“The Blessings of Spiritual Poverty”
Matthew 5:3
As
we begin a Sunday-by-Sunday journey through the Beatitudes, we need to remember
the following realities about them: First: They are the least understood
passages of the Christian Scriptures, difficult to understand because, not only
do they contradict our commonsense approach to life, more often than not they
contradict the values of our culture. Secondly:
Each of the other Beatitudes is encompassed by the first one. Unless our lives are lived in accordance with
the first Beatitude they cannot be lived in accordance with the others. Once we figure out number one the others will
quite naturally fall into place.
What
is this first Beatitude? What is Jesus
telling us about true discipleship?
Being poor in spirit involves knowing, really knowing, one’s absolute
need for God. The poor in spirit are
those who realize the utter destitution of their lives apart from God’s saving
and healing grace. To borrow some of
Eugene Peterson’s imagery, the poor in spirit are those who have quite
literally reached the end of their rope – and know that they’ve reached it.
There’s
an old poster floating around. On it
there’s a picture of a kitten hanging onto the end of a rope. Written under the picture are these words: When you’ve reached the end of your rope,
tie a knot in it and hang on. But
tying knots and hanging on aren’t what spiritual poverty is all about. True spiritual poverty involves not only
knowing that, humanly speaking, we’ve reached the end of our rope – realizing
that our own resources are exhausted and that nothing in this world, not even
the rope, can save us. Spiritual poverty
is about coming to the end of that rope and simply letting go. Trivial as the phrase might sound, it really
is about letting go and letting God.
We
Christians can learn a lot about this from Twelve Step programs like Alcoholics
Anonymous – and many of us have. There
is a book written by an unnamed group of Christians who refer to themselves as Friends in Recovery. The title of that book is The Twelve Steps
for Christians: Based on Biblical Teachings. Let me share with you Steps One, Two, and
Three. One: We admitted that we were powerless over the effects of our separation
from God – that our lives had become unmanageable. Two: [We] came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore
us to sanity. Three: [We] made a decision to turn our will and
our lives over to the care of God…
What are those folks saying?
That when they reached the end of their ropes – when they came to truly
understand that apart from God they were utterly powerless against the effects
of their own sinfulness and the sinfulness of this world – they let go of the
rope. They trusted God enough to turn
their lives – and their wills - over to the God revealed in Jesus Christ. They knew deep down in their hearts, souls,
and guts how much they needed God, how destitute their lives had become apart
from Christ.
It’s a horrible thing to hit rock bottom, to be driven to our knees by
the knowledge that neither the rope nor hanging on to it can save us from the
consequences of our sin. It’s
frightening at that moment to realize that all our attachments to the things of
this world have to be surrendered, and that our only attachment must be to
Jesus Christ. Self-will has to be
replaced by God’s will. Self-dependence
must be replaced for a total dependence on God.
Our pride, the deadliest of the seven deadly sins, must be surrendered,
and then replaced by humility. For
modern, middle class, mainline Protestants that is indeed frightening. Powerlessness is not something we relish
admitting.
But
do you remember the old song Trust and
Obey, for there’s no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and
obey. If we’re going to be able to
live sane, healthy, and fruitful lives, God’s grace must be trusted above all
else. Obeying God – faithfully following
Jesus – must become our way of life.
There is no other way into the
Only
by letting go and letting God can we enter into the blessings of his
kingdom. And these blessings aren’t some
pie-in-the-sky-in-the-sweet-by-and-by promises.
Those who are poor in spirit can know the happiness of the Kingdom right
here and right now. Whatever our
circumstances might be we can possess and be possessed by a deep, deep joy that
the world cannot take away. Such joy is
part of what Paul described in Galatians as the fruitful result of a life
marked by trust in and obedience of God.
When we let go of our pride, surrender our self-will, and abandon all
thoughts of self-dependence – when we become the humble-minded people God
created us to be – then we are able to live as true citizens of the
Kingdom.
That
is in itself a blessing beyond compare.
With reference again to Eugene Peterson’s imagery, when there is less of
us – less of our pride, self-will, and self-dependence – there is more room for
God’s rule in our lives. The more God
rules our lives, the happier, healthier, and more sane we become. The more faithfully we follow Jesus, the more
often will we experience what Paul called a peace - a serenity - that passes
all understanding. Life won’t be
perfect. Bad things will still happen to
us. We won’t be exempted from the
headaches and heartaches of life. What
we will be is happy in Jesus, not having to worry about anything of substance
and able to thankfully turn all our needs over to God.
A
real-life Biblical example of such turning over comes from this morning’s
reading from Psalms. Psalm 51 is King
David’s great prayer of confession and contrition following a confrontation
with the prophet Nathan in which he is brought face to face with the reality of
his adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband. Driven to his knees by that confrontation and
the subsequent death of the son they had conceived in sin, David had come clean
with God. He confessed the horrible
reality of being so driven by his uncontrollable lust that he had seduced and
stolen another man’s wife. He faced up
to being so insulated from reality by his pride, power, and sense of royal
entitlement that he arranged to have that man killed in battle. He admitted wanting Bathsheba, taking her,
getting her pregnant, and then in order to cover his tracks, having a man
murdered. The great and mighty King
David humiliated himself before God. He
surrendered his pride. He let go of the
fantasy of being more powerful than God.
He acknowledged the depth of his spiritual destitution. The king of
He
had reached the end of his rope, realizing that he could neither undo what had
been done nor bring his dead child back to life. For all his power he was powerless. This mighty ruler of a great empire had lost
control of himself and his life. He had
separated himself from God. There was
only one thing that he could do: let go of the rope and turn his will and his
back over to God. In thus surrendering
himself to God he experienced the blessings of spiritual poverty: real joy and
real peace. He trusted and then obeyed
his God for he had learned from his harsh experience that there was no other
way.
Are
we convinced of our utter powerlessness over the effects of our separation from
God? Have our lives spun out of
control? Have we been driven to our
knees by the knowledge of our sinfulness?
If so, let us believe as maybe we’ve never believed before that the God
made known to us in Jesus Christ has the power bring us back to our senses and
help us regain our spiritual health and integrity. Let us surrender our pride, turn our wills
and our lives over to God, and, right here and right now, experience the joy of
his Kingdom. Amen.