A Trip to the Mountains

What follows is a transcript of our guest speaker's message from our Sunday morning gathering. We share these messages on our blog for those who appreciate the opportunity to read the sermon again—whether for deeper reflection, personal study, or a quieter moment of prayer and introspection. As you read, we invite you to linger with the words, notice what resonates, and remain open to how God may be speaking to you through them.

by Sandi Mull

So before we go to the mountains, I thought I'd tell you a little story about what happened a little earlier this week.

Doesn't probably make any difference, but I thought you might enjoy this. I don't know whether it was Monday or Tuesday, it was the past week, I already had my scripture picked out and had written some on this, and I don't know, I was reading something and really, it got me to thinking, and it must have carried over into the middle of the night, because all of a sudden I woke up and I had what I thought was a wonderful title, it was still related, and an introduction and some other things that I thought were better than what I had on paper already, but I didn't write it down. So we got what we've got, and Jenny Su said that happened to her with teaching, and I'm sure some of the rest of you, that's happened to you, but you always need it, you think, you know, it's like, oh, that made such an impression, I'll remember it, and in fact, I waited a day to give Virginia my sermon title because I kept thinking maybe it would come back, but it didn't, it's gone.

So, like I say, we've got what we've got, and we're going to the mountains today. When I go to the mountains, it's usually, at least my memory of it, is going in the heat of summer so that I can get cooled off, so I can have a vacation where the temperature is cooler, the humidity is a lot less, and I can enjoy nature. Now I know probably some of you, maybe not now, but at one time may have liked to go to the mountains in the winter for skiing.

Now that wasn't me, I like to go in the summer. But the mountains that we're talking about, on which Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount, wouldn't really be what you're thinking about for a vacation, because I always think of mountains as shaded and cool and all. Well, in Judea and Galilee, they're hot, they're basically desert, they're a hill that is a desert.

In fact, Luke calls it a hill, the Sermon on the Hill, because they're about the size of some of the mountains down in South Missouri. So I think maybe the elevation is already higher there than it is here, but they don't have the trees that we would have. But basically, they're a mountain or a hill without any shade or anything.

So this is what the people were doing when they came and the crowds came to listen to Jesus. They were out in the hot sun. The Beatitudes opened the Sermon on the Mount, which I see as Jesus' more or less statement of what he's all about, what his ministry and mission is all about.

He gives the heart of his message. And as he starts with the Beatitudes, people then and now have different responses to them. I don't know whether you've ever thought about it, but some people look at the Beatitudes and say, oh, they're just wishful thinking.

There's no way anyone could do anything with them. Or they may think they're commandments and they weren't meant to be commandments. Or they may see them as something else that, you know, just like, oh, they're too hard to understand.

I'm not going to mess with them. I don't need to understand that to live the gospel. And people, you know, probably all of us have done that with some portion of scripture or what at some time.

And with the Beatitudes, it's very easy to do. Some of the things, as we talk about them, we're not going to go through everyone and analyze it. We're just going to talk about some reflections on some of them.

And we won't even, we're not going to hit all of them. So we're not going to be here for all, for half an hour or 45 minutes, I can promise you. I think Jesus startled people actually when he started speaking because they were so accustomed to hearing people, hearing teachers talk about keeping the commandments better.

You should be keeping the commandments and maybe emphasizing some of the commandments. Whereas Jesus says, I think he includes the Beatitudes as saying, this is what life in the kingdom of God is like. And it's more of a description of how we live, not a set of rules about living.

It includes some things like mercy, justice, integrity. And the word righteousness, sometimes I think we slide over what it means. It can be called right living or sometimes we would call it justice.

They all come from the same word in the original scripture. So any of those things. So those put it maybe a little different vision on it than just saying righteousness.

Because sometimes I think, I know, I think at one time I thought of righteousness as some kind of wholly set apart someone that wasn't really living a real life. But that's not really what that's saying. It's that we live justly.

We try to live correctly and be people that serve others and help. When Jesus starts the Beatitude, he says, he starts each one with blessed. Now, in that context, when you said blessed, that was to say, listen to this.

This person, if they're blessed, they are someone we should aspire to be like. So that it was more or less an issue of, you know, hear me out, hear about this. Sometimes also, I think in looking and reading the Beatitudes, we think about the people that heard them originally.

And maybe we think it was probably easier for them because they had this peaceful hill in Galilee, Judea, and they didn't have all the pressing issues that we have. But let me tell you, it probably wasn't. It's very easy to see, feel like someone else doesn't have the same kind, and they're not the same kind.

But they had been violently overtaken by Rome. Rome was not, yes, the city of Rome was fairly peaceful, but they kept it peaceful by keeping turmoil and having battles out in the colonies. And Judea and Galilee were a part of the colonies.

So they had, if they crossed a Roman soldier or somebody, they could lose their life just for a word or something they said. So it was not a peaceful kind of existence. And so in many ways, they faced the same thing we do when we try to think about living the Beatitudes.

And sometimes, especially since 9-11, we see life a little differently, and we know that there's more pressures on politicians than on people. And yet, they had some of the same pressures. They didn't live in a culture with the phones and those kinds of things, but many of them basically were scurrying around to try to pay their debts and have enough food to eat.

And that was their whole life existence for many of them. As we discuss them, we are going to reflect on a few. The first one is the people that are poor in spirit.

And that, that Matthew says, blessed are the poor in spirit. And sometimes that poor in spirit causes us to think, well, okay, now what does that mean? Well, the meaning is that we know we need God. We're not, we can't do it all.

We don't know everything. And that's probably pretty obvious to all of us, that we need to rely on God. But sometimes we get ahead of God, and we think we can rely on ourself.

