Just can't sit there! Matt 5: 1-2

We’re going to look at the Beatitudes for the next while. Let’s put the experience in context. We see from Matt 4:23-25 that large crowds are following Jesus. Jesus has been preaching all over the region of Galilee and ‘announcing The Good News about the Kingdom’. A significant element of that announcement is that Kingdom of God is accessible. Certainly a portion of the crowd were religious leaders that were trying to find out what the hubbub was all about, and finding fault. But the vast majority of those ‘large crowds’ were persons who felt that they were not worthy – or measure up and were themselves disabled. They had been led to believe that they didn’t belong or fit in the temple and the present religious constructions. However, Jesus didn’t abandon the religious system. He spoke regularly in the synagogues telling them of the new accessible kingdom. This new way was not at the exclusion of the synagogue/church – but Christ’s heart was/is for accessibility to the Kingdom to be ‘through’ them/us. What I find intriguing is that Jesus took it the hillside – he took it to the people creating a revolution of sorts. There’s always danger telling people how things should be, when they are not because it creates ‘unrest’ with the status quo. There is significant power in the ‘ voice of people’ . We see this throughout history – where regular, normal people in the crowd can make a difference.

This past week I was struck with one story where one voice made a powerful impact. I was on a short holiday with my in-laws to Connecticut this past long weekend. My father- in- law is a historian/naturalist (Earl Plato). He is passionate and has written books on the period of the Civil War. So, while in Hartford he just had to stop at the home of Harriet Beecher Stowe. She was a woman living in an age where her voice was not valued (DOB 1811). When Abraham Lincoln met her he said “So you are the little woman who started the Great War.” Harriet wrote a book entitled “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” – and with that book she rocked a country into action against a horrible injustice– a voice that engaged millions of people to stand up in the US and around the world and say “no more!” When asked why she wrote Uncle Tom’s cabin she replied:

“ I wrote what I did because as a woman, as a mother I was oppressed and broken-hearted, with the sorrows and injustice I saw, because as a Christian I felt the dishonor to Christianity - because as a lover of my country I trembled at the coming day of wrath. It is no merit in the sorrowful that they weep, or to the oppressed and smothering that they gasp and struggle, not to me, that I must speak for the oppressed - who cannot speak for themselves.”

I pray that when we hear the message of the accessible Kingdom for the oppressed, broken and disabled, we would not just ‘sit there’ anymore.

(1982, California quoted from www.darwinawards.com) Larry Walters of Los Angeles is one of the few to contend for the Darwin Awards and live to tell the tale. "I have fulfilled my 20-year dream," said Walters, a former truck driver for a company that makes TV commercials. "I'm staying on the ground. I've proved the thing works."
Larry's boyhood dream was to fly. But fates conspired to keep him from his dream. He joined the Air Force, but his poor eyesight disqualified him from the job of pilot. After he was discharged from the military, he sat in his backyard watching jets fly overhead.
He hatched his weather balloon scheme while sitting outside in his "extremely comfortable" Sears lawnchair. He purchased 45 weather balloons from an Army-Navy surplus store, tied them to his tethered lawnchair dubbed the Inspiration I, and filled the 4' diameter balloons with helium. Then he strapped himself into his lawnchair with some sandwiches, Miller Lite, and a pellet gun. He figured he would pop a few of the many balloons when it was time to descend.
Larry's plan was to sever the anchor and lazily float up to a height of about 30 feet above his back yard, where he would enjoy a few hours of flight before coming back down. But things didn't work out quite as Larry planned.
When his friends cut the cord anchoring the lawnchair to his Jeep, he did not float lazily up to 30 feet. Instead, he streaked into the LA sky as if shot from a cannon, pulled by the lift of 42 helium balloons holding 33 cubic feet of helium each. He didn't level off at 100 feet, nor did he level off at 1000 feet. After climbing and climbing, he leveled off at 16,000 feet.
At that height he felt he couldn't risk shooting any of the balloons, lest he unbalance the load and really find himself in trouble. So he stayed there, drifting cold and frightened with his beer and sandwiches, for more than 14 hours. He crossed the primary approach corridor of LAX, where Trans World Airlines and Delta Airlines pilots radioed in reports of the strange sight.
Eventually he gathered the nerve to shoot a few balloons, and slowly descended. The hanging tethers tangled and caught in a power line, blacking out a Long Beach neighborhood for 20 minutes. Larry climbed to safety, where he was arrested by waiting members of the LAPD. As he was led away in handcuffs, a reporter dispatched to cover the daring rescue asked him why he had done it. Larry replied nonchalantly, "A man can't just sit around."
The Federal Aviation Administration was not amused. Safety Inspector Neal Savoy said, "We know he broke some part of the Federal Aviation Act, and as soon as we decide which part it is, a charge will be filed."

We may not want to take Larry’s lead necessarily, but if we want to make change for others “we just can’t sit there”

Anyway, I was just thinking….