The
Be Attitudes
July 28, 2013
BMC- Matthew 5:1-12
Introduction: BA
Baracus
When
I was growing up, one of the shows that I really enjoyed watching was “The
A-Team.” This of course was in my PM
days, pre-Mennonite that is. It is a
rather violent show by some standards; but just a couple of weeks ago, my next
door neighbor in all seriousness told me that the A-Team is one of the most
family friendly shows ever made. No
really, that’s what he told me.
The
show ran from ’83-’87 and was about “a fictional group of ex–United States Army Special Forces
personnel who work as soldiers of fortune, while on the run from the Army after
being branded as war criminals for a "crime they didn't commit".[1] In 2010, there was also a movie made that was
based on the show. Perhaps some of you
saw it. I myself missed it.
One
of the characters, originally played by Mr. T, was named B.A. Baracus. He is the team’s strong man and
mechanic. He played a muscle bound tough
guy and it was said that the B.A. in his name stood for “Bad Attitude.” Though in one episode, his mom revealed that
in actuality, his name was Bosco Albert.[2] You
can see why he stuck with “Bad Attitude,” besides the fact that it was so
fitting to his character.
I
share this because it seems to me that our attitude is a significant part of
how we experience life and what we do with what we experience in life. This has become much more evident to me as a
parent than it had been before. There
are many things in life that my children could and do enjoy doing if they are
willing to have a positive and open attitude as they enter a situation. By the same token, there are many things in
life that they can completely despise and that they can ruin for others as
well, if they choose to hold tightly to a bad attitude.
And
this is true of each of us as well.
There is much in life that we do not have control over. There is much in life that just happens to
us, and while I don’t mean to minimize the pain and challenge that comes with
those circumstances; it also seems to me that the battle often begins with our
attitude. Our attitude about the
situation and whether or not we choose to approach our circumstances with a
good attitude or not shapes our experience.
Our
scripture passage for this morning comes from the beginning of the Sermon on
the Mount. It is often referred to as “The
Beatitudes.” This term comes from the
Latin version of the Bible and means “blessedness”[3]. And there certainly is an inherent
“blessedness” to these declarations and yet as I reflected on them, it seemed
to me that many if not all of them require a certain “attitudinal” adjustment
on our part to see these things as blessings rather than throwing up and hands
and declaring, “woe is me.”
Series/Text
Background
Let’s
begin by looking more deeply into the text.
In Matthew 4, we read that Jesus was tested in the wilderness, he began
to preach, he called his first four disciples, and he did some healing. Then as chapter 5 begins, Jesus comes to a
mountain side, sits down and begins to teach.
His teaching begins with these beatitudes.
Now
one might see this as reminiscent of Moses bringing down the law or the 10
commandments from Mt. Sinai; and perhaps in some ways it is. But as Phil Clemens suggests in his book
“Beyond the Law: living the Sermon on the Mount,” this was not so much about
law as in right and wrong. Rather this
was a call for God’s followers to live beyond the law into God’s righteousness.
These
are instructions about what it means to live into God’s righteousness and
require more than following the law or doing the right thing. Living into God’s righteous requires our
heart to be in the right place and thus a certain attitude adjustment on our
part. Moreover, it seems to me that to
live into some of the realities we have to see them from the perspective of
heaven and to do that, we need an adjustment in attitude or perspective. Thus I wonder if they are actually “The Be
Attitudes;” descriptions of what a Godly attitude is and what our attitude
should be.
For
instance, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs in the kingdom of
heaven.” Who of us feels blessed by
poverty? Who of us feels blessed in
times which our spirit is troubled or we feel spiritually weak? Who of us feels at that moment that we are in
the kingdom of heaven? And yet this is
what Jesus declares.
Jesus
declares it and so we believe it to be true, but when we are honest with
ourselves perhaps we find ourselves wondering if it really works that way;
because that is not generally how we see the world around us. It takes a certain attitude shift on our part
to realize that in the poverty of our spirit, we find the strength of God’s
spirit. It takes an adjustment in
perspective for us to see that in the midst of our pain and suffering that God
is still with us holding us and blessing us.
It takes a widening of our perspective to comprehend that even amid our
short comings that we are a part of the kingdom of heaven.
