People With Problems


“And he opened his mouth and taught them saying: 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 meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

This is the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. It is undoubtedly one of the most important and misunderstood talks ever given. Here is how we misunderstand: we try to make of the persons and conditions described here – poor, grieving, lowly – as virtuous in themselves, something we must all try for.

But I ask you, is this really what Jesus is saying? Have you ever asked someone who just lost the love of their heart, whether it’s a good place to be or not? Do you need to ask them, all things considered, would they rather not be grieving right now?

Jesus is not lifting up certain conditions and problems as prerequisites for God’s attention in our lives. He is, rather, looking at the reality of our lives, our problems, both self-induced, and unasked for, and our conditions, and saying, “Here, you too, are a person that God’s kingdom has come for.”

The message of the Sermon on the Mount is that no one is beyond God’s blessing.


The past two days I had a sick child on my hands – so he said. He stayed home from school. You know how this works. They are sick and they need rest. But there is also the attraction of missing school, lying on the couch watching hours of cartoons, and getting waited on for drinks and sandwiches and ice cream. You don’t get that service at the Ramada.

But after a couple days, they begin to feel better. (Side note: did you all read the latest study suggesting all those antibiotics don’t make a difference. We’ll get better anyway, or we won’t. But either way, save your money.)

But the kid starts to feel better. And at the same time this is happening, they start to wonder what their friends are up to at school; and they’ve reached cartoon saturation, and they realize that they’re missing out on better things.

I mention this because people sometimes question whether the poor want to be helped; or whether the sick want to get well. What lies behind this question for some may just be a search for an excuse to do nothing. For example, “they have a TV and a phone, why should we help them with their rent?”

Defining who really needs help and how they can be helped is half the battle. Jesus asked a similar question of a man in obvious need. There was a pool of water in the town of Bethsaida that was rumored to have healing powers. It was said that angel of the Lord would occasionally come down and stir the waters, and the person in the water when this happened would be healed. There was a man, paralyzed for many long years, who sat by that pool day after day, waiting for a miracle. But in those times when something was moving in the water, someone else always beat him in there first. Jesus asked this man, “Do you want to be healed?”

What a question! When Jesus asks this question however, he’s not looking for an excuse not to help, he’s pointing a way toward a cure. If you wish to be healed, you must believe that things can be different. You must believe that there is something different to be had and that you’re tired of missing out.

Lawrence Mead of New York University writes, “It has become difficult to avoid the conclusion that serious poverty in America is rooted in the culture of the poor.” What is culture but the behaviors, lifestyles, and most of all, beliefs of a given group of people? People in the culture of poverty believe that they are meant to be poor. They believe that not much can change. Things are the way they are. They are victims of a system, of government, of their parents, of bad luck. There’s not a lot of hope there. But what Mead suggests is that if the culture, or rather, the beliefs of individuals can be changed, their behaviors can be, and if their behaviors can be changed, their lives can be changed. For example, it is pretty well known across the board of social agencies, law enforcement, and educators that if a person gets a high school diploma that they can read, stays out of jail, gets a job and stays employed, and gets married, it is very unlikely they will continue to be poor. Some people need a lot of help and encouragement to do these things, but if they do their lives will undoubtedly be better.

The vision of the Kingdom involves more than becoming a middle class citizen. The Kingdom is about the fullness of life on every level. The Kingdom of God, at every turn, every malady, every social dynamic, is about destroying the works of the Devil and bringing the healing power of God into play.

When John the Baptist wanted to know if Jesus was the promised Messiah, he sent his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the One?”

Here is how Jesus answered: “Tell John simply what you see and hear: the blind see again, the paralyzed walk again, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised; the poor are given good news for once. Blessed are they who can receive this and believe.”

Believe I am the Messiah based on the works I do. Believe because you see a new reality being born. Believe because this life is better than the life you have known. Don’t believe only because you’re obligated to, or you think you ought to. Believe because Jesus is for real. Jesus is true. Life in Jesus is a better life. It’s a life for people with problems.

The Kingdom life, however, begins with not what we can see on the outside, but what is going on inside. The necessity to change our beliefs before a better life will come is true not just for the poor; it’s true for all of us. John Ortberg calls this the Inner Game. The Outer Game is what most of us worry about most of the time, what everybody sees. It gets dressed up, whistled at, and ignored. The Outer Game is really a zero sum game. Everybody loses at this game eventually. You begin to lose brain cells, weight starts shifting from the poles of your body toward the equator, hair stops growing where you want it to and sprouts out from other unlikely places. It’s a humbling thing. “The hardest thing to bear as we get older is the feeling that we remain young inside.”

“It may be that you are not yet twenty-five. At some deep, preconscious level, you are thinking, This will never happen to me; I will never grow old like that. Everyone in your life who is over thirty wants you to know they understand. They love you. But it will happen to you. And frankly, they’re looking forward to it.”

That’s the Outer Game. We play it how we play it, but the results are always the same. Ironically, the Inner Game gets little of our attention, but it has the highest stakes by far. The Inner Game is for keeps. It’s for forever.

From a prison cell, St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians,
“We do not lose heart, though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.”

Again, John Ortberg paraphrases Paul’s take on the two games being played, the Outer Game and the Inner Game:

“It doesn’t bother me much, ‘cause my body’s just kind of a loaner anyway. Rent-a-wreck material. It’s what’s inside that matters. Something’s going on inside of me; it’s like the opposite of what’s happening outside. Outside I’m dying a little every day. Inside I’m coming to life. Inside I’m growing. Changing. I keep getting stronger. Joy keeps bubbling up – even in prison. I keep getting more hopeful. . .I keep loving people more . . .It’s the strangest thing. I’m dying on the outside, but inside I’m coming to life. It’s fabulous.”

People like Paul and John the Baptist never had much use for the Outer Game, never worried about what people in soft robes thought. Maybe we can have this attitude as well. Stop worrying so much about the Outer Self and start giving more attention to the Inner You in God.

We have scales and mirrors and cameras to track the progress of our outer selves. How can we track the well-being of the part of us that will last? Here are a few mirrors and scales that we all probably need:

Self-examination and confession
Friends who love you enough to speak truth to you
Time to be alone and listen to God
Examination of your calendar and checkbook
Key questions, such as: How easily discouraged do I get these days? How easily irritated am I compared to six months ago?
Attention to your secret thought life. What is your mind drawn toward – really? Where do envy or blaming or judging or lusting rob your inner person of life and joy?

It’s with attention to such details about the inner self that we will see the Kingdom of God grow in and around us. People with problems become people with irrepressible joy.

“Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. . . He will come and save you.”
A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God’s people; no traveler, not even fools, shall get lost.” Isaiah 35.3-4, 8