Living the Beatitudes

Text: Matthew 5:1-12

I always struggle with the language of the beatitudes. It feels a bit flowery and distant to me. I don’t normally think about people as “poor in spirit” or “meek” or “hungering and thirsting for righteousness”.  If I’m putting actual people into these categories I first have to break down what each category actually means. 

It makes a difference to me to hear “poor in spirit” as helpless. 

I hear meek differently when I consider one of its definitions: submissive. Hungering and thirsting for righteousness has a different flavor when considered as longing for justice. 

Now these are categories of people I can see real life examples of in my head. I’ve met people who felt helpless. I know what it is to mourn. I’ve learned about the agonies of forced submission, ways one group finds to control the actions of another. It’s easy to find examples of people longing for justice. The beatitudes become more tangible, more engaging. 

However, once I actually have a picture in my mind of who might fit into each group, I actually become a bit annoyed with Jesus. He’s saying that people in situations out of their control are blessed. Other translations use the word happy, which to me just seems worse. It seems to almost justify their pain, to highlight their situation as somehow acceptable because God will eventually help them out. If I were someone in one of these categories and Jesus said this directly to me, I’d be mad. If I’m feeling hopeless, I don’t want to hear that I’m blessed or happy. I want to have someone come alongside me to help me out. 

That’s where I think the context of the Beatitudes makes a big difference. Jesus isn’t talking to the crowd, though I’m sure they can hear him. Jesus is talking to the disciples, the leadership of this new movement that he is building. Jesus has just healed the sick who have come from miles around to see him. The crowd is filled with people who fit all of the categories of the beatitudes. Now Jesus is explaining to the leaders why those people are at the center of his message. I’m sure it’s probably not grammatically correct in Greek, but what would it look like if we started each line as “Bless”, not “Blessed are”. 

Bless the hopeless, theirs is God’s kingdom. 

Bless the mourning, they will be comforted. 

Bless those forced to submit, they will own the earth. 

Bless those who long for justice, they will be filled.

This is a call for action, a shaping of Jesus’ ministry of healing, of reversal of fortunes. This is not a passive thing that God will do, it’s an active call to the leaders of this new community to pay special attention to these groups of people, to help them out. 

After highlighting these groups, after putting them first, Jesus addresses how these leaders are supposed to act. They are to be merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers. 

Bless those who are merciful, they’ll receive mercy.

Bless the pure in heart, they’ll see God. 

Bless the peacemakers, they’ll be called children of God. 

These are interior dispositions that demand action in daily life. Being merciful, being compassionate, seeking God and demanding true peace are all conscious choices. Jesus promises that if we seek to be this kind of people, God will indeed make us this kind of people. We find our way into Godly living by choosing to live in a Godly way. God blesses us and makes us what we desire to be. 

But the gifts of compassion, seeking God’s way first, of creating true peace, come with a cost. 

Bless those who are persecuted for demanding justice, for theirs is God’s kingdom. 

Bless you when people revile you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. 

Rejoice? Be glad? When people are harassing you, making your life hard? When you could even be killed for your actions, as Jesus and the majority of his apostles were? That’s the hardest bit. That’s why Jesus turns and personalizes the message of that last stanza. Blessed are you. Bless you. 

The rejoicing, the celebration here is not that we’re being persecuted. We don’t need to live into a persecution complex. People are not oppressed in the United States for being Christian. We do not have the struggles of the early followers who were tortured and died for their belief that Jesus was the Son of God. However, Christian actions still cause controversy. Seeking justice, standing up for the rights of all people, will always cause controversy. That is why God’s kingdom isn’t on earth yet. But what Jesus’ early followers faced and what we face are different.

Still, in the midst of harassment or being degraded for doing the right thing, Jesus calls us to rejoice. I don’t think many of us fully grasp what rejoicing means. I’m not sure I really did until I started listening to black preachers. Joy, and the action of rejoicing, is a spiritual discipline often practiced in congregations of oppressed people. It’s a conscious choice to embrace gratitude and to lift one’s spirit up to God. They don’t rejoice because things are great, but because we need to drink from the well of life, God’s outpouring of love upon us. When things look bleak, we need something that can punch through the darkness and bring light. Joy is embracing the hope that the world can change, even if everything points to the contrary. It’s a belief that God’s still in charge. 

Rejoicing is not as much of an emotion as much as it is a conscious decision to praise God even in the midst of despair. When you’re hopeless, when others control what you are able to do, when you’re in the midst of grief, when you’re experiencing injustice, it is the act of turning and saying, “God, I trust you and I love you.” That’s what Jesus is talking about here. Not thanking God that people are harassing you, thanking God that God is with you and walks beside you in the struggle. 

Jesus turned to his leadership and he told them that they were to lead the world into the practice of joy, in the act of rejoicing. All of the beatitudes end in this practice of the spiritual discipline of joy. Jesus says joy is blessing the helpless, mourning, those forced into submission, and those who demand justice. Joy is being compassionate, seeking God, searching for true peace. Joy is being willing to be persecuted for the sake of justice. It’s doing the right thing even when others harass and revile you for it. We do it all because we trust that God walks with us through it all. That is the spiritual discipline of joy. That is why we rejoice and give thanks. God blesses us by God’s presence. 

But doing all this is a tall order. I honestly don’t think any of us can accomplish all of these things on our own. That’s why we seek God first. That's why we build communities. That’s why we work together. Each individual has their own talent, their own part in this Body that seeks to do these things together. The call of Christ is demanding, but it does not try to make us all look the same or act the same. The beauty of the Body of Christ  is its diversity. That’s the secret sauce. We can each approach these things in our own way and we can each help the collective Body work towards our beatitudnal goals. If we hold out these ideals as our own, if we seek God in all that we do, we can each take our own approach in ways that compliment each other. Our talents and weaknesses balance each other. No one person can do it all. That's why we come together. 

This week I invite you to consider and sit with the beatitudes a bit. How can we hold in front of us the needs of the helpless, the mourning, the ones forced into submission, and those who need justice? What does that look like in the midst of our daily lives in the communities we live in? What does it look like for each of us to choose mercy and compassion, to seek God, to live in true peace? How can you embrace the discipline of joy? Our identities are shaped and formed by the call of Christ who put these things first. May God help us and bless us as we seek to follow Christ today. Amen.