Blessed

Blessed

Matthew 5:1-12

Matthew 5:1-12, the Beatitudes, is one of those passages we know too well but not well enough.  It is easy to let what we think we know get in the way of what we should know.  We’ve read this passage so often, heard it so often, heard about it so often that we believe we understand it.  When we try to look below the surface we may find our sight as clouded as when we open our eyes underwater and try to see what’s at the bottom of the lake.

Jesus begins each saying with the word blessed.  What does he mean?  Blessed means more than just being happy, although that certainly is a part of it.  We would expect the person who is blessed to be happier than the one who isn’t.

Blessed involves spiritual well-being.  It means having God’s favor.  If we are where we should be spiritually we will have God’s favor, feel blessed, and most certainly be happy.

One commentator has said that, in this passage, blessed could be an instruction:  be poor in spirit; be meek; be merciful; be pure in heart.  In this interpretation, blessed is not a reward, but a command.  These are the qualities God expects of those who would enjoy God’s favor.

N.T. Wright translates blessed as, “Wonderful news!”  For him, blessed is not a command, not a state we ought to be in, but the heart of the gospel.  Being poor in spirit is wonderful news, for it puts us in the same place Jesus was during his time on earth.  It’s wonderful news that when we mourn we will be comforted.  It’s wonderful news that we have been given, as Paul says, the ministry of reconciliation, allowing us to be God’s peacemakers.

To be blessed includes all these definitions and more.  When we embody these attributes—spiritual poverty, meekness, purity of heart, peacemaking—we’re in good shape spiritually.  We’re in a place of spiritual well-being.  We will surely enjoy God’s favor. We’re blessed.  What more could we ask for?

We know this is not the way the world is.  It is not the way the world operates.  The world appears to be governed by an entirely different set of principles and behaviors, one that is the opposite of the Beatitudes.  The world says:

Blessed are the proud, the haughty, the vain.

Blessed are the strong, the powerful, the bold, the daring.

Blessed are the tough, the winners, the ones who go for the kill.

Blessed are those who aren’t afraid to fight for what they want, who fight back when attacked.

These may be the world’s standards, but we know something the world tries to forget.  Since Jesus arrived on earth, what we read in the Beatitudes is the way the world is becoming.  It may be difficult to see.  The evidence against it seems overwhelming; but if we look closely, we can see signs that the world is changing.

When we admit to spiritual poverty, when we allow ourselves to mourn, when we interact with the world in the strength of meekness, when we make peace instead of war, when we are reviled and choose not to revile in return, we cross the barrier.  We leave the old world behind and enter the new world.  We become part of the kingdom of God.

The Beatitudes are written in the present tense.  We are called to live in the present, and to live in the way that will bring about God’s promised future.

Because that future is now.