What’s on the Agenda
Sermon — February 1, 2026
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Lectionary Readings
“Blessed are those”— a modern adaptation of the Beatitudes might begin—“who attend the Annual Parish Meeting.”
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for Coffee Hour, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the bakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who stare at budget spreadsheets for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people email you and call you and ask all kinds of financial questions of you redundantly on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven; for in the same way they persecuted the treasurers who were before you.
I’m only kind of joking. Every church lives suspended between two realities. On the one hand, the local church is a human institution, with legal requirements and established bylaws and literal brick and mortar to be maintained. On the other hand, every local and visible church is also a part of the universal and invisible Church, the mystical Body of Christ. And it’s a conundrum. Because if we don’t attend to the practical side of things, then we’re not able to gather for worship or to carry out our mission. But if we don’t attend to the spiritual side of things, it’s even worse: all the effort of keeping a church afloat is wasted if keeping the church afloat is the only thing we do.
We live suspended between the practical needs of running the church and the theological demands of being the Church. And while my imaginary Beatitudes might reflect some of the agenda for our church’s Annual Meeting today, it’s Jesus, in his real Beatitudes, who sets the agenda for the deeper, spiritual life of the Church.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit,” the Beatitudes begin, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” (Matthew 5:3-5)
Jesus says these words at the very beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. It’s his first public address, and Jesus sets the tone for the rest of his ministry with a series of counter-cultural claims: “blessedness” is not greatness, or power, or fame; it’s meekness, and mourning, and poverty.
Some of the Beatitudes are about time, and change, and the impermanence of everything, good and bad alike. Blessed are those mourn, Jesus says; for they will be comforted. (Matt. 5:4) Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness; for they will be filled. (Matt. 5:6) The version of the Beatitudes recorded in Luke expands on this theme, and also states it in reverse; “Blessed are you who weep now,” Jesus says, “for you will laugh.” (Luke 6:21) But also “woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry; woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.” (Luke 6:25) In part, this is about cycles that occur over the years, or even over the day: those who are mourning this year have laughed before, and will laugh again; those who are laughing now have wept before, and will one day weep again; most of us go between hunger and fullness three or four times a day. But these Beatitudes are also about the promise that one day, these cycles will end. We live in a world that’s full of mourning now, and there is another world of eternal comfort. We live in a world in which we hunger and thirst for righteousness now, and there is another world of God’s eternal justice and peace. Although the process may be slow, God is breaking the cycles in our lives; God is leading us toward a better world. And our faith in this truth is what gives us hope in the face of adversity.
But the Beatitudes are not only about hope for the future. I said that the Beatitudes are an “agenda” for the Church. And—as any of our classicists could tell you—agenda means “things to be done,” as opposed to credenda, which are “things to be believed.” And the Sermon on the Mount is truly an agenda for the Church. It’s not only about our beliefs, but about our actions; not only about what we hope God will do, but what God says we ought to do.
“Blessed are the peacemakers,” Jesus says, “for they will be called children of God.” (Matt. 5:9) “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.” (5:7) “Blessed are,” not those who “hunger and thirst” in general, but specifically those “who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” (Matt. 5:6) We are not blessed because we wait for God to bring about a more peaceful world eventually; we are blessed when we make peace in this world. We are not blessed because we believe that God is merciful, we are blessed when we offer our own acts of mercy. To hunger and thirst for righteousness means to open our hearts to the suffering of others, and to yearn for it to end, even though it causes us pain, in our guts, to hunger and thirst for justice in an unjust world.
Christians throughout history have only rarely been insulted and reviled and persecuted simply for being Christian. From the eras of persecution in the early Church to the struggles for civil rights and social justice in the modern day, Christians have been rewarded for keeping their mouths shut and saying their private prayers. The push-back that Jesus predicts has always come when we begin to speak out in his name against the violence and injustice of the world. But when this happens, Jesus says, don’t despair. “Rejoice and be glad, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matt. 5:12)
You might think that this agenda for the Church sets way too high a bar. What can we, at little old St. John’s, do to be peacemakers in a violent world? How much do our small acts of mercy mean in the face of so much need? Why does Jesus insist that the Church expose itself to persecution and insult and reviling—doesn’t he know we’ve got a budget deficit to sort out?
But as is always the case, and as Paul reminds us this week, “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” (1 Cor. 1:25) God doesn’t choose to act through the great and mighty people of the world. God chooses the humble and the meek: God chooses the ordinary. “Consider your own call,” Paul writes to the Christians at Corinth, in the ultimate back-handed compliment: “Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.” (1 Cor. 1:26-27)
… Thanks, Paul? I guess? That’s a little rude, but in fact it’s incredibly good news if you are among the weak, and the foolish, and the humble people of this world. Just as the Beatitudes turn our idea of blessedness upside-down, so too Paul tells us that God’s power works through the powerless.
So I wonder whether, alongside the business of our Annual Meeting this year, we might run a sort of parallel Annual Meeting of the heart. The items on the agenda for our Annual Meeting and in the contents of our Annual Report provide some implicit rubrics by which we measure the life of the church: operating income and expenses, numbers of baptisms and average Sunday attendance, and more.
But the Beatitudes offer another set of rubrics by which we might evaluate our lives as Christians this year, and our life together as a church, and it’s only in service of these theological demands that the practical concerns actually matter.
So I wonder:
How foolish were we at St. John’s this year, in the service of God?
How hungry were we for righteousness?
How poor were we in spirit this year?
How meek were we? How pure in heart?
What acts of mercy did we undertake?
What did we do to make peace?
What did you mourn this year in 2025? When were you comforted?
Were you persecuted or insulted or reviled this year? Did people utter all kinds of evil falsely against you in 2025?
It’s easy to get caught up in the practical challenges of church life. There are difficult questions for how churches will carry on in the decades ahead, and there are no easy answers. But we should never lose sight of the simplicity of our faith: for God has told us, as the prophet Micah says, “what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)
