Beatitudes. We know em (kinda), but I’m taking a little different take on them today. Have at ye!
Matthew 5:1-12; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; Psalm 15; Micah 6:1-8
The Beatitudes are weird. No I really mean that. We’re used to hearing it, so we miss a lot of the weird. But Jesus is talking about things that 1st Century Greco-Roman culture, and even 20th Century American culture, are not “blessed”. Poverty of spirit, mourning, meekness, hunger for righteousness, mercy, purity of heart, peacemaking, persecution — these are not particularly high on the list of good values. In fact, in 1st Century Greco-Roman culture, they’re the polar opposite to the culture’s core values: strength, pride, power, authority, victory, justice.
In fact, their culture isn’t too much different than ours. What are some of our culture’s values, after all? The Declaration of Independence declares we have an “inalienable” right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Our country was built on, and continues to encourage, individualism — where any person has the opportunity to do whatever it is they want. Hard work is also central in our American cultural ethic, where things have more value if we earn them ourselves. In general we discourage assistance, the phrase “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” comes to mind, yet when a drastic need arises we are quick to offer help.
So what about the Beatitudes? Where do they fit in our culture? Some of them actually kind of work, but not always in a good way. We don’t really like the whole “poor in spirit” idea. We like being self-sufficient, and the idea of being poor in anything doesn’t appeal to us. Mourning in our culture is something to be gotten over and dealt with, and but we are quick to comfort those who are mourning. Meekness is something to be avoided. Hunger and thirsting for righteousness is one that we don’t really understand, let alone do. We like the idea of mercy when it applies to us, but not when it applies to those who wronged us or others. We also like the idea of being pure in heart, but in practice deviousness and underhanded tactics are what put people ahead of others it seems. Peacemaking is ok in theory, but as a nation we still rather like going to war. Finally on the whole we don’t like persecution, but we generally ignore it if we’re not the ones on the receiving end.
Now when you really look at the Beatitudes, and really the whole sermon on the mount, it’s trying to get the listener to one place: you, listener, are a horrible miserable sinner who can do absolutely no better than sin horribly and miserably on your own. That idea infuriates Americans. Culturally we absolutely hate asking for help. We hate needing help. But that’s what the sermon on the mount tells us. Jesus says things like, “You thought it was sinning to kill someone? Well, let me tell you, if you’re mad at someone you’ve as good as killed them. You thought it was good to love your friend? Well, you have to love your enemies too. It’s not good enough to be a good person, you have to be as perfect as God.”
That’s why he starts out the sermon on the mount with “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The whole sermon puts us in the place where we can be nothing BUT poor in spirit, realizing that absolutely nothing we can do can put us right with God. And that’s when God steps in and says, “But the kingdom of heaven is yours.” We didn’t earn it. In fact we did everything we could to NOT earn it. But it didn’t matter to God.
You see, the thing that makes Christianity so incredibly odd compared to every other religion I know of is this: Christianity is the own religion where our best efforts actually make it worse. The more we try to do it ourselves — by following an arbitrary set of rules thinking God will like us more because of it — the deeper we dig ourselves into sin. And that grates against our American self-reliance.
God doesn’t want “good people” in heaven, even though most polls I see have people thinking that’s what He wants. He wants what the prophet Micah talks about — people who walk humbly with Him. It’s not about our sacrifices, though God may ask us to make sacrifices. It’s not about doing the right things, though if you walk with God you will do the right thing. It’s about coming before God, poor in spirit, and saying, “Lord have mercy on me a sinner.”
I mentioned earlier the phrase, “Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.” Have you ever tried? Or at least tried something similar? Usually what happens is you end up falling flat on your butt. That’s exactly what happens when we try and earn God’s favor — we fall flat on our spiritual butts. Yet when we are poor in spirit, when we’ve hit that place where we feel that there is no hope, God steps in and reminds us that all the work that needed to be done was done on the cross.
And, as Paul writes, that is something that is worth being proud of. Because it’s not about anything we do, none of us is any better than anyone else. We’re all sinners. And yet, a God who has every right to deny us life itself, instead gave up the life of his Son so that our sentence is commuted. By the same act which paid the penalty for our sin, he defeated death and won for us a place in the kingdom of heaven.