What, exactly, might Jesus have meant when he said, “Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh,” if he actually said that? No one can know the answer to that question for certain. However, this morning I want for us to contemplate what Jesus may have intended by making that statement, if indeed he said it, which I choose to believe he probably did.

“Blessed are you who are hungry now” addresses people with a physical hunger. They want food. If they are hungry enough, they will eat any kind of food, even Brussels sprouts or Limburger cheese. “Blessed are you who hunger and thirst for righteousness” speaks to a quite different kind of hunger. Their hunger is to acquire goodness or righteousness or ethical acceptability. The first hunger is essentially physical, while the second is moral and spiritual.

The Sermon on the Mount is the longest uninterrupted collection of the teachings of Jesus to be found anywhere in the synoptic Gospels. It consists of everything in the fifth through the seventh chapters of the Gospel of Matthew. However, the Gospel of Luke also has a version of that sermon, although it is much shorter in Luke than it is in Matthew. Furthermore, biblical scholars call it “The Sermon on the Plain,” because Luke begins his account of the episode by saying, “And (Jesus) came down with (the disciples) and stood on a level place.” No one knows why the locations for the sermon are in two such opposite places, or even where, specifically, they can be located on a map of Israel. There is a beautiful church for the Matthean location on a mountain which rises up from the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. It is called the Mount of the Beatitudes. The church was constructed by Benito Mussolini, of all people. There is no corresponding church somewhere on a plain beside the lake. If there were, it could not match the beautiful view from the portico of the Church of the Beatitudes down across the lake, to where the Jordan River runs down to the Dead Sea.

The God who is proclaimed throughout the Bible, in both Testaments and in virtually all its books, is portrayed as the God we can always count on. Psalm 98 was our responsive reading. Here are its opening verses: “O sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things! His right hand and his holy arm have gotten him victory. The Lord has made known his victory, he has revealed his vindication in the sight of the nations” (98:1-2). In biblical times, the Jews felt that God was in competition with the purported gods of other nations. Thus when things went well for Israel and battles were won, it vindicated God in their eyes. They believed they could depend on God to do this.

The God who is proclaimed throughout the Bible, in both Testaments and in virtually all its books, is portrayed as the God we can always count on. Psalm 98 was our responsive reading. Here are its opening verses: “O sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things! His right hand and his holy arm have gotten him victory. The Lord has made known his victory, he has revealed his vindication in the sight of the nations” (98:1-2). In biblical times, the Jews felt that God was in competition with the purported gods of other nations. Thus when things went well for Israel and battles were won, it vindicated God in their eyes. They believed they could depend on God to do this.

It seems to me that religion is probably held in lower esteem now than at any other time in the past century or so. Religious extremists such as the 9/11 terrorists, or the mosque bombers in Indonesia or Tennessee or elsewhere, or the church bombers on Easter in Sri Lanka, or the synagogue shooters in Pittsburgh or California give all other religious people an undeserved bad reputation. Jewish militants in Israel make the peace process with the Palestinians almost impossible, and vice versa. Buddhists are supposed to be peaceable people, but the Buddhists of Burma have treated the Muslim Rohingas of Burma terribly.

Psalm 91 is one of the best known of all the Psalms. It has been a source of comfort and assurance to Jews and Christians for many centuries. Whenever I read it, I am reminded of the monks at Mepkin Abbey. They have seven services a day, most of which have a few Psalms sung as part of each service. The abbey is cruciform in shape, and the monks sit in two rows of seats on each side of the “long part” of the cross, facing one another. One half of the community sings one verse, and then the other half sing the following verse, and so it goes all the way through the Psalm. The words are not exactly the same as what we find in the Bible, but they are a paraphrase of that, which makes the metric feet of the poetry work out better. If you don’t know what I mean, don’t worry, and if you do know, don’t feel smug. But in my mind I can hear the Marvelous Men of Mepkin singing Psalm 91, and it puts chills down my spine.

Only faith can authenticate Easter. It is impossible to ascertain it as fact. Trust alone can make it real to us. Whatever ending we choose to give to Easter, it is not the end. We must become committed to something we cannot validate through the normal processes by which we are able to verify other realities.

During Lent I have been preaching a series of sermons based on the events of Holy Week according to the Gospel of Mark. The first one began with what is known as the “cleansing of the temple.” Mark said this occurred on the day after Palm Sunday, while Matthew and Luke said the temple incident took place immediately after the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Whatever may have been the historical fact, we have been following the chronology of Holy Week as Mark recorded it. Today, because this is Palm Sunday, we shall go back to Mark’s telling of the Palm Sunday processional, and then jump forward to part of his account of Jesus with the disciples at the Last Supper.

