February 1, 2026

Epiphany 4 Year A

Matthew 5:1-12

Epiphany, Winnipeg

----- It’s Thursday afternoon, and I’m sitting in the food court at St. Vital mall. My computer is on the table in front of me, a cup of Tims is off to the side, and I’m starting to write what will turn into what you’re hearing now.

I’m at the mall writing a sermon. Part of me hates malls. All the signs and sales and wonders and endless choices and cell phone kiosks. The way a mall is designed to confuse you, with weird layouts and no natural light to help you orient yourself; the way they’re made to make it easy to get lost for twenty minutes or so, and studies have shown that after that twenty minutes people are more likely to buy things.

So I’m at the mall writing a sermon. The food court is kind of quiet at 2:30 p.m. The crowd is small.

----- The crowd. Here’s a thought about crowds, and it’s kind of a tip for reading or hearing the Bible. Jesus says all this today, to a crowd. Actually, almost everything that we have in the Bible would have been experienced first by people in a crowd; a big crowd or a small little bunch, listening while someone reads a letter or recites a story that’s been handed over to share. So the first people to hear all this “Blessed are the poor, the meek, those who mourn,” and so on, wouldn’t have been reading it from a book in a quiet place. They’d be listening together with whoever else was there. Any time we listen to Jesus, or to a prophet or a storyteller or someone who wrote a psalm, we’re listening with a crowd, even if we’re sitting alone with an open book. There’s always a crowd. We never listen alone.

----- Jesus and his disciples seem to be trying to get away from the crowd today. People from all over have been following Jesus around everywhere, so when he sees the crowds he scrambles up a mountain. His disciples join him up there too, away from the crowds. So Jesus teaches this small crowd, these twelve he has called together. They’re sort of like apprentices. Jesus is the journeyman who has learned the trade and can practice it well, and he is teaching his trade to the disciples. This is their first day in class.

On this first day, he’s letting them know a thing or two about what they might expect to learn.

He’s letting them know that their life and their work will not be all about trying to be strong or grab hold of power. Blessed are the meek, he says. He wants them to know that they are not going to be happy all the time, and nothing will guarantee that they are safe, or that they will not know sadness or pain. “Blessed are those who mourn.” Jesus has an idea that following and being with him won’t necessarily make them popular- “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and tell lies about you, just like they’ve always done to prophets.”

He hints that they’re not going to be given a way to escape from injustice or try not to see it, so he says that the ones who are hungry and thirsty for righteousness, for justice, are blessed. And Jesus knows, he can see it already, that some of these disciples, just like so many in the crowd they’ve left behind for awhile, will one day know what it’s like to be poor in spirit, to be this close to having their spirits broken by life under the power of politics and economic systems, and even just by everyday life that sometimes just doesn’t work out right.

And he’s getting them ready to see the world around them differently; to see that all around them are these people who might seem forgotten or even cursed, but who are actually God’s beloved and God’s blessed. He’s opening their eyes to see that the kingdom of Heaven is here, among all those people.

I keep talking about them – those disciples. But Jesus’ disciples are never them. Jesus’ disciples are us. So we’re in that crowd of disciples, still learning the trade of loving God and loving our neighbour.

----- When the teaching is done for now, we turn around to head down the mountain, and we see the crowd we had left behind. You know, the crowd: People on the streets of all sorts of cities in the U.S. who protest loudly or quietly, people on the other side of the world in city squares and prisons in Iran. People in Gaza who finally have the one road in and out of the place sort of almost barely open and accessible. You know the crowd: Blessed peacemakers, blessed mourners, blessed thirsters for justice, blessed persecuted. I’m not sure what I think about this, but you know the crowd, maybe people with masks and guns and vests that say ICE on the back, and I know how much I’ve been drawn into hating and reviling them, and they know it too. The crowd’s not all people on the same side. You know the crowd, all those people you might have sat with at that Jets game last week, or the crowd at a bar in the Exchange District listening to a band play the blues. We head down the mountain and we see the crowd. You know, the crowd in your classroom, and the crowd you see at the office, the crowd of cars with little crowds of commuters or drivers all alone? You know the crowds, the ones milling around in front of a shop on Portage, one or two with a Tim Horton’s cup and a request for change, the crowd at church today?

Wherever we go we follow Jesus into the crowd, and once we’re there in the crowd we discover that the crowd isn’t “them.”

Because you know, we are part of the crowd with everyone that Jesus names. We will all grieve sometime, like everyone else who grieves. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” The things happening all around us, in the news and on the streets or in the politics we watch that seem so out of our control – sometimes it just feels like it could break your spirit, doesn’t it? Sometimes it does break the spirit. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.” We’ll be hungry or thirsty with countless others for something fair and good and just to happen in the world. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”

Blessed are they, blessed are they, blessed are you….

------ We’re part of the crowd. And you know, that means that we’re never left trying to figure out our life as disciples or just as plain old everyday people all alone. No one needs to be meek all alone. Nobody is left alone to grieve. No one person can make peace by themselves, or make the world a just and righteous place all on their own. But we can work on it together.

The crowd of disciples, all that crowd following Jesus around; Jesus looks out at the crowd, and calls them blessed.

------ I’m writing this in the food court at St. Vital Mall. Part of me hates malls. I think I’ve gone on about that before.

The food court was kind of quiet when I arrived at 2:30. It’s 4:30 now and the crowd keeps getting bigger. Students out of school are finding their way here. A few people have trickled in who look like they might be on their way home from work. There are people who are here because there’s nowhere else warm to be right now. The crowd’s getting bigger.

This crowd in the food court, sitting down with coffee and burgers and pizza and Greek and Thai food, this crowd with couples and tablefulls and people all alone, this crowd has all the kinds of people Jesus has been talking about. You know them well by now. Poor in Spirit, mourning, hungering for justice or for something to go right, and so on… And I see that the kingdom of heaven is here. Where there’s room for all of them. Even in places I might rather not be, the blessed are all around.

And we are blessed by the company of someone else who is here in the crowd. Remember that fancy name we’ve heard for Jesus? His name will be Emmanuel, which means “God is with us.” Here in the crowd with us is Jesus, God with us, who mourned for a friend, who thirsted for justice just as much as he thirsted right before he drew his last breath. We are blessed by the presence of one who in the end seemed as meek and as weak as the weakest and meekest.

Blessed are they, blessed are you…This crowd, at the mall, everywhere, right here, is blessed by this one among us who lived and died and lived again, so that the crowd, everywhere, will have life. Blessed are they, blessed are you. Blessed are we.