Bringing Down the Walls

Matthew 5:3

August 25, 2024 • Mount Pleasant UMC

One of the most sobering experiences in all my travels has been the times we’ve gone from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. The two towns are not that far apart geographically, only about 5 1/2 miles. And I still remember when it was easy to go from one to the other. But in the last decade or so, that journey has become very difficult, certainly for tourists but even moreso for those who live there. That’s because, in order to protect themselves from terrorist attacks, Israel has built a protective wall around much of the area that is controlled by the Palestinian Authority. So now when we go from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, we have to stop at a checkpoint, prove we are tourists, and slowly make our way through an opening in the wall. But those who live in Bethlehem and either have family in Jerusalem or work in Jerusalem have a much longer and more difficult trip, often being detained for a long time. And there are other places, all throughout the country, where barriers are built, some of them real and some virtual. But what all of those barriers demonstrate is a clear line between “us” and “them.” “We” are safe; “they” are not.

As we’ve been talking about the last few weeks, we live in a culture and a world marked by division, by walls both virtual and real. The Olympics that concluded last week are always a bright, shining moment when, for the most part, the world can come together and compete in a safe and unifying environment. But, as we’ve learned over the past few years, as soon as the games are over, the friendliness disappears. Even for us in America, for those two weeks, we are able (for the most part) to put aside partisanship and just be “Team USA.” But now, we are back to building walls and living divided lives.

Walls in the culture. Walls in the church. Dividing lines of hostility, as Paul would describe them (cf. Ephesians 2:14). Is there any hope for bringing down these walls and being one, as Jesus prayed we would be (cf. John 17:21)? We’re exploring that question in these weeks, looking for ways that our world can be “Mended,” and last week we began looking at some tools for healing our lives and healing the world, the first of which was prayer. This week, we turn to a more internal discipline, a personal practice with huge implications for the world around us. That discipline is humility.

Humility is not popular today, would you agree? No candidate for political office calls themselves “the most humble” and we don’t tend to follow “the most humble” leader. You have to wonder what would happen to Moses today, who is described as “more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth” (Numbers 12:3). But I think part of humility’s loss of status is because we have the wrong idea about what it is. We tend to think of humility as doing menial jobs, or being ignored, or doing things no one else wants to do. We might even equate it with someone who feels personally worthless, someone who is constantly criticized and doesn't speak up for himself. So because we misunderstand what humility is, we end up seeing other people as competitors to be defeated or threats to be eliminated. If you don’t believe me, check out any political ad today. We are given very little idea what any candidate stands for, just what they despise about the rest. Rather than pursuing humility, we build walls around ourselves, become easily offended and constantly strive to look good. But the reality behind all of that is our sense of self has become very, very fragile and we’re constantly afraid we won’t come out on top (cf. Villodas, Good and Beautiful and Kind, pgs. 94-95).

Jesus, as you might imagine, had a different idea about how to live life. The verse we read this morning is just one of eight blessings Jesus gives at the very beginning of what we call the “Sermon on the Mount.” He is in Galilee, most likely on a hillside along the coast of the Sea of Galilee, and crowds have gathered. Jesus is becoming known, popular, a celebrity of sorts, and the time has come for him to share his vision of what God’s kingdom should be like. So while he is specifically teaching his disciples (5:1-2), the crowds also get to listen in. He begins, as I said, with eight blessings (nine if you count the one about persecution, but it’s a little different than the rest, so we will stick with eight), and while blessings like these were not unusual in Judaism, Jesus’ blessings are far from what people expected. For one thing, the usual formula for the rabbis was to follow blessings with curses. But Jesus doesn't do that here. Rather than continuing to build the walls that other rabbis built, Jesus instead is giving his followers a new identity rooted in a role reversal. In other words, Jesus says, you think you know how the world works? Get ready for something new (cf. Card, Matthew: The Gospel of Identity, pg. 52)!

Each of these blessings begins with the word makarios, which essentially means “happy.” That’s how the Common English Bible and some others translate it. But notice here that Jesus is not giving an eight-step plan for being happy. You won’t find his list in any bestselling book on “How to Be Happy” or find them discussed in any “Achieving Happiness” podcast. Rather than describing how to be happy or how to be blessed, Jesus is giving examples of people in his own world who are happy (Davis, Come Alive: Matthew, pg. 26). He says to those first followers (cf. Card 52) and to us, “You think you know who is happy? Let me turn your world upside down!” And so he does, even with the very first one: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (5:3). So who are the poor in spirit? Quite simply, they are the humble, and according to Jesus, humility is one thing that leads to blessing, to happiness.

