Matthew 5:1-12

Here on this mountainside with the disciples listening in, Jesus sits down to teach us about blessing.

How often are our prayers filled with “Bless me … help me … solve this for me…”

Jesus has in view something that really should make us uncomfortable,

uncomfortable grace in the face of God’s tender mercy.  God’s mercy means he isn't prepared to leave us as we are.

Here Jesus points the way to the “up close and personal” way God deals in our lives. He isn't interested to gaze on us from a distance with benign disinterest.  Jesus tells us God is on the move to shape us towards a life of growth in grace; towards a life that is progressing in sanctification, with all eyes on Jesus for how he wants us to go about that.

As far as Jesus sees it, we matter in the scheme of the cosmos.  Happy are the discontented.  Jesus points us the way of God.  It all looks upside down to the way we expect God shaped things to look like in life. 

Stop being so self important, Jesus tells us, look see where is there a growing humility towards God going on deep down in your soul, where are we owning faith and owning up to the sin that so often blinds us.  Take off the blinkers, Jesus says, and see life as it is before God.

Before we jump into looking closely at the beatitudes themselves,             let’s understand what the word “blessed” here means.  Because if I just said “I’m really blessed” to you, in our culture you’d think I’d be pretty happy - happy are the poor in spirit and so on…

Blessed, as Jesus uses it here, is much sharper, more powerful than just happiness.  It doesn’t quite fill in the full picture.

In the Bible, blessedness is being approved by God, shaped by God, God on the move in our lives looking to Jesus.  To be more like Jesus.  God is relentlessly pursuing after us with powerful tenderness, so he can change you, which brings us to our point of contact with this sermon of Jesus.  In our lives; when we think “blessing”, we think of ourselves, our happiness, our comfort, our security.