The
world would tell us that the kingdom of heaven is only for those who have made
it. The world would tell us that the
kingdom of heaven is only for those who have their act together. The world would tell us that the kingdom of
heaven is only for those who are successful because it is the successful who
are blessed by God. Yet this beatitude
invites us to shift our attitude, to be an attitude that recognizes that the
kingdom of God works differently and even in our shortcomings God has blessings
for us and invites us into God’s kingdom.
Moreover
as these beatitudes tell us, when we choose to live into upside down kingdom
realities, that we will meet difficulty and experience persecution. But in the midst of that, we will still be
blessed by God which is where our quilt block comes in this morning.
This
block is the cross and crown pattern.
The way of the cross, the way of Jesus, is one that includes difficulty
and persecution. The cross in this block
reminds us that we will be persecuted for righteousness. But along with that are the crowns, a
representation of the blessing perhaps even the heavenly honor that we receive
for faithfully following the way of the cross.
The Kingdom of
Heaven is for those in Need
Now
we could take time this morning going through each of these beatitudes and
flushing out their significance for us in our faith walk. That would be a worthy exercise and one that
I encourage you to consider doing in your devotional time in the week ahead. But instead of taking time to do that
together this morning, I would like to suggest 3 lessons from this section of
the Sermon on the Mount and then suggest three applications.
First,
the kingdom of Heaven is for those in need.
While God so loved the whole world and Jesus came to save us all, this
is a reminder that we must not lose sight of the place in God’s kingdom for
those in need. The world tries to
suggest that God’s kingdom is for those who have earned it or for those who
have their lives together, and we can be tempted to fall into this same trap.
Yet
in these beatitudes, the kingdom of heaven is for the poor in spirit, those who
mourn, the meek, the hungry, and the persecuted. These are people who are in need and the
kingdom of heaven is theirs.
We Are Called to
Live Into an Upside Down Kingdom
Second,
we are called to live into an upside down kingdom. The world tries to tell us that it is the
rich and the powerful are the ones that we should emulate. And yet scripture and these verses in
particular call us to live into a kingdom that is upside down from the world
around us.
Blessed
are the meek, not the haughty. Blessed
are the merciful, not the vengeful.
Blessed are the peacemakers not the warriors. These beatitudes call us to live into a
kingdom that is upside down from the world around us.
We Will Receive Resistance
for Living This Way
Thirdly, we will receive resistance for living this
way. When we choose to live into this
upside down kingdom, we will be persecuted for it. When we choose to live as Christ has
instructed and modeled, people will falsely say all kinds of evil about us.
Notice that in verses 3-10 each of the blessings are
“blessed are those who” or “blessed are the…”
But in verse 11 there is a shift.
Now it becomes personal. “Blessed
are you when people insult you…” If we
are truly living into these kingdom realities, we should expect to be
persecuted for it.
Application
The kingdom of heaven is for those in need. We are to live into an upside down
kingdom. And we will be persecuted for
following Jesus and living into His kingdom realities. But given that we must first begin by living
into these realities and that doing so requires a shift in attitude, what are
we to be doing to apply this to our lives.
Check your attitude
The first thing that we need to do is to check our attitude. There are things in life that we don’t
like. There are trials in life that we
will go through that make things difficult.
We can’t avoid things we don’t like all the time and we can’t avoid
trying circumstance, but we can approach these circumstances with a good
attitude. We can choose to make the best
of our situation.
This is pretty insignificant in the scope of challenges in the world,
but I had to be intentional about having a good attitude at times while we were
on vacation. When you vacation with a
group of people, and especially when that group of people includes your
in-laws, there are going to be times when things don’t happen the way that you
would have liked them to or that you have to participate in something that may
not be your favorite.
Well our vacation began by us driving down to Piqua to meet Beth’s
family for lunch and then to carpool together from there. No big deal really, but the restaurant chosen
for us to meet at was Cracker Barrel.
Now there aren’t too many restaurants that I don’t care for but Cracker
Barrel is one of them. I really don’t
like their menu or their food and my in-laws know this but they chose to meet
there because it was a convenient spot and would allow us to have supper with
Beth’s Grandparents while we were passing through the area.
Now I was being very intentional about having a good attitude about
eating at the Cracker Barrel. I understood
the reasons for it and I didn’t want to start our vacation off on the wrong
foot. Because of this while we were
waiting to be seated and my mother-in-law asked me “How long has it been since
you have eaten at a Cracker Barrel?” I simply said that I couldn’t remember the
last time but that it had probably been a few years.
