Finn Chirnside preaches on the Beatitudes and the Kingdom of God on All Saints Day
A Sunday sermon by Finn Chirnside at Sumner Redcliffs Church on Matthew 5:1–12.
Summary
Finn Chirnside, Associate Vicar at Sumner Redcliffs Church, delivers a sermon on All Saints Day centred on the Beatitudes from Matthew 5:1–12. He argues that the Beatitudes are not a salvation checklist or an impossible standard reserved for heaven, but proclamations of how the kingdom of God actually works — declarations that those whom the world dismisses are honoured and welcomed by God. Drawing on the context of the kingdom of heaven as the defining theme of Matthew's Gospel, he contends that the Beatitudes only make sense when read through the lens of Jesus' announcement that the kingdom of heaven is near. He challenges the common reading that reduces the Beatitudes to a template of attitudes one must achieve to earn entry into God's kingdom, arguing instead that they are blessings freely given, rooted in grace, and pointing toward the full satisfaction that the kingdom promises.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
The Early Church and the Marginalised
Finn Chirnside: If you're new to church, or you haven't been around long, you might not be aware that the heart of the growth of the early church under Roman rule, in the early zeros and the hundreds, was women and slaves. They were the main kind of people who were growing the church early on. In fact, women in particular — which people don't really believe these days, but it's true — saw Christianity as a liberating and honouring religion, one that took them seriously, and saw them as more than just a flesh sack for babies. True. It's true.
Often Christianity is touted as a religion that seems to want to crush the freedom of women and minorities, when in fact the reason people joined is the opposite. One of the reasons we were criticised early on is because we would take people seriously who no one else took seriously. There was a common practice at the time — oh, it's a girl, we've just had a baby, it's a girl, just leave it out. It was called exposure, and the baby would just die on the side of the road and people would just ignore it. Christians came along and said, hold up, what are you doing? And they started adoption. They did this whole thing, and it just became a common practice of the early church to pick up babies that were abandoned. No one else was doing this, and we were pretty heavily mocked for it.
The idea, even in the church, that a man and a woman could sit together and eat — not as a precursor for something slightly more raucous, but for fellowship and community — was insane. It was outrageous at the time. Or the idea that a slave and his master could sit at the same table together and be equal in the confines of the church was outrageous. In a culture which prioritised certain bloodlines and heritages, Christianity comes out of nowhere and actually upends that. It was the religion where the marginalised, the poor, the useless, the dispensable had value and worth — and were not dispensable and were not useless.
And Christianity is still that religion, far more than any other, far more than secular humanism, or atheism, or Buddhism, or anything like that. What is so special about the Jesus movement that this kind of transformational — but let's be honest, slightly daft — way of living came about?
Karl Marx, Matthew's Gospel, and the Kingdom of Heaven
So let's start with Karl Marx. The first line of the Communist Manifesto — that's a curve, isn't it? This will make sense. The first line of the Communist Manifesto is this: The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. The sentence captures the rest of the document. If you just didn't read the rest of the manifesto and you just read this, you'd be like, okay, cool, I kind of get it. I understand what he's trying to do here.
I say this for a purpose. In the same way, when we read the Gospels — in particular Matthew's Gospel — we see a similar intention behind how Matthew phrases his Gospel. The Communist Manifesto starts with a little preamble talking about a whole bunch of stuff, and Marx and Engels are just saying some weird stuff. It's all very boring. And then you have this line, and then they start extrapolating on it.
In Matthew's Gospel, you have a similar thing where Matthew just kind of sets the scene. He gives you Jesus' genealogy. He gives you his birth and his early life. He gives you his baptism. He gives you his Garden of Eden moment — that's a whole rabbit hole. And then he gives you the key phrase, which is that companion phrase: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. This is in Matthew 4.
The kingdom of heaven — or sometimes called the kingdom of God — is the defining theme in Matthew's Gospel. And actually, it is the Gospel, right? The Gospel is this: the kingdom of heaven is available to all. And that is ultimately realised and made fully possible through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. With Jesus' arrival on the scene, it has already arrived. He thinks it's already available, and what starts is completed on the cross. Does that kind of make sense? Jesus is the kingdom in a person.
The kingdom of God is the place of God's effective will, where God's will is fully realised and worked out. This is why we pray, your kingdom come — because, unsurprisingly, this probably isn't what God wants his kingdom to look like, what we currently experience in the world. Would that be fair?
