{"id":4446,"date":"2025-02-28T07:38:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-28T12:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=4446"},"modified":"2025-02-28T07:38:00","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T12:38:00","slug":"and-the-winner-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/28\/and-the-winner-is\/","title":{"rendered":"And the Winner Is"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

It\u2019s awards season in Hollywood.

This Sunday\u2019s Oscar presentations come on the heels of the Screen Actors Guild awards, the BAFTAs, and the Golden Globes.

In truth, when it comes to Hollywood, every season is awards season. When you include all the technical and cinematic specialty events, there are more than 300 annual awards shows in which the TV and film industry honors its own.

In Jesus\u2019 day, it was typical for Israel\u2019s spiritual teachers to hand out awards as well, although not quite so literally. They routinely announced their \u201cnominees\u201d for the men and women who were most blessed by God.

Their proclamations went something like this:\u00a0Blessed are the faithful and the obedient and those who try with all their might to become very pleasing to God.

Rigorously religious people came off looking quite good.

Then along came Jesus. After he produced his own list of winners, spiritual achievement awards have never been quite the same.

Jesus\u2019 statements are known as the Beatitudes \u2013 eight declarations found in the Sermon on the Mount at the beginning of the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew.

Understanding the Beatitudes is not rocket science.\u00a0Rocket science is easy.\u00a0<\/em>At least rocket science follows known rules and principles. Jesus\u2019 statements seem to violate every known assumption about spiritual vitality.

They turn upside-down the world\u2019s most cherished values.\u00a0

The Beatitudes aren\u2019t guidelines for positive thinking or personal happiness. They are descriptions of the kind of people who are able to get close to God and are therefore bound to experience the kind of life they have always wanted.

If Jesus were handing out spiritual Academy Awards, those expecting to win Best Performance by a Righteous Person are not going to be giving any acceptance speeches. He doesn\u2019t say, \u201cBlessed are the comfortable, because that means God must be taking care of them.\u201d He says just the opposite. Only those who are desperate for God as their only security are likely to sell out to him.\u00a0

And unless we sell out to Jesus, we\u2019ll just play religious games in Jesus\u2019 name and call it \u201cgoing to church.\u201d

The very first Beatitude, for instance, is simply not the sort of thing you\u2019d expect a great religious teacher to say:\u00a0\u201cBlessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven\u201d (Matthew 5:3).

Who gets to enjoy God\u2019s kingdom?\u00a0Blessed are those who have so overdrawn their spiritual checking accounts that the grand total of what they have to impress God is zip<\/u><\/em>. Blessed are those who have no spiritual assets, who are religiously pathetic, and don\u2019t know the first thing about knowing God.\u00a0In other words, blessed are the spiritual underachievers.

This is a joke, right?\u00a0 Why would it be a good thing to be spiritually impoverished?

The answer is that if you are spiritually bankrupt \u2013 and you know<\/u><\/em> there\u2019s nothing in your own performance you can count on \u2013 then you\u2019ll ultimately conclude you have nothing to count on except Jesus.<\/em>

Scottish Bible commentator William Barclay notes that the concept of \u201cthe poor\u201d in ancient Israel had an interesting evolution. At first, poor people were identified as those who had little or nothing. Because they had little, they had no influence, even on the course of their own lives. Because they had no influence, powerful and irresponsible people were left free to crush them. Because they were crushed by others and were desperate for help, poor people were those most likely to place their hope in God.

They hoped in God because they had no other hope \u2013 and acting out of such desperation turns out to be the very thing that saves us.<\/em>

Jesus\u2019 first Beatitude ought to scare the living daylights out of outwardly religious people.\u00a0Jesus wrecks the curve by eliminating<\/em> the curve.\u00a0When it comes to being good enough to impress God, we\u2019re all put back to zero.

He then goes on to say, \u201cBlessed are those who mourn \u2013 who grieve their own spiritual brokenness. Blessed are the meek \u2013 who know that they cannot leverage God with spiritual Brownie points and therefore must simply trust him.\u201d\u00a0

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness \u2013 who long, more than anything else, to be \u201cin the right\u201d with God.

Blessed are the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and those who are getting pushed around, laughed at, and squeezed out of the spotlight because they are certifiable losers in society\u2019s winner-take-all games of money, sex, and power.

The bottom line with Jesus? Life\u2019s \u201closers\u201d are ideally positioned to become God\u2019s winners.

Which, when you think about it, suddenly makes acceptance speeches a whole lot easier.

That\u2019s because whenever we are blessed, there\u2019s really only one Person to thank.
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here It\u2019s awards season in Hollywood. This Sunday\u2019s Oscar presentations come on the heels of the Screen Actors Guild awards, the BAFTAs, and the Golden Globes. In truth, when it comes to Hollywood, every season is awards season. When you include all the technical and cinematic specialty events, there are more than… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4447,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[789,871],"class_list":["post-4446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-beatitudes","tag-poor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4446"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4448,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4446\/revisions\/4448"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}