Henrietta United Church of Christ

Rev. David Inglis May 25, 2008

Matthew 5:10-16

Doorways to the Realm of God: “Living at Cross Purposes”

We’ve finally come to the last of Jesus’ beatitudes–the last of these surprising, paradoxical doorways into a deep kind of joy and a new kind of reality that Jesus called the kingdom of God: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

I’m not so sure I’m ready to sign up for this one, how about you? I tried to use my biblical study skills to find a loophole. Maybe in the Greek or Aramaic it means “Blessed are the misunderstood”. Hey, I could live with that. But no such luck. In the Greek and in the Aramaic, persecuted pretty much means persecuted–rejected, despised, hurt, imprisoned, even killed. Maybe I’m dense or something, but I’m not seeing the joy in that, are you? I’m biologically, emotionally and socially programmed to seek pleasure, comfort, security and approval, and to avoid pain, conflict, anxiety, fear, and rejection. Hey, I’ve even learned to dress a little sharper so the fashion police around here don’t pick on me as much!

But you know, with every one of Jesus’ beatitudes, we have found an unexpected blessing and joy. So let’s take a look at this last, very challenging beatitude about persecution and see what we might discover.

Let’s start with where we all are--biological and social creatures programmed by evolution and our upbringing to seek pleasure and avoid pain, seek approval and avoid rejection, seek security and avoid anxiety. What happens to us if that’s what our lives are all about?

If our main purpose is to pursue our own pleasure and get our own needs met, what’s to keep us from betraying our own loved ones, using our friends, cheating our customers, slandering our competitors or mindlessly trashing our earth that sustains us–if we think we can get away with it? But even if we do get away with it, something in us shrivels and starts to die–our capacity to love and be loved, our desire for connectedness and trust, our own integrity within ourselves and with others, our connectedness to Creation that nourishes our bodies and souls.

If our main purpose is to avoid the pain of anxiety, failure, rejection, and loss, we’ll take so few risks we’ll fail to grow. We’ll stifle our own creative spirit to avoid criticism, hide our own talents to avoid failure, be overprotective of our loved ones, and resist anything that’s unfamiliar. We’ll sacrifice our own living spirit on the altar of security.

Jesus said, “What does it profit a person to gain the world but lose their own soul?“ It’s ironic, isn’t it, that when we adapt to the “real world” the way it is, and go after the pleasures and comforts we can see and touch, and avoid the pain and anxiety that we have so many reasons for, we end up missing out on life’s most precious gifts of love, truth, intimacy, creativity, fulfillment, and growth. And we ourselves help create a world that’s even more competitive, hostile and unjust.

Thank God there have been souls who have not been content to just seek their own contentment. They have not conformed to the world as it is, but have sought to transform the world into what it can be. They have not sacrificed their souls on the altar of security, but have been willing to lay their energy, their comfort, their life times, and even their lives on the altar of justice, of the common good, of the realm of God.

Their courage and conviction have required them to live at cross purposes to the dominant powers of the world around them. As Martin Luther King said before the American Psychological Association,

There are some things in our social system to which I am proud to be maladjusted and to which I suggest that you too ought to be maladjusted. We must never adjust ourselves to racial discrimination and racial segregation. We must never adjust ourselves to religious bigotry. We must never adjust ourselves to economic conditions that take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. We must never adjust ourselves to the madness of militarism, and the self-defeating effects of physical violence.... The world is in desperate need of such maladjustment. Through such maladjustment we will be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.¹

St. Paul told us to be maladjusted like that too. He said, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed, by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2). This transformation that renews our minds and carries us beyond our own egos’ drives for pleasure, comfort and security and sets us on a higher vantage point. From there we can view the world more as God sees it–one world, one humanity, not divided by nation, race, culture, class, or religion. From that vantage point we see that there are no inherently “evil” people or inherently “good” people–just people with the capacity for both good and evil, struggling to seek pleasure and security and avoid pain and anxiety, and learning at their own pace the fulfillment of living for something bigger than that. From that vantage point we can see how interconnected we are, and how no person can be secure until there is liberty and justice for all, and how no person can be fulfilled as long as others are empty. We can see how deceit, violence, domination, and exploitation set in motion the energy of destruction that comes back to bite those who set it in motion. And we can see how compassion, generosity, forgiveness, and selfless sacrifice set in motion the energy of creation that comes back to bless those who set it in motion.

When you begin seeing the world in this way, you are no longer content to just “get along” and “go along” with the way things are. You become willing, even compelled, to throw your gifts, your time and your life into God’s ongoing work of transforming the kingdom of greed into the kingdom of God. You do that because you no longer see yourself as just one lone individual. You see that you are part of everyone, and they are part of you.

