What If Jesus Meant It? Red Letter Christianity and the Beatitudes

Introduction

Thank you for inviting me—it's a brave move on your part. The first time I was invited to take a wedding in my church at Royal Docks, after ten years in a church plant there, I was co-vocational, teaching sociology alongside ministry. I preached that getting married is a massive leap of faith, but what came out of my mouth was: "You do know that the person standing next to you is the person most likely to murder you—because that is sociologically true." So yes, it's a brave choice having me here today.

As a Red Letter Christian, I wanted to preach from the red letters of Jesus. I turned to his most famous sermon in Matthew 5 and Luke 6. I want words that both comfort us and challenge us—to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. I take that very seriously in my community.

What If Jesus Meant It?

The first thing I want to say is: what if Jesus meant it? That's a great way to approach the Bible. That question began my journey into Red Letter Christian living. What if he actually meant these things? What if I'm supposed to try to live them?

That is dynamite. When we read Jesus's words with the idea that he might have actually meant them, they become very dangerous words. They can ruin your life. They could take you out of all kinds of comfort zones and into a faith adventure which you are frankly not ready for, not equipped for, and you may not survive.

I've been reading Bonhoeffer on my sabbatical. He used the Sermon on the Mount as training for the Confessing Church. Bonhoeffer was a quiet German academic—intellectual, reserved, a committed pacifist. But born in the late 1930s, as the Nazis took power, he went on a radical journey. He trained pastors to be part of a counter-Nazi movement. He set up an illegal Bible training college. Eventually, he became part of a plot to assassinate Hitler. How far does the Sermon on the Mount take a person on a journey?

Bonhoeffer had a beautiful metaphor. He said: sometimes we're born in ages where war crimes are being committed. It's like there's a madman driving a car toward a crowd of pedestrians. Is the pastor's job to bury the dead, or to try to interrupt the madman?

The Sermon on the Mount were the key verses for the Confessing Church. Bonhoeffer would send trainee ordinands into the sand dunes with basically just the Sermon on the Mount and invite them to reflect on it individually rather than discuss it academically. They hated it. They had a rebellion. But he knew that for such a time as they were born in, they needed to take seriously the words of Jesus.

I think we're in such a time as well. The world has gone mad. The way Christianity is being used and abused is like the 1930s in Germany. We need to wake up. We need resources. We need to live a faith that looks like Jesus—not "churchianity," a faith that makes you a better member of a denomination.

The Sniff Test

Our friend Shane Claiborne runs Red Letter Christians in the States. He's part of a community in Philadelphia that receives a lot of free food. He's learned to use the sniff test: you can't always trust the label, so you open it and get your nose in there. Does it pass the sniff test?

I think we need to approach Christianity like that. Does it pass the sniff test? Does this smell like Jesus? Does this sound like Jesus? Because a lot of Christianity really doesn't. It stinks.

My church doesn't march in Pride anymore. We stand next to the groups spouting hate, weaponizing scripture against people walking in Pride. We stand next to them—and we need a bath afterwards. Our ministry is: as soon as they start preaching, we start blowing whistles and making tambourines. We drown them out.

Their words might be biblical, but they are not Christian because they sound nothing like Jesus, who gave us the ultimate sniff test: Is it love? If it's not love, you are a clanging gong and a noisy cymbal.

We take our big black Jesus—a six-foot-tall cardboard cutout—to Pride with a sign: "God loves all her children." We stand next to the hate-preachers drowning them out with our message: God loves everyone. Don't you think we need to be doing that? Using the red letters of Jesus to tell the difference between good and bad theology?

Two Readings, One Truth

I suggested two readings for today. Have you noticed they contradict each other? How often do you go to a church where the preacher says, "I want to give you the Bible which is contradictory"? I'm not embarrassed by that. It's one of the best things about the Bible. I think it's time we take the Bible seriously.

Matthew says the Sermon happens on a mount. The first blessing: "God blesses those who are poor in spirit."

Luke says it happens on a plane. He says: "Blessed are the poor."

