy people need good fences. Some will point out, the very act of falling in love is dependent upon the collapse of ego boundaries that separate one from another. I will answer that the act of loving demands those fences be mended. It was the Lebanese-American Christian poet Kahlil Gibran who wrote:

“Let their be spaces in your togetherness, for the pillars of the temple stand apart, and the oak tree and the cypress grow not in one another’s shadow. “

When two people without good fences and good boundaries marry, they are both miserable. You have got to be strong before you can bind your strength with the strength of another. Finally, this poem is insightful, because it reminds us that there are some fences that do not need to be mended at all. Frost’s neighbor could not get beyond the saying of his father, “Good fences make good neighbors,” but there are fences that do not need to be mended, and we must not allow a former generation to help us determine what they are. When I was a boy, we had a fence called separate but equal that kept blacks and whites apart. In his spiritual autobiography, “Living Faith,” Jimmy Carter struggled with that fence. He said that his father was a good man, and he accepted separate but equal as a necessary fact. He said that his mother was a nurse who served all races alike. Mrs. Lillian said there could never be equality as long as separation was the basis of it. Jimmy Carter broke with conventional wisdom, and listened to his mother rather than his father. To borrow one more phrase from Frost, Jimmy Carter took the road less traveled, and it made the difference. It proves the truth of the old hymn: “New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth, we must onward still and upward who would keep abreast of truth.”

And that leads me to removing walls. This part of the sermon was inspired by a Sunday school lesson on Ephesians 2 that I recently heard taught by Jimmy Carter himself. Thanks to Michael and Valerie Crane, Clyde Manning and Elayne and I were recently invited to be the guest of their friends, Bill and Marilyn C________ of Plains Georgia. They invited us down to stay in their home, and they arranged for us to attend Jimmy Carter’s Sunday School Class at the Maranatha Baptist Church. Many of you do not think Jimmy Carter was a particularly good president. I am a political independent, and I vote both ways. I liked President Carter, but I only voted for him fifty-percent of the time. That said, I think most of you will agree with me that Jimmy Carter is one of the greatest ex-President’s we have ever had. Ronald Regan won the White House in 1980, and Carter did not get a second term; but since January of 1981 Carter has achieved some truly great things as an ex-President. The head of a major world health organization was recently asked who has done more to eradicate disease than anyone else in the history of our world. Without hesitation he answered, “Jimmy Carter.” The reporter said, “But what about Madama Cure, Louis Pasture, and Jonas Salk?” And he said, “They made great contributions; but, when it comes to eradicating disease, Carter is the one who has done the most.”

Carter has done many things in the thirty-six years since he left the White House. He has worked to improve the world’s health, and bring about peace, and build up democracy. More than anything else, I am excited by his Christian witness. His witness is multifaceted. Some people will point to the hundreds of doorsJimmy Carter knocked on as a Baptist lay-witness. Volunteers with Habitat for Humanity will speak of seeing President Carter work hundreds of 12 hour days, building dozens of houses alongside people that he met only after the week long building blitz had begun. Personally, I am most impressed that he is the only ex-President that regularly teaches Sunday school. Let me tell you what it is like to visit his class.

Depending upon whether or not you are an invited guest, people arrive between 5:00 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. At some point, the secret service arrives to process as many as 350 guest. Then the guest are seated, a member of Maranatha Baptist, in our case, Mrs. J______ W_______, comes out to tell them what they can and cannot do. The first thing she told us was to remember we were in church. “When President Carter comes in, do not applaud,” she said. She told us that when President Carter says, ‘Good Morning,’ we were to say, “GOOD MORNING!” And when President Carter asked, “Where are you from?”, we were to answer, by state, or by country, but only one person from a state or a country was to name that state or country. She told us when we could take pictures, and when we could not. She told us that there was only one “Mr. Presedent,” and that was soon to be “President Trump.” She said that all former presidents were called “President (Carter/Bush/Clinton/Bush and now Obama).” Then President Carter came in, and the session started. After the exchange of greeting, and after we told him where we were from, President Carter introduced several special guest. Last Sunday, we were fortunate to sit behind one pew behind former senator Sam Nunn and his family. Equally exciting, Linda Fuller, co-founder of Habitat for Humanity with her late husband Millard Fuller, was there, too, on the other side of the church. Then President Carter made several comments on current events. He told us that he would be in Washington for the inauguration of Donald Trump, and he promised, that before the lesson was over, he would tell us why.

Then he started teaching the lesson. He taught like a trained Bible scholar and theologian. His words were straight and true, and he pulled no punches. He spoke about Jesus Christ in an easy, natural way. The lesson was on Ephesians 2. There-in we read about how Jesus Christ has broken down the dividing wall of hostility between Jews and Gentiles. President Carter said that Jesus did that on his cross, when he died for all of us. He told us, too, that the dividing wall of hostility was a real wall that once stood in the temple in Jerusalem. That it true. In the Jerusalem temple, it was the wall that separated the court of the Gentiles from the court of Jewish women. Of course, there was another wall that separated the court of Jewish women from the court of Jewish men, and yet another wall that separated the court of Jewish Men from the court of the high priests. The temple had lots of walls, but only the wall separating Gentiles from Jews bore the warning that any Gentile who passed beyond it was responsible for his own death.

President Carter then said that Jesus had torn down that wall, and all the others that separate us from one another. He quoted Galatians 3:28 saying that in Christ there is no jew, no greek, no slave, no free, no male, no female. He went n to say that in Christ there is no black, no white, no brown, no yellow, no red, no rich, no poor, no Republicans, and no Democrats, but all are one in Christ.

President Carter then said that Jesus wants each of us to be a wall-remover. He said that we cannot remove the wall erected by a neighbor, we can only remove the walls that we have erected. He pointed out that he was a Democrat, and that he had 22 other Democrats in his family, and that they had all voted Democratic in the last election. He said, “I cannot wait for my friends who are Republicans to reach across to me, I must reach across to them.” He said that he was going to the inauguration of President Trump, and he would do all he can to support as much of his agenda as he can. He also said he was hand-carrying several letters to give to the various members of the cabinet, who may want or need, the help of the Carter Center.

The highlight of the lesson was when President Carter said that our vocation and accomplishments are not nearly so important as our character. He said that the day is coming when all of us, will lay down all our honors and titles and accomplishments of every kind and everything else. He is right. When, at last, we stand before our God the only thing left to us is who we are at the core of our being, and what we have done for others–what we have done for Christ. On that day, I do not want to be remembered primarily for building walls, nor even for mending walls, though each is a legitimate task, I want to be remembered for being a wall remover. I want to be remembered as someone who knocked down the walls that kept me from others.

Finis