Blessed

In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus’s public teaching ministry begins with what many of us know as the Sermon on the Mount. Most scholars will be quick to say they don’t believe Jesus actually gave this long “sermon” of a teaching, but instead Matthew is arranging many of Jesus’s teachings into a “package” that he wants his Jewish readers to see as one large teaching.

But even before Jesus starts teaching, the record of Matthew is already interesting. Chapter 4 ends with a description of Jesus going throughout the Gailiee and teaching in their synagogues. We are told that He healed many folks and crowds came out to see Him. Matthew includes a description of who is in these crowds. There are people from the Galilee (religious Jews), people from the Decapolis (pagans), people from Jerusalem (Sadducees?), Judea (Herodians?) and the region beyond the Jordan — a quick way of saying everybody was there.

Jesus, after seeing the crowds, goes on to call His disciples to Himself and teach them. The “them” in the passage is slightly ambiguous. We have a few things helping us to determine what Matthew is saying. First, a rabbi would never address such a large crowd with this kind of teaching; however, we’ve already stated that it’s quite possible Jesus didn’t actually teach this entirely in the “sermon” form we see today. Second, in typical Greek, the “them” would be a reference to the closest antecedent, which would be the disciples. The key word in the last sentence would be “typical,” because if there is one thing I learned from Greek in my Bible training, it’s that the “rules” of the Greek language are much more fluid than we’d like (hence the reason Greek ruined my GPA, but I digress).

It would be safe to say that Matthew is pointing out the crowds for a reason and a purpose; you might also remember Matthew’s agenda concerning the outsider. This crowd has lots of people who simply “don’t belong.” This point of consideration will become important as we learn from the sermon on the mount.

Jesus opens with a famous passage that we like to call the Beatitudes:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
    for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
    for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
    for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
    for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
    for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
    for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Now, I’ve heard many a sermon about the Beatitudes being a list of things Jesus is inviting us to aspire to. However, there are a few things that may be incorrect about this approach. If this is true, then Jesus is announcing that God’s favor rests upon somebody else. When you become meek, when you get to the place of peacemaking, when you get to _______________, then you find the blessing of God. Not only does this run counter to many of the things we find in Jesus’s teachings, but this line of reasoning doesn’t work with all the statements. Consider the term “poor in spirit” or “those who mourn.” Do you want to aspire to mourning? Is Jesus really telling people to pursue a state of mourning? Do we really want to be people who find ourselves poor in spirit? This seems upside down.

Instead, Dallas Willard once suggested that the Beatitudes are, in fact, pronouncements of God’s blessing on all the people the world thinks are missing out. In essence, this would mean Jesus starts His teaching with pronouncements that look like the following:

God is for those who are spiritually bankrupt.
God’s favor in on those who mourn.
God is for those who are meek.

This sounds like an intriguing idea, but don’t we end up with the same problem as our other theory? It doesn’t work for all of the statements. Being merciful isn’t a negative quality. But Willard invites us to consider the context of Jesus’s teaching. In fact, being merciful would be a terrible quality. In a world being torn apart by Imperial Rome, to show mercy to your enemy would be an incredibly offensive idea. To be a peacemaker would be akin to asking for persecution.

So, in fact, the Beatitudes might be a list of pronouncements; Jesus might be announcing to the crowds — full of Jews, Gentiles, Herodians, Pharisees, and Romans alike — that God is for the ones they think He has abandoned.

That would fit Matthew’s agenda of the mumzer quite nicely.

And if we peer a little deeper into the teaching, we may begin to wonder if the list is a chiasm.

Poor in Spirit
    Those Who Mourn
        The Meek
            Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness
            Merciful
        Pure in Heart
    Peacemakers
Persecuted

The stunning, thunderbolt center of Jesus’s teaching would be a stark message to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Jesus might be saying, “Are you interested in righteousness? Do you hunger and thirst for it? Do you want to see it? Try showing mercy.” Into a world that is being rocked with injustice — into a crowd that has a mixture of Romans and the Jews they are mistreating — Jesus suggests that true righteousness looks like mercy.

And Jesus isn’t going to let up on this idea throughout His teaching. Jesus will continue teaching that we would pray for those that persecute us and love our enemies, and He even tweaks an ancient Jewish prayer to be a statement about forgiveness.

This Jewish rabbi is serious about loving people. So buckle up, because this ministry of Jesus is just getting started…