Can a mountain be a plane? Did Jesus do the exact same thing twice? You can make theological pretzels if you want this to match, but it doesn't. What if this isn't a glitch to be embarrassed about, but a sign to take the Bible seriously? Take both things. Understand that the Bible has the fingerprints of the people who wrote it all over it. That's one of the best things about it. It's person-made.

The Bible as Library

Open Genesis and you get two different accounts of creation. The first is a poem, beautiful. Then immediately you get another version. The word for God is different in Hebrew. Why put two things next to each other that contradict each other with two voices speaking?

It happens again and again: Kings followed by Chronicles—the exact same history retold in another voice. The Bible is multivocal.

I consider myself evangelical because I believe the Bible is the key tool to encounter the word of God. But do you know this is not the word of God? The Bible says Jesus is the word of God. "The word became flesh, not paper." This is God's gift to us—the Spirit's inspired work in human people—the best way of encountering the living person, Jesus.

But we've turned this into an idol and ignored the beautiful way the Bible is actually written. Bible means library. You don't go into a library thinking one person wrote everything. That would be foolish. What we have is a beautiful load of hand-drawn maps of how people understood God.

Sometimes we learn by saying, "Well, that's wrong." We use Jesus as our spirit level. If it doesn't sound like Jesus, then Jesus—the full revelation—is how we measure it. Jesus said, "If you've seen me, you've seen the Father."

Bits about genocide and God commanding people to kill? Meet Jesus and you think: "Well, I know how to take that bit now. That's a 'how not to' bit." We look at Jesus's life and realize: God is like Jesus. Have you made that step? Or do you have two different gods in your head?

Some fundamentalists really want to become Muslims when it comes to scripture. In Islamic doctrine, Muhammad is illiterate, and Gabriel dictates the Quran. There are no human fingerprints allowed. But the Bible has never been like that. It's never been presented as that. We've gotten that wrong idea from the printing press and the Enlightenment.

What we have is a beautiful, precious library—the most wonderful way to meet Jesus. But it has to pass the sniff test. Can I encounter Jesus through this? Am I encountering the word of God?

The Four Gospels

When we get to the Gospels, there's four versions. Why not? We now know that's how God likes to reveal things—multivocal. Four versions.

Mark gets there first. Mark is a person in a rush: immediately, immediately, immediately. He cuts out all the birth narratives, jumps straight to baptism, doesn't do much with resurrection. Written about 30 years after the resurrection. All the New Testament letters are out there before the Gospels.

Then Matthew and Luke—the synoptic Gospels. The red letters, the things Jesus says, are usually exactly the same because of an oral tradition called Q. Disciples, as good Jewish scholars, would have learned Jesus's words as he spoke them. A twelve-year-old Jewish boy could recite the Torah. They were used to learning like that. Matthew and Luke write after AD 70.

Then John, the poet, who always turns up late and writes something beautiful but ethereal.

Two versions of the first beatitude: "God blesses those who are poor in spirit" and "God blesses the poor." What if we took that seriously and the differences are intentional?

Matthew: Spiritual Destitution

Matthew is writing to a Jewish audience primarily. Something really important has happened to them. In AD 70, the Romans destroyed their temple. Think how significant that would have been. Just imagine Brighton's reform government tears down this building. You would be destitute. You would feel spiritually destitute. How are you going to practice your faith without a building?

Matthew writes to a Jewish audience that has just lived through that. Looking back at Jesus, the person they know—first-generation eyewitnesses with apostles still living—they say: Jesus had a blessing for this. There's a blessing for being spiritually destitute. "Theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

Matthew puts it on a mountain because in Jewish faith, everything good happens on a mountain. It's a Jewish thing. The word "destitute" would mean something to post-temple faith.

Jesus said, "I'm going to tear down this temple and rebuild it in three days." The building didn't come back, but Jesus came back.

In today's setting, there are people here who have become spiritually destitute. Your faith has deconstructed. Maybe you left your church. Maybe key beliefs that were foundational fell apart, and for a while you felt utterly destitute. This beatitude says: God blesses spiritual destitution.

