“The Good Life”

What is the good life? What do you think?

We seek the good life, all of us, in our own way. It is a quest that drives us all—often drives us off in very different directions (drives some crazy). But Jesus shows the way this morning and in the Beatitudes tells all His saints what the good life is and where it is ever found.

Matthew doesn’t mention anyone prompting Jesus by asking a question or anything. No one appears to have said: “Hey, Jesus, tell us about the good life,” or anything like that. It’s early in His ministry though. But this is something on Jesus’ mind. Something He wants to share with us early on. So He tells.

He’s got a list. “Blessed are the poor in spirit…” is how it starts. makarioV is the word Jesus uses. Literally it means blessed or happy, with a sense of being given a divine favor. Now, we often import lots of complicated ideas into our picture of the good life. Expensive cars, planes, fancy houses, wine cellars, investments, stocks, bonds (not so many credit default swaps anymore though). Clubs to join, friends to keep up with…

Jesus has a simpler picture. For us, the good life is just an end in itself. For Jesus, the good life actually makes you good. That’s why we have this reading on All Saints Day. For Jesus, being a saint is simply enjoying the good life. If your life is good, you’re good. If you’re good, God smiles upon you with His eternal favor. If God’s favor is upon you, well… you are righteous in His eyes, holy, a saint. It’s really that simple for Jesus. If the fruit is good, the tree is good. If you enjoy a happy life, you are happy and holy yourself. Simple as that.

So Jesus says: “blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Where our good life has lots of high achievement, wealth, and stuff to go with it, Jesus’ happy life, His good life starts with poverty. With nothing. Less you have, the happier you are. But it’s not even losing our material stuff that Jesus has in mind with His blessed poverty. It’s poverty of spirit that He is thinking of. And what is that, exactly?

To be poor in spirit, to have nothing spiritually is to be a beggar. It is to have come to a place where you realize that the best that you can be and achieve spiritually is still nothing. Zero. So like a beggar, the poor in spirit have their souls empty and open for God to fill. They aren’t doing anything to become holy. They’ve got their hand out by the temple (where everyone in Jesus’ day went to beg). They are waiting for God’s divine gifts to fill them.

And Jesus says these beggars, the poor in spirit, the open handed, will receive nothing less than the kingdom of heaven itself. Heaven is so vast, so great a gift, you see, that if you’ve got anything in your hand, anything to which your spirit clings other than God the Father, well then: you don’t have the room, spiritually, for heaven! Heaven requires an emptying of self first, a loss of old treasures in order to receive something better. Those who have no spiritual wealth are the ones open to receiving God’s treasure…

“Blessed are those who mourn,” Jesus says. “For they shall be comforted”. Odd second thing on a list of the happy life—mourning. I don’t know about you, but I usually picture the happy folks, as well, happy and not sad. People who are sad and mourning, I usually don’t describe as happy or blessed. But Jesus does. Again, it’s the same thing as what was going on with spiritual poverty. The happiness that we have and hold onto is a small thing; it makes us small, because it keeps our hearts closed tight around something little. God has a happiness that is so vast, so wide, so deep, that it claims the whole person, overflows all other emotion. So just as only the poor in spirit have room enough in their souls for heaven to fill them, so the sad and mourning on earth have the room in their hearts for the comfort of God to fill them completely. The broken, the empty, the sad heart—that’s the one God will comfort and make eternally happy.

Once you see Jesus’ secret of “The Great Reversal”, the rest of the list flows. Blessed are the meek—they shall inherit the earth. The ones who have control of the earth now are anything but meek. They are the self-promoters and office seekers who run the attack ads. They get somewhere. But the meek, the ones who hang back and don’t put themselves forward for divine office are the ones to whom God wills the whole earth.

Happy are the ones who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. Those who will not settle for righteousness that is holy in human eyes, but hunger, thirst for something far better, will get it from God and be filled at last. So also it is the merciful who obtain mercy, the pure in heart who see God, the peacemakers who are called Sons of God, and the persecuted who capture the kingdom of heaven.

Letting mercy flow out of you, empties you and opens you to God’s mercy to fill the void. The pure heart, the heart with nothing but eyes for God will see Him. And the One who makes peace for all will be called Son of God and the sufferings He bears will win heaven.

Now I ask you, who fits this description? Does it sound like anyone you know? I only know One Person who fits this description to a T—Jesus Christ. You can’t get any poorer than emptying Yourself of all divine privilege and prerogative and taking the form of a servant and dying for the world’s sins. You can’t mourn anymore than Jesus did over a lost and sinful world. He was the meek one, the hungry and thirsty one (for righteousness). He was the One who showed mercy to all. He is the pure in heart who sees God the Father always. He made Peace for all by His blood. He was persecuted for righteousness, yet by His death won heaven for all. Jesus is the happy, the blessed One, and His alone is the good life.

Which is sort of depressing at first glance. I could never do that. You could never do that, right? It just isn’t in us, is it?

But the last lines are Gospel for us. Jesus says “Blessed are you, happy are you, when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

When you and I share the cross, the sufferings of Christ through faith alone in His Gospel and Sacraments, when people speak against us for this, we share in Christ’s poverty and woes and thus share His kingdom as well. To share even a small bit of Jesus’ cross, gives you the whole lot, all of heaven, His good life as your own. Whoever is Baptized in Jesus’ Name shares His cross. Whoever eats His body and drinks His blood has gotten his or her share in the sufferings and triumph of Christ. It will bring some hard knocks on this earth, but a weight of glory in the age to come you simply cannot imagine.

Just so, the good life of Jesus has now become yours. And it will sustain you with all the saints in the Peace that surpasses understanding, and guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. Amen.