We invite those of you who enjoy our sermons to join our church community for worship whenever you are in Galena on a Sunday morning. We would be happy to see you.

​​

The World Turned Upside Down

Matthew 5:1-12

February 1, 2026

​

There is a wonderful story in one of William White’s books about a young woman who gave birth to a son. At his baptism, an old man comes and gave him a blessing and a gift. The gift was to have one wish granted. The mother, wanting the best for her son, wishes that he would be loved by everyone he met. The wish was granted, and as often happens in these kinds of stories, that gift became tragic.

 

Everyone loved him so much that he never lacked for anything and experienced terrible emptiness. He could have anything he wanted just by asking and though he was loved by everyone, he had real no friends. He became cynical, bitter, and downright dishonest since he never experienced any consequences to his actions.

 

When his mother died, the same old man returned and offered the young man another wish. He agreed and wished that the original wish be changed, so that he might love everyone he encountered. It was only then that he finally experienced happiness.

 

In much the same way, the Jesus’ teachings in what we now call the Beatitudes take our expectations of the way the world works and flips them totally upside down. 

 

That’s important to note since biblical scholars tell us that beatitudes were common sayings in Jesus’ day. Typically, they were proverbs describing the way the world works. An example of that might be, “Blessed are those who are wealthy for they will be freed from day-to-day worries.” But Jesus turns that tradition on its head. 

 

Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor.” “Blessed are the hungry.” “Blessed are the meek.” It’s as if he were pointing out every possible category of person who is down and out — the poor, the oppressed, the grieving, the hungry, even those who wrestle with doubt or who don’t know how to pray and never come to worship. It’s as if Jesus sees blessings in the least likely people and least likely situations. 

 

To be sure, those were the very people Jesus was preaching to that day on the mountainside. The vast majority of the crowds following Jesus in those early days were people who were able to track him down because many of them were unable to find work or they may have been swindled out of their lands through the semi-legal scheming of the wealthy and well-connected. 

​

More often than not, Jesus’ crowds were filled with the poor, the dispossessed, the downcast and downtrodden. Perhaps that’s why they were the very people Jesus was pronouncing a blessing on in spite of the way the surrounding culture rejected them. Jesus went so far as to say, “your reward is great in heaven.” 

 

Surely that must have made them feel at least a little better about their situations, but they also had to wonder how and when these incredible blessings would become tangible in their lives. 

 

Those pronouncements must have sounded like wonderful future blessings, but they seemed to offer nothing to those who suffered in the present. Yet, according to William Barclay — and many, many other commentators — the first thing to note about the Beatitudes is that their grammar makes it clear that Jesus is talking about life in the here-and-now, not in some idealized heavenly kingdom to come. As Barclay puts it, “It is not something into which the Christian will enter, it is something into which he [or she] has already entered.” 

 

In fact, the word translated as “blessed” means essentially a self-contained joy — that is, a joy that exists regardless of any kind of circumstances in life, good or bad. To quote Barclay again, “This word describes the joy which has its secret within itself, that joy which sorrow and loss, and pain and grief, are powerless to touch, that joy which shines through tears, and which nothing in life or death can take away.” 

 

If we really dare to follow Christ, in spite of the prevailing culture, our faithfulness will be its own reward. Jesus never promises in the Beatitudes that we will succeed. only that we will be blessed. In fact, “Reinhold Niebuhr, who was one of the Twentieth Century’s leading theologians, always condemned those who tried to make a success story out of the cross. By the world’s standards, Jesus failed. [But] winning isn’t everything. Paul said that he […] ‘finished the race,’ not that he…won.” 

 

Sydney Harris once wrote a newspaper column that started out by saying: “I walked with a friend to the newsstand the other night and he bought a paper, thanking the owner politely. The owner, however, did not even acknowledge it. ‘A sullen fellow, isn’t he?’ I commented as we walked away.”

 

‘Oh, he’s that way every night,’ shrugged my friend. ‘Then why do you continue to be so polite to him?’ I asked, and my friend replied, ‘Why should I let him determine how I’m going to act?

 

And why should we allow the standard reactions of the culture around us become our responses? We need to practice the self-giving way of the cross. As someone once said, “The way of the cross is not the way of the world. But it is the way that leads home.” 

