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Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany – February 1, 2026
Matthew 5:1-12
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
When you think of what it means to be blessed, what comes to mind? Usually, we think of ourselves as blessed when things are going well. We are blessed when we are healthy – physically, spiritually, and emotionally. We are blessed when we have enough in the fridge and in the bank account. We are blessed when we have good relationships with others, when we have people in our lives who love us. We are blessed when the people we love are happy and healthy too. Blessings are usually thought of in terms of those things which bring us joy and peace and contentedness.
And this isn’t wrong. If you asked to name the greatest blessings in my life, these are the kinds of things I would point to. They are the first things that would come to my mind. These are indeed blessings – they are gifts from God.
In the Sermon on the Mount, however, Jesus greatly expands the idea of what a blessing is and who is blessed. In this first part of his famous sermon (we’ll hear more of it next Sunday), Jesus announces blessings upon situations and people which were not thought to be blessed at all!
“Blessed are the poor in spirit,” Jesus begins. Jesus starts off by announcing a blessing on those for whom things are NOT going well! Blessed are those whose spirits are lacking in peace or joy. Blessed are those who are experiencing a poverty of the soul. Blessed are those who are down in the dumps. Blessed are those who are anxious or remorseful or ashamed.
“Blessed are those who mourn,” Jesus continues. Blessed are those who are grieving, those who are sad. Blessed are those who have faced loss of one kind or another.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” Jesus said. In other words, blessed are those whose lives are NOT right. Blessed are those who have been stung by a world that is not right. Blessed those who long for their relationship with God and their relationships with others to be made right.
Blessed are those, Jesus says, who are persecuted and reviled and have all kinds of evil uttered against them falsely on his account. Blessed are those who are harassed and excluded and teased and despised and lied about by others because they are Christians. Apparently being a Christian won’t always make us popular or respected by others!
These are NOT the situations or people we usually think of as blessed, are they? The poor in spirit? Those who mourn? Those whose lives are not right? Those who are hated? These are blessed? Really?
This sermon of Jesus’, the Sermon on the Mount, is not a prescription. Jesus is not saying these are things you should strive to be and do. The fastest way to ruin a blessing is to turn it into a to-do list! No one should try to be poor in spirit. No one should seek unrighteousness or broken relationships. Purposefully offending people doesn’t make you a Christian, it just makes you a jerk! This sermon is not a prescription but a description. It is a description of what Jesus is up to. It is a description of the gifts, the blessings, he has come to give.
Jesus has come to bring blessings to those who are lacking them in one way or another. Jesus has come to bring gifts from God to people who need them. And these gifts have both a present reality and a future hope.
Note how each of the blessings are in the present tense. “Blessed ARE…” Jesus says, over and over again. He doesn’t say, “Blessed IF…this or that happens. He doesn’t say, Blessed WILL BE this person or that after they accomplish this or decide to do that.” This blessing is in the present tense. Their blessing comes now! And it comes because Christ Jesus has come to be with them. Jesus came to be with the sick and suffering. He came to be with those who were plagued by demons. He came to break bread with sinners. He came to seek out the broken and the lost and the hurting. And as he came to be with them, his presence with them was already a blessing! “Blessed ARE you!” he said to them. “Yours IS the kingdom of heaven!” In Christ’s presence with them, they got to participate in that kingdom now. They could know the peace and the presence of God. What a gift! What a blessing!
But Christ’s blessings also pointed to a future hope. They WILL BE comforted. They WILL BE filled. Rejoicing WILL come, because when the blessing of Christ’s presence is made known, healing and new life is never far behind.
Some of you may be familiar with the Japanese art of kintsugi. This is an art form where something broken is repaired with gold or silver. Those precious metals are melted down and used as a glue, welding the broken pieces back together, creating beautiful rivulets where the cracks had been. The broken places are still there, but the bowl or the vase is whole again, and the scars are turned into something beautiful, something redeemed.
This is the blessing Christ has come to give to the broken. He has come to take the shards, the rough and jagged parts of our lives, and bring them together by his grace, his mercy, his forgiveness, making us whole again. The marks left behind might still be there – at least for now, at least in this life – but instead of being ugly scars, they become places of strength. They become something beautiful, beautiful because they have been redeemed.
When people outside the church look at us, I think they often assume that we are a group of people who are blessed in a conventional sense. Supposedly, we are the people whose lives are going well. We are the ones who are happy and righteous and spiritually strong. Maybe that’s even what we think sometimes.
While these blessings do exist, to be sure, and while those kinds of blessings should be celebrated and received with gratitude, that’s not why we come to church. It is not what makes us Christians. We come here because we need the kind of blessings our Lord Jesus is giving here. He comes to us with the blessings we need the most. He comes to us to say: “Blessed are you who are having a rough time, because I am with you now to give you hope and peace.” He comes to us to say: “Blessed are you who sad or heavy hearted, for I am with you now, and I assure you that this grief will not have the last word.” He comes to us to say: “Blessed are you who are not right, you who sin and are sinned against, for I am here to be your savior, I am here to make you right by my grace, my free gift of forgiveness, and I promise you that everything will be made right in the end.
With these words of blessing and promise, the Lord Jesus practices his kintsugi, putting the broken parts of our lives back together. We are blessed here and now as Christ comes to us through Word and sacrament, forgiving us, renewing us, redeeming us with the beautiful rivulets of his sacrificial love, making us whole again by his grace, making even our broken parts gleam with his glory. And we are blessed with a future hope as we entrust everything that is not yet mended to him.
In receiving Jesus’ blessing, we come to be a blessing. We are blessed with mercy that we might become merciful. We are blessed with a new heart made pure by grace that we might see God, and in perceiving his presence, participate in his bestowal of blessings. We are blessed with the peace of Christ that we might share that peace with others.
But this isn’t a to-do list. It is just what flows out of us when we have been blessed by Jesus.
And you have been blessed by him! Not just in the good stuff, but in the hard stuff too. The Lord Jesus brings his blessings to all of it, every corner, every crack, here and now.
“Blessed are you, blessed are you.”
Yes, you.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church