Jesus believed the world would come to a cataclysmic end shortly after his death. He seemed to have no doubt of that. There are hints of the Apocalypse here and there in the Galilean ministry, but it was in Holy Week where his concepts of the Apocalypse are most apparent. The word “apocalypse” is derived from Greek. It means “unveiling.” Something huge was going to happen in the near future, but it would be fully unveiled only when it happened. Jesus said, “But of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Sopn, but only the Father.” Therefore there inevitably was a mystery to it, with many unanswered and unanswerable questions.

To understand the nature of Jesus’ many skirmishes with his theological enemies during his public ministry, we need first to think about the innate nature of theological conservatives and theological liberals. Theological conservatives, or for that matter, nearly all conservatives, are resistant to change. What has long worked smoothly in any organization or institution is resisted by conservatives, simply because the old seems to be tried and true, and has operated so well for so long. The continuation of tradition is thus of high importance to conservatives.

Jesus had been thinking for some time about what he would do when he came into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. He intended to make the dramatic statement of an irrepressible religious reformer. Thus he drove out of the temple the money-changers and those who sold animals for sacrifice. He also overturned their tables in a display of puritanical fury. He was completely convinced this is what God wanted him to do.

what Jesus did in driving out those who bought and sold sacrificial animals and those who changed money in the temple was a major symbolic religious and political statement. He was strongly expressing disapproval of practices which had been going on in the temple for ten centuries and the religious politics which supported the concept of animal sacrifice. What specifically, we might therefore ask, was his opposition?

The apostle Paul believed in the doctrine of predestination. According to John Calvin, predestination means this, and only this: Before anyone is born, God decides whether that person will go to heaven or hell, and there is nothing anyone can do to alter that outcome. Technically that is double predestination, meaning that each of us is predestined either one way or the other: for heaven, or for hell. What predestination doesn’t mean is that God preordains everything that happens in our lives. Many people think that’s what predestination is, but it isn’t. And if you have never heard that before, you have now heard it here first.

This sermon is probably going to sound much more like an academic lecture in political/military strategy than a sermon in an ecclesiastical setting. I confess to you that through the years my preaching has become more and more academic and intellectually-oriented. I want you to know I am aware of that, and I presume you are aware that the tendency is not abating. In any case, this sermon is based on what I believe to be a fundamental biblical tenet, namely, that war under any circumstances is always morally unacceptable. To be sure, there are several instances, especially in the Books of Joshua and Judges and the historical books of the kings of Israel which clearly indicate that God intended the Israelites to wage fierce and total wars against some of their neighbors. I further believe, however, that was a human attempt to impose a purported divine mandate on a very human decision of the Israelites to attack those they chose to perceive as enemies.

This sermon shall be largely devoted to a summary of how the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, understood the subject of what the Bible calls “strangers” or “sojourners.” In our terminology, we call such people either “immigrants” or “refugees.” But as we consider how God directed the Hebrews or Israelites or Jews to treat immigrants or refugees, we need also to ask ourselves, “How does the USA --- or the world --- treat strangers or refugees from Central America, the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere?”

“Global warming” has been abandoned as a term intended to evoke widespread attention among climate watchers. Far more places are getting warmer than are getting colder, but still, “climate change” is now the operative expression. Nevertheless, there is almost as much strong opposition to the idea as there is strong support for it. Nothing I shall say in this sermon will change the mind of anyone who denies the concept of climate change, nor shall anything herein add fuel to the disputatious fire that is already burning. The debate shall continue whether or not a preacher preaches anything about this.

The French have a proverb, “To know all is to forgive all.” It also can be translated as “To understand all is to forgive all.” What does that mean? It does not refer to academic knowledge or understanding. Rather it has to do with a knowledge or understanding of people’s behavior, and in particular the behavior of people other than ourselves. If we knew the complete life story of everyone we encounter, we might more readily forgive their failings and foibles.

A metaphor is a simile that is enlarged or extended or expanded to a much bigger concept than a mere simile. In Coleridge’s long poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, he tells of a lone sailor, lost somewhere in the South Seas, i.e., the South Pacific. It says of him that “he sailed upon a painted ship upon a painted ocean.” The ancient mariner didn’t literally do that, because he was in a small sailboat upon the actual ocean. However, he was actually becalmed in a vast expanse of placid water from which he might never escape, if wind should never again appear. In a short poetic figurative phrase, Coleridge captured the predicament of the old sailor all by himself in a tropical and potentially lethal oceanic calm.

Certain events leave an indelible impression on us, and we cannot find words which sufficiently describe what we experience. Seeing the Grand Canyon is always like that for me. Seeing a newborn baby the first time, especially one’s own child or grandchild, may create a similar awe-stricken moment.