Preaching Steve Croft: Sermon Series on the Beatitudes - The Poor in Spirit

Delievered at: St Mark's Harrogate 3^rd January 2010 – 8am

Textual Basis: Isaiah 61:1, Matthew 5:3

Today we begin a new sermon series on the Beatitudes, as presented in the Gospel of Matthew. It’s a series that has been devised alongside a particular book by Steve Croft, the Bishop of Sheffield, called “Jesus’ People: What the Church Should do Next”. I’d encourage you to go and get a copy as it’s a book you’ll be hearing a lot of references to over the coming weeks as we look at the Beatitudes individually.

Steve Croft’s basic argument is that organisations often have a character and in that way the Church is no different. And just like a person, the character of an organisation can be formed by its experiences and history. An organisation that has known only success and prosperity will have a different character from that which is used to struggling to survive. As it is with individuals, so it may be with groups of people.

So the book is an attempt - in under 100 pages – to argue that the Church is called to be a community that reflects the character and nature of Jesus Christ to our wider society. And that character, argues Croft, is to be found in the eight statements of the beatitudes found in the first ten verses of Matthew Chapter 5.

A point to stress before looking at the first of these today, is that for Steve Croft each of these statements needs to be seen not through an individual lens, about what it might say to me as an individual, but rather through a corporate lens – how does it speak to us as the body of Christ in this part of the world ?

When we read these texts we often tend to go straight for the individual interpretation: “this is how I am to be and I am to behave.” But Croft argues that in looking at the Beatitudes afresh we need to hear them in the context of how Christians can be together - as values for community living.

So having set the context for the coming weeks, let’s turn to our beatitude in today’s text: Matthew Chapter 5 verse 3  “Blessed are the poor in Spirit – for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”.

“Poor in Spirit is an intriguing phrase.” Says Croft. “An alternative translation of the Greek gives us a way into understanding it. One of those alternatives is this: “Happy are those who know their need of God.”

When he talks about the ‘poor in Spirit’ Jesus is not talking about the down in the mouth, or those having a bad day. Rather Jesus is saying Blessed are those who are spiritually poor and impoverished, blessed are those who come to God in humility and recognition of their need for Him – it is these who will enter into His Kingdom. Or to turn the phrase around again, when we think we are self-sufficient and full of our own goodness, at that moment we are far from the Kingdom of God.

One of the things about being poor in Spirit is a deep and knowing recognition of our utter dependence on God’s grace. Of the knowledge that we cannot do it by ourselves, we cannot earn our way into the kingdom. We are utterly dependent upon God’s invitation and gifting.

But it is hard isn’t it to believe this corporately at a Church like ours here at St. Marks ?

By most terms of measurement we belong to a successful church. Every week 500 or so people worship here. We give approaching £200,000 to the diocese to help support churches throughout the area, more than any other single church in Ripon and Leeds. We give away a further £50,000 – 10% of our income to those working in areas of need - supporting the homeless, working with people with disabilities, environmental groups to name but three.  We have modern facilities, a beautiful building and even beautiful clergy – I refer of course to my wife. Surely we are blessed and along the right track aren’t we ?

Jesus’ words here suggest that as soon as we start patting ourselves on the back we begin to take a step away from the Kingdom of God. We become concerned perhaps with our Church building more than with the people who form the Church. We begin to think that it is our budgets and not our prayer life that is where our focus should be. We start becoming obsessed with leadership and start losing sight of servanthood.

A parallel can be found in the lives of the rich and successful who fall from grace. Many of you will know the name of John Profumo. Although he held an increasingly responsible series of political posts in the 1950s, he is best known today for his involvement in a 1963 scandal involving Christine Keeler which led to his resignation and contributed to toppling the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan.

After his resignation, Profumo began to work as a volunteer cleaning toilets at Toynbee Hall, a charity based in the East End of London, dedicated to helping the homeless and socially deprived. He eventually became Toynbee Hall's chief fundraiser, and used his political skills and contacts to raise large sums of money. All this work was done as a volunteer, since Profumo was able to live on his inherited wealth. The social reform campaigner Lord Longford said he felt more admiration for Profumo than “for all the men I've known in my lifetime"

It was only when he had realised the utterly futility of depending on his own goodness and self-sufficiency that John Profumo discovered a life of service where he found his true vocation. 

The danger for us in Harrogate, where words like “failure” “poverty” and “need” are words we hear about others, is that through our own seeming spiritual self-sufficieny, we begin to squeeze God out.

The good news that we hear from the prophet Isaiah is good news for the oppressed, for the poor, for those who know what it is to be broken. Jesus came to save the broken and not the self sufficient. Those who believe they save themselves daily have no need for a saviour in Christ nor do they recognise such a need. Their own affluence, intellect, beauty, skill, talent will be sufficient unto themselves.

It is through the brokenness of poverty, the brokenness of failure, the brokenness of bereavement, illness and addiction, it is through the experience of emptiness that comes with brokenness that we begin to open ourselves up to the fullness of God’s grace. 

It is only when we begin to grasp our own spiritual poverty that we can enter a place of growth and grace.  So may God grant to us in this place the recognition of His Grace, of our dependence on it, and the humility of Spirit that leads us to first seek Him.

Amen