The Garden of Eden, the Fall, and Two Kingdoms
And this goes back — as with everything in the Bible — to the Garden of Eden story, where you've got heaven and earth fully united. God gives humans power over the earth, basically, and says, hey, I'm giving you this as a gift to rule. The idea is that we do it with him as our Lord. But when we choose not to, we tell him to basically get stuffed. He goes, all right then. He never retracts that authority over the earth from us, and we choose to become our own masters of our own lives and not live in the way that was designed by God.
So to do this is to step out of harmony with creation, and then by logic to step out of the kingdom. And it's not actually — this is a whole preamble, it will make sense — it's not actually that you're just becoming your own master, your own god, which was the idea. You're actually stepping from one kingdom into another kingdom. The Bible would call this the kingdom of darkness, where there is no light and where God is not present.
In God's kingdom, humans are rulers of all creation under God, and we're still given these royal titles — this is what the Garden of Eden story is all about. In the kingdom of darkness, we are slaves: slaves to our own desires, to the evil intentions of others, and to the malevolent spiritual forces that bring death and destruction.
But one of the great promises of the Old Testament is that a king would come who would restore the unity of heaven and earth, and bring a people to himself who would rule over and care for the earth as per the original design in Genesis. And this became known as the kingdom of God. This was the great hope of the Old Testament. This is what everything in the Old Testament is aching for. And this is what people in Jesus' day waited for — for a Messiah to come who would somehow, and they argued about what this would look like, restore the kingdom of God on earth.
So when Jesus arrives on the scene and says, the kingdom of God is near, they've got all of this stuff in their background. They've got the Genesis story, they've got the story of David, they've got the story of Saul, they've got the story of the prophets. So obviously it's going to come with assumptions, anticipation, trepidation, and lots of questions.
The Sermon on the Mount as the Manifesto of the Kingdom
In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus announces the kingdom is near, he calls to repentance, and then he goes and heals people — that's the next thing he does. And the reason he does this is not just to show off his power, although that is part of it. It's actually eschatological. That's a fancy word for the end times, right? It's the study of the end things. And this is why it's eschatological: humans were not designed to be sick. In the garden, we did not get sick. And in the new heavens and new earth, hopefully you're not going to get typhoid or whatever. The promise is that that's gone. So in Jesus — the kingdom in a person, heaven and earth fully reunited — he brings back through his healings what once was and what one day will fully be. Do you see? It's actually a promise of the full restoration to come. That's what's happening in his healings.
And this is why people flock to him. They have all this in mind. They get this. So you've got thousands upon thousands, a great multitude in Matthew 4, flocking to him. And then Jesus climbs a mountain — slash a hill — which is kind of copying Moses a little bit. He sits down, which is a position of authority in Hebrew thought. And he gives the greatest sermon of all time. It is the Sermon on the Mount.
Why is the Sermon on the Mount so good? Here's why. It is the manifesto of the kingdom of God. It is the extrapolation of the kingdom of heaven has come near. It shows the kind of life that is possible when one aligns oneself with Jesus and his way and his kingdom through repentance and allegiance. And Jesus starts with the Beatitudes, which we'll get to in a second, and then he works through multiple different vices — such as adultery, hatred, greed, and pride — and then offers a kingdom vision for how to live in response.
I need to word this well. It is often taught that the Sermon on the Mount highlights our sin, and it does. But sometimes it's then taught that therefore it is impossible to live the Sermon now. Have you heard this before? I've heard this before. The basic idea is that Jesus is setting a standard, and we can't hit the standard, and we'll never be able to hit the standard, so this is just for heaven. This is just Jesus showing us what heaven's like. I get it. It does identify our failings. But then Jesus seems to think we could do it. The thing is doing it with him and by his power — that's the catch. But it would be very weird for Jesus to talk about, so when you pray, go and do this, and talk like that the entire time, and then say, by the way, you will never be able to do it. He never says that at any point. In fact, he says the opposite multiple times. Go and do likewise. Teach them to obey everything I've commanded you. He thinks that through his power, you and I can live the Sermon on the Mount.
I want to get that straight off. We can't cop out of this. He genuinely thinks we can be these kinds of people. It would be very weird if he gave all those practical instructions and then said, it's pointless, by the way, just a big psych. That would be silly. But that's how I've heard it preached before. I get how we got there. I understand the jump. But it's actually not what Jesus is saying.
