Matthew
5:11
The Beatitudes
are among the most beautiful, lofty, and totally impractical teachings of
Jesus. “Blessed are” the
following people [Matthew 5:1-12]:
·
“the poor in spirit” -
the folk who have no fight, no gumption; the ones who are convinced that they
will always lose, because they generally do; the hopeless cases; the first one
out in every dodgeball game
·
“those who mourn” –
and not just because they’ve lost someone close to them, but also the people
who are stuck on all sorts of past grief and grievances, who live with a sense
of it-could-have-been
·
“the meek” –
folks who don’t know how to stand up for themselves, people who have been
bullied or pushed around so often that they expect it
·
“those who hunger and thirst for
righteousness” – the meek may be among these, and so may
the poor in spirit; so also would be people who have become bitter with trying,
or whose hearts are always breaking for others and their problems
·
“the merciful” –
not that there’s anything wrong with being understanding, but don’t you have to
draw the line somewhere? These people
draw the circle too wide.
·
“the pure in heart” –
another word for this is “naïve”,
·
“the peacemakers” –
whom you want on your team to keep unity against others, but who have to be
held in check when it comes to dealing with the opponent
·
“those who are persecuted for
righteousness’ sake” – the ones who stand in somebody else’s
way and end up with their reputations hurt and their names smeared by false
allegations; the ones who get dragged into lawsuits because someone knows they
cannot afford a good defense; the employee who has to be fired before the rules
can be bent; and, lastly,
·
“you” (we’ll
get to that one later).
To say that these people are actually blessed requires
looking at things in one of two ways.
The
first – and this is not totally off base – is to see it as meaning that God
will reward them in eternity for their faithfulness within time. A lot of secular people hold this
understanding of the Christian message.
If you’re good here, you go to heaven.
If you’re bad here, you go to hell.
Apart from the fact that you can do good for bad reasons or bad for good
reasons, it leaves out any understanding of God as merciful and kind as well as
just. Jesus told several parables about
how unfair God can be, letting sinners off the hook, and he even pardoned a
criminal being executed next to him who openly admitted that he deserved his
punishment. Yes, God does judge our
deeds. Even more, though, God judges the
human heart in ways that are beyond us.
One
writer on this topic, N.T. Wright, says something that I find helpful. He notes that just because the Beatitudes
speak of God putting things to right “in heaven” does not necessarily
mean “after you die”. “Heaven,” he says,
“Is God’s space, where full reality exists, close by
our ordinary (‘earthly’) reality and interlocking with it. One day heaven and earth will be joined
together for ever, and the true state of affairs, at present out of sight, will
be unveiled. After all, verse 5 says
that the meek will inherit the earth, and that can hardly happen in a disembodied
heaven after death.”[1]
He points out that Jesus taught his followers to pray,
“Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
That
means seeing these words to the downtrodden and the troubled in an entirely
different way. They are promises,
surely. But they are also assurances. Go ahead and live as part of God’s kingdom,
and the kingdom becomes present. As he
puts it,
“The life of heaven – the life of the realm where God
is already king – is to become the life of the world, transforming the present ‘earth’
into the place of beauty and delight that God always intended.”
The Beatitudes
“are a summons to live in the present in the way that
will make sense in God’s promised future; because that future has arrived in
the present in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
It may seem upside down, but we are called to believe, with great
daring, that it is in fact the right way up.
Try it and see.”[2]
I
like that last sentence. “Try it and
see.” That is what Jesus meant when he
added that last, most threatening of the Beatitudes:
“Blessed are you when people revile you
and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my
account. Rejoice and be glad, for your
reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who
were before you.” [Matthew 5:11]
I’m not saying to go looking for trouble. I am saying that sometimes when trouble finds
you it means that you have been doing enough good to get in the devil’s
way. Good for you!
Dietrich
Bonhoeffer was a German theologian who was active in the resistance to Hitler
during the 1930s and 40s. He was able to
do a lot because he came from a respected family and the Nazis did not at first
believe he was anything but a bumbling pastor.
All the same, eventually they saw him as a problem because he just would
not shut up, especially about people who called themselves Christian while
going along with the Nazi agenda. He saw
the state church being taken over as the state had been and helped organize an
alternative “Confessing Church”. He said
that no Christian had any business going through the rituals of religion
without also seeking justice. “Only he
who cries out for the Jews may sing Gregorian chants.”[3] It was inevitable that he would end up in
prison. He was killed as the Allies approached
in 1944. I would pray that no one here
would end up in that kind of situation.
But if anyone ever did face such choices, I would also pray that they
meet them in the spirit of the hymn that Bonhoeffer wrote and enclosed in his
last letter to his wife, one that is in our own hymnal.
“By gracious powers so
wonderfully sheltered,
and confidently waiting,
come what may,
we know that God is with
us night and morning,
and never fails to greet
us each new day.
Yet is this heart by its
old foe tormented,
still evil days bring
burdens hard to bear;
O give our frightened
souls the sure salvation,
for which, O Lord, you
taught us to prepare.
And when this cup you
give is filled to brimming
with bitter sorrow, hard
to understand,
we take it thankfully and
without trembling,
out of so good and so
beloved a hand.
Yet when again in this
same world you give us
the joy we had, the
brightness of your sun,
we shall remember all the
days we lived through,
and our whole life shall
then be yours alone.”
“Rejoice and be glad, for your
reward is great in heaven.” [Matthew 5:11]
[1] N.T.
Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part One (London: Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge, 2004), 37.
[3]
Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010), 281.
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