Lessons from Lockdown: Stand together!
Today we start a new series. It is The Greatest Sermon Ever Preached. That’s the title of the series, not the OffChurch grade of my teaching. Every teacher/preacher thinks their talks are significant. In reality, few are that memorable. There are of course a few exceptions: 
Remember Reverend  Lovejoy from The Simpsons, and his rambling sermon on the Letter to the Ephesians? 
Then there’s Dr Tony Campolo – speaking of the despair of Crucifixion and the hope of Resurrection, It’s Friday, but Sunday’s a Comin’. Watch it on YouTube. It’s a classic. Tony Campolo tells how he was “out preached” by his African American pastor.
Jackie Pullinger and her radical ministry in Hong Kong among drug addicts and gangs. She is one formidable preacher, not one to be missed or messed with.
More recently, in the midst of the pomp and ceremony of St George’s Chapel, Windsor, at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s royal wedding, Bishop Michael Curry stunned the great and the good with his hugely powerful sermon, When love is the way. 1.9 billion people watched it.
Of course, right up there, must be Dr Martin Luther King. Everyone knows about his “I have a dream” message but, for me, I’m struck by the last sermon he ever gave. In Memphis, Tennessee Dr King preached:
“I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain! And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. My eyes have seen the Glory of the coming of the Lord.” 
Watch it on YouTube. The next day he was assassinated but his sermon, his legacy lives on.
Tony Campolo, Jackie Pullinger, Bishop Curry and Dr King are all stunningly good preachers/ teachers that I strive to learn from. But they say their inspiration comes from the same other preacher/ teacher - Jesus Christ. His Sermon on the Mount was the greatest sermon ever preached. It’s probably the best KNOWN, but also the least understood, and even less lived part of Jesus’ teaching.
It’s so important, we’re going to take our time to work through it over the coming weeks, even months. To keep the momentum, we’ll chunk it into five month-long mini-series.
Jesus wasn’t just a great teacher/ preacher – though He painted pictures in people’s minds with his stories, life-examples, and clever twists on popular culture. Jesus was on a mission to change the world and bring people back to God.
In fact, looking back, his life and ministry had such impact the whole world said, stop the clock, re-set the calendar. We now date everything according to whether it was BC or AD, Before Christ or, for you Latin lovers, Anno Domini (in the year of THE LORD).
Born on the Continent of Asia, Middle East, in a remote outpost of the Roman Empire, in unpromising and humble circumstances, to an unmarried teenage mum, in a cow shed or stables surrounded by unclean animals and their smelly, unhygienic waste, this Jesus would go on to be the reason you, 2000 years later, are watching this Sunday Online service.
Today, too often society uses dehumanising langue to turn refugees into “swarms of migrants”. Have you noticed, when people come to the UK they are ‘immigrants’, but when people from the UK go to other countries they are “expats”?
We forget that refugees are people who are faced with no choice but to leave their homes, careers, all that is familiar – to flee for their lives, often taking great risks because crossing the sea in an overcrowded, leaking boat seems a safer option than staying put.
Why else would young parents, Mary and Joseph, with their new-born baby Jesus, risk travelling across a desert with only the water they could carry? This Jesus, who we worship, sing about today, was not only the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, He was the Refugee of refugees.
Years later, Jesus snuck back to the land of His birth, but still the oppression was rife. The most powerful military superpower the world had ever known – the Roman Empire - had invaded. Its boot was firmly on the neck of the local population.
Empires always seek to impose their own values, rule, as they invade, crush and rob. As Empires expand ever further from their base, in this case Rome (we could say the same for those driven by Constantinople, London, Berlin..), they have to use increasing terror and corruption to maintain their control. The Roman Empire was no different. 
Just imagine how it would feel to have your country invaded, your freedoms, your rights taken away; the overwhelming feelings of fear, powerlessness, humiliation.No  wonder many were hoping, waiting for God’s Messiah. 
Surely, when the Messiah finally came, he would lead an uprising, revolution, a violent revolt that would push the invaders back into the sea once and for all.
Many had tried. All had failed. Their crucified bodies were left for all to see. But still people were waiting, hoping for THE Messiah and the revolution to begin.
But the oppression wasn’t just from the State and Empire. There was the enemy within. The religious Scribes and Pharisees had set themselves up as the spiritual elite. They alone knew how to keep the right side of God, or so they said. The answer was to keep the right said of them. God was holy, so holy, He had to remain aloof, distant from anything and anyone that could contaminate Him.  They took it upon themselves to judge who was “in” and who was “out”, who was “acceptable” to God and who was “unacceptable” to God. The list of the former became shorter and shorter, whereas the latter – those unacceptable to God – became ever longer. It included: shepherds and all those that worked shifts; 
women, especially women who had the temerity to be on their period; those who were too young or too old; those who were sick, those who had contracted a disease; those that had administered first aid to anyone with an injury… And all those who had any social interaction with any of the above. And so the list went on.
History shows that, when religion gets into the wrong hands, it judges, condemns, labels, demonises. No wonder, later on Jesus, would create such a stir by standing with those oppressed by the religious elite.
This was then ‘monetised’ by those who sought to pocket from people’s fears. Imagine, you are frequently told you a sinner. And that God HATES sin. So you grow up believing God must hate you. But, so called good news, if you make a sacrifice – kill a bird – then God might be persuaded to overlook your sin. The bigger the sin, the bigger the sacrifice. Oh, by the way, two things: One, it only works if you make that sacrifice in one place on the planet – the Temple that we operate; two, like a greedy, conniving airport that doesn’t permit you to take your own food/ drink into the airport lounge but, when you get there, then sells it to you at exorbitant price, so the Temple Traders tell you, that sacrifice you need to make…, you can’t take it through Temple Security, but when you get to the Temple Lounge you can buy our sacrifices at – how much? 
So, take the oppression of both the State, Empire, and of the Religious Elite, and the System, the whole way of life, seems stacked against the masses, the ordinary people. Endless put downs. 
Then imagine you hear another Wannabe is pitching to be Messiah. Rumours are circulating that he’s good, could he actually be the One. So you drop what you’re doing and head out.
Matthew says, Jesus saw the crowds. Not just the numbers, like Trump, but, as in, saw – really saw where people were at and what life had done to them.
There must have been real anticipation. But possibly also some apprehension. 
What was he going to say? Maybe you’d brace yourself, like you would if you thought someone was about to slap you. After all, wasn’t that what the religious elite had done for so long?
Then, eventually, Jesus starts to speak. And the first thing he says – against all expectation - is you are blessed. You who feel worn down, judged, excluded, exploited.. God is so for you.
BLESSED are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Can you see why this was so radical, so different to dead religion?
Maybe you feel worn down by life, beaten up by the System that always seems to be weighted against you. Or maybe you’ve felt the condemnation/ judgment of religion in the wrong hands, that’s told you, you’re never good enough, you’re too female, not male enough, you don’t pray the right way… Maybe, you’ve been left feeling on the outside, overlooked by God? Feel the relief, the elation of the Revolution. God is SO for you. 
The Bible begins with God blessing all that He has made, and particularly humanity. The first thing Jesus teaches is blessing – it’s God default response.  And He does it indiscriminately. It’s for all in the crowd, not just for some. Today, Jesus speaks blessing over you.
In the Greatest Sermon Every Preached Jesus goes on to show just how radical His revolution is. And He wants you and I to join him. And, right now, Jesus is looking straight at you.
DannyBrierley@ChesterRoadBaptist.org.uk