Oh boy, another post written in the fallout of the SCOTUS ruling on same-sex marriage…
But it’s not one of THOSE posts. Trust me. It’s really not about same-sex marriage or homosexuality at all.

Regardless of what side of the issue you fall on, I hope I can establish some common ground with you. One of the biggest, if not the biggest frustrations for a lot of us in all of the debating, discussing, arguing and sloganeering is that for many on all sides of the issue, there seems to be only two responses: excited celebration or gloom-and-doom protest.

At the risk of sounding overly critical… How old are we?

I’ve said this before, and I’ll repeat it, because I’ve adopted this as my new temporary favorite thing to say…throwing a party and digging a bunker are not the only two ways to respond to a thing. Just because you don’t agree with the opposition doesn’t mean you have to celebrate with the promoters. Just because someone disagrees with your “win” doesn’t mean they’re digging a bunker out of fear and/or hatred of you, and just because your “side” “lost” doesn’t mean you have reason to be angry or fear and go all Y2K about it.

Of particular curiosity to me is the notion that because I disagree, I hate, or because I do not celebrate your choice that I hate you. That is a logical jump no one yet has been able to explain to me. I disagreed this morning with my son’s actions of yelling at me and storming off out of the kitchen when I wouldn’t give him “a tiny snack right NOW.” Does that mean I hate him? Does that mean I don’t believe in snacks? Seriously…

Like so many others have said, I don’t have to celebrate your choices to love you; I can love and respect you while simultaneously believing your actions are wrong. But when my disagreement with actions is misconstrued as hate, bigotry, or whatever else, my response is going to be very counter-intuitive.

There are many ways to respond, and I just want to take a few paragraphs to discuss something Jesus said about how the world responds to Christians, and how Christians respond to the world’s response to them.

Jesus already told us our love and pursuit of righteousness, and even our humility as His followers would be misconstrued this way, so it’s not a surprise, and it shouldn’t be to you either. When Jesus began the Sermon on the Mount, he addressed this.

In Matthew 5:10-12 Jesus said “Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

I’ve not seen a lot of scholarly writing on this particular point, but I think that what Jesus refers to as being hated, misunderstood and insulted by the world is something already mentioned specifically in the previous verses, the “Beatitudes.”Consider the first 7, Matthew 5:3-9.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

As Christians, we struggle in the tension between being attractive—or, making God attractive—to the world, and being hated by the world. But it’s not a surprise considering how Jesus has worded the Beatitudes.

The word “blessed” here in the Greek really means happy or joyful. In other words, Jesus is saying “The person who is truly happy, who truly has an unshakable joy in their life is…” the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the gentle, etc. In other words, the Beatitudes is a list of descriptions of the people who are part of God’s kingdom. Not a list of requirements to get in, but a list of descriptions of those going. The first half of each sentence describes those of the second half. The second half of each sentence explains the cause of the first.

These are very strange pairings, but they are written in a way that makes the tension between being attractive and being hatable easy to understand. In this list Jesus is telling us both things will happen, and that Christian faith cannot be devoid of either to be truly genuine. Both the attractiveness of humble action, and the belief in and claim to divine privilege…both brokenness and healing, both lowliness and high standing, go together. True Christian faith comes with both the humble actions of service and mercy, and the claim to the truth of the gospel…neither can be absent for it to be genuine.

If we separate these pairings into their own lists this is easy to see, because everyone in the world appreciates the poor in spirit, the mournful, the gentle, those who seek righteousness, the pure in heart and peacemakers. Outside of followers of Neitzsche, you probably won’t find many people who hate peacemakers, or the humble, or someone who seeks after righteousness and justice, etc. This is the attractive aspect of Christian faith and following. True believers look very attractive to the world…they just don’t sound very attractive. It’s not what they do that’s the problem, but what they say. 

While the world loves the humble, the world has little tolerance for people who claim divine privilege… those who claim to be citizens of the kingdom of heaven, people who claim to have a comfort that comes to them from outside this world, people who claim to be heirs and owners of the world, those who claim to be satisfied by a righteousness that comes to them from outside themselves (rather than from within), those who claim to see and know God, or who claim to be sons of God. So while the look of true followers of Jesus is attractive, the claims that come from their mouths sound very offensive, almost like the polar opposite of their actions. The look appears humble, but the claims sound arrogant.

But claims to divine privilege are not contrary to actions of great humility, because the true Christian’s actions display the humility by which they came about the privileges they claim. It is only by recognizing absolute poverty of spirituality that one becomes an heir of the kingdom. It is only by recognizing righteousness does not come from within that it can be gifted from without. Because the kingdom comes to the sinner, to the reject, the down-and-out…those who believe they are not one of those things are excluded. 

These claims are offensive to people who believe they are ok, people who reject the notion that they are sinners, fallen from God and deserving of His wrath and In need of a Savior. Even God’s own people rejected this notion, which is the point of the last part of verse 12 where Jesus says “In this same way they persecuted the prophets who came before you.” Who were the prophets persecuted by? Not the non-believing world, but by God’s people to whom God sent the prophets…by the religious community. Self-righteousness is not limited to the world outside the believing community, but is usually the hallmark of false believers, those who are strangers of the kingdom.

But for a true believer, how should he respond when his humble claims are misconstrued as self-righteous, arrogant and hateful though they are the opposite, when they are actually the reality behind the description the world likes and celebrates? ”

“Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven.”

Jesus says that in the midst of the worst that human relationships have to offer, in the midst of being hated, falsely accused, slandered, shunned, painted by an unfairly broad brush in a color you don’t actually come in…in the midst of this, Jesus says to rejoice and be glad. Why? Because your reward is great in heaven.

This is really the whole point of the sermon of the mount…the only kind of person who is part of God’s kingdom is the person whose reward comes from God, in secret, and not from people in public. The person who knows his reward, praise, comfort, righteousness, mercy and home come from God, unseen from the rest of the world, is the person who is part of God’s kingdom. This is the person who knows and sees God. If your reward, your comfort, your peace comes from people as an exterior reality, then you will never be able to rejoice and be glad in the midst of persecution and slander because the persecution and slander are destroying your reward.

If you are totally bent out of shape by the SCOTUS ruling, or by the misunderstanding, slander and/or hatred coming from those that agree with the ruling, then most likely your reward is not in heaven. This goes across the board with all kinds of other issues. If something regarding people totally steals your joy, completely devastates you, then your reward is in this life. The whole of Matthew 6, the middle chapter of the Sermon on the Mount, takes up this theme as its main point. Take some time to consider where your treasure is, where your reward is. Is it in the kingdom, or is it in this life and this world? What would bother you more, the loss of a human relationship, or the loss of the kingdom of heaven? The loss of your family’s praise, or the loss of God’s praise?

There are two practical implications of this I want to suggest here.
1. If the claims of a true believer do not negate, but explain, their description, then don’t reverse the process and make yourself the bad example that the world has every right to condemn. If righteousness comes from outside yourself, then live out of your brokenness to let God’s righteousness shine through you; don’t live out of your righteousness, because your pride that shines out will offend people and turn them away from the truth of the Gospel. Grace is everything, not just a part of it.
2. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. Stop putting stock in the opinions of people…live out of your brokenness, letting that move you to acts of justice, mercy and compassion, and let the world see that…but don’t let the misunderstanding of your claims rob your of your joy in them. Your reward is in secret, not in public, so whatever happens in public stays there and will not follow you eternally.