"The Sunday I Almost Quit"
Matthew 5:1-12
January 30, 2005
St. Paul United Methodist Church
Rev. John A. Fleming
I am haunted by the Beatitudes, especially Matthew's version of them. I still shake in my pastoral shoes when they appear in the suggested lessons, the lectionary, on a given Sunday, like they do today. There is a reason why, of course. There is a story behind why I they scare me so. Would you like to hear it? Would you like to be a part of it?
To do that, we will have to go back some twelve years ago. It all happened on this Sunday, the last Sunday of January, in 1993. Back then I was in my third year of seminary. At the seminary that I attended, you left the campus on your third year for an internship. I am in Arkansas because of that internship. I had a couple of options for my internship placement. One possibility was the Boston Avenue United Methodist Church in Tulsa. The second one was the First United Methodist Church in Fordyce. The Boston Avenue Church was a huge church in a large town with many staff members. The Fordyce Church was a mid sized church in a small town. And other than the secretary, I would be the only member of the staff. I chose Fordyce first because Arkansas was familiar. I also chose it because I knew that once I was out of school and in the ministry, I would pastor places like Fordyce much more often than places like Boston Avenue.
My internship began on a Sunday afternoon in August and ended on a Sunday night in May. For nine months I was there, learning the ropes, doing things that pastors are called to do. I preached sermons once a month, was in charge of the youth group on Sunday nights, visited in hospital and nursing home rooms, and in people's homes. For nine months, I learned from one of the best, our own John Christie, a former pastor of this church. He led me and four lay persons in that church were on a committee that also helped me along. In order for me to meet the requirements of that internship, I had to pass both semesters, the fall one and the spring one.
On the Sunday before this fateful day, it was announced in the morning worship service that I had passed the first half of my internship. The church was gracious. They took ownership of me. When the announcement came, they smiled and clapped. I cheered. I was on top of the heap. I was at the top of my game. I had made it. There had been some struggles that fall, but I had made it. I was successful. I was a young pastor on his way to a promising career in the ministry. I was sure of my calling. I knew what I could do. It was a great day!
That sets up the scene for this haunting scripture lesson and Sunday. The following Sunday was my turn in the pulpit. Matthew 5:1-12 was the suggested gospel lesson for that Sunday. I made the mistake of walking into my mentor's office and telling him that I had no plans to preach these first words of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. I made the mistake of telling him that the lesson was too hard, that I did not understand it's words, and that retreating to a more familiar lesson was best. John Christie gave me that grin that I had grown accustomed to. I knew what he was going to say before the words came out of his mouth. I knew that he was going to challenge me. I knew that he was going to make me preach the Beatitudes. He had power and position over me. I had only passed half of the internship. There was another half to pass. So I retreated to my office and did all of the things that I usually and still do to get ready for a sermon. I read the lesson. I read some commentaries. I thought about stories. I thought about what the people in the pews needed to hear. I prayed over the scripture, but nothing seemed to help. No message from the Lord seemed to come. There wasn't even a whisper of a message in my heart. Nothing came to me and at the end of the day, I went home, back to the parsonage, defeated and still wondering what I was going to say come Sunday. I would like to tell you that the pieces fell into place on Tuesday. They did not. Sometime Tuesday afternoon I begged, "Please, Jesus, send me a sermon! Use my hands to type the words. Speak it to my heart. Please, Jesus, help me!" I trusted Jesus to do that, but I also had a back up plan. As I drove to the parsonage late that Tuesday night, I formulated my escape plan. Since I was living in one of the bedrooms of the parsonage, I knew that leaving town, getting out of Dodge would be a challenge. Packing up in the middle of the night was an option. Leaving with only a few of my things and coming back to get them later, was a possibility. Staying. Toughing it out. Trusting that God was going to help me, was not the direction I was heading. I could not help but to visualize me standing up in that same pulpit, where the announcement had come the previous week about my success, with nothing to say. What I was so sure of the week before, I was now not sure of at all. How was it that twelve verses of scripture could affect me so?
