The Way It's Going to Be: Matthew 5:1-12 - Third Sunday after Epiphany

Uhde, Friedrich Karl Hermann von, 1848-1911. Sermon on the Mount, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN

What room in your home is the most difficult to keep clean?

For us, it would have to be the kitchen. My wife and daughter are excellent cooks, so I do my part by helping with cleanup. It’s not my practice to leave dirty dishes in the sink, or splotches of spaghetti sauce or cooking oil on the surfaces. But I find that the more effort I put into cleaning the kitchen, the greater the urge for Elizabeth and Rebecca to return to the kitchen to cook or bake something else. Even though we’ve already eaten dinner!

The kitchen table is an equally lost cause. When dinner time rolls around the next day, it’s covered with mail, half-empty bottles, groceries that never made it to the pantry, or numerous other random household objects.

This is the problem with housework—it’s never done. Even if you stay out of a room altogether, dust and cobwebs will still accumulate. 

This is but one demonstration of the impermanency of life. Nothing ever stays the same, and nothing ever lasts forever. This includes, strange as it may sound, the healing miracles of Jesus.

For all the sick people Jesus healed, and for the people he raised from the dead, none of them are still alive today. For every person Jesus healed, there were many more who were not healed, simply for the fact that Jesus could only be in one place at one time. But Jesus didn’t come to earth to perform miracles. He didn’t come to fix people’s problems. Jesus came to announce the coming of God’s kingdom, and to draw people into that new reality. 

I believe that this is why the Sermon on the Mount takes place at the beginning of Jesus’s ministry, before we have any stories of miracles or healing acts.

Click here to read the Scripture text

Right after he called his first disciples, Jesus performs miracles, and people quickly come from all over to be healed of their diseases. But Jesus quickly calls a time-out, goes up onto a mountain, and teaches the crowds about the kingdom of heaven. Every miracle functions as a teaching tool to reveal who Jesus was: that Jesus has ultimate power over the forces of evil; that Jesus has authority to forgive sins; and that God’s kingdom is coming alive in every person who hears Jesus’s words, believes them, and puts them into action. 

However, none of the people Jesus healed—and none of the people who believed in him—got a free pass from suffering or loss. Life for them went on for them just as life goes on for us, even after you or I witness miracles and God answers our prayers in the ways we hoped that he would. 

The biggest mystery of our faith—and the strongest evidence against everything we believe—is that bad things happen to good people. That a loving God reigns over a world full of evil. That God answers some prayers but not all of them as we would have hoped. 

There are no permanent fixes to the troubles of this life. Faith comes with no guarantees that you’re going to live a prosperous and pain-free life. Jesus even warns that righteousness may lead to persecution and that you may suffer for the sake of heaven’s kingdom.

But the sermon on the mount is about truth and promises that are far greater than any miracle or answered prayer: though not all things can be made right in this life, everything will be right in the kingdom of heaven. 

But the kingdom of heaven belongs to those who are poor in spirit. Those who mourn will be comforted. The meek will inherit the earth. All who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled. The merciful will receive mercy. The pure in heart will see God. The peacemakers will be called children of God. And all who suffer for righteousness’s sake will be rewarded.

What this means is that if you suffer, and that suffering continues despite your prayers, you are assured, at the absolute minimum, that you will be made whole in the kingdom of heaven. And God won’t send anyone away empty who comes to him in prayer. You have the Holy Spirit to sustain you in your journey through this life. You have Jesus, alive in your heart through faith, right there with you when all you can to is cry his words, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Miracles happen every day, but we’re usually too preoccupied with other things to take notice.

God works wonders, both big and small. But it takes a grateful heart to notice them. And you can’t give up on God when things don’t go your way.

Furthermore, you won’t see gods works if you are not doing gods work. There is no faster way to suffocate your God-given faith, than by isolating yourself and not doing for others. Following the example of Jesus, and giving yourself in service to the neighbor, on the other hand, means that through the Holy Spirit you will become a maker of miracles, as one of the greatest signs of God’s presence in this hurting world is faith active in love. You know God is there with God’s people care.

It takes faith to take hold of the promises, just it takes faith to take hold of the miracles and answered prayers. But the fact remains: Evil, suffering, and death are becoming a thing of the past.

You are a child of God, and God’s blessings await you, both in this life and the next. 

We have these promises to hold onto when things go wrong—because all will be made right when God’s kingdom comes. All who are empty now will be filled. No one who seeks the kingdom of God and its righteousness will be turned away.

That’s the way it is. And that’s the way it’s going to be.