So the word Jesus uses here refers to “absolute and abject poverty.” In other words, when Jesus talks about “poor in spirit,” he’s referring to someone who has no earthly resources whatsoever, nothing to stake their hopes on in this life (Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Volume 1, pgs. 90-91). In Jesus’ day, there were all sorts of rich and important people, but the ones who most responded to the Kingdom of God were the tax collectors and the prostitutes, “the rejects of human society, who knew they were so poor they could offer nothing and achieve nothing. All they could do was to cry to God for mercy; and he heard their cry” (Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, pg. 40). Now, this is not to say that to be “poor in spirit” you have to get rid of everything you have. No, the type of person Jesus is describing is someone who, regardless of their wealth or lack thereof, puts no hope in that. It is someone who has realized that the only lasting hope they have is found in God, and they long to make much of God and less of themselves. It’s not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less. It’s being detached from things but attached to God (Barclay 92), and longing for God above everything else (Keener, Matthew [IVPNTC], pg. 106). Humility means less of me, more of Jesus.

When we’re easily offended by that person on social media who disagrees with us, when we react badly to someone who criticizes us, or when we build a wall against someone who is asking something of us, it is most likely a sign that we need to move more in the direction of being poor in spirit, of learning humility. Humility is part of the path away from brokenness and toward wholeness; it is part of the hope for our world, because the humble “refuse to build a life apart from the love of God” (Villodas 97). The humble are those who walk in the way that Jesus laid out for us. What does that look like?

Well, first of all, the humble have nothing to protect. One of the walls I built and hid behind early in my life was the need to be perfect, the need to be at the top of the game, and so I tended to only engage in activities and groups at which I could excel. If I couldn’t do it well, I didn’t do it, which is why you never found me on the basketball court and probably why I quit baseball after elementary school. A lot of us, though, live our whole lives this way, hiding our failures and deficiencies and allowing people to believe we never make a mistake. And then when I took that attitude into ministry—well, let’s just say the first few years were rough. I mean, I was the one with the seminary degree and the Biblical knowledge. I had to have all the answers. But do you know what? A life like that is exhausting. One of the most important phrases I ever learned consists of three words: “I don’t know.” That’s not an easy thing to say when you’re expected to give answers of some sort on at least a weekly basis. But to admit that there are a lot of things I don’t know and a lot of answers I don’t have has been surprisingly freeing. Suddenly, you have nothing to protect when you admit that you don’t know and can’t do everything. I’ve even learned to say “I don’t know” from the pulpit when there are things I don’t know! I’m not claiming to be humble, and I’m not claiming that I get it right every time. But I’ve found that as I stop protecting my ego, I’m much freer and, hopefully, a little more like Jesus. The “poor in spirit” have nothing to protect (cf. Villodas 97-98).

They also have nothing to possess. Here I come back to what I said a few moments ago, that this is not about whether or not we have property or possessions. It’s not about whether or not we save for the future or have a 401K. This is, instead, about holding those things lightly. It’s about realizing that what we have can be used for the service of God’s kingdom and that we don’t need a lot of stuff to be happy. I think of this every time we have the yard sale here. We all have a lot of stuff. Now, I’m glad you get rid of your stuff and bring it here so it can benefit our missionaries, but we have to admit we have a lot of stuff. And the advertisers spend their days trying to get us to buy more stuff. There’s nothing wrong with having possessions unless they begin to possess you.

This also has to do with how much stock we put in the opinions of others. And this is not about just saying, “I really don’t care what other people think of me,” because some of the same people who say that will then turn around and count how many “likes” they get when they post something on social media. Or we allow the perceptions of other people control what we post online. I’ve known several people throughout the last few years whose lives actually look nothing like the life they post online. Now, I’m not saying you have to air all your dirty laundry on Facebook; plenty of people do that already. What I am saying is that we can be honest about who we are. Everything does not always have to be picture perfect. And so many times we spend so much energy trying to get the perfect picture that we aren’t present with those around us. Our worth is not found in what we possess; “it’s found in being claimed by God” (Villodas 99). The poor in spirit have nothing to possess.

