Beatitudes or Be-Attitudes? (Matthew 5:1-13)

We have as our Gospel reading this morning what is certainly one of the best known and best loved portions of the Bible. Along with ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’ and ‘For God so love the world …’, the verses from the beginning of Matthew Chapter 5 must be amongst the most popular in the world, perhaps particularly in this day and age.

They are traditionally known as the ‘Beatitudes’:

Blessed are the poor in spirit
Blessed are the meek
Blessed are the peacemakers …

Despite the occasional confusion with the ‘cheese-makers’, I think you will agree that most of us know these blessings pretty well. They are amongst the best-known and most celebrated words Jesus ever spoke.

I used to have a poster on my study wall with the Beatitudes on them. It had an image of a beautiful landscape in the background. I took it down some time ago as it was worn out (perhaps through being meditated upon once too often).

I remember hearing these Beatitudes read out upon TV, by a man with a deep, soothing voice if I remember, and with similar beautiful landscape images running in the background.

The way the Beatitudes have been presented (in my experience) reflects the fact that people perceive this list of blessings from Jesus to be beautiful and inspiring.

Doing a search on this passage on the NET suggests to us one reason why so many people appreciate these blessings so much. It is because they give us a straightforward list of attitudes that we need to adopt if we are going to live a full life.

Pastor David Legge from preachtheword.com says, that here “the Lord reveals to all those – His children, and to the world at large …the attitudes of the kingdom of God, the attitudes that we as believers… are to follow to live righteously.”

Indeed, one thing you discover quickly when doing a search on the Beatitudes on the NET is that most people nowadays seem to be spelling ‘Beatitudes’ with three ‘t’s’, to bring it in line with the spelling of ‘attitude’.

Indeed, some go further and hyphenate the word, and capitalize the ‘B’ and the ‘A’, so that they become the ‘Be-Attitudes’ – the Attitudes that we need to adopt if we are going to Be the persons that God requires!

Now you’ve probably picked up that I’ve already started to descend into the world of the American tele-evangelist – a character who is increasingly finding his way on to the Internet to hold online worship! This is true, but it’s sort of inevitable once you start doing a search on ‘the blessings of Jesus’.

It’s a recurring theme coming from this end of the Christian spectrum, that God’s greatest desire is to bless you (which tends to mean that He’s going to make you wildly rich and successful) and within this context, the Be-Attitudes are regularly seen as the key to the sort of mindset that you need to adopt if you are going to be truly blessed.

This end of the Christian spectrum, in my view, tends to confuse Christian spirituality with positive thinking. Christianity at this level can become very much a form of self-help therapy, wherein one adopts the so-called spiritual mindset (as reflected in the Be-Attitudes) as a means to climbing the ladder of success.

This involves a very selective reading of the Bible of course, as is well evidenced by the one publication that I purchased online, coming from this end of the church – ‘The Positive Bible’ by Kenneth Caine (Avon Books, NY, 1998).

I found the online add for this publication to be irresistible. It promised to give me a Bible that had“all the good stuff” in it and … “nothing else”!

From the inside cover: “Turn to any page in this book. You will be greeted with a Biblical passage that offers hope, help, and encouragement. It is a simple concept, but one that may have a profound influence on your life.”

Indeed, it also claimed that it would allow me to “read the whole Bible in about an hour”, which is an indication of the fact that there is a lot of the Bible, as traditionally composed, that is left out!

The Gospel of Matthew, in The Positive Bible, begins with the Beatitudes (most of them, at any rate). Why? Because they list the attitudes that we need to adopt if we are to live a positive, happy and successful life.

If have a real problem with this (in case you hadn’t worked that out)!

Why? Mainly because I run a website and an online newsletter with around 3000 subscribers, many of whom write to me each week, and speak to me about their struggle to find the key to ‘releasing God’s blessings’ for them.

Those who know me well might wonder how persons of this mindset ever came to be on my mailing list, but these are good people – sincere Christian people, many of whom are better persons than myself, no doubt. Yet contemporary Christian culture has sucked them in to believing that God’s greatest desire is to make their life and their business successful, in the normal secular sense of the word.

I care about these people. I care about the fact that someone has sold them a lie that is almost bound to lead them to spiritual disillusionment. And I care about the fact that this lie is often associated with other rubbish, such as a political agenda that tacitly supports the oppression of the Palestinian people.

Let’s be clear about this today. The Lord Jesus does not promise to make us rich or successful (in the worldly sense of the word) anywhere, ever! On the contrary, the general picture we get in the New Testament is that those who are loyal to the Kingdom of God will pay for it in this life. Ironically, nowhere is this made more clear than in 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 receive 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 for righteousness’ sake.

Now the first thing that needs to be said about these Beatitudes is that they are not attitudes.

Being a ‘peacemaker’ is not an attitude. It’s a lifestyle. Similarly, being persecuted certainly isn’t an attitude.

What about being ‘poor in Spirit’. Is that an attitude?

I’m not entirely sure what it means to be ‘poor in spirit’. Christian scholars are still debating the matter. Maybe it does just mean being humble. But the word ‘poor’, in the original language of the Bible, tends to denote those who’ve been crushed by poverty into destitution. Maybe this is why Kenneth Caine, in The Positive Bible, actually decided to leave that particular Beatitude out!

