Fourth Sunday in Epiphany, Year A:
Micah 6:1-8; Ps. 15;
1 Corinthians 1:18-31; Matthew 5:1-12
There are two major players in our Gospel reading today. The first one is obvious: Jesus. For the last few weeks we’ve followed his birth, his baptism, and the beginning of his ministry. In the church, we call the season where we remember all of this “Epiphany,” because with each new thing that Jesus does, he reveals himself, he unveils something important about himself. He causes revelations, epiphanies, to happen all around him and we discover who he is and what he shows us about God. Today, as Jesus begins his famous Sermon on the Mount, the epiphanies continue.
At this point we know that Jesus is a preacher and we know that he is a healer. And because he’s been helping so many people, and speaking so powerfully, crowds are following him around. It’s not like he’s a celebrity, or a politician, or even a guru, because he’s actually in the middle of all these people – he speaks directly to them, he walks among them, he touches them and affects them immediately. He doesn’t have bodyguards or minders, so even when he does something sort of seemingly-introverted – like going up on this mountain here, away from most of the crowds – he’s followed by a group of disciples.
And this is where the next epiphanies happen, where the next revelations take place. Jesus reveals to us that he is a rabbi, an authoritative teacher. Beginning with these sayings that we just heard about blessedness, Jesus will take the ethical principles that people are taught to live by and break them open to reveal the beating heart at the center of each of them. In doing this, Jesus will reveal to us the will of God, what God’s heart is like.
But the more striking epiphany, the revelation that’s new in every generation – the revelation that is new every day – is the identity of that other major player in the Sermon on the Mount. The crowds have been following Jesus, that’s true, but the crowds don’t follow him up the goat path to this place where he sits down to teach. His disciples do, literally, his “learners.” They peel off from the regular flow of things to be set apart on this day, with this person. Just as you peeled off of Lakeshore Dr. and onto our street. Just as you stepped off of the bus and into this church, or walked down the steps of your building and turned toward an altar, and not a breakfast table or a newspaper stand. The epiphany is us. The veil is lifted on the disciples, and they are revealed to have our faces. This church is revealed to be our mountain, and the whole dynamic of our being together, everything that happens when we break bread together, when we hear Scripture read and when we sing and pray together is revealed to be Christ himself, his presence among us, embodied in our worship.
But for each one of us there’s a further personal epiphany, something to be unveiled that we can’t get at just by reading the story and talking about it. We see that a group of disciples takes that deeper step and follows Jesus up the mountain to hear him teach. We see that several of us have made it here this morning with some intention. But why? What is it that we’re looking for? What does being on this mountain mean for us? Because it’s not the easiest thing in the world to do. In fact, if we borrow a line from St. Paul this morning, it may even appear foolish. Even these first disciples, who had the living proof of Jesus in front of them, had a rough time. For starters, they actually, physically followed him, climbing mountains, walking for miles, being tired and thirsty. Jesus’ sayings about blessedness give us clues to what they experienced, because our Gospels were, after all, written down for them, and read to them in their worship services. So we hear that they were poor enough to be excited about what they hoped to gain; they were grievous enough to want the whole world to rejoice; they were hungry enough to sense their own constant needs; they were single-hearted enough to be able to hold up Love as the single most important thing. And they were willing to be thought foolish – by others, and most importantly by the voices of doubt in their own minds – in order to deal with all of these challenges and to not lose heart. They had to have a sense, then, of why any of it mattered.
And us, we the disciples, have a hard time of it, too. Some of our problems are the same as the first disciples’: churches have always had to deal with money, from the very earliest times. Churches have always depended on the time and talents of their members, who’ve always had a lot of responsibilities to juggle. Churches across the ages have weathered political crises and cultural shifts. Really, these are problems that any group, institution, or association might encounter.
But we live in a time that makes some of this harder. Disciples have always been busy, it’s true, but I think more than ever it’s hard for us to be single-hearted, what Jesus calls “pure of heart” in our Scripture today. We have just as much to do as any person ever did, but our lives are so fractured. We’re pulled in so many competing directions that it’s very hard to devote ourselves wholly to something like discipleship. And especially when the payoffs aren’t so obvious, so external. In our day and age, going to church doesn’t guarantee you the things it once did. Our culture doesn’t require churchgoing in the same way it once did, so your parents might not be watching to make sure that you’re here. Plus, the social benefits of belonging to this denomination or that denomination are much more muted than in past generations. You may have friends and neighbors and co-workers here, but your friends and neighbors and co-worker aren’t necessarily here. All of this means that you are here for another reason.
And so this other epiphany, this thing that is to be revealed in your heart, is that question. Why are you here? Why have you come up this mountain to sit with this teacher? What do you want from him? What will finding the heart of God mean for you and for the people you love? In the weeks leading up to Lent, as we read the Sermon on the Mount, let’s sit with this question and let’s enjoy being with one another in the presence of Christ. And then, let’s be ready to live into a new epiphany about who we are, about who we are here, in this place, and about who we are with God. There is hope here, and there is promise.
Sermon preached by the Rev. Danielle Thompson at St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church in Chicago, IL on Jan. 30, 2011 at 8:00am, 11:00am and 5:15pm
