My mother’s outburst in the store embarrassed me, but it also awakened me to an injustice. Years later that embarrassment turned to a commitment on my part to make a difference in confronting injustice. Thinking about this incident as I read Sunday’s gospel makes me see the beatitudes Jesus is teaching in a new way. His beatitudes turn the world upside down and bless the 95% of the population in his time who are poor, hungry and thirsty for justice, looking to God for help.
Jesus lives in occupied territory. Romans rule. The Jews of his time live under an occupying army, made aware of their subservience on a daily basis. In a culture whose citizens worship the emperor for his strength and power, Jesus challenges the ethic of “might makes right.” Jesus insists that God blesses his listeners even though Roman power keeps them poor and oppressed.
Jesus grew up among the poor who work each day to survive. Jewish people farmed small plots of land, growing wheat for flour. They pressed olives for oil to make bread. They had grape vines and fruit trees. They paid taxes to Rome, to Herod, and to the temple.
For the people Jesus teaches in Galilee, his sayings are an outburst against injustice and the system that keeps them in their lowly place. His vision lifts up the poor and lowly, affirms their dignity, and promises God does not forget them.
- Which beatitude do you relate to most?
- Why do people so often choose the beatitudes as the gospel reading at funerals?
The beatitudes state Jesus’ essential message. These eight powerful statements confront the mindset of the Romans and their empire, a mindset that exists in our world today—power and money rule.
Some translations use the word happy rather than blessed to begin each of the beatitudes: Happy are the poor in spirit. Happy are those who mourn. Happy are the meek.
Our consumer culture bombards us with advertisements that promise the happiness we deserve if we drive a new car, take a vacation, and install better windows. In Jesus’ time all wealth flowed toward Rome. In our time all wealth has flowed toward the wealthiest 1%. God blesses 100% of us, not only the rich and powerful.
The beatitudes challenge us to find God’s blessings in our own experiences of losing status, of mourning loved ones, of hungering for fairness. The beatitudes call us to solidarity with those who live in poverty or oppression, to be God’s blessing to those in need.
In the beatitudes Jesus expresses a prophetic paradox. He lives among the poor and sees injustice around him. Unlike some prophets of old, Jesus does not rave and rant. Jesus speaks with authority as he offers a vision of the world God wants us to create. The kingdom Jesus envisions values people who are poor and blesses those who suffer with the sorrowing, endure hunger and thirst for food and for justice, who show mercy.
- What signs of being blessed or happy do you see people in our culture valuing today?
- Whose experience of poverty, sorrow, lowliness, persecution, peace making has blessed you?
Jesus uses the word blessed nine times in the beatitudes. Blessed, berakhah in Hebrew, is not a verb, but rather an adjective that identifies God’s creative goodness at work. Jesus is telling us that when we live the beatitudes, we live God’s way with love and justice for all.
Lists of the beatitudes usually include only eight. The last beatitude repeats the eighth but changes voice from the third person to the second person, addressing us, the readers. It challenges us to live Jesus’ teaching and continue his mission even if bringing the poor and hungry to our tables causes persecution.
Mahatma (Great Soul) Gandhi, the Hindu who led the struggle for India’s independence from British colonial rule, admired Jesus as a teacher. “The message of Jesus as I understand it,” said Gandhi, “is contained in the sermon on the mount unadulterated and taken as a whole… If then I had to face only the sermon on the mount and my own interpretation of it, I should not hesitate to say, ‘Oh, yes, I am a Christian.’”
At another time, Gandhi remarked: “Ah, yes, Christianity. A great philosophy, I’ve just never seen it practiced.” Jesus’ sermon on the mount entrances many nonChristian religious leaders.
- Why do you think lists usually leave out the ninth beatitude?
- What entrances you about Jesus’ teachings?
- Which beatitude is the most difficult for you to imitate? Which is easiest?