I meet a lot of people who have deconstructed their faith. Red Letter Christians has become a home for people deconstructed and looking to reconstruct—to build something.

Think of a site under construction with a billboard showing what it will be like. Sometimes our early faith is like that—two-dimensional, a very strict structure. You're told what you must believe. Then the billboard breaks apart. But what if you're meant to go through that because the thing behind it is the real deal? Not the billboard with its frame, but something wilder and harder to contain. You can't quite own it, box it, make a checklist. "Do you believe this? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. You're in."

I had to fill out a form when I joined as a Baptist minister. They asked, "Do you believe in hell?" I said, "No." "Do you believe in...?" "No." They still let me in. I don't know. Desperate times.

Faith can break down, but you can end up with something that is not tame or safe but—borrowing C.S. Lewis's word—is good. There's a spiritual blessing when things fall apart. Maybe you're moving to the wild place where God's love rules. That's how I like to translate "kingdom of God."

If that's happened to you, I'm pleased you're in this church. It looks open for questions. It doesn't have heavy gatekeeping. We need Christian communities that allow people to go into that place of wildness and meet them there because we've lost our certainties too.

The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.

As a movement, we're keen to go into that together. But you don't have to lose everything. If you hold on to Jesus, the word of God, the rule of God's love is yours.

Luke: Economic Blessing

Matthew spiritualizes. Luke doesn't. Luke writes mainly for a Gentile audience, same period, post-AD 70. He says, "Let's put it on a plane." Jesus taught on mountains and planes. Like all good speakers, he probably said things more than once.

Luke says: It's really important for my people that we have this on a plane where everyone's on a level. There's a scrum. People trying to grab Jesus. It's not organized. It's not disciples first on a hill. It's like an East End community. On the plane, Jesus says:

"God blesses you who are poor. The kingdom of God is yours."

God blesses you if you are actually economically destitute.

Luke is living at a time when the church has become inclusive of different classes. Look at Romans 16—Paul lists names. Some are aristocratic Greek people who've come to faith. There are slave names in that list. There are women leaders. All these different people of different economic classes are trying to live together for the first time.

Luke speaks to them: Jesus blesses the poor. Jesus blesses the poor.

Culturally, poverty was seen as shame or curse—you'd done something wrong, God wasn't happy, that's why you're poor. Some political parties still believe that: if you'd only stop eating avocado toast, you could save for your house.

But Jesus says something shocking: There's actual blessing in poverty.

I believe, and I'm sure you agree, that structural sin impoverishes people. That's wrong. That's sinful. I'd even say demonic.

We live in a time of incredible, unprecedented inequality. We have billionaires. The globe just got its first trillionaire. Do we understand what that means?

I do an activity with my sociology students. If I gave you a pound a second, how long to become a millionaire? About eleven and a half days. How long to become a billionaire? Thirty-one point seven years. How long to create a trillionaire? Thirty-one thousand years.

Elon Musk has just become a trillionaire. That man has more GDP than Sweden. What's he doing with that? Tweeting about British politics.

Fifty families on earth own more resources than over 50% of the earth. Here is Jesus pushing back on these systems saying: God's blessing is on the poor.

Not that there's something good about structural poverty. Ask Jesus's mom. Mary, in her prophetic poem—the Magnificat—says:

"God is going to turn everything the right way up. God is going to send the rich away empty-handed. God is going to fill the bellies of the poor."

Mary's talking about economic salvation. I've been transformed by my reading of Marx, but I've been radicalized by Mary. Salvation is economic.

Luke's community lived in a time of class difference. They came up with ways to make this blessing real. They started selling goods. In Acts of the Apostles, what's the community doing? Limiting private ownership. The wealthy are selling land, putting it in a common pot because they know the word of God is Jesus. In his first sermon, Jesus declared:

"This is the year of the Lord's favor."

The word he used was jubilee—economic jubilee. Every 50 years: all slaves freed, all land returned to original owners, all debts cancelled.