These Beatitudes, these first words of the first sermon out of the mouth of Jesus in Matthew's gospel, are hard, I guess, because their message is so hard to put your hands on them and your arms around them. They are hard to embrace. In a world where there are usually winners and losers, the strong and the weak, the successful and the not so successful, Jesus opens his mouth and the words that pour forth from it turn the world upside down.
Some of you know that between here and the parsonage is a McDonald's. That is a good thing and a not so good thing. It is good because it is convenient for a quick dinner. It is not good because too many quarter pounders with cheese is not good for your pastor. Not too long ago, on the sign under the golden arches that usually tell of the special of the week, were these words: "Now Hiring Losers" I wish that I had taken a picture of the sign. What was up there was not the intended message. It was supposed to say: "Now Hiring Closers" but someone, perhaps in the middle of the night, reached for the letter "C" and pulled it down (or maybe it fell). The sign caused many smiles along Cantrell Road for several days, I am sure. The way that we have set up the world, there are winners and there are losers. And picking the winners is, in a way, what Jesus is doing in these verses. But instead of declaring that the blessed are the stronger, the faster, and the more aggressive, Jesus essentially hands out the trophies to people who would not recognize a lucky break if it hit them over the head. In these words of his, Jesus praised those who are weaker and more unsuccessful, at least according to the ways of the world. His list is a Who's Who List of Losers really, that constitutes Jesus' choices for God's blessings. His words have a bittersweet taste and feeling about them, because the conditions for these blessings involve pain and broken hearts. Even so, because it is Jesus who made the list, I think that most of us would like to be somewhere in that number. And so our tendency is to take each Beatitude, try it on for size, and ask, "Is this me. Am I meek? Well, not really. Not usually. Am I poor in Spirit? Sometimes I am. Sometimes I feel spiritually bankrupt. Am I persecuted. No, not really, not ever. Not the way that some have. Am I a peacemaker? No, not really, though I do play that role in my family from time to time." So where are we on this list? Have we even made the list?
What is so hard about the Beatitudes, I think, is that they do not go out and tell us to do something. I wish that they did. Luke's version of these words follows them up with the instruction to do things like bless those who persecute us and turning the other cheek. But not Matthew's version. Matthew's version has the challenge of these words being about who we are, who we are supposed to be, maybe even this, who we can become.
These words of Jesus may have lost some of their punch since they were first said. I think that that is a shame. Now they are cross stitched and hung in the living room and bedrooms of our homes. Now they are memorized by children in Sunday School classes by children, who, I suspect, have no idea how radical they are. Now they are almost skipped over when they appear in Bible study lessons and in scripture lessons on Sunday mornings. We see them, there is a familiarity about them, and we say, "Oh, I know what these words mean." They are like an old friend, something that we know, words whose message we are sure of. Try this. Climb with Jesus to the mountain top, sit down on the grassy area with the other disciples, and hear these words for the first time, and you will see that Jesus and his words are intended to turn the world upside down. If you take these words seriously, they will change your life and who you are. If you take these words seriously, they will change your world. If the world were to take these words seriously, things would change. Jesus' world is not all that different from our own. In his day, there were winners and there were losers. There were those in positions of power and there were those who struggled for justice. The words from Jesus' mouth to our ears say that those who are really blessed, those who are happy, those who have an inner joy, are those who are humble and think first of others. Jesus says those who are happy are those who mourn, who look around at the world and are grieved by it. Real joy, says Jesus, comes to meek souls; those who do not assert themselves in such a way as to get an advantage. Real joy, says Jesus, comes to those who hunger and thirst for the higher things of life. Real joy, says Jesus, comes to those who are merciful, the ones who forgive. Real joy, says Jesus, comes to those who are pure in heart; the ones who do no double-dealing in their lives, ones who have integrity. Real joy, says Jesus, come to the peacemakers, who see as their calling to build up the world instead of turning it down. Happy are you, joyful are you, says Jesus, when you are persecuted. The truth is that if you strive for things like righteousness and humility, you will be persecuted, you will meet resistance. You see what Jesus is doing with these first words of his sermon is describing the way that the world is supposed to be, the way that one day it will be. There is an already and a not yet aspect to our world and the world that Jesus speaks of. With His coming the kingdom has started. That is the already part of it. But there is a not yet part, too, because we are not there yet. In fact, some days I feel like we have a long way to go?