And, and we can't, we, yes, God wants us to use our brain, use our bodies that he made for, that he gave us, but we also are called to know that we have a reliance on God. Jesus set an example of going to the people that, at that time, would be called the outsiders. There's always outsiders in the system, people that don't quite fit.

For them, it was the poor, the foreigners, maybe somebody that had a different religion than Judaism. And then disease, which, of course, was more rampant. And especially leprosy was, and Jesus touched lepers.

So he made that, he showed us some of how to live with and acknowledge the people that may be outside the system. Now, Luke says, blessed are the poor. He doesn't say poor in spirit.

So, and there were plenty of them in that time. Probably, of the people that listened to Jesus, at least 97% were in the bottom two rungs of society. There were about seven or eight rungs with, of course, the Romans and some of them in higher.

And the bottom rungs were some of the people that were in trades and maybe services. And then the very bottom were the people that just scurried around and tried to find part-time work somewhere, somehow to be able to buy some food and pay their debts. And this was basically the life of a peasant in that time.

It wasn't, they didn't have any services for them. They were mostly poor people that Jesus would have been talking to. And so, and then he talks about the humble being given the land.

Now, this was almost like saying the opposite. For one thing, most of his hearers, the people that heard Jesus, wouldn't have ever had a chance to own any land because they were so poor. The only people that owned land were the wealthy.

And they often took advantage of the poor people. Landlords were hated because they took advantage of the people. But he says, if you're one of the humble, if you're one of the ones that isn't, it doesn't have all the advantages, you will inherit the land.

And that was the, having land was the only way they could even get ahead. And that's been true a lot of times in history. Although, here in our country, in some places, people cannot, in cities a lot of times don't own land.

They don't own their house, but they have other ways of getting it. But there, it was only if you had land that you could get ahead. And then Matthew says, blessed are those who hungered and thirst for righteousness.

And here again, that word righteousness sometimes leads us, at least me, it always used to lead me into a different thought. But the person that hungers and thirsts for right living or for justice. And then Luke says, the person that's hungry will be filled.

So a little bit of two different versions. But being hungry could be hungry for a lot of things. And Jesus says, be hungry for the things that will last.

And so we have to, yes, it's not wrong to want other things, but the main thing is to be hungry for that which will last, that which isn't just temporary. So many things, careers, social events, various things are passing. Even having our own house and all.

Somebody, at some point in the future, somebody else will probably live in that house. That we have. And so he says, it's okay to be hungry for things and want things.

But make sure that some of them are what will last and all for you. And then peacemakers and peacekeepers. And I think about a conversation at Circle of Joy a few weeks ago.

People were talking about the fact that, and I'm sure some of you that weren't there have the same situation. They have friends and family members that have very different opinions than they do. But they were talking about how they tried to maintain those relationships, even though it was sometimes difficult.

And have peace between them. Because they liked each other, but they had very different opinions. And so they talked about family things and some things that wouldn't be controversial.

So they could maintain those friendships and those things. And to me, that's a way of being a peacemaker and living out the Beatitudes. That part of the Beatitudes.

And they had heard, you know, we've all heard the stories of some of the things that happen when people let those differences divide them. And families are divided and friendships are divided. So living as peacemakers or peacekeepers to find some way we can interact with people even though we disagree with them.

The Beatitudes are meant to be living in the kingdom. And what it is like to live in the kingdom. When Jesus was on the hillside, he was pointing that out to the people.

Sometimes if we're going to live the Beatitudes, we might have to change. Who are we becoming? Who are we? Who are we becoming? And I think there's a tendency at the age that some of us are saying, I've become who I'm going to become. But sometimes God has a funny sense of humor and might call us to make a few changes, you know, in who we become or who we are.

Because sometimes when we change or when we do that, it might lead us to places with groups we really don't want to go or we don't want to be with. Jesus went to people that many people would not want to be with. He talked with prostitutes.

He touched lepers. He talked with women, which at that time was not necessary. Most men did not do that.

He went, you know, you think about the women at the well, various other people. And living the Beatitudes means we might talk with people that we don't want to be with or have to do something with them, and yet that's part of the call of our faith and the Beatitudes to do that. But it's also finding a new way of relating to our family and our friends, not just those people that we might consider outsiders, but to people we know and how we relate to them.

I read an article about a nun who felt like she had a calling. She said she would go to Mass on Wednesday morning, and then she would pray for the people she was going to meet and drive 45 miles to be in a courtroom with children that were ages 4 to 16 who were unaccompanied minors. And each one of them, when their case came up, had to go in that courtroom by themselves.

Most of them didn't have counsel. And she said, I can't say anything during the procedures. Sometimes I don't know their language, or they don't know mine.

And then you can imagine going in a courtroom, you don't know the language, a 4-year-old. And she was just there. She couldn't even sit with them.

She had to sit behind them. But she would try to do things to just say, tell them that there was somebody there that cares. She wasn't trying to make any statement.

She said, nothing I do changes any of the issues, anything that happens to them. It's just, I hope that maybe there was some place they'll remember that there was somebody that cared about them, that was able to be there for them. And I think that's sometimes what God calls us to do in different ways, not everyone, of course, is called for that.

And so she said, for her, she felt like that was a ministry that God had called her to and a way of living the Beatitudes. Jesus doesn't teach us to memorize beliefs and rules. He tells us to live our life that is sort of outrageous love, that shows outrageous love, revolutionary love, whatever we want to call it.

And so my question to you is how do the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount teach you to love your friends and maybe teach you to love some of the people that challenge that, some that you might rather not be with? How do you see yourself living the Beatitudes?