The Beatitudes (from the Sermon on the Mount) have been one of the most perplexing passages for me to understand over the course of my Christian life. Our pastor preached today on them, and I think the light bulb finally went on for me. The election season being upon us certainly helped, as we'll see below.
The big idea is that humanity is fallen and estranged from God. This we know from Sunday School lessons. But the implication then is that humankind's priorities are also flawed, its cultures and institutions oriented wrongly: toward strength, power, wealth, success, influence, skills, acclaim, pride. Two of our Presidential candidates are oriented in that direction, so it appears.
When Jesus walked the earth, he preached about the Kingdom of God. And the Sermon on the Mount (in Matthew 5, or the Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6), was an announcement of the major policy statements of the administration which Jesus inaugurated with his Incarnation as God-in-flesh-united. He proclaimed himself King and announced the transition to a new ruling order, and the Beatitudes were the key planks of the new platform (of the Kingdom of God Party, as it were).
Seen in that light, the Kingdom of God is all about dismantling those flawed human institutions and introducing new cultural priorities. In this Kingdom, losers will become winners and vice versa. The meek and lowly rise, and those with self-reliant success stories will fall. Justice is achieved and mercy is granted. In the kingdom of God the effects of humankind's Fall from grace are unwound.
With this as the new paradigm is taking over (reaching its zenith at the last judgment, the restoration of all things), it forces me to reconsider how I view the homeless, the outcast, the suffering, the mentally ill, the drug-addicted, the lost. People who have made poor choices, or been the victims of bad luck, and are now suffering... they are in for a reversal of fortune in this Kingdom of God.
So why should I despise them for their present circumstances, regardless of how they got there? After all, I did not accomplish my own salvation, or secure my own entrance into the Kingdom of God. Jesus intervened in my life and addressed my spiritual poverty with his merciful self-sacrifice. And arguing from the greater to the lesser, shouldn't I also intervene for others who are in physical or emotional poverty? Of course! What else could Matthew 25:31-46 and Luke 3:11, 6:36-36, 12:33-34 mean if not that?