Unfortunately my father-in-law chimed in as well with the response,
“Not long enough” as if speaking for me.
And that is the response that my mother-in-law remembered and later
reported to my wife as my reply to the question. So even though I had done a good job of
keeping a good attitude, I still got in some trouble for something that I
didn’t say. So while it is not
foolproof, one of the things we can do is to check our attitude.
Act in Support
The second thing
that we can do is to act in support of that which is not our preference. When something doesn’t go our way, we can
choose to have a bad attitude and act in ways that slow the process or express
our displeasure. Or we can choose to act
in support of the outcome even if it was not what we preferred. We can choose the discipline of supporting
the other direction even though our heart may not be in it as a way of training
and bringing our heart along.
When I was a
student at Bluffton, plans we being made for Centennial Hall. It was to be a building in the center of
campus that would be quite large and contain more classroom and office space
along with a better computer lab. The
building was an important improvement to campus, but I didn’t feel like that
was the right place for the building for a few reasons, one being that it would
be built on top of a space that had been set aside for natural habitat.
It bothered me
enough that I decided to send a well thought out and polite e-mail to Lee
Snyder, the president at Bluffton at the time, expressing my opinion. I did it thinking that it would be the end of
the discussion, but to my surprise she replied and asked to set up a meeting to
talk further. So one afternoon, I went
to her office where she asked to hear more about my thoughts and then told me
more about why they made the choice that they did and what some of their longer
term plans for the campus were.
We had a nice
conversation. Neither of our minds was
changed. I still disagreed with the
location and she still believed it to be the best plan, but it meant a lot to
me that she chose to talk with me about it.
Now I could have harbored ill feelings toward her for not changing her
mind or I could have chosen to protest the building since I still had my
opinion. But instead I made it a point
to be one of the few students who took time out of their day to be present for
the ground breaking ceremony for the new building. I choose to act in support of it even though
that wasn’t where my heart was as a discipline to correct my attitude.
As an aside to
that, President Snyder ended her time at Bluffton in 2006. And to this day when I see her as I did while
I was out in Phoenix, she knows me by name and we have a cordial conversation
together. That would likely not be the
case had I not chosen to check my attitude through acting in support.
Look for the
Blessing in the Trial
Third, we should
look for the blessing in the trial. Many
of us have and all of us will experience trials and difficulties in our
lives. These are challenging and they
are painful, but they are unavoidable.
We can’t control our circumstances, but we can control how we approach
them. We can choose to engage our
circumstances with an open eye for how God is moving in the midst of them.
What’s more is that
we know that in all things God works for the good. We know that even in bad circumstances, God
can and does use those circumstances to bring about good things. And as these beatitudes remind us, there are
blessings for us even as we mourn or as we hunger for righteousness. And so I believe that it is important in the
midst of our trials to look for the blessing that God has for us.
As you know, Beth
has two brothers with Down syndrome.
Joel, the older of those two, is her biological brother. Beth has shared with me about the pain and
the mourning that went along with Joel’s birth.
Her parents did not know that he had Down syndrome until he was
born. When they discovered this, they
went through a process of mourning the “perfect” child that they had been
anticipating. They mourned the loss of
their dreams for his future.
But as one of our
beatitudes tells us, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be
comforted.” There have been many
blessings that have come along with Joel and who he is. The joy and the level of love and acceptance
that Joel is capable of far exceeds that of many adult men. And though no one would ask to have a child
with down syndrome, Beth’s family has experienced the blessings that come along
with the challenges and have embraced their circumstances.
In fact, they
embraced their circumstances to the point of adopting Micah, Beth’s youngest
brother, who also has Down syndrome. And
while once again, there are challenges that come with that, there are also
tremendous joys as well. But often
times, we need to open our eyes to see the blessings that God has for us in the
midst of or as a result of our trials.
Conclusion:
Matthew 5:1-12 is the opening of the
Sermon on the Mount and it contains the beatitudes. These serve in part as encouragements for us
to be the attitude that God desires.
They teach us that the kingdom of heaven is for those in need. That we are to live into upside down kingdom
realities and that we will be persecuted for doing so. How have these teachings shaped your
attitude? Take a moment to consider this
for yourself.
{Pause}
With this in mind, I invite you in
the coming week to be intentional about checking your attitude, to act in
support even when it differs from your preference, and to look for the
blessings even in the midst of the trials.
Let’s pray together. {Pray}
Amen.
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