Reading the Beatitudes in Context
So this is why we need context for the Sermon and for the Beatitudes. And the context is this, once again: the kingdom of heaven is near. If you read the Beatitudes without repent, the kingdom of heaven is near, you're stuffed from the start. And as I'll explain, you will get into some really weird theological stuff that I have come across too much — which is why I'm now talking about it from the front. The reason I'm talking about this is because I've talked to people about it and they've come to me with these ideas. I understand how you got here, but I just want to tell you: the Beatitudes are a blessing and not some thinly veiled curse that Jesus is trying to whack you with.
The Beatitudes could be a year's worth of preaching. I've got about 20 more minutes, so just give me some grace when I miss most of what you want to hear. There's so much to say. Even the way you translate the word blessed — it could mean happy, it could mean flourishing. There are disagreements between scholars trying to get at what Jesus is really trying to hit here.
Let's start with what he's not doing. If we start with what Jesus is not saying, then we can work out what he's really saying. One of the easiest ways — and this is from my own experience — early on I read the Beatitudes as a template, like a salvation template. Like if I check the boxes, I'm in. Has anyone else done the Beatitudes like this before? I don't blame you if you have. It's like, oh, if I just become poor in spirit — or some translations will say poor, or different things like that — then I'm in. And it becomes this thing that you can isolate from the rest of the Gospel and just go, don't worry, I've checked one box, and it's fine, I'm in. That's not what Jesus is doing.
Dallas Willard and the Poor in Spirit
Dallas Willard, who wrote the best book on the Sermon on the Mount, called The Divine Conspiracy — read it, cry, read it again — he makes the point that with all of the Beatitudes, Jesus is speaking to his context. And this is a really important one with something like poor in spirit. Sometimes people take it as recognising your spiritual poverty, so therefore it applies to everybody. The idea being that no one is able to meet Jesus at his level of holiness. I get that, but it would be weird — why does he seem to isolate it like it's one group of people, if it applies to everybody? I think he's got a specific group of people in mind here.
Willard talks about how the poor in spirit, in Hebrew context, is more like people who have no spiritual credentials or worth. They're not very bright. You're not going to come to this person with a theological question. They struggle to read, they can't read, they don't come from the right family, they're not pastor's kids, they won't take over the family church. These are the kind of people that Jesus is talking about in a context like this.
Dallas Willard paraphrases it like this: Blessed are the spiritually deprived, the spiritually bankrupt, since they too have access to the kingdom. The intellectually deficient, the uneducated, the religiously disrespected.
Now, the people listening to Jesus were these kinds of people. They were the ones the religious system didn't have time for. Particularly early on, they were the tax collectors and the prostitutes who were treated with contempt, but they ached for something more. And the key thing for them was that they repented — they saw the availability and they repented and they changed their ways.
The disciples Jesus chose were of this sort. Fishermen, zealots — not the top of the list to be religiously respectable. Even Jesus himself — there seemed to be some kind of logic with this, where Nathaniel, who had become his disciple, said to him, Can anything good come out of Nazareth? It's kind of like, can anything good come out of Cust? No, but this is the logic, right? Like, oh, this person lives in Cust. Oh, jeepers, creepers, man. They've got nothing to offer. That's the kind of idea. It's the people you just kind of look at and go, oh, pish posh. And I love Cust, by the way. It's a great little place. But you know what I mean — no one's going to say, oh, I studied at the University of Cust before I got this job.
The Danger of Salvation by Attitude
This verse, and all verses, must be looked at through the lens of the availability of the kingdom of the heavens through repentance. This is the big thing. You've got to have this the entire time. If not, salvation — the entrance to the kingdom — ceases to become a free gift of grace, but it becomes salvation by attitude. So it's like, oh, I've recognised that I'm spiritually poor, I'm in. Or, a perfect example: oh, I'm a peacemaker for the UN, so I don't need to repent because Jesus said peacemakers get in, and I'm working as a peacekeeper. Do you see how you can really easily just take it and go, oh, I'm a merciful judge, I work for the system, and I let people off easier than others, I'm in. I'm being ridiculous. But do you understand how people can look at that, and without the wider framing, just kind of go, oh, brilliant, easy.
Without repent, the kingdom of the heavens is near, if you don't have that, you can do whatever you want. Jesus doesn't say, because you are poor, your poverty has earned a blessing. He doesn't say you've done anything to earn it. He's saying you are blessed by God in your poverty no matter what. There's a distinction there.
And if you have this salvation template — I'm ranting about this because I see this so much — I have two questions. What happens to people who aren't in spiritual poverty? So pastors' kids. What happens to smart people? Like, genuinely, sorry bro, you can't get in no matter what you do because you're quite bright. Sorry, Julian, you're stuffed, mate. You're too smart. If you go extreme like that, that's what kind of happens. Or my sons — I have three boys, and if they're all pastors' kids now, are they not allowed in anymore because they're suddenly spiritually rich? They've got some spiritual credit because they're my kid? It's actually kind of silly the more you extrapolate it. That's not what Jesus is doing.
