Blessed

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. Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.” (Matthew 5.1-12)

As we can see, we have a part of one of the most famous sections of Matthew’s gospel given to us today in our selection from scripture for this Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Overall called the Sermon on the Mount, it is contained in Chapters 5 through 7 and is more properly understood as a collection of teachings rather than a very long sermon spoken by Jesus in one place.

That we find it near the start of Matthew’s gospel is important. Each evangelist has a particular picture of Jesus in mind in writing his gospel. For Matthew, that picture is Jesus as a teacher. So, we will find Jesus teaching the disciples and the crowds throughout this text. Through his teachings, Jesus will provide a moral code or a way of life for those who wish to follow him. This so-called Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’ inaugural address as the teacher of Israel.

This also aligns with Matthew’s intent to present Jesus as a Moses-like figure, someone with whom his Jewish audience that he wrote to would have been very familiar. In Jewish tradition, Moses is often given the title “Moses our Teacher,” that designation due in large part because he is credited with the formation of the Torah, that is the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures.

While scholarship has made it clear that Moses did not write the Pentateuch as tradition would have it, it is safe to say that he influenced its eventual construction by way of his role as the first teacher of the Hebrew slaves in the ways of the Lord God, providing them with the Ten Commandments from the Most High God and stressing the covenantal relationship between the slaves and the One who had delivered them from bondage.

Some scholars are wont to divide the Sermon on the Mount into five parts that would correspond in some way to the Pentateuch, those first five books of the Hebrew scriptures. Perhaps so. What is important is that Matthew begins this section with Jesus going up the mountain as Moses did when he received the Ten Commandments, and that afterwards Jesus sat down, as would a rabbi or teacher in the Jewish tradition. One point that should be made is that there is no mountain in Galilee, so Matthew is revealing his intentions in presenting one where there is none, needing a mountain so that Jesus could be seen as much like Moses.

This first part of the Sermon on the Mount is well-known, perhaps the most recognized part of the scriptures, and is called the Beatitudes because of the eight blessings or beatitudes that Jesus speaks to the people. We want to make clear that beatitudes were nothing new to the Jewish listeners, neither Jesus’ initial crowd before him nor Matthew’s audience. For example, the first psalm in the Book of Psalms begins with these words, “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in company with scoffers.” Likewise, the Book of Proverbs contains several examples of beatitudes, such as is found in 3.13. It reads, “Blessed the one who finds wisdom, the one who gains understanding! Her profit is better than profit in silver and better than gold is her revenue.” 

While the beatitude form was an old one, used already in the Hebrew scriptures, Jesus does something unusual with his beatitudes. Whereas earlier beatitudes made sense and were logical, at least for the righteous believer, Jesus’ beatitudes, at first glance, make no sense. Most everyone would agree that it was illogical to say that the poor will receive the kingdom of heaven or that the meek will inherit the land.

That isn’t the way that the world works. We all know it. And that is the whole point. Jesus turns everything we know on its head, reversing, inverting, flipping our conventional ideas and challenging our common presumptions. In other words, he’s offering a ballgame that we’ve never seen played. Where in the world do those who are persecuted rejoice and are glad? Not in the world that we know.

Of course, Jesus is intentionally contrasting the world in which we live with the kingdom of heaven, a place far removed from the ways of this world, a place where the ways of God are practiced and where the sovereignty of God, not earthly kings, is upheld. So, those “blessed” are those who live under a different king and in a different kingdom. They are blessed precisely because their actions are antithetical to the ways of this world.

Many would argue, rightly, that the first beatitude, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” is the most important, setting the stage for the others that follow. It is foundational, in effect personifying all the others. The poor are also the meek, the mourner, the merciful, and so on. The argument is made that the poor have no one to depend on but God. They can bring nothing to God but their dependence. They cannot bargain with God because they have nothing to offer.

It is their poverty and emptiness that make them vessels for God’s outpouring of graces or blessings. Rich people do not need God; they have their bank accounts. Well-fed people do not need God; their stomachs are full. The powerful do not need God; they have their weapons and their foot soldiers. But the poor, the hungry, and the meek have none of these things, and so they stand before God with empty hands.

