Matthew 5:1-12
Keith Green was a Christian who wrote some powerful songs. One of his songs re-renders the passage in Matthew 25 where Jesus talked about separating people like drafting sheep and goats. I never did like that passage and I liked Keith’s song even less – it got to me. For some time, when I played my Keith Green tape, I would fast-forward past that track. Eventually, though, I braved it and, after a few times hearing the song it was no longer hitting me between the eyes. Instead it was drifting right past. Familiarity destoyed its impact.
Most of us are pretty sure we know the Sermon on the Mount, or at least the Beatitudes, which are the subject of this and the next few sermons. The Beatitudes are radical sayings but, like Keith’s song, familiarity has lessened their impact. Jesus’ revolutionary sayings hardly stir the pulse any more – they struggle to capture the heart or engage the mind.
Many commentators have written on the Beatitudes. One, Chris Marshall, called them ‘verbal grenades’. Over the next few weeks we’re going to see if we can get these grenades to explode again.
Blessed are
The Beatitudes are not simple statements – “Blessed are …” – they are exclamations. This form of saying was very common in Hebrew and Aramaic occurring frequently in the Old Tewtament. For example: Psalm 1:1 ‘O the blessedness of the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly.’ Likewise Matthew 5:3 is ‘O the blessedness of the poor in spirit.’
This is very important, for it means that the Beatitudes are not pious hopes of what might come; they are not glowing but nebulous prophecies of some future bliss; they are congratulations on what is. The blessedness which belongs to the Christian is not something into which we Christians will enter; it is something into which we have entered. True, it will find its fullness and its consummation in the presence of God; but for all that, it is a present reality to be enjoyed here and now. The Beatitudes in effect say, “O the bliss of being a Christian! O the joy of following Christ! O the sheer hapiness of knowing Jesus Christ as Master, Saviour and Lord!” The very form of the Beatitudes is the statement of the joyous thrill and the radiant gladness of the Christian life. In the face of the Beatitudes a gloom-encompassed Christianity is unthinkable.
O the joy
The word translated ‘blessed’ – makarios – describes a divine and godlike joy; a self-contained joy which is completely independent of all the chances and changes of life. The English word, ‘happiness’, gives itself away for it contains the root ‘hap’ which means chance. Human happiness is something which is dependant on the chances and the changes of life, something which life may give and which life may also destroy. The Beatitudes speak of that joy which seeks us through our pain, that joy which sorrow and loss and pain and grief are powerless to touch – that joy which shines through tears and which nothing in life or death can take away.
The world can win its happiness and the world can equally-well lose its hapiness. A change of fortune, a collapse of health, the failure of a plan, the disappointment of an ambition, even a change in the weather, can take away the fickle happiness the world can give. But the Christian has the serene and untouchable joy which comes from walkingfor ever in the company and in the presence of Jesus the Christ. The greatness of the Beatitudes is that they are not wistful glimses of some future beauty; they are not even golden promises of some distant glory; they are triumphant shouts of bliss for a permanent joy that nothing in the world can ever take away.
Moderate extremes; extreme moderation
Over the centuries many commentators and preachers have spent a great deal of effort trying to tone Jesus’ words down – trying to explain why he couldn’t possibly have meant what he said. This is understandable: Jesus is an extremist and we are all moderates – we like life to be comfortable and we get hassled when it isn’t. Worse still, Jesus was an extremist in his whole life – not just in some narrowly spiritual areas, but in everything. He lived what he taught. The same lofty ideals and moral absolutism that win our respect leave us reeling in disbelief or despair. Surely he can’t be serious! This is so counter-intuitive. To take the Sermon on the Mount seriously is a difficult and disturbing business. But you’ve probably guessed that that is precisely what I want us to try to do.
Traditionally the Beatitudes have been understood as descriptions of personal virtues, private character traits that every true believer ought to display. Consequently, sermons on the Beatitudes usually leave a sense of guilt or inadequacy. Living up to any one of these virtues seems impossible, never mind displaying them all!
But before despairing, it is worth observing that the Beatitudes are addresssed to the disciples as a group. They are all in the plural, and they take the form of descriptions, not demands (although demands are implied). These observations suggest that Jesus is not primarily talking about personal moral qualities, but about what the messianic commmunity ought to look like.
The Beatitudes are Jesus’ attempt to define the ethos of the church as a colony or showcase of God’s kingdom; to set forth the values and priorities that the Christian community will incarnate in the world when it is faithful to its commission.
In what ways does participation in God’s kingdom actually affect the situation of the poor and persecuted? It does so because the kingdom of God becomes a social reality in the community of Jesus’ disciples, a community commmitted to God’s new order, a people called to live out the vision and values of the Beatitudes here and now.
The entire Sermon on the Mount presupposes participation in the community life of a people prepared to be radically different from the world around it. A community that honours the poor, demonstrates integrity, craves for all that is right, prefers mercy to punishment, makes peace not war and suffers for its commitment to Jesus.
This of course requires that each individual member strives to live in conformity with Jesus’ demands. But it is impossible to do so without the support and trust of others. It is precisely as isolated persons that we are most apt to fail as Christians.
We will only be inspired to live ‘beatitudinally’ inasfar as we are surrounded by fellow believers who share our commitment and whose collective direction will sustain us when we fail individually.
But the community is more than the sum of its individual parts. The corporate faithfulness of a nurturing community pursuing the same vision will uphold us when we falter and challenge, encourage and inspire us to try again.
So there is nothing private about the demands of the Sermon. It is very public, very political, very social in that it depicts the public form by which the colony shall witness to the world that God really is busy redeeming humanity, reconciling the world to himself in Christ.
So the Beatitudes are neither individual character traits nor a strategy for changing society; they are imaginative examples of life in the kingdom of God, as realised in the community of faith.
Only as we take the Beatitudes seriously as our corporate charter of life can we hope to be effective agents of God’s kingdom in the world today. When we, as a Christian community, believe in and embody the values of the Beatitudes, we will be a truth-affirming, life-enhancing, thirst-creating manifestation of God’s kingdom in unbelieving society.