The Beatitudes are one of those passages I sometimes think of as “pillow passages,” because of their tendency to be stitched on a decorative parlor pillow in one of those fancy rooms in an old house that people really aren’t supposed to sit in. Or if not on a pillow then framed behind glass as part of an antique cross stitch sampler someone’s great-great grandmother worked on when she was a young girl learning the domestic arts. I actually found a cross-stitch pattern for sale on the internet this week that is a recreation of the work of an otherwise anonymous Ann Webb, aged 9 in 1829. The third verse, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” is carefully stitched in the middle surrounded by motifs of flowers, birds, and two billy goats.
The Beatitudes are the beautiful and beloved start to Jesus’ important Sermon on the Mount in the book of Matthew, but, I sheepishly have to admit that I sometimes get frustrated by them, or more accurately, I discovered this week, I get frustrated by the way people use them.
Maybe it’s the sanitization that comes with years of being stitched in samplers surrounded by flora and fauna. Maybe it’s the way they don’t seem to line up with our experience or pop culture understanding of material blessings. Maybe it’s the way we tend to extract them from the rest of Jesus’ teaching and mission in the world and spiritualize them so they don’t really have to influence our outlook on life and understanding of how God works in the world. Maybe it’s a bit of all of these, but my frustration is the way we take these verses that open Jesus’ inaugural sermon in this gospel and fail to see how shocking, in a good way!, they really are, how they set the stage for the rest of his sermon and the rest of his entire ministry.
My problem with the Beatitudes – not with what they are and say, but with how them they have been used – is right up there with the way we sometimes use the saying of Jesus that “the poor will always be with you” as a reason to do nothing to alleviate poverty and its effects on individuals, families, and communities. That is not what Jesus meant, but it’s not uncommon to hear people twist it that way, particularly when they are trying to find a reason to withhold from their or our collective abundance.
With the Beatitudes, we sometimes hear people doubling down on the myth of redemptive human suffering. “Don’t worry if you’re feeling sad or if people are mean to you; it means that someday you’ll be with God in heaven.” “Don’t speak up for what you need now or you’ll miss your heavenly inheritance.” We sometimes hear people justifying the suffering of others to relieve themselves of the responsibility of caring for people. We convince ourselves we don’t have to take care of others today, because God will take care of them someday. Or we turn these declarative statements into conditional ones. If you are pure, if you are righteous (even when it says “hunger and thirst for righteousness:”), if you are meek… then you will be rewarded.
That sort of transactional thinking is all over our culture, just as it was all over the imperial Roman culture of Jesus’ time. If you pay your taxes, then Rome will allow your local languages to be spoken, your gods to be honored. If your puppet king was loyal to Caesar, then your people will have peace. If your people served in the army, then you will be protected. If you cooperate, if you fully assimilate, if you turn your back on your own people, then you can be a citizen in the kingdom of the emperor.
But right out of the gate, setting the tone for the rest of his sermon, Jesus essentially says, this may be the way of the empire, the kingdom of Rome, but this is not the way of the kingdom of heaven. When Jesus finished preaching, the crowds who heard him were astonished at his teaching. It came with an authority they didn’t recognize, an authority willing to challenge the assumptions of the day.
God’s peace, God’s protection, God’s presence – it isn’t earned by good behavior, right payment, or betrayal of God and God’s people. God’s blessing isn’t an if/then proposition. It isn’t far off in the distant future. God’s blessing IS. It’s now. It’s here. You don’t get it by striving. It’s not a reward for that which the world values – power, prestige, or perfectly curated and posted public presentations of our lives and families. It’s God’s to give freely according to God’s own will and love, not some fabricated calculation that determines who measures up.
The Beatitudes are a big flashing light right at the start of Jesus ministry to alert us to the truth, remind us of the reality – GOD DOES THINGS DIFFERENTLY! Differently from Caesar, differently from the world, differently from our expectations.
We might be tempted to think that the outwardly happy ones are blessed.
But guess what! God’s presence is with those who are struggling in their hearts.
We might think those who never grieve are being rewarded.
But the truth is that those who grieve are being held by God’s own hand.
We might think the rich and powerful warriors are blessed because they seem to be in control.
But actually, it’s those who craft peace that are close enough to the ultimate power to be called children of God.
The Beatitudes, it turns out, are not an instruction manual for how to earn the title “saint at the end of our lives or a place in God’s realm, but a description of who is already a part of it, and the astonishing thing is that it describes all of us. Who are God’s chosen ones? Who are the ones who are blessed? Who are the saints alive and the saints who have gone before us? We are. We all are. Because our blessing isn’t dependent on what we do, or what we achieve, or even what we believe or what we declare. Our blessing is dependent only on God who sees us, in our poverty of spirit, in our grief, in our meekness, in our desire for the world to be a different place than we experience, in the mercy we need and the mercy we show, in the purity of our desire to know and love God, in the peace we desire and the peace we are a part of building, in our pain and our sorrow and our struggles – God sees us and God knows us. When we and the world might least expect it, God calls us blessed.
For this blessing, for this salvation, for this good news of the nearness of the kindom of heaven, thanks be to God.
Who would be the ones Jesus declares “blessed” if he delivered this sermon today?