And it is those empty hands that move God, his love and mercy pouring out of his heart for those who have no one to help them, to protect them, to feed them. And so he reaches out to them, blessing them, and bringing them close to his warm embrace. The Hebrew word that is most often used to describe these poor people is anawim. For good cause, then, they also are called “the little ones” of God.

As a result, anawim ends up being a tough word to translate because it is so inclusive. The usual attempts to capture its meaning is found in the words meek, lowly, humble. So, for example, in the Book of Numbers, Moses is described in this way, “Now the man Moses was very humble (anawim), more than anyone else on earth” (12.3). 

It is important to see that Jesus describes himself in the same way in this gospel, stating that he is “meek and lowly in heart” (11.29). In other words, for Matthew, Jesus becomes the personification of the beatitudes, the one who is poor, meek, pure of heart, and righteous. He sees himself as utterly dependent upon his Heavenly Father, the same as those to whom he ministers and to whom he shows the love and mercy and care of the Most High God. 

What does this mean for us? Much depends on if we view ourselves as followers of the Lord Jesus. If so, then we also must become the anawim, that is, the poor, meek, pure of heart, and the righteous, living as and loving those who are called blessed in these beatitudes. It is two-pronged. We become like the little ones of God and we work on behalf of the community of these little ones. Such was the life of Jesus.

The Beatitudes, then, become a checklist for the Christian, a means of identifying if, in truth, we are living in the Kingdom of Heaven, not in the kingdom of this world. Many of us wrongly believe that we have to wait for the Kingdom of Heaven, thinking it is in the hereafter. But that is not necessarily a gospel understanding of the Kingdom of Heaven. 

For Matthew, the Kingdom of Heaven begins in the here and now, whenever and wherever we choose to live according to the ways of God, refusing to accept the ways of the world as normative for us. Or, as the Episcopal priest and writer Barbara Brown Taylor once said, “Earth is where heaven starts, for all who are willing to live it right now.”

The challenge, of course, is that few are willing to live it right now. Otherwise, our world would not be the place it is today. We do not have people racing to be poor, pure of heart, or persecuted. Nor do we find many who are meek, merciful, and peacemakers. It simply is not the way our world is structured and few of us are strong enough to buck the system. It is too radical.

Father Daniel Berrigan, the Jesuit activist of the 1970s once said that he took away points from any college student who used the phrase “radical Christian” in a paper or a report. He did it because it was a redundant phrase. As Father Berrigan explained, “If you’re a Christian, you’re automatically radical.” There is no arguing his point, especially when we view the Christian as living according to the Beatitudes, not according to the rules of the road that this world puts before us.

Another Jesuit, the theologian Karl Rahner, perhaps one of the greatest theological minds of our times, once wrote that, “When Christians reach more than twenty percent of the population, they no longer have any effect in changing the culture around them.” He offered the reason. “At that point people become Christians just because it’s the acceptable thing to do, not because they’re really committed to carrying on the ministry of Jesus Christ.” He added, “Often, they’re an obstacle to real Christians.”

Hearing his words, we have a tendency to take on a defensive posture, but it doesn’t serve us well. Until we are able to admit that we Christians are failing in the job, we will not change our course nor the course of the world. As our country tears itself apart with divisions, denials, and disinformation, we must ask ourselves where are the true Christians, the ones who are meek and merciful, poor and peacemakers?

We would benefit from hearing again an old Jewish targum. As the story goes, one day Rabbi Joshua ben Levi talked to the prophet Elijah, as good rabbis were once wont to do. “Where,” Rabbi Joshua asked, “shall I find the Messiah?” Elijah answered him, “At the gate of the city.” Rabbi Joshua asked next, “How shall I recognize him?” Elijah responded, “He sits among the lepers.” Rabbi Joshua was shocked and implored, “What is he doing there? Elijah said, “He changes the bandages. He changes them one by one.”

If we, like Rabbi Joshua, find it difficult to understand why in the world the Messiah would  be among the lepers, then we only need to read again the Beatitudes, listening carefully to whom Rabbi Jesus called blessed and, conversely, whom he did not call blessed.

–Jeremy Myers