What the Beatitudes Actually Are
And this is why context is so important. The Beatitudes are statements designed to show how heaven views things and how heaven works. People who in Jesus' times were not taken seriously, were pushed around, were laughed at — they were welcomed into the kingdom as a result of the Beatitudes, as a result of Jesus. And it gives them a greater status, honour, and meaning than they could have imagined.
Each of the blessed were people who in Jesus' time were not taken seriously. They were the bottom of the pile. They were not strong in the world's eyes, but weak. Tim Mackey from the Bible Project says it like this: The kingdom of heaven is a new kind of society where generosity, justice, and peace reign, in a world where love is the final word. The Beatitudes are the first deposit of that reality.
And they lead us into a grace-filled tension. Jesus really captured it when he says elsewhere to the religious leaders, The tax collectors and the sinners are entering the kingdom of heaven before you. Anyone can enter in — he still thinks they can enter. But those with more, whatever that is, can actually struggle to access it, even if the door is wide open. And this is uncomfortable for many of us. It doesn't mean it's impossible, if you have status and prestige, to enter God's kingdom. But it's often true that we can generate a kind of pride within ourselves that means we miss the very, very open door. And the people who are at the bottom, who have nothing, just go, sick, I'll take that. Thanks, mate. Someone's taking me seriously.
And this is important. Jesus did have intellectuals in his community. Paul of Tarsus was like one of the smartest people who's ever lived. He was doing all right. He was in, wasn't he? But he counted all of his stuff as rags for the sake of knowing Jesus. That's the distinction. You can have stuff. You can have credentials. You can have power. You can have wealth. But where does it sit in your loves? This is what Jesus is assuming with the Beatitudes.
Thomas Aquinas, one of the best theologians and philosophers in history, was writing a book towards the end of his life called the Summa Theologica. It's spectacular for what's written of it. And then he had this experience in communion that was so profound that he refused to finish it. When his biographer said, dude, can you please finish it? It's quite good, he said no. And this is why: All that I have written seems to me like straw compared to what I have seen and what has been revealed to me. So the grace and the kindness of God took Aquinas' gift seriously, but in the face of the outrageous generosity of God and how the kingdom works, it all didn't matter anymore. Does that tension make sense? You can be spiritually rich, but you must know your place and realise that what you have is a gift and not built by yourself.
The Beatitudes as Blessings, Not Burdens
You cannot experience mourning — I was saying this at the 9 a.m. service — I haven't really had anyone close to me die. Just being straight up. I haven't had a parent die, I haven't had a sister die. I haven't had that level of mourning. But you can still be filled with compassion for those who have mourning.
You can spend your whole life free from persecution. Sometimes people can read the Sermon on the Mount and go, oh man, persecution means it's like a check, and sometimes it is. But then they'll go out looking for it. And if they're being a really mean person and going, well, I'm being persecuted for Jesus, I'm in now — that's not at all what he meant. He's saying, if you are persecuted, don't go seeking it, but rejoice, because what you have to come is so much better. Do you see?
So this is the big thing. The blessings should actually bless. They shouldn't be something that you read and go, oh gosh, I'm really stuffed here, aren't I? They should be a blessing. They are saying loud and clear that you are blessed because in the kingdom you will receive the antidote, the satisfaction of what you are currently experiencing, whatever that pain is.
All Saints Day and the Hope of the Resurrection
Today in the church calendar, we celebrate a day called All Saints Day. It is a day where we remember those who have gone before us, who have graduated to heaven in the last year and on — but generally last year. The reading on All Saints Day is always the Beatitudes. Why? If they are a salvation litmus test, it's a bit weird. But if they are filled with hope, then it's something completely different.
And there's that line: Blessed are those who mourn, they will be comforted. Why are they comforted? It only works if you've got the wider vision of the kingdom of the heavens involved. They are comforted because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead. They are comforted because there's a God who himself has died and experienced the pain of that and can sympathise with you.
If you don't have that — if atheism is true and we're just all floating around on this big doom rock and then the big bang happens and everything's predetermined since, according to Stephen Hawking, nothing really matters anymore — why are you blessed if you mourn? There's no blessing to experience. It only works if the kingdom of the heavens is involved.
