Hi Everyone, 

Matthew 5:1-12 (click here for full text)

The sermon on the Mount is the most familiar collected sayings from Jesus and is recorded in St. Matthew's Gospel. It is the Magna Carta of the Christian faith. The sermon begins with a series of revolutionary statements which we know as the Beatitudes: goals or ideals for one who would fulfill the requirements of citizenship in the Kingdom of God. Each beatitude is a challenge. These teachings cut across the ethic of the day. A beatitude is a blessing or announcement of God's favor but have you considered how odd these words must have sounded in Jesus' time as well as our own.

Blessed are the poor in spirit...Blessed are those who mourn...Blessed are the meek.

Those who first heard these words must have puzzled over what Jesus was up to. But in these oddly worded blessings is a promise:
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth."

These blessings at first sound more like curses until one hears the promise attached to each one. Being poor in spirit is no blessing all by itself, but when attached to the promise, it possesses life-changing power.

How much does your life depend on promises? The promises of daily transactions...watch out for the children, pay attention to traffic lights, be courteous to the elderly. And the bigger promises of greater meaning...promises of faithful friendship, love and fidelity in marriage, ones that bind us one to another.

And there are promises that people of faith claim..the promises of God. Pick any of the beatitudes and recall those persons known to you who have heard the promise: faithful souls who endure whatever the moment requires of them, because their lives are held in the arms of a God who is a maker of promises as well as a keeper of promises.

Peace, 

Sheri