Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them, saying:
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 be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (NIV)
BLESSED ARE THE BLESSED, FOR THEIR LIVES SHALL BE FILLED FULL!
In his novel Anything For Billy, Larry McMurtry describes his anti-hero Ben Sippy, who has left a good life in Philadelphia for the wild adventures of the late nineteenth century west, as suddenly being overcome with a restless longing that he found undefinable. “All day I sat in gloom under the mesquite, filled with a sense of having missed something – something precious, something I would never be offered again. What was it that I had missed? . . . I – though a born describer – cannot even describe, or really imagine [it]. I could only miss it.”
What a heart-wrenching statement: “What was it that I had missed? . . . I cannot even describe or really imagine [it]. I could only miss it.” The emptiness of that statement is heartrending.
That sense of emptiness frequents the human condition. The psalmist sensed it when he said, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?” (Ps. 42:1, 2 NIV)
THE TERROR OF THE EMPTINESS
Today’s world (and every day’s world before this one, for that matter) is marked by a mad scramble to fill the emptiness that Ben Sippy expressed so movingly. There are plenty of offers to fill that emptiness . . . wealth, power, reputation, sex, material possessions, shallow relationships, an endless round of busy-ness to keep us from thinking about or experiencing that emptiness, diversions of mindless entertainment designed to give us vicarious thrills of all sorts.
None of it works, though. The latest fad designed to fill our wants becomes tomorrow’s junk. Our best effort at filling life with our own version of fullness falls ultimately into the finality of the grave. At the root of all these efforts is a constant hope that something of this world can fill that great emptiness in our lives. It is called “idolatry” in the Bible . . . this search for a human-made idea or manufacture of some kind that will satisfy our deepest need – fill the emptiness in life.
But idols always fail. And the emptiness remains.
FILLING THE EMPTINESS
For we were made by God to bear a divine image, to be shaped and formed by the will of our Creator, to be filled with the fullness that only God can give. That is why the psalmist did not simply lament an emptiness, but longed for the presence of God as a deer overcome with thirst pants for streams of living water.
It is this haunting desire for God that suffuses the beatitudes -- our Gospel for today. They form a summary statement of who it is that speaks these words . . . and of the kind of life he gives to those who follow him. They give this section known as “The Sermon on the Mount” its “flavor,” laying before the hearers the sense of what it means to live under and by the grace of God.
In the opening sentence of today’s Gospel we hear that “when he saw the crowds . . . his disciples came to him.” He is not addressing these words to the world, for the whole organization of worldly understanding does not and cannot understand what is being set forth in the words that now follow. Jesus is revealing what the kingdom of God looks like. The tone is being set for his ministry: “He began to teach them, saying . . .” By the end of the “sermon,” the crowd will be astonished at his teaching. It will strike a strong chord with all who “listen in.”
The blessedness of the blessed is simply this: Everything that Jesus now speaks has its heart and core in the speaker. If one wants to know about poverty of spirit, appropriate mourning, godly meekness, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, divine mercy, purity of the highest sort, the making of genuine peace, the willingness to be persecuted for righteousness, one dare not look within one’s own self, for these things will not be found there. One must look to the one who speaks these words, finding in him all that permeates these declarations of blessedness. These words will mark his entire ministry.
And they are to be the marks of those to whom he ministers. For in his life, suffering, death and resurrection one finds a transforming power that turns life inside out, replacing the emptiness of our poor human frailties with the fullness of the grace and mercy of the very one who first made us and who alone can re-create in us a sense of completeness that cannot be found anywhere else. There is a God shaped emptiness within us that can be filled only by pouring God into it. Today’s Second Lesson puts it this way: “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.” (I John 3:1 NIV)
To be reconciled to God from whom our sin has estranged us is the one thing necessary for life to be rescued from its empty loneliness and restored to its intended essence. It is this reconciliation that has taken place in and through this one who now speaks.
