Matthew 5:1-12
Introduction to the Sermon on the Mount
1 Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2 and he began to teach them.
The Beatitudes
He said:
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
5 Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
As we are introduced to Jesus' first Sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, we see something in the Beatitudes...We see that we blessed if we are poor in Spirit...We are blessed if we mourn...We are blessed if we are meek...We are blessed if we get persecuted because of righteousness...We are blessed if people insult us for believing and talking about Jesus...So from the very start of His First Sermon, we see that life brings suffering to life...
Author C. S. Lewis said these things about suffering...These quotes are from different times and thus are not like a book or in any special order...They are just Lewis' thoughts on pain and suffering we have throughout our lives...And as Lewis says, that Large Pain Megaphone turns our attentions toward Him as it did Job...
Lewis says: I suggest to you that it is because God LOVES us that He gives us the gift of suffering...Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world...You see, we are like blocks of stone out of which the Sculptor carves the forms of men...The blows of His chisel, which hurt us so much are what make us perfect...No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear...Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer...I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief...I have received no assurance that anything we can do will eradicate suffering...I think the best results are obtained by people who work quietly away at limited objectives, such as the abolition of the slave trade, or prison reform, or factory acts, or tuberculosis, not by those who think they can achieve universal justice, or health, or peace...I think the art of life consists in tackling each immediate evil as well as we can...Why love, if losing hurts so much?...I have no answers anymore: only the life I have lived...Twice in that life I've been given the choice: as a boy and as a man...The boy chose safety, the man chooses suffering...The pain now is part of the happiness then...That's the deal...We were promised sufferings...They were part of the program...We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accept it...I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for...Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination...I'm not sure God wants us to be happy...I think He wants us to love, and be loved...But we are like children, thinking our toys will make us happy and the whole world is our nursery...Something must drive us out of that nursery and into the lives of others, and that something is suffering...The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who LOVES, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word "love", and look on things as if man were the centre of them...Man is not the centre...God does not exist for the sake of man...Man does not exist for his own sake...Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created...We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may LOVE us, that we may become objects in which the DIVINE LOVE may rest "well pleased"...We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour...If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it...Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself...Both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective...That is what mortals misunderstand...They say of some temporary suffering, 'No future bliss can make up for it,' not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory...And of some sinful pleasure they say 'Let me but have this and I'll take the consequences': little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin...I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow...Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state, but a process...It needs not a map, but a history, and if I don't stop writing that history at some quite arbitrary point, there's no reason why I should ever stop...Those who are enjoying something, or suffering something, together, are companions...Those who enjoy or suffer one another, are not...It takes courage to live through suffering; and it takes honesty to observe it...The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not...So that the one road for which we now need God's Leadership most of all is a road God, in His Own Nature, has never walked...But suppose God became a Man...He could surrender His will, suffer and die, because He was a Man...Aren't all these notes the senseless writings of a man who won't accept the fact that there is nothing we can do with suffering except to suffer it?...There must, whether the gods see it or not, be something great in the mortal soul...For suffering, it seems, is infinite, and our capacity without limit...If, as I can't help suspecting, the dead also feel the pains of separation (and this may be one of their purgatorial sufferings), then for both lovers, and for all pairs of lovers without exception, bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love...The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who LOVES, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word "love."...We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program...We were even told, Blessed are they that morn...I am suffering incessant temptations to uncharitable thoughts at present; one of those black moods in which nearly all one's friends seem to be selfish or even false...And how terrible that there should be even a kind of pleasure in thinking evil...I can answer that only by hearsay, returned the Guide, for pain is a secret which He has shared with your race and not with mine; and you would find it as hard to explain suffering to me as I would find it to reveal to you the secrets of the Mountain people...But those who know best say this, that any liberal man would choose the pain of this desire, even for ever, rather than the peace of feeling it no longer; and that though the best thing is to have, the next best is to want, and the worst of all is not to want...Kindness consents very readily to the removal of its object – we have all met people whose kindness to animals is constantly leading them to kill animals lest they should suffer...Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering...Tribulations cannot cease until God either sees us remade or sees that our remaking is now hopeless...
We know that in all things (which includes sufferings) God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to His purpose...For those God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the Image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters...And since God's Son suffered for us on the Cross maybe we too must suffer...Maybe it is just a part of living and believing in the Suffering of the Cross...
When it comes to suffering Jesus tells us to rejoice and be glad, because great is our reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you, we will be persecuted because of Him...There is this lesson in Job that when we suffer, it is difficult to love God...That was a belief of the evil one...But Job suffered greatly...Job lost his family, workers (among the many friends), and his wealth...And although he suffered many tragedies, Job continued in his faith with God...Job's faith endured his trials and many sufferings...One might think when one suffers that they sinned...Job's friends did...But when we look at Jesus, He never once sinned...And He was tortured, suffered, and died on the Cross...So that argument does not work...Let us take heart and hope in Jesus...He said in this world you will have trouble... But we can take heart!...Jesus overcame this world and is at the right hand of God in Eternal Life...