This morning I listened to a message from Rob Bell called “Blessed are the Poor in Spirit.” I have spent a good part of my day reflecting on this teaching, wondering how we are doing as a church in carrying on Jesus’ message of welcome to the ‘poor in spirit.’
Here is my transcription of part of his message:
The moment we look down on somebody because they aren’t as disciplined, hard-working, upright, smart, responsible, moral, God-fearing, Bible-believing, or Jesus-trusting as we are because they’ve made idiotic, stupid, immoral choices again, and again, and again – at that moment we are in fact rich in spirit and Jesus isn’t announcing anything to us. The gospel is the announcement that in your pathetic, bedraggled, confused, morally ambiguous state in which there is nothing good within you God announces “I’m on your side.”
Perhaps we could say it this way. If you are a church then, and you are a gathering of people who take seriously the Gospel pronouncement of Jesus, then you have to embrace the simple truth that before it’s a theology, or a system, or a doctrine, or a church, or a movement, or an institution, or a worldview, or a way, or a perspective, it’s an announcement. God has sent his Son into the world, His one and only Son, because God so loved the world. And this Son did not come to judge or condemn, He came to save. And He begins His epic Sermon on the Mount by starting not high but low with an announcement: a shocking, jarring, strangely counterintuitive, exuberant, healing, comforting sort of message. All the people who think “I’m out,” God’s blessing is now pouring out on you. The Creator of the universe who you have been convinced is for all the people who do it right, doesn’t work that way. You don’t earn it; you simply stand in awe of it because it’s an announcement.
It’s not a teaching; it’s not advice; it’s not blame; it’s not neat ways in which the world works. It’s an announcement that God loves. The kingdom of heaven has now become available in a fresh new way for all the people who have absolutely no claim to it and who don’t deserve it. Blessed are those who there’s no reason in the world why they should be blessed.
Think through then a church being a place that begins first and foremost with announcement. Not, “Yes God loves you but… a, b, c, d then it gets really good.” No. Announcement. Announcement. Announcement.
I know that we can do that individually, but there is something to be said about how we have done that corporately, as the body called the church. Have we, the church, become the Pharisees and Sadducees of today putting complicated barriers between people and God? It pains me to think of how many we might be excluding – albeit inadvertently – from knowing that the message of grace, love, and peace includes them.
May we become the church of the announcement – Blessed are you who know there is no reason in the world why God should bless you.