BLESSED ARE THE BLESSED FOR THEY HAVE BEEN BLESSED
When we speak of “saints” on this day, we speak of all who have been caught up in this urgent longing for and seeking after that glorious presence marking the halls of heaven, described by John in the First Lesson: “A great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb.” They cry out with words echoed in the liturgies of the church as the saints of today join the voices of the saints now gathered in heaven: “Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever.” And who are they? “These are they who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”
Listen closely. These are NOT they whose strength of character has won them a place here; NOR are they those whose moral character was unblemished; NOR are they people who have stood head and shoulder above ordinary sinners.
They are, one and all, those who have “persevered and endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary,” as John puts it earlier in this book. They “have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Their life of blessedness is the pure gift of the Father who has claimed them, the Son who has redeemed them, and the Spirit who has called them to be his own. These are they who have received the word of salvation, been washed in the cleansing waters of baptism wherein they were joined to the Christ, and have been fed on the body and blood of him whose open wounds on the cross poured out the blood in which they are now washed. Blessed are these, for they have been blessed.
THE BLESSEDNESS THAT FILLS OUR EMPTINESS
This brings us back yet again to today’s Gospel.
The word “blessed” is the introductory word to each beatitude. It is a word that could well be stated thus: “O the bliss of!” It is an exclamation! William Barclay points out, “In its older form . . . the characteristic of that word is that properly it describes a bliss which belongs only to the gods.” While the meaning of the word had developed in such a way that it could now be applied to humans, it remained a word joining the divine blessedness to a human life in such a way that “the Christian comes to share in the very life of God.” It is “the bliss which comes when [one] recognizes [one’s] deepest need, and discovers where that need can be supplied.” (Wm. Barclay, The Plain Man Looks At The Beatitudes,” pp. 11-14) It is the thing that a person without God is “wondering what he / she has missed,” to use the words of Ben Sippy.
One must also note that in the Greek there is no verb. “The Beatitudes are not promises of future happiness; they are congratulations on present bliss.” (Barclay, ibid) I.e., these beatitudes are not promises for the future based on a condition – “You will be blessed if . . .” They are not hopeful statements: “If all goes well you will be blessed.” They are the condition of one who is blessed here and now, who is joined to the one in whom all fullness dwells, namely, the one teaching the disciples. Inserting the word “are” is not merely to help those who speak English understand the beatitude. It is to make clear this emphasis on the present blessedness of God’s people even when the promises turn our eyes to the future.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit.” This is the poverty of realizing that the kingdoms of this earth can only produce disillusionment. They propose to fill the emptiness, but they fall back into emptiness. The inner drives that make us think we govern our own destinies are also illusions. Our best efforts are misbegotten, shaped only by the earthly surroundings that are doomed to failure. Nothing earthly can be trusted. We are poverty-stricken. For those whose only hope is found in the God on whom alone we can rely. “Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
“Blessed are those who mourn,” who have recognized that nothing on this earth can satisfy the hearts described by St. Augustine as those “that are restless until they find their rest in thee.” It is a mourning over our weaknesses, our powerlessness, the earth’s inability to produce what it promises when it rears its head as that in which we can trust. Mourning such ineptitude on the human level drives us to seek our hope elsewhere. “They will be comforted.”
“Blessed are the meek,” those whose lives have been “tamed” by the realizations that our human efforts lead nowhere. These are they who have become aware that only unless one far greater, far wiser, far stronger than they claims them, they will come to nought. It is not a “namby-pamby weakness,” but a willingness to depend fully on the one in whom the fullness of life resides. They are “teachable,” as one commentator puts it. They look beyond themselves and this earth to find hope in the midst of despair. This earth will crumble and cave in on itself, but those who have found their strength elsewhere “will inherit the earth.” It will not be theirs by strength of arm, but by inheritance from him who alone can sustain it and give it to them.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” They do not merely wish to have a “snack of righteousness” once in a while. They are starving (the words suggest this), and will perish if they do not find a righteousness that they themselves cannot produce. They are driven to the “man of righteousness” who is speaking. “They will be filled” with God’s righteousness.
