Last Sunday we discussed Matthew 5:1-12 (sorry for the delayed post and podcast issues), a passage better known as the beatitudes, but one that might also be considered the preamble to Jesus’ manifesto of the Kingdom of God. Those who grew up in the church have likely heard this passage taught or sermonized many times, but we were challenged to look at it a little differently.
If the collected central and primary teachings of Jesus to his disciples we know as the sermon on the mount in fact do serve as a discourse on the Kingdom of God, the immediacy and availability of which was the good news (gospel) Jesus came to proclaim, then we might consider how these opening lines serve to distinguish how the values of the Kingdom of God differ from those of the world. The paradigm offered for wrestling with this passage was “two kinds of people, one choice to make.”
FIRST: Two kinds of people – those who experience poverty of spirit (v. 3) and those who, by way of implication, do not.
We often hear that to be poor in spirit is a good thing. After all, Jesus called them “blessed.” (The Greek might better be translated as “happy,” thus the term “beatitude,” which comes from the Latin for “happy” – I know, clear as mud) What if poverty of spirit is not so good? In any other context we consider someone who has a broken spirit (another way of saying poor in spirit?) to have been hurt by something, to be a victim of abuse. What if, in offering an alternative view of reality (the Kingdom of God), Jesus is saying that in this world you will find people who benefit from the realities of this world, and those who are crushed (thus, they are poor in spirit) by the world.
How do you know if someone has been broken by this world? Look at the next two beatitudes. The first is mourning. Crying is good, cathartic, even healthy. But crying is not mourning. The latter is an ongoing condition, a deep depression, a true 
brokenness … such as you might expect to find in one who has been broken by the world. The second is meekness: if we consider meekness in terms of humility, surely it is a good thing. But can meekness be a bad thing? The image offered was that of an abused dog. How do you know if a dog has been abused? She or he cowers every time a voice is raised or hand lifted, or they attack violently, regardless of the context. Isn’t this another form of meekness? Is this not how broken people respond?
Thus, according to this reading of the passage, Jesus tells us there at two kinds of people in the world: Those who benefit from the way things are, and those whose lot in life is different
NOW: One choice to make – what will you do on behalf of those whose spirits are broken?
The next beatitude speaks to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. We often think of this as a personal hunger (i.e., I want to be a righteous person). But if you consider another translation for righteousness is “justice” you begin to see that this is a much bigger concept. To hunger and thirst for righteousness/justice is to long for things to be the way they should be (the way they will be in the Kingdom of God). It is to hunger and thirst for those whose spirits have been broken to be made whole. More than a desire, it is to work toward that end. It is to act in mercy, with a pure heart, for the goal of peace. The Biblical concept of peace is much richer than our own. Better expressed in the Hebrew word “shalom,” it has to do with things being as they should be, whole, complete, and full. Martin Luther King, Jr. captured this with his comment: “True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.” This is what it means to live a Kingdom life. It is what the Kingdom of God is all about. It is a reality that flips “the way things are” on their head.
The final beatitudes offer a caution. When you chose to pursue the Kingdom, when you seek after the welfare of those whose spirits are crushed by the world, you will meet opposition. There are those who benefit from the way things are, and don’t particularly concern themselves with how this way hurts others. There are others who see nothing wrong with the way things are. They will resist, sometimes even violently, those who try to flip the systems which benefit them on their head. The Kingdom of Heaven, according to Jesus, belongs both to those who continue to seek God’s righteousness in spite of this opposition and to the poor in spirit on whose behalf they seek this righteousness.
- In what ways do the values of the Kingdom of God reverse the values of the world? Can you think of specific instances?
- Do you hunger and thirst for righteousness? Does this hunger and thirst express itself in action on behalf of the poor in spirit?
- Have you ever faced persecution, or in some other way had to “pay the price” for your faith?
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