Learners

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he had sat down, his disciples came to him. He began to teach them, saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” (Matthew 5.1-9)

More than any other gospel, Matthew’s text presents Rabbi Jesus as a rabbi, that is, as a teacher. The evangelist takes pains to show that Jesus’ primary ministry is teaching, meaning instructing, guiding, leading. For this reason, many commentators like to say that Matthew’s gospel is “a teaching gospel,” by which we might understand a manual on how to become a follower of Rabbi Jesus. In other words, on how to be a learner under the tutelage of the Galilean Rabbi. 

With that emphasis front and center, it is no surprise that Matthew begins Rabbi Jesus’ ministry with a class. Granted, it is not your usual classroom, not as we experience one, but an open-air classroom, this one on the slope of a mountain, the evangelist writing, “Jesus went up the mountain.” With his text geared towards a Jewish audience, he expects his readers to connect the phrase with another great teacher, Moses, who, as the Hebrew text tells us, “went up the mountain” to receive the Ten Commandments from God, lessons on moral living inscribed on stone.

His next phrase reinforces the image of a teacher, stating that “after Jesus sat down, his disciples came to him, and he began to teach them.” Whereas we are accustomed to a teacher standing behind a podium and lecturing, in Matthew’s time the typical posture for a rabbi was to be seated, his disciples gathering around him, listening as he teaches. So, in a few brief passages at the start of the gospel, we’re off to the races, so to speak, with Matthew’s intent clear and certain, portraying Jesus as the Teacher, one like Moses but even greater, and us as learners, sitting at his feet, soaking in the lessons he offers us.

This first teaching is but one of many that the Rabbi will offer us in this course on living that is called the gospel. While tradition has decided to call this first lecture a sermon, clearly it is not a sermon in the traditional sense. Instead, Matthew has brought together into a cohesive overview here at the start a number of the Rabbi’s major teachings, presenting them to us here as a teacher might offer an outline of the course or run through the syllabus for the semester with his students. 

Often, one hears that these so-called Beatitudes are the gospel in miniature, which, I suppose, is saying the same thing, since the the subsequent sections of Matthew’s gospel will expound and expand on these teachings, Rabbi Jesus consistently presented as the teacher instructing us on how to live in a world ignorant of God, a world without a clue on the right way to live. 

And like any good teacher, Rabbi Jesus teaches by word and by example. Interspersed throughout the pages of the text, we find five major teaching sections, the Beatitudes being the first of the five. These are the classroom talks. But Rabbi Jesus doesn’t keep his students locked in the classroom. Instead, he regularly takes them on field trips, opportunities for him to get them some hands-on experience, watching him as he lives out the words that he has spoken to them, in this way offering them the full experience of learning.

The objective of Rabbi Jesus’ teaching, of course, is to contextualize the kingdom of heaven, a phrase that Matthew regularly places in the Rabbi’s mouth. The phrase refers to a way of living that is focused on God, not on oneself, an oasis in the world where God’s rules are followed, not the rulebook of potentates and the powerful, any place where a person decides to put God first, not last.

Practically speaking, Rabbi Jesus intends his learners to take with them into the wider world the lessons that he has taught them, spreading the lesson by their words and by the way they live, in this way gradually returning the world to the graces of God, instead of allowing it to plummet further and further away from the Almighty. 

That intention is clearly stated at the end of the gospel in what is called the “great commissioning.” The setting is after the death and resurrection of the Galilean Teacher. And, as Matthew did at the start, he does here, having Jesus again on a mountain. He writes, “The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them.” 

And what does the Risen Jesus tell his followers? He tells them classes have ended for them and now they are to “go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations.” The Greek word for disciples here can be translated as learners. Having spent the year with him, the students now become the teachers responsible for the learners entrusted to them. “Teach them,” the Risen Lord says, “to observe all that I have commanded you.” 

And should they feel inadequate to the task–and who wouldn’t–he offers them this promise, “I am with you always, until the end of the age.” His spirit, his voice resides within them, guiding them, prompting them, assuring them as they become first-year teachers, a voice that stays with them, echoing his words to them so that they can pass on his teachings to others who also want to learn.

The eight beatitudes, or teachings, that Rabbi Jesus presents in his first lecture lay before the disciples, or students, a way of living in the world that is the polar opposite of how things run in the world. If Alice thought she had stepped into wonderland when she fell down the rabbit hole, the world that Rabbi Jesus offers his disciples is just as different from the one they presently know.

