Thank you, Jesus, for your wonderful way of helping those who suffer swallow their lot and sing the old song, “When we all get to heaven…” If that’s how God blesses people, who needs God in the first place? Your blessings speak of a cursed life. We don’t need a God like that.

Here’s betting there’s even more in this from which you’d prefer to walk away. Certainly no one would ever want to be poor or “poor in spirit” as Jesus names it. And yeah, we know that we’re going to lose people sooner or later. But being in grief and mourning is a tough way to get close to God. Oppressed people “hunger and thirst for justice [righteousness]”. Why can’t God just make the world right to begin with?

In short, to get along in this world, virtues of meek humility, mercy and kindness, starry-eyed idealists, calls for peace, and non-violent resistance belong in the land of the lame. People praise these qualities at funerals, but life requires characteristics that get the job done and ethics get muddied in the process. Step all over whoever you have to and hope you’re never the one to get squashed.

Jesus, what really doesn’t make sense is how you say this on your first big stage. Here you are speaking from a first-century arena, on a mountain with your main guys in front and crowds filling in behind. Son of Man, people are seeing you and thinking this is like Moses bringing down the Big Ten from God’s mountain. They want to know again what God is going to do for them as a nation and in their own lives. And all you have are these platitudes?

Reframe It

Let’s address this up front. Jesus is not saying that you’ve got to be in a bad place so as to be blessed, feel God has your back and is doing something in your life. And sorry to say, old Moses, but Jesus isn’t rehashing the thought that if someone is good enough, as in perfectly keeping all those laws, God’s goodness is all yours.

He’s also not closing his eyes to what he sees right in front of him. Hard circumstances never let up for these people. He’d just been on a preaching tour, and people with every kind of illness known, physical, mental, spiritual had flocked to him for healing.  His words lead from the trouble in their lives. And radical words they are.

Provocative Teaching

“Blessed are…” Jesus’ repetition of this phrase introduces what’d never been heard before. Not that he says all your problems are going to go away immediately. Most of his blessings lead into the future tense. But this new thought for these who suffered was how God has not forgotten you, God cares, and God is making a new way for you in the world.

Great, and how many times have people been through the worst thing possible and then hear, “Our thoughts and prayers are with you.” Your big Sermon on the Mount must be the originator of how people cry volumes of what’s so wrong and shameful today, but it all comes to nothing. Jesus, these people need action NOW.

Exactly, and Jesus brings it, though not recognized as much today. In that time, the spoken word for people contained a kind of power. Today, we’re shrewd enough to not believe everything you hear (or read). But then, to have one seen as speaking with authority from God, his words were potent. Just by the saying of it, a new reality was created.

His words were not just a hope or even a prayer. His words were blessing. To know one is blessed, not in some future when “we all get to heaven” promise, but NOW changes one’s perspective, identity, purpose. Those who mourn realize comfort, those who seek justice live into it, the meek raise up to meet life as it comes. People find in Jesus’ words a reversal of how they are known by God. No longer are they to be pitied and victimized. They live in God’s blessing.

And What Difference will that Make?

Note this: Jesus begins and ends these blessings with a reference to the Kingdom of Heaven. This isn’t the one people sing about until they get there. No, this is a reordering of the world.

Will there still be those who are poor in spirit, who are sad, simple folk who seem to not have influence as the world prefers it? Will those who try to be generous with others even in their mistakes be taken advantage of? Will the peacemakers forever be challenged by conflict? Will those who live in ways that reflect faith and the fortitude to do it still be severely challenged for it? Here’s another bet that’ll happen you can make.

Bet on it but be prepared to risk big loss. For in this reordering known as the Kingdom of Heaven is an unspoken challenge. Want blessing? Be that blessing. Side with the poor to see that poverty and hopelessness are eradicated. Get alongside those who grieve and let them know they’re not alone. Walk with the meek and become like them. Work for justice so the world will know a righteousness that is available to all. Imitate the merciful. Honor the pure in heart and their wisdom. Proclaim peace as not absence of conflict but as shalom, reconciliation with God and neighbor.

No where in this homily does Jesus deliver any “thou shalt or shalt nots.” His listing of virtues recognized by God as worthy of blessing are not commandments on which blessing depends. Yet, undergirding them lies the greatest gift of blessing there can be: the undeserved grace by which these reversals and reordering rest. For this, Jesus invites those who receive him and his words to, “Rejoice and Be Glad!”

“For the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.”

Matthew 5:1-12