Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 5:1-12

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.