The Best Meal You’ll Ever Eat

The students all gathered around the teacher in the high school culinary class. They were excited as she gave the instructions to make Rice Krispie treats. The recipe was given, each of the students was assigned a different part of the recipe, and then they stirred it all together. One of them brought 6 cups of Rice Krispies. One of them brought 4 tablespoons of butter. And one brought 4 tablespoons of salt.

If you know much about cooking, you see the problem immediately. Four tablespoons of salt is way too much for just about any recipe, especially for something sweet like Rice Krispie treats. Needless to say, it was a learning experience for the class, but not much of a treat for anyone to eat.

Hang onto that story and that concept as we delve back into the Sermon on the Mount. We are back for a second week in a row. When the Worship Team met last summer, they saw the Sermon on the Mount in the lectionary, and thought that there was wisdom in pausing there for just a bit longer. Like we talked about last week, when Jesus sat down on that mountain, he was delivering a different kind of wisdom. It was a wisdom that was “counter-order” from what the world around him was doing. Counter-culture. Counter-Empire. Counter-status quo.

To describe this counter-order ethic, Jesus used the language of wisdom literature…

• Like Proverbs 11: “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but wisdom is with the humble.”
• Or Ecclesiastes 4: “Better is one handful of peace than two handfuls of toil”
• Or Psalm 37: “The meek shall inherit the land.”

Sound familiar? Jesus lifted up these concepts of humility and meekness and peace, counter-order examples of wisdom, and reframed them for a new time and place. Even as the Roman Empire preached violence and arrogance and war, Jesus told them that those who live according to a different ethic will be blessed.

A lot of scholars suggest that Jesus seemed to mean a couple of things when he used this word—sometimes translated as “blessed,” or sometimes as “happy.” One, he seemed to be describing an eschatological future. While this world continues to live by the values of Empire, one day there will be an eternal Kingdom that will live differently. As well, Jesus also seems to suggest that this eschatological truth works its way backwards into the world today. Those who live according to these values will actually find themselves more blessed than those who found themselves chasing after an overpowering destruction of those who are different than they, or a violence and arrogance that marks political power-players. They suggest that Jesus was telling them with a straight face that this is actually the better way to live.

Poor in spirit. Mourning. Meek. Righteous. Pure in heart. Merciful. Peacemakers.

But then, Jesus tells them the rest of the story. “When you live in this counter-order way, the current order isn’t going to like it much. You will find yourselves out of step and out of favor by those in charge of this world.” Verse 10 continues in the same pattern: “blessed are those who are persecuted.” But then, it’s like he’s afraid that they might not get this point. So he stops and points a finger. “No really. Blessed are you (except he uses the plural)…blessed are y’all when you get persecuted. Because that means you are doing something right.”

But what that means, then, is that some people take the Beatitudes to say that they can act however they want. Or say whatever they want. Or live however they want, and if someone doesn’t like it, then they are victims of persecution. The Beatitudes can turn into something like a blunt object.

And even preachers have fallen into this. Perhaps you have heard a sermon or a hundred about how then we are to live by this ethic. A one-size-fits-all prescription for everyone to do the same. It usually ends up with us standing up here, waving our arms, using a fair amount of verbal violence in the demand that we become people of peace! With arrogant clarity, we stand up here telling people to just be more humble!

But the more I live life, it seems like the Beatitudes are not a one-size-fits-all endeavor.

• We should work for peace, but what does that mean for someone who constantly sacrifices their needs just to “keep the peace”?
• We should be merciful, but what does that mean for someone who allows others to walk all over them?
• We should be humble, but what does that mean for someone who deep down doubts that they have any value, even in the eyes of God?

In contrast, I like the way that scholar Amy Robertson talks about the Beatitudes. She goes back to a concept from the Hebrew scriptures, to the word anavah. Anavah is often translated as humble, or meek. In fact, it is the word from Psalm 37: the anavim shall inherit the land.

But it is not humble in the way that we as preachers sometimes use it, like a blunt object. Anavah means that we work to take up just the right amount of space in this world. To take up the space in the world that is rightly yours, and not shrink back from it, or take more than is rightly yours. Robertson reminds us that some of us are programmed by cultures and our families to take up all the air in the room, and some are programmed to make ourselves small. But the concept of anavah suggests that both—taking up too much space or too little—denies the way that we are made to live together in community and healthy relationship. It rejects the way that God has created us. Anavah is a holy living that works to know and live into that right amount of space. For a lot of us who have been given a lot of privilege in the world, that means humbling ourselves and allowing others to take up more room. And for a lot of us who have been told to sit still and be quiet, or that we aren’t worthwhile, anavah invites us to step into that space.

So an anavah reading of the Beatitudes means something more complex than this blunt object: always be smaller. This word and this concept, which Jesus seems to be referencing, implies a right seeing and a right-sizing of who God made us to be. Robertson quotes the wisdom of Rabbi Hillel the Elder, who lived about a hundred years before Jesus was born:

• If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
• If I am only for myself, who am I?
• If not now, when?

The anavah that inspired Jesus might inspire us, as well. What are the ways that we should be more than the world tells us we should be…ways we should be who God created us to be? And what are the ways that we should lower ourselves from the pedestal that the world puts us on…ways we should be who God created us to be?

To demonstrate this way of living, Jesus told a mini parable about salt. He told them that the right amount of salt will make a dish worth eating. But there are those who think that they don’t have enough to offer the world, so they shrink back and ignore the gifts that God has given them. But Jesus reminded them that just a little salt goes a long way to change the flavor of the whole dish. In contrast, there are some in the world who come on like four tablespoons of salt. They think they know it all and live out of an arrogance that ends up ruining the Rice Krispies in which they live. The key is to find, and know, and live into the space for which we were created.

Philip Yancey demonstrates this concept in his book The Jesus I Never Knew. He writes about his memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his approach to the famed civil rights leader. He writes, “Against all odds, against all instincts of self-preservation, [Dr. King] stayed true to the principle of peacemaking. He did not strike back. Where others called for revenge, he called for love. The civil rights marchers put their bodies on the line before sheriffs with nightsticks and fire hoses and snarling German shepherds…I grew up in Atlanta, across town from Martin Luther King Jr., and I confess with some shame that while he was leading marches in places like Selma and Montgomery and Memphis, I was on the side of the white sheriffs with the nightsticks and German shepherds. I was quick to pounce on his moral flaws and slow to recognize my own blind sin. But because he stayed faithful, by offering his body as a target but never as a weapon, he broke through my moral calluses. The real goal, King used to say, was not to defeat the white man, but to ‘awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor and challenge his false sense of superiority…The end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community.’ And that is what Martin Luther King Jr. finally set into motion, even in racists like me.”

Yancey understood anavah. He learned that he had to step back in order for King and others to be able to step forward. Had to humble himself so that others could become what God had truly created them to be. Had to practice peace, in the context of beloved community.

Today, Christ calls us to ask how we might follow the example of Yancey, in following the example of Christ. May we learn these ways together in the days ahead.