One person who became very well known for seeing that and acting on it, was Mahatma Gandhi. He was a Hindu whose greatest teacher was Jesus. He said he would have become a Christian if the Christians he knew had seriously tried to follow the teachings of Jesus, like loving their enemies, praying for those who persecuted them, and returning good for evil. It was the British Christians who were heartlessly exploiting and oppressing the Indian people. Though Gandhi never called himself a Christian, he probably applied Jesus’ teachings to the strife and conflicts of the real world more than any other person ever has since Jesus himself walked the earth.

Gandhi believed completely and totally in what he called Satyagraha, which has been translated as “truth force,” “love force” or “soul force.” Gandhi staked everything on his belief that the truth of our inherent interconnectedness is woven into the fabric of creation, and that it has an unstoppable dynamic power to it. When we align ourselves with it, it transforms ourselves, the world around us, and even those who oppose us and persecute us.

So as Gandhi struggled to liberate the people of India from debilitating colonialism, he persuaded the Indian freedom fighters not to fight against their enemies, but to courageously, compassionately, make themselves vulnerable to them. Their actions said to their oppressors:

We will match our capacity to suffer against your capacity to inflict the suffering, our soul force against your physical force. We will not obey you, but we will not hate you. Do what you like, and we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. And in the winning of the freedom we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you. So ours will be a double victory; we will win our freedom and our captors in the process.²

Applying Satyagraha to the political repression in India succeeded just as Gandhi had believed it would. Britain’s conscience was awakened and the British released granted India independence.

Some years later, Martin Luther King was studying Gandhi. When he read those words about applying Satyagraha, he wrote in the margin, “That’s it!” He adopted the same method to awaken the conscious of this country and to bring an end to legalized racial discrimination and oppression.

Both Gandhi and King were criticized, hated, threatened, jailed, and ultimately shot by assassins. They were “persecuted for righteousness’ sake.” Do you think their spirits regret having made that sacrifice? No, their causes triumphed, and a billion Indians, 40 million African Americans, and the now united and free societies of both nations owe our these men an eternal debt of gratitude for persevering in the face of persecution.

Living at cross purposes with the dominant powers of this world doesn’t necessarily mean a cross, an assassin’s bullet or imprisonment. But working and pressing towards the kingdom of God does set us apart from the kingdom of this world. And it does require courage, faithfulness and perseverance. Right after Jesus talked about the blessedness of those who find themselves persecuted, he said, “You are the salt of the earth.” You who are working to transform this world, instead of conforming to it, are the salt that preserves the world from corruption, decay and self destruction. You are the salt that brings out life’s true flavor. You who glimpse the world as God sees it are the light of the world–helping dispel the world’s dark shadows so people can see its true potential, holding up a beacon of hope to guide people towards God’s vision for humanity.

That saltiness and that light are not just for the saints and martyrs. Both Gandhi and King had their human shortcomings like everybody else. But they were salt and light, not because they were fearless, but because they knew there was something more important than their fears. Not because they were especially gifted, but because they were especially willing for God to use whatever gifts they had. Not because they had all the answers, but because they trusted God’s truths. They said, “Here am I; use me.” “Your high will, not my small will be done.” Every one of the beatitudes is designed to take us to this place of surrender, trust, openness, and availability to God, so that God’s kingdom can come and God’s will be done in us and through us.

“Blessed are the persecuted, for theirs is the kingdom of God.” Does surrendering our time, talents, treasure, comfort, security, and maybe even our lives to God’s higher purpose lead us to blessed joy? This surrender may not lead to happiness the way the world defines it. If the world’s happiness is what we’re longing for, then we might as well pursue money, sex, power, and entertainment if we’re the adventuresome sort, or withdraw into comfort, security, and passivity if we’re the anxious sort. But if what we’re longing for is the love, connectedness, wholeness, exhilaration, and deep peace that comes from being aligned with God and God’s truths, then there’s really only one choice we can make. We have to choose to not conform to the world as it is, but to allow God to keep transforming our minds so that, in our own small ways, we become agents of transformation, sprinklers of salt, bearers of light.

God leaves the choice in our own hands. What kind of life do we really want? What kind of world do we want to create? “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake - those who work at cross purposes to the powers of the world to fulfill the purposes of God, through God’s power working in them. Theirs is the kingdom of God.” They are already living in it as they help create it-and they are preparing their souls to enter it fully in the world to come.