 

So how do we follow that way in a practical sense? The first step is to change our perspective away from how this world trains us to see. William Willimon makes that point this way:  

 

“Sometimes we come to church thinking that church is mostly about doing, motivating to do better, acting. But sometimes at its best, church is a way of seeing, a matter of vision. I’ve got a friend who defines Christianity as training in how to pay attention. It is so easy to get distracted in this life by false images of success, and false images of failure. Church is a way of seeing.”

 

To understand that point even more deeply, let’s focus on the first of the Beatitudes, which says:  “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

 

Let me offer you an alternative version of this Beatitude that comes from Eugene Peterson’s modern paraphrase of the Bible called The Message. Peterson puts that verse this way, “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and God’s rule.” Let’s explore what that means. 

 

In the l600s, Rene Descartes wrestled with a thought experiment. In essence, he wondered what a human being could truly know if they weren’t certain that they could trust the evidence of their own senses. What is left if almost everything is torn away?

 

Descartes decided that without their senses, a human being would be left simply with their own thoughts — thoughts that might be trustworthy or might not be. But then he realized that if there are thoughts, then there has to be someone to think those thoughts.

 

Therefore, even if someone were to doubt everything else, they can’t logically doubt their own existence — a conclusion that he summarized in the famous phrase, “I think, therefore I am.” 

 

In today’s Beatitude, Jesus asks what is left when everything superfluous is stripped away from a human being? When — like Job, the supremely tragic figure of the Old Testament — all of their possessions, their family and their even health is taken away?

 

According to Jesus, what is left is the utter certainty that even those who are distraught and devastated remain in the loving and protective presence of God. When all else is removed, God remains. Or to paraphrase Descartes, “I live, therefore I am loved.” 

 

When my father was in the last year of life, Parkinson’s Disease had reduced him to being almost completely bed-ridden, totally unable to care for himself and, even worse, drifting in and out of reality. He had been vibrant and vital and deeply involved with other people all his life. But the disease took all of that away. 

 

Even in those moments when he was fully aware of his surroundings and tried to engage with others, his body betrayed him by garbling his speech in its journey from his brain to his vocal cords — until those he was trying to communicate with were completely unable to understand him.

 

So he would lay in bed, totally locked into his own little world, a world that is bounded by the gray cells of a brain that he knew he can no longer depend on. What was left for him? Where was his hope?

 

I can’t state this with absolute assurance since I had no way to enter into that world. However, I believe that even in those terrible conditions, my father’s hope remained firmly planted in his Lord, who is probably even more palpably present to him in those circumstances than in his many decades as a pastor. As Jesus said, “You’re blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and God’s rule.” That said, what about you and me? Do we have to wait until everything else has been ripped away to experience the assurance and presence of God in our lives? I would hope the answer to that question is an obvious no. 

​

Surely, when we come to the end of our ropes and we finally look up — away from all the frills and distractions of this world — we will discover that the One who has been holding the other end of the rope we’re dangling from is God.

 

God is always with us in good times and bad, in joys and sorrows. Blessed are those whose awareness of God's constant presence fills their hearts and their actions with joy. 

 

Jesus promises us that life’s tragedies do not prove God’s displeasure with us, Instead they help to reveal God’s love and care for us. In fact, Jesus says if you really want to encounter God at work in our world, look for the blessings that come beyond the tears of the down-and-out. And in the midst of joys, we have the blessing of knowing that God is right there with us, enlarging and enriching our lives beyond even our greatest hopes.

 

As my late friend Paul Kabo once wrote, “God knows what you need. God provides everything you need. How blest are you when in all your struggles to survive you come to the place where you realize how much you need God in order to live. How blest are you at that moment when you discover you cannot get all you need, but you can receive all you need. No one can get salvation, the kingdom of heaven, eternal life. Everyone can receive this gift from God. How blest are you when you discover where the getting ends and the gift begins.

 

“The poor are not blessed because of their poverty. The rich are not blessed because of their wealth. The pious are not blessed because of their religiousness. And for heaven’s sake, those who have [an impoverished] spirit are not blessed because there is nothing particularly spiritual about them. 

 

“Poor or rich, pious or one of no faith, each become blessed when in the course of the daily grind the discovery occurs in which one confronts their great need for God. For when you have realized your need for God, the gift of the kingdom of heaven is yours. Take it. Receive it.” Amen.

​

Jim McCrea

​