What is this kingdom like? What is the kingdom of God? Let me put it this way, the Kingdom of God is wherever, whenever, and in whomever the rule of God exists and the world is the way that one day it will be. Do you see why I had so much trouble on that Sunday of 1993? It is hard to embrace these words. It is difficult to live these words. It is a challenge to get our hands around these words. If we lived them, what would they look like?
Well, maybe a story would help. I will close with this story. Tony Compollo, the great teacher and part-time Baptist preacher from Pennsylvania tells the story of Teddy Stollard and Mrs. Thompson, his third grade teacher. Teddy was not like the rest of the kids in his class. Teddy often came to school in old clothes and he was behind most of the kids in the basic skills Mrs. Thompson knew a little bit of Teddy's story. She had read his records. She knew that when Teddy was in the first grade, he was an exemplary student, but then his mother got sick. Cancer was her diagnosis. Soon Teddy fell behind the others in his class. Mrs. Thompson knew that when Teddy was in the second grade, his mother was worse. She read that Teddy received little or not attention at home. The last note in his record for his second grade year, scribbled on a cold day in March simply read, "Teddy's mother died today."
Mrs. Thompson knew all of that, but there was something that she did not like about Teddy. She couldn't put her finger on it and she was a little ashamed of the satisfaction that she received from marking his papers in red and putting failing grades on his report card.
Near Christmas, of that year, Mrs. Thompson's class had a party. Cookies and punch were offered and presents were exchanged between the students and their teacher. Mrs. Thompson received some great gifts that year. There were gift certificates to her favorite restaurant. There were sweaters and shirts from a local department store. All of the presents were neatly wrapped. All but one, that is. Teddy Stollard's gift was crudely wrapped in the comic section of Sunday's newspaper. Teddy's gift was the last one that Mrs. Thompson opened. The truth was that this teacher was afraid of what might be under the newspaper. Mrs. Thompson pulled back the paper and saw a bottle of perfume with half of it's contents gone and a bracelet that had several stones missing from it. To her credit, Mrs. Thompson oohed and ahhed at Teddy's gift. The rest of the class followed her lead. As a result, Teddy was not embarrassed by the gifts. Mrs. Thompson put on the bracelet and dabbed a bit of the perfume on her wrists. When everyone had gone, Teddy came up to Mrs. Thompson's desk and gently said, "You look good in my mother's bracelet, Mrs. Thompson, and you smell just like her, too."
Tears formed in her eyes and when Teddy left, she got down on her knees and asked God to forgive her for how she had behaved and for thinking the thoughts that had crossed her mind. That Mrs. Thompson did not come back to the classroom after the Christmas break. A new Mrs. Thompson, did, though. She vowed that she would treat Teddy and every one of her students with great dignity and respect.
Years after that, Mrs. Thompson received a letter from Teddy. These are it's words: "Dear Mrs. Thompson, I hope that you will be proud of me. I'm graduating from high school tomorrow night, second in my class." Four years later, another letter arrived from Teddy: "Dear Mrs. Thompson. I am graduating from the university next week. This time, I am first in my class." Four years later a third letter came. It's words were these: "Dear Mrs. Thompson, I am now Theodore M. Stollard, M.D. I am getting married in a month. I was hoping that you would come to my wedding I would like for you to sit where my mother would have sat. You made the difference in my life." And when the wedding happened, Teddy Stollard seated his third grade teacher in his mother's place in the church pew. Mrs. Thompson, friends, became a kingdom person. In her and in people like her, we see the way that the world is supposed to be, the way that we are supposed to be.
Well, by now you know that I did not high tail it and run from the Beatitudes that fateful Tuesday night in January, now some twelve years ago. Instead I stayed and learned a lot about these words, but also a lot about myself and God. Let us pray
(Special thanks to the members of the First United Methodist Church in Fordyce, Arkansas for accepting me as their intern minister. Thanks to Rev. Tony Compollo for his story about Teddy and Mrs. Thompson. I do not know it's source. I only remember the power and the details of it. I originally told it on the last Sunday of January, 1993, from the First United Methodist Church pulpit in Fordyce, Arkansas).