Very unlikely the Old Testament ever achieved it. But Jesus stood up and said, "I'm here to declare it's happening." Luke's community are trying to make it live. They're expressing the kingdom of God economically. Aristocrats and slaves living together. I reckon in the church they freed slaves' debts—and that slave became a leader in their church with work. I imagine they had a party at every member's meeting.

The gospel is economic.

I wonder if you've caught that vision. Is it economic redistribution in your community? I think you're there. I've heard about your social enterprises, paying people decent wages, spreading wealth, training people. That's beautiful. That's part of the gospel. That's part of salvation. But it's a bit dangerous, isn't it?

Living the Red Letters

I want to explain one danger of being married to someone who's a Red Letter Christian: they take Jesus's words seriously.

In my church, we don't have a building like this. We have an asbestos hut built in the 1930s. For years we planned to redevelop it. We have a community association for 25 years—you can Google us, Bonnie Downs. Twelve years ago, we set up a day center for people experiencing homelessness. We knew it wasn't just a place to sleep. It was a place to be during the day.

We thought: What if we rebuild this not as a place we worship, but as the world's first Baptist urban abbey with seven sacred spaces? What if it became a community where eight people coming out of homelessness could live together with friends, church minister families, sharing life? Shared meals, places to work, two years of therapeutic living with pauses in a chapel, using our liturgy.

We got all the way through architects' plans, through planning permission, and submitted to Newham Council. We were stuck for over a year. Prices went up because of Brexit. With our best financial modeling, we had half a million pounds short.

We were well into our dream. We couldn't give up. We thought: we need a super donor. Someone to give £500,000, no strings attached.

We had a meeting. We prayed: God, show us the super donor. In our church, we've seen God really move with financial provision. This wasn't beyond possibility.

Dave brought me tea in the morning—38 years of morning tea. That's why I'm a happy woman. He said, "Sally, I have found the super donor." I thought he'd found some secret millionaire. He said:

"Sally, it's us. We own a house in East London. I think we need to sell it and give the money to the project."

Do you know Jesus says, "Sell everything you've got and give it to the poor" as many times as he says, "You must be born again"? But where's the altar call for that? Not so popular.

As soon as he said it, I thought: We have to do this. This is the biggest adventure.

So we sold our house. We bought a flat. The Baptist denomination found out we'd gone this crazy route—"What happens if you retire? What if they vote you out? What happens when you're homeless?" They stepped in. I'm a cheerleader for the Baptist denomination now. They gave us almost £600,000. I think they did it because we sold our house.

The flat we bought as a temporary stop gap, we get to continue to own. Isn't that beautiful?

The red letters of Jesus bless those who sometimes intentionally choose poverty.

I don't know what that means for you. It might mean not taking the job that'll consume all your time and energy. There's a blessing in that. Or living beneath your means so you can be generous. That's a blessing. In our community—38 years very happily—we've only about two of those years lived with just our natural family. We've always had an open home. Started with youth group members, people wanting to come, homeless families. As kids moved out, we kept filling the house.

I'm wondering: What's the next step for you? There's blessing in living beneath your means. There's blessing in giving your spare room to a hosting scheme. So many have found that living with refugees is a total blessing.

Conclusion: Writing the Gospel

The Bible is a living thing to wrestle with to find Jesus. It's worth the wrestle.

NT Wright explained it beautifully. The Bible is a five-act play:

1. Creation
2. The Fall
3. Jesus
4. Acts of the Apostles (the apostolic age and early church)
5. And the rest is yet unwritten

Using Natasha Bedingfield's words: "the rest is yet unwritten." And you are writing the Acts of the Apostles of Brighton.

It's not one person writing it. There's not one version. All of you are writing it. It's multivocal like the Gospels. Your lives are the gospel. Your communal lives are the gospel. They're the gospel to Brighton.

People may never open the Bible, but how they think about Jesus and God is what you're living. That's a bit scary, isn't it? You better live it well.

I pray for you that you'll find faith that is not tame and not particularly safe, but is good. I pray you'll have the simple resilience that comes when you fall upwards out of certainty into the incredible mystery of a God who loves you and loves you and loves you. And I'll be cheering you on from the East End.

Thank you.