You've just heard the eight beatitudes
– again. If you've never heard them before, you would have to be
living under a rock. Even people who don't know them at least know
that there are beatitudes. One question is how to read them. Some
people say that Matthew took a few of Jesus' sayings and put them all
in this gospel. Others say that Jesus actually preached a sermon
starting out with these statements. The second big problem is that
Jesus gave the beatitudes in Aramaic; Matthew's gospel is in Greek,
and even when you try to translate Greek into English, you often
don't quite hit the mark. If you go to different translations of the
bible, you find different words. Sometimes the beatitudes begin with
the word “Blessed” as you've just heard them. Other times the
word is “Happy”. I've also heard the variation, “How blest are
those...” with an exclamation mark. And translators can't make up
their minds wether Jesus is saying “Blessed are they” or “Blessed
are you”. And the third problem with the beatitudes – what do we
do with them? Are they descriptions of how we should live? Are they
commandments? Are they just comments Jesus is making? Martin Luther
said that they are meant to show us that we can never meet the
standards that they set, and so all we can do is throw ourselves on
God's mercy.
If you remember how this gospel
starts, even there we have a lack of clarity. Is he speaking to the
crowd who follows him? Or did he leave the crowd and go up on the
mountain with his disciples? Is this a message for everyone, or just
the inner circle?
One author gives an interpretation I
like. Imagine that Jesus is speaking to his disciples, and pointing
at the crowd below. If you look at the first four beatitudes, they
describe people who are suffering, who are at the margins. Being
poor in spirit are those who for whatever reason have no joy; they
are the worriers, the people who have no one in their lives. She is
the woman who sees no hope, who thinks suicidal thoughts, who dreads
waking up tomorrow. Being someone who mourns is confronting loss.
He is the man who has been told that he has to carry around an oxygen
tank the rest of his life; she is the one who has lost a child and
the void is always there. And the meek – he is the doormat, the
person everyone kind of ignores. She is the teenager who is always
getting teased, who is the object of bullying. And the ones who
hunger and thirst for righteousness – the man who can't get a
decent job because English is his second language and he hasn't
gotten it down too well. Or perhaps she is the one who has been
cheated out of her livelihood by her children, and because they are
her children she has chosen to suffer rather than seek justice.
The first four beatitudes promise that
God will reverse these things, if not in this world, than the next.
And then we get to the second set.
Here the beatitudes don't describe something that a person is caught
up in; instead, they describe traits that can be acquired. You can
be merciful; you can be clean of heart, you can be a peacemaker, you
can go out and try to make things right. And Jesus is saying that if
you do these things, you are God's way of addressing the issues
present in the first four. IF you are merciful, you will be there
dealing with the bully; if you are clean of heart, you will have made
yourself sensitive to the presence of God in other people, and that
in turn will show you what you can do. And if you are a peacemaker,
you will be a bridge between enemies, you will be the one who heals
divisions. And you will notice that hungering and thirsting for
righteousness is not the same as being persecuted for the sake of
righteousness. Jesus is saying that the person who seeks to make
things right will inevitably draw fire – because someone has a
vested interest in keeping the injustice going. But such a person
will achieve his goal – seeing the kingdom of heaven come about.
So Jesus says, look around you – God
loves all these people who carry such burdens and you should love
them too, because God will see that things come out right in the end.
And if you make yourself merciful, if you seek righteousness, if you
beome clean of heart, if you make peace, you will be part of that
reward, and you yourself will have what you are looking for.
And finally, Jesus changes the last
“blessed”. He's been saying “Blessed are they” and now he
says, “Blessed are you” – he's speaking to his disciples now,
to you and I – when as a consequence of your efforts on my behalf,
you suffer – because as the martyrs of the early years of
Christianity knew so much better than we do – you will not go
unrewarded. To bring about the kingdom, identify people described by
the first four beatitudes, and teach people to develop the
characteristics in the second four.
One other point. Matthew has Jesus go
up a mountain to deliver the beatitudes, just like Moses went up a
mountain to receive the ten commandments. The commandments were
meant to be a floor. They mostly say “Thou shalt not”. In other
words, if you want to live together in some sort of peace, here are
the minimal requirements. Jesus, on the other hand, says, “Here
are goals to shoot for: A follower of Jesus is never satisfied with
the bare minimum. He or she is always striving to be better. Saint
Alphonsus Ligouri, the founder of the Redemptorists and a doctor of
the church, died at the age of 90. Even in the last few days of his
life, he was still reaching for those goals, he was still trying to
live the beatitudes.
And so should we. Because the message
of Jesus is that what is wrong will be made right, sooner or later.
But those of us who are members of Jesus' body have the opportunity
right here and now to begin this process. And he holds out an
awesome promise that should make us rejoice.
Do a beatitude today. Find someone
who needs you and be merciful, clean of heart, seek righteousness,
make peace, and begin to right the injustice of the world. And you
will notice your heart rejoicing because you are doing what Jesus
calls you to do.