“Blessed are the merciful,” those who have fallen into the hands of a rescuing God wrapping his arms around our failing existence and bearing it up with almighty and everlasting arms. Those who have not found mercy on this earth “will be shown mercy” by the God who reveals himself in and through this one who receives sinners and has fellowship with the most unlikely people.
“Blessed are the pure in heart.” This is not a “purity” of unstained living. It is the “purity” of one who shoots an arrow, aiming accurately so that the arrow strikes truly. These are those whose lives are driven without distraction or misdirection toward the one whose promises alone can sustain their lives. Their hearts are set on one thing only . . . to belong to the God from whom they came and to whom they go. Nothing less will do. “They will see God.”
“Blessed are the peacemakers.” Two things are of note: Firstly, this peace is not simply an absence of noise or neighborly disagreements, a lack of violence and bloodshed. It is a deep-rooted sense of things being right within and around one’s self. It has to do with resting in the Lord so that God’s peace and mercy prevail within a person’s soul in such a way that the person conveys that sense of peace to all around. Secondly, this beatitude does not merely speak of maintaining peace. Blessed are those whose lives are so filled with peace that wherever they go they bring peace as part of their being. It is an active word – a word best understood under the cross of Christ where the violence done to him became the reconciling moment with God as he carried out the will of the Father, giving himself into death so that there might be peace among all whose lives were filled with his presence. He was born to the angelic message, “Peace on earth,” and he died in bringing that peace to its highest form. “Blessed are those whose peace is in him and who therefore bring peace wherever they go, for they will be called after him – sons of God.”
The world never really understood him, of course – and even resented him because he kept calling things for what they were. He insisted that there was reason for mourning. The world understood his meekness as weakness, not recognizing the strength from which it sprang. He sought righteousness with a passion and was the author of mercy among those whose self-righteousness demanded justice. His life was directed surely and truly toward doing the will of the Father and he bore peace into a world that only knew peace through the suppression of violence. The world could not stand the likes of him . . . and the world crucified him!
“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness!” he exclaimed. Those whose lives are devoted to this man of righteousness must recognize that all who follow him will be subject to the same scorn that the world accorded their Master. Would it not be strange if it were otherwise? But he was, as Paul put it, “exalted to the highest place and given the name that is above every name” because of his faithfulness to the one who had sent him. And so it shall be to all who follow this Jesus who speaks. “Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
To the world all this sounds like pure nonsense, for it diametrically opposes everything that the world propounds as a fullness of life. But the earth’s fullness always falls back in on itself and becomes a new emptiness, time after time.
Jesus sets forth the bliss that fills the God-shaped void in life through these words, however, even though the world does not recognize it. It is enfleshed in the one who speaks these words. They are sure words, for when the Word made flesh gave himself into death he was raised again by the Father as the guarantee that in him all the fullness of life resides. He remains with us always in his word, in water, in bread and wine, filling that huge empty hole of which Ben Sippi spoke. He is there to fill every life that longs for something other than what is at hand, not quite knowing what it is, only knowing that they miss it.
In the Beatitudes the heart of the Gospel that enlivens and blesses all the children of God is found. These “exclamations” are not a set of self-help sayings; nor are they philosophical reflections on ways to govern life; nor are they therapeutical ways of correcting dysfunctional lives; nor are they simply information about what would make life better; nor are they even a prescription for godly living. They are first and above all the way the Gospel looks when it appears in the person of Jesus Christ from whose lips they come.. They are at the same time the way the Gospel looks when the same Jesus lives within us today, filling our life with a divine presence. In this sense they are truly “in-forming,” a filling full of the emptiness of this life and re-forming the way one understands and lives life. It is simply what his presence in us causes us to become when he claims our hearts. Blessed, indeed, are the blessed, for they shall be filled full!
Hubert Beck, Retired Pastor
Austin, Texas
hbeck@austin.rr.com