The second thing that needs to be said about these Beatitudes is that they don’t actually tell us what we are supposed to be. They actually are not prescriptions at all.

I don’t mean to be pedantic, but the beatitudes are given in the indicative, not the imperative. They are descriptions of people, not exhortations to be something. They are in fact all descriptions of the disciples!

All eight groups of persons mentioned – the poor, the meek, the persecuted, etc. – are in fact thesame group – the disciples.

This is clear from the way the passage opens in Matthew 5, with the crowds following Jesus up the mountainside, and then it says, still in verse 1, that “His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them [ie. the disciples] saying: Blessed are the poor in spirit …”

Jesus is talking to His disciples. In Luke’s version, it is made even more clear. It says “Jesus looked as his disciples and said, ‘Blessed are you poor …’”

It is the disciples that Jesus is talking to and it is the disciples that Jesus is talking about. It is thedisciples who are spiritually ‘poor’ or ‘crushed’. It is the disciples who are hungering and thirsting for justice. It is the disciples who are being persecuted.

Jesus says ‘you guys are blessed’. ‘Yes, you might seem to be a pretty pathetic bunch by worldly standards – poor and meek and persecuted, but you’re blessed.’ They are blessed, of course, not because they are poor and meek and persecuted. No. They are blessed despite the fact that they are poor and meek and persecuted. But they are poor and meek and persecuted becausethey are disciples. Let’s be clear about this.

Jesus is not telling us to be poor any more than he is telling us that we ought to strive to be persecuted. Jesus commands us to be disciples. And if indeed you count the cost and become a disciple, then there is every likelihood that you will find yourself poor and persecuted. Even so, Jesus says that you are ‘blessed’. Not by worldly standards, no. By worldly standards you are poor and meek and persecuted. But from Jesus’ perspective you are blessed because you are a disciple of the Kingdom of God, and when the Kingdom comes you will be rewarded!

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” When? When the Kingdom comes.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” When? When the Kingdom comes in its fullness. That’s when those of us who have been hungering for justice will finally be satisfied, for that is when we will finally see justice!

We know that we do not see justice in this world. We disciples hunger and thirst for it and we work and pray for it, but we do not see it, not in its fullness, not now.

No. In this world we continue to see wicked men conquer and evil schemes triumph, despite the best of our efforts. But one day, when the Kingdom comes, we will see true justice prevail, and we shall be satisfied. That is Jesus’ promise.

“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Yes. The prophets before us suffered, as we will suffer if we have the courage to proclaim the truth, but this is no reason to get depressed. No. ‘Rejoice and be glad!’ For the day will come when the ‘earth will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea’, and when that day comes, we will all enjoy the full blessings of God.

This is the promise we are given in the Beatitudes of Jesus. This list of blessings is not a prescription for how to lead a happy and successful life. It is not a list of benefits that we will immediately enjoy if we sign up with Jesus. No. These are the comforting words of hope that Jesus gives to those who have forgone immediate joys and worldly success in this life for the sake of their commitment to the new world coming.

In this life, we disciples who would serve the Kingdom must expect poverty and persecution. But one day, when ‘all things are brought together in Christ’, we shall be satisfied.

Is that Good News? Not if we came to Jesus because we were looking to Him to make us more comfortable and successful, but if you have counted the cost and made the decision to follow Jesus anyway, and have committed your life to building the Kingdom of God, then these are comforting words indeed.

Blessing awaits! Times may be hard now, but blessing awaits! The wicked may seem to have the upper hand in this world, but the Kingdom of God is coming! And when that Kingdom comes, we who have been hungering and thirsting for justice shall be satisfied!

I don’t know how we got the Beatitudes so mixed up.

Not everybody has, of course. Even poking around on the NET I found some really terrific material on these blessings from Jesus – not so much on the high profile sites of the well-known evangelists, but on small discussion boards where ordinary people get together to reflect on the Scriptures.

One of the most impressive reflections I found was on a discussion board hosted by a group called ‘Absolutely Gay Christian Men’. I always appreciate it when an online group lets you know where they’re coming from right from the outset, and this group were certainly up front about who they were.

If you visit their discussion board you’ll see a lot of honest dialogue that struggles with the Scriptures and with issues of male identity, some of which has been focused on the Beatitudes. One guy was writing about how he saw in the Beatitudes Jesus’ affirmation of him just as he was. Another guy, by the name of Kudo, wrote back and said:

“My goodness, If you read the beattitudes and all you come away with is that you just have to be yourself…well ’nuff said.

I personally don’t see the easy life in these challenges. Jesus presents a list of very radical human living standards that frankly go against everything we are taught by our families, our culture, and frankly by many of those who consider themselves spiritual leaders.

“Poor/Poor in Spirit”, “Meek”, “hungering and thirsting for righteousness”, and in case anybody missed it you get no credit for persecution you receive on your own, you only get credit when they do it to you for being a follower of Christ.

Truthfully the only thing that makes this list at all appealing in any way, is that Jesus himself said it”

Maybe that’s a bit hard. Certainly they are sobering blessings – these Beatitudes of Jesus – but they are still blessings. Yes, we are expected to go the hard path, enduring poverty, pain and persecution if necessary, but in the end … we shall be satisfied!

First preached by Father Dave Smith at Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill.