Weekly Sermon: 02-01-2026 - Season of Light, Love, and Mission

The Holy Gospel according to Matthew.

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he sat down,

his disciples came to him, and he began to speak, and he taught them, saying,

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek,

for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds

of evil against you falsely on my account.

Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.

For in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, O Christ.

Thank you.

When Jesus sees the crowds in our passage today,

he does not begin with healings, with commandments, with parables,

or even asking for someone's lunch to feed the people.

Jesus looks at the poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, those for whom life

has gone wrong, who hunger and thirst for righteousness and something good,

and he calls them the blessed ones,

the ones being smiled upon by God, the lucky ones, the ones getting the good stuff.

Jesus looks at the very people who feel small, afraid, disoriented,

heart sick about the state of the world, the chaos in their community,

the crises in their families.

And Jesus says, you are not forgotten.

You are not outside of God's favor.

You are really and truly the blessed ones.

Maybe today, hearing this, it sounds different.

Because so many of us, so many in Minnesota, so many across the country and

the world are carrying grief and anger and fear.

Fear about violence, worry about civil unrest, distress about the use of force

against those exercising their rights,

fear about safety, and real confusion about the future of our communities and our country.

Some feel powerless. Some feel unheard.

Some feel like the ground beneath us is shifting.

Jesus sees all of this on the faces in front of him, including our faces today,

and the grieving and angry and brokenhearted faces in Minnesota and across the

country and in our conflict-ridden, unsettled world.

And into all of that, Jesus does not offer a political slogan or strategy.

He offers a way of being human.

But I venture to guess that we struggle with his words, his solution, his vision.

And we wonder, is this really a time for the Beatitudes?

Because honestly, the Beatitudes sound naive, don't they?

Are we allowed to say that in church? Are we allowed to admit that around other Christians?

I don't know. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the merciful.

Blessed are the peacemakers. In a world that's driven by domination,

by force and outrage, this sounds, well, downright foolish.

But isn't that just where the Apostle Paul meets us today in the first chapter of 1 Corinthians?

The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing,

Paul says, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

Well, the cross does not look like power. It looks like losing.

It looks like weakness. It looks like love that refuses to retaliate.

Like love that refuses to match violence with violence.

And Paul is bold enough to say, well, that is exactly how God works.

God chooses what the world calls foolish to shame the wise.

God chooses what the world calls weak to shame the strong. And God shows up

not in domination, but in self giving love, love that in the end has the power to overcome death.

So when Jesus blesses the poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek,

he is not romanticizing suffering.

Jesus reveals where God is already at work, and he reveals where the kingdom is being built.

Jesus says, Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

This is not a command to feel sad, but it is permission to tell the truth.

To mourn is to admit that things are not as they should be.

Lives have been lost. Trust has been broken.

Communities are afraid. People feel unsafe, unheard, and unseen.

Mourning is not weakness. Mourning is spiritual honesty and strength at its best.

To mourn Alex Pretty and Renee Good is to demand honesty that things are not as they should be.

Jesus says the ones who dare to face reality without numbing,

without pretending, without hardening their hearts, those are the ones who will

encounter God's comfort.

Not shallow reassurance, but the deep presence of God who has also suffered,

who has also wept, who has also been wounded by violence.

And there, there you are fully human and fortunate and lucky and blessed to

have the courage to live in the truth and the comfort of the God who holds you

in the world that is not yet right.

Because that is where God is at work through you and in you.

Jesus says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Notice he does not say, blessed are those who are satisfied.

No, he said, blessed are those who hunger and who thirst.

That is the longing for a world where people are treated with dignity,

not escorted to the car during an immigration arrest in their underwear,

wrapped in a blanket in the dead of winter.

This is the hungering for a justice that applies to all human beings made in

the image of God, even when a rest is required.

Where truth matters, where power serves life rather than crushing it,

This is a holy longing, hunger and thirst for right relationships.

And here is where the cross reshapes us.

Hunger and thirst for righteousness is not the same as hunger and thirst for revenge.

It is not winning at all costs. It cannot be fueled by hatred.

Our anger must be transformed and channeled at the cross so that it can be fueled

by love for our neighbor.

Even the neighbor with whom we disagree.

This kind of righteousness can look slow. Oh, so slow.

Oh, maddeningly slow that we have to go back to the cross and transform our

anger at how dang slow it is.

It grows like a seed rather than a burst.

And oh, I'm one of those people who loves the burst and not the seed.

Gosh darn it. and yes to

the world it looks foolish yet there

when you hunger and thirst for

righteousness you are fully human and fortunate and lucky and blessed because

you will be filled with a right relationship with God and you will know that

Jesus relationship with you heals It heals your heart and your soul.

And you will know that the righteousness of Jesus restores us even now,

right now, today at this table and with these prayers and with us singing together,

even when the world has not yet come into the fullness of the kingdom,

because this is where God is already at work in you and through you.

What a blessing it is to experience that.

Jesus says, blessed are the merciful and the peacemakers.

Mercy does not mean ignoring harm. Peacemaking does not mean pretending everything is fine.

Mercy means we refuse to let bitterness have the last word in our hearts.

Because each of us requires grace at the end of the day.

I'm 63. three. I haven't had a perfect day yet, and you all know I've been trying.

You know how hard I try. I clench my teeth so hard at night.

I'm trying in my sleep.

I have to have a three-year-old's toothbrush because I'm trying so hard to brush the sin out of my gums.

I've told all of you this. None of us are perfect.

And the same is true for every other person on the planet, especially when we

stop calculating that someone else's sin is somehow worse than our own.

We're all standing in the need of grace, no matter what it is.

Peacemaking means we work for a world where truth and reconciliation meet.

Jesus does not bless the peace lovers.

Well, that's all of us. He blesses the peacemakers,

the ones who step into the tension without violence,

who speak truth without contempt because they've been here, who seek accountability

without dehumanizing the other person or the other group. This is really hard.

The peacemaking requires courage and the Holy Spirit because our instinct,

my instinct, is to go toward outrage or withdrawal.

You know, we were in Orlando this past week visiting the most beautiful granddaughter in the world.

And at the airport coming home on Friday, you know, the Orlando airport is all

trams, and here, you know, you have to get on a tram to go anywhere, even gate eight.

So we were on the tram, and then we got to our gate, and other passengers at

the gate told us a story that happened on their tram, and they said there was so much tension.

I mean, wasn't everybody just at Disney World, the happiest place on earth.

There was so much tension on their tram to get to the gate that a fight nearly broke out.

And a woman stepped in between these two men and she pushed out her arms and

she said, we're not doing this here.

And she stopped the fight. She was a courageous peacemaker where God was at work.

On the cross, Jesus absorbed violence without returning it.

And he exposed injustice without becoming unjust.

This is not passivity. It is the strongest thing that love can do.

Jesus calls us into this kind of bravery, love that tells the truth while it refuses to hate.

And there, when you are merciful,

when you are a peacemaker, you are fully human and fortunate and lucky and so

blessed because you are embraced and filled with God's mercy.

And you see God clearly overcoming death with life through the cross,

which is working in you and through you.

That is what God has done for Renee Good and Alex Pretty. They see God.

And even in the tragedy of their deaths, we trust that God is still at work,

bringing light even when we can't see it bringing kingdom work in those who love and follow.

Jesus ends with this, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake.

So when you feel misunderstood for choosing mercy, when you feel out of step

with the culture of outrage, when you feel insignificant for choosing love over

dominance, you are not alone.

You are walking the same road Jesus walked with all of us by your side.

The Beatitudes are not instructions on how to avoid suffering.

They are a promise that suffering for love is never wasted in God's kingdom.

God uses all of it.

God uses every act of love.

For the kingdom does not come through domination.

It comes through the cross of Jesus Christ, a love so powerful,

a love so powerful that God could use this love to defeat sin, death, and the devil.

I love that phrase from Martin Luther.

God defeats sin, death,

and the devil with love so powerful that it rose Jesus from the dead and gave

him a victorious life in the whole universe that is also a life for us, eternal life.

And we trust the power of this eternal love of God, which is more powerful than even death itself.

So we trust that the kingdom comes through foolish,

beatitude people like you and me who are filled with the love of Christ Jesus,

which has the power to defeat death,

which makes us shaped by the cross.

And so filled with this kind of spirit, we can tell the truth about our grief without losing hope.

We can long for justice without surrendering to hate hatred.

We can engage the world without becoming hardened or embittered. We pray.

We listen. We refuse to caricature those who see things differently.

We support what protects human dignity and the common good we act in ways that

align with the mercy that we have received and we are filled with hope.

Because the Beatitudes are not wishful thinking.

They are the map of where God is already working and where God is bringing in the kingdom.

Where people are honest enough to mourn, God is there.

Where people ache for what is right, God is there. Where mercy interrupts bitterness, God is there.

Where someone stops two angry people and says, we're not doing this here,

God is most definitely there.

This world began at the cross, and it is growing steadily,

stubbornly through ordinary people like you and like me who choose the foolish

beatitude way of Jesus Christ.

And one day, Jesus Christ will finish what he started.

And until that day comes, the kingdom will come like this. every time you refuse

to hate someone who has made you afraid.

And the kingdom will come every time you choose mercy when outrage is so much easier.

And every time you work for justice without losing your soul.

And so I encourage you this week to ask, where can I live those foolish Beatitudes today?

And you are most fully human, so lucky,

so fortunate, and so fully blessed because that foolish cross-shaped love is

where the kingdom is breaking in through you and in you. Let the church say amen.

Go in peace to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly, shining the light

of Christ as you love, serve, and welcome all.

Thanks be to God and we will.