The Beatitudes are not law. They are not rules. They are proclamations that the rule and the reign of God is here. And because of Jesus, these types of people — and so many more — are blessed, because in the kingdom there are answers and satisfaction and delight for those who mourn. They have the promise that they will receive comfort from God and will see their loved ones again. You can't have that outside of this.
For those who desire peace but never see it — if you've got an insatiable desire to see peace in this world, if you're like an intercessor and you just have a constant burden for people — if there's no satisfaction for that, no one's looking at someone who mourns and going, man, you're having a great time, aren't they? It's not the mourning, it's not the poverty, it's not that — but that's the reason you're blessed. You know? It's what happens in the kingdom as a result.
No one's looking at someone who's a perfectionist, who just can't sit still and will never be happy until the world is completely resolved, and going, man, they're having a great time. No one's looking at a workaholic who just can't sit still and going, man, they're loving life, aren't they? No one's looking at someone who is so burdened by the love of God for the world that they spend their nights weeping — and there are people like that — and going, man, they're having a great time. It only works if there's satisfaction for it at the end, and that's what the Beatitudes are trying to say.
For people who are persecuted, they're not sitting in persecution and going, this is awesome. I'm really loving this. I'm looking forward to someone coming into my house and potentially killing me and my family. They've got a bigger view of what's happening in play. This is what the Beatitudes are doing. It's a blessing.
The Kingdom Reorientates Everything
For those who have no spiritual status, if you're not very bright, for those who are born and raised and will die in obscurity, to those with no hope, whatever that looks like — and that's a lot of us right now, I think — the Beatitudes say that God has a place for you. And you'll find the longer you follow Jesus, you'll kind of start to look like a mini-Beatitude in your own way. You'll become more of a peacemaker, shaped by the goodness and grace of God. You'll become more merciful, but it's through the love of Jesus and not to earn the love of Jesus.
One of my favourite phrases is this: the Beatitudes are rumours from another world, whispers from eternity into now, and they proclaim that everything is gift and that all are welcome. Here, in the kingdom of God, the priority is God-defined love. And what culture puts first — whether it's status, wealth, your job, your legacy, your sexual conquest, your intelligence — they're small in comparison. They will not satisfy your soul. But the Beatitudes say that satisfaction is coming, if only you will receive. That's the repent part. It's the turning and coming towards the kingdom of the heavens, and then you'll receive that satisfaction.
In an election season, the Beatitudes confront us with how creation actually works. Often Christianity is called an upside-down kingdom. I'd suggest we live in the upside-down kingdom, and actually God's kingdom is the right way up. It's actually how things were designed to be. So what we have now, with a world that is power-hungry and falling to pieces, is not how things would be. This is the upside-down world.
But the Beatitudes reorientate us to the true nature of things. Rulers in God's world are not power-hungry and self-serving. They don't stick their face on billboards. They're not platform builders. They are the meek, the gentle, the self-sacrificial, the surrendered, the dead self. And it is those kinds of people who will inherit the kingdom and will rule in the true fulfilment of all politics, which is the kingdom of God. All politics is reaching out for and trying to ascertain what the kingdom of the heavens actually is.
Conclusion: A Life That Matters
So, what's the point? To those without hope, those without purpose: you have a place and a kingdom that gives you purpose and hope. To those who think you're pretty sorted: the world is not designed the way you think it is. I would suggest altering your point of view and coming towards Jesus. He wants to call you to a life of freedom, to a life where you do not earn your status and worth, but it is just freely given. No matter your position in life, your wealth, whatever it is, I guarantee you carry a burden — and the kingdom offers you a light burden, one that is fuelled by the power of Jesus, one that fills you with his love, his joy, and his peace.
I have met so many people. I've worked in a couple of churches now in my life. I've taken funerals for people that people won't remember in ten years, and they were the most extraordinary people you'll ever meet, because they were walking in beatitude. They were filled with love. They were filled with grace. They were filled with kindness.
There's one lady when I used to work in New Brighton, and she was called Shiny Jenny. It was because she had way too much makeup on, just all the time. And she had nothing that would give her credibility — just like objectively, in terms of modern society, nothing about her was like, man, she's smashing it. But her funeral was packed. There were hundreds of people there.
Alicia, my wife's mum, when she passed away — nothing really going for her in terms of a CV or anything like that — I think about a thousand people turned up to that funeral. That's a beatitude, man. That's a life that matters. That's someone who's got the order the right way around. Those are people who will be remembered by Jesus, and those are the people who can have genuine impact now that will transform people. And that's the kind of life Jesus invites us into.