In many ways, this brave new world, which he calls the kingdom of heaven, is the mirror image of the world in which people live. It is as if Rabbi Jesus looks at the world and teaches his disciples the opposite of what the world teaches. Everything is inside out. Whereas the world glorifies the rich, putting them in their own kingdoms, Rabbi Jesus extols the poor, stating that “theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” 

In many ways, this first point is the critical one for his disciples to learn because the others depend upon it and are built from it. As Rabbi Jesus sees it, the poor are open to God, whereas the rich have no need for God. Those without anything are dependent on God to provide. They can’t pull out a credit card for groceries or take out a loan for a new home. They have nothing, except trust in God. And for that reason they are called blessed, or happy, because they have come to a crucial insight about our humanity. We are all dependents of God, whether we recognize it or not. Or as Augustine of Hippo was quick to see, “Before God, we are all beggars,” a idea that many people in the world do not cater to, believing they have made their own successes, built up their own portfolios, and pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps, a favorite trope of our culture. 

Moving on, Rabbi Jesus then praises those who mourn, difficult for us to understand since those who mourn have lost something. What he intends here in all likelihood is more than a personal loss of some sort, but more of a loss of the world as it should be. Those who mourn, in other words, grieve at the world that has put itself so far removed from the Divine One. They look around and they know this is not the way God intended it to be. They are heavy hearted at what they see, a world where selfishness is a way of life, where hatred is the norm, and where the powerful rule. 

Only those who mourn can see this wrecked and wretched world as it is, while those who do not mourn can’t see the many things that are wrong, choosing instead to go along with things as they are, believing everything is good, which is a far cry from the real world, a world in which bigotry is rampant, innocents are slaughtered, and oppression is condoned. Whereas such wrongs would normally be a wake-up call for change, the world moves along, oblivious to the injustice, inhumanity, and intimidation that fills it like a dump site. Only those who can imagine a different world mourn, and for that reason they are blessed.

Likewise, the gentle hearted are promised an inheritance by Rabbi Jesus in his teachings, the word “meek” often used in translations, although the word “humble” comes closest to the Jewish understanding of the word “anawim,” surely the ones that the Rabbi has in mind when he refers to this group of people. They are those who, like Moses, lower their heads before the burning bush, aware of their insignificance and unworthiness.

In a Facebook age and in a twitter echo chamber where every thought and action of a person’s day are broadcast across the globe minute by minute, hour by hour, as if what we ate and everything we think is newsworthy, the call to be humble is going to take off like a lead balloon. Nowadays, humbleness is considered a weakness and humility is classified as poor self-esteem. 

Of course, without humility, we easily forget our status as creatures, created beings who fail and who falter, creatures made of mud and spit who need a cup of coffee to get going in the morning and require a shot of whiskey to get to sleep at night. Without humility, we believe our Facebook postings, fake and false though they may be, and, before long, we have fooled ourselves into believing we are the envy of the world.

Next, Rabbi Jesus praises the merciful, those capable of showing mercy, an attribute that combines feeling and action. A merciful person feels the pain of another and seeks to alleviate it. Such a person steps into another’s shoes and walks with them on the rough road that they trod. Often, we find forgiveness part and parcel of being merciful because the one who shows mercy can see himself or herself in the one who has done wrong, knowing that healing comes only with forgiveness.

It takes one look around us and we know that mercy is in short supply. Our preference is to pile on, joining the caravan of critics who pounce on someone who has committed a wrong, suffocating the sinner under an avalanche of finger-pointing and name-calling, offering our superiority as a clear contrapuntal to the shortcomings of the accused. 

But Rabbi Jesus sees it differently, as it always does, embracing the sinner, bringing close to him the estranged, and saving his criticism for hypocrites, blatant sinners blind to their own faults, pretending to be saints soon to be canonized. Rabbi Jesus, in his teachings, does not see a world of saints and sinners, only a world where everybody falls short. And the merciful person knows it and responds accordingly.

In many ways, the Sermon on the Mount is like Tuesdays with Morrie, the bestseller by Mitch Albom, who, while in college had a sociology professor named Morrie, his favorite teacher. Years later, learning that Morrie is dying, Mitch begins to visit the dying professor each Tuesday, taking from his time with this great teacher the nuggets of his wisdom, hoping to turn them into a way of living for himself.

At one of their last meetings, the professor, nearing death, whispers these words to Mitch: “Be compassionate. And take responsibility for each other. If we only learned those lessons, this world would be so much better a place.” Sound familiar? Listen to Rabbi Jesus’s words that Matthew gives us today, and we hear another great teacher whispering similar life-changing and life-saving lessons to us, his students.

–Jeremy Myers