And they have nothing to prove. This may be shocking to you, but hold on: we don’t have to win every argument or prove ourselves to be right in every situation. The poor in spirit live free of the need to justify themselves. Author and philosophy professor Dallas Willard was teaching class one day when a student raised an objection that was both insulting toward his teacher and clearly wrong. Dr. Willard paused for a moment, then said it would be a good place to end the class that day. As the students filed out, a friend asked Dr. Willard, “Why did you let him get away with that? Why didn’t you demolish him?” And Dr. Willard replied, “I was practicing the discipline of not having to have the last word” (Villodas 99-100). I like that phrase: “the discipline of not having to have the last word.” That’s a hard discipline to learn and even harder, I think, to practice. There have been so many times I have wished I could grab that email back I just sent, or take those words back I just said. I had a friend who told me that often he will write out what he wants to say and then save it and not send it. Later, he will go back and revisit it and most of the time, he says, it no longer needs to be said. That’s one way of practicing the discipline of not having to have the last word. Especially when we remember that the real last word will be spoken by Jesus, we are freed from having to prove ourselves in everything. The poor in spirit have nothing to prove.

Several years ago I had a person come into my office very angry. Angry at me, angry at the church, angry at what had happened the weekend before. Not the first time (or the last time) such a thing had happened, but this one sticks out in my mind because I had spent several hours planning what I was going to say and how I was going to respond and, quite honestly, how I was going to put them in their place. And I was ready, or so I thought. The one thing I didn’t really do was pray about it, but in spite of that, when this person came in and sat down and began telling me all the upsetting things that had occurred, the Holy Spirit must have placed his hand over my mouth. In a rare moment of wisdom, I didn’t say anything; I just listened. I didn’t fight against the things that were said about me; I tried to understand. And none of this came from any sort of skill or power I had. There have been plenty of times, before and since, when I have not reacted well. But in that moment, I’ll never forget, the Spirit gave me a sense of what Jesus said in this passage: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (5:3). It was and is enough of a sense that it makes me wonder what our world might be like if people moved more toward humility, toward being poor in spirit. What might it be like if we and those around us had nothing to protect, nothing to possess and nothing to prove? What if our politicians lived out of a sense of service rather than privilege? What if, in our church, we did what Paul advised the Philippians: “In humility value others above yourselves, not looking for your own interests but each of you to the interests of others”? (Philippians 2:3-4). I think, if even just God’s people lived like that, the world might just become a more loving, peaceful, kind and beautiful place.

Jesus once told a parable—though like some of his other parables, I often wonder if this one was “based on a true story.” But, anyway, it’s about two men who go to the temple to pray. One of them is a Pharisee, those law keepers we’ve talked a lot about lately, the ones who thought a relationship with God was about perfectly keeping all 613 commandments in the Old Testament. He comes to the temple, and this is his prayer: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.” It’s funny to me that he thought he had to tell God what he had done, as if God didn’t know. Well, it’s funny to me until I realize that I often do the same thing, tell God things he already knows. But I digress. The other man who came to the temple that day to pray, Jesus says, was a tax collector, someone who wasn’t liked very much. No, that’s not true. He was someone who was hated by most everyone. He was considered a traitor to his people, an outcast from his family, and most believed he wouldn’t be welcomed by God. Apparently he believed that too, because listen to his prayer: “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Any average person, watching such a scene, would admire the piety of the Pharisee and think he was a righteous man. They would despise the tax collector, if they even noticed him there. It’s the Pharisee who is loved by God, right? Jesus says no. According to Jesus, it was the tax collector who “went home justified before God.” And in case those listening didn’t get it, Jesus goes on to explain: “For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (Luke 18:9-14). Elsewhere Jesus says if we draw attention to ourselves, that’s all the praise we will ever get (cf. Matthew 6:1).

For centuries, some in the church have adapted this prayer and used it, just like the tax collector, to remind them of who they are and who he is. It’s often just called “The Jesus Prayer,” and it simply goes like this: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” That’s it. That’s all there is to it. I love this prayer because it’s easy to remember, and it’s powerful for a very short prayer. “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” It’s good for the soul. It reminds me to rely completely on Jesus’ mercy and that I have no other hope anywhere else. Remember it’s not, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on that other terrible person, a sinner.” No, it’s “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” I deal with my own lack of humility and let others deal with theirs. I want to encourage you this week to learn this prayer and pray it several times during the week, maybe once a day at minimum. And watch how it transforms the way you see the world and the way you see yourself.

When we are tempted to build walls against others, moving toward humility reminds us that we are not better than them. We are more like “them” than we care to admit. Humility reminds us that there is a world, not in need of correction, but in need of love. As God’s people move more toward humility, I believe the world can and will be changed. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (5:3). Let’s pray.