SUNDAY SERMON: Heaven enough for me

By Rev. Stephen Baldwin

NT: Matthew 5.1-12

Today’s New Testament reading is one of the most well-known passages in the Bible. We know it as the Beattitudes. Jesus goes up on a mountain in front of his disciples and a crowd of curious villagers to preach a sermon. The Sermon on the Mount was his “I Have a Dream” sermon; the sermon he would be known for from that moment forward, both by those who were fortunate enough to hear it that day and the billions of people who would read it in the thousands of years to come. And it begins with…the beatitudes. 

But here’s the thing. That word isn’t in the original New Testament story, which was written down in Greek. It was a headline added hundreds of years later in Latin. 

So what does the Latin word for “beatitude” even mean? It’s a word we might only ever say in reference to this story or on a religious word search. Any guesses what it means? Go ahead and pull out your phone to ask AI for help if you want to! 

 “Beattitude” means supremely blessed. Not just blessed…supremely blessed. It means you didn’t just get an A on the test; you got an A+! You didn’t just get a gold star from the teacher; you got a sparkly gold star with a scratch & sniff surface that glows in the dark! 

Who is supremely blessed? All those people is talking to–his disciples, who left their families and jobs to follow him, the crowds of Jews and Gentiles, farmers and villagers, ordinary people who had no social status. In Jesus’ eyes, by Jesus’ words, they are supremely blessed. Not in the world’s eyes, but in his eyes. 

And it’s not just those he’s talking to that are supremely blessed; it’s also all those that he is talking about–the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, the poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who are peacemakers, and those who are persecuted. Again, not in the world’s eyes, but in Jesus’ eyes. 

His list is specifically of people who are not seen as blessed at all, let alone supremely blessed. Blessed are the poor, says Jesus, yet in our world we demonize poverty and silently cast out those who are poor from our neighborhoods, our teams, and even our churches if they don’t fit in.  Blessed are the meek, says Jesus, yet in our world those who don’t scream the loudest are never heard.  Blessed are the merciful, says Jesus, yet in our world those who show mercy are considered soft or weak. 

For Jesus, the beatitudes are facts of life. Not as the world sees it, but as he sees it. It’s a different way of seeing the world than we normally do. What if we saw others as Jesus does? What if we saw people the world considers to be ordinary as “supremely blessed”? 

Put yourself in the people’s shoes that day on the desert mountain. You’ve seen thisman called Jesus do miraculous things. You’ve heard even more incredible stories. But now he’s talking…to you. 

When he begins to speak, you hang on his every word like frost on the windshield.  He called you “blessed,” and you surely cried tears of joy.  You’ve known so much grief and heartache, your hearts had been broken so many times, you probably didn’t think there was anything left to break or to mend.  You were the lowest of the low in your society—poor, immigrants, disabled, diseased, outcast, an hourly employee.  It would be like Jesus calling migrants in a refugee camp or people living in a homeless shelter or residents of a rural nursing home blessed today. They would be overwhelmed to know that someone loved them.  

After he sits down and begins to speak, Jesus says something blissfully surprising: “Blessed are you.”  They knew what it was like to be blessed out, but not this.  Jesus embraced them just as they were, wrinkles and warts and all, and it had to be overwhelming.  

Here’s the point: We’re reading the Beatitudes today, on All Saint’s Day. The day on the church calendar when we remember the people who have been called from the minor leagues down here on earth up to the big leagues in Heaven. We remember the people who we think of as “supremely blessed,” because of all they did to bless us when they were alive.  

I’ve been reminiscing this week about so many of them in our church. All week, I’ve been thinking about people like Sara Bethel, Faye & Basil Baker, Ann Boone, Weston Guthrie, Philip Graber, Tom Long, Marie Nickell, Bill Wallace, Forrest & Betty Holt, Jack O’Dell, Mary Sue Swink, Rosemary Carter, Betty Ralston, Mary Ellen Cobb, Sonnie Feamster, Mindy Napier, and Don Massey, to name a few. People like Carolyn Arbuckle, Murch Murchison, Melvin & Frankie Bostic, Melvin Hoover, Paula Jackson, Bev Arbuckle, Ralph Blake, Fred Neely, Otis Miles, Buddy Baker, and Bob & Marie Reynolds, to name a few. 

Who exemplifies and personifies the beatitudes in your life? For this All Saint’s Day, I’d like to ask you to share the names of those who supremely blessed your life when they lived here among us, before they went on to Heaven. You can say their name, you can tell a story about them, or you can lift up their name in silent prayer. Let’s all take a few minutes to honor the saints in these ways, as you feel led. 

Thank you for sharing your saints today. I’d like to close today with a poem written by the late Wendell Berry about heaven. I will offer it this morning as a prayer, so let us pray:  

Heaven enough for me

would be this world as I know it, but redeemed

of our abuse of it and one another. It would be

the Heaven of knowing again. There is no marrying

in Heaven, and I submit; even so, I would like

to know my wife again, both of us young again,

and I remembering always how I loved her

when she was old. I would like to know

my children again, all my family, all my dear ones,

to see, to hear, to hold, more carefully

than before, to study them lingeringly as one

studies old verses, committing them to heart

forever. I would like again to know my friends,

my old companions, men and women, horses

and dogs, in all the ages of our lives, here

in this place that I have watched over all my life

in all its moods and seasons, never enough.

I will be leaving how many beauties overlooked?

A painful Heaven this would be, for I would know

by it how far I have fallen short. I have not

paid enough attention, I have not been grateful

enough. And yet this pain would be the measure

of my love. In eternity’s once and now, pain would

place me surely in the Heaven of my earthly love.

— Wendell Berry, from ‘Leavings’

Amen.