The Beatitudes

Matthew 5: 1-12 (November 5, 2023, All Saints Sunday)

Matthew’s Focus

We shouldn’t think of the Gospels as being like the transcript of a news reporter who was present at all of the events and recorded them just as they happened. Each Gospel was written for a particular community of followers of Jesus. They are narratives that were crafted by their authors to present the story of Jesus, his teachings, and his significance in a way that was meaningful to the people in those communities. As R. Alan Culpepper writes in his commentary on Luke in the New Interpreter’s Bible, “Each Gospel contains a different structure, develops different themes, and portrays the person of Jesus in its own unique way.”

According to M. Eugene Boring, the scholar who wrote the New Interpreter’s Bible commentary on Matthew, “Matthew’s church saw itself as the messianic community, the eschatological people of God [meaning the people at the end of history who would be brought into full community with God], distinct from all – Jew or Gentile – who did not believe in Jesus as the Messiah.”

Matthew particularly links Jesus to Israel’s history, telling the story of Jesus by evoking the figure of Moses in several ways, according to Boring. “In a dream, an angel announces Moses’ birth and that he will work miracles and save his people. Likewise, Jesus is conceived in a miraculous way; at his birth he is threatened by the wicked king [or Pharoah]; he is initially rejected by his own people; he comes out of Egypt; he passes through the water and is tested in the wilderness [40 days instead of 40 years]; he ascends the mountain and gives authoritative commands…”

The Sermon on the Mount which the beatitudes we just heard are part of, occurs in both Matthew and Luke. It’s interesting to compare the two. While Luke has Jesus delivering this sermon on a plain, Matthew has Jesus giving the sermon on the mount, which would remind his Jewish community of Moses receiving the Torah on Mt. Sinai. Matthew’s Jesus is like Moses, fulfilling the scripture and establishing his authority through his own words.

So when we approach Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, we have to understand it as Matthew’s composition, not as a word-for-word recording of a speech that happened at a particular place on a particular day. Matthew has taken all he knows about Jesus and crafted it into this Gospel aimed at his community of believers. He writes out of his own conviction that Jesus is the Christ, and that the Christ is the fulfillment of the Jewish scriptures. Matthew believed that the eschatological times – meaning the end of history and the reign of God – had begun with the incarnation of Christ in the world.

The Sermon on the mount runs from the 4th chapter of Matthew through most of the 9th chapter. Just prior to this, Jesus calls four of his disciples, and then begins his ministry of teaching and healing. He announces the good news that the kingdom of God is at hand, and then proves that through his healing acts. Jesus approaches the people with mercy, healing them without their needing to meet any special requirements or confess any particular beliefs. In Jesus, sick and suffering people encounter the living God and are brought to wholeness.

In the first verse of this passage when it tells us that Jesus’ disciples came to him, Matthew doesn’t mean the four that Jesus had just called. He also isn’t referring to the crowd gathered at the foot of the mountain. According to Boring, the scholar who wrote the commentary on Matthew, the word “disciples” here refers to Matthew’s community, it refers to his church. And the teachings of Jesus he relays here are aimed at this community and are delivered in the form that is called a “beatitude.”

There are three main points I want to lift up in the rest of this sermon.

1. I want to show you how these teachings are meant to overturn or reverse a common understanding and usage of beatitudes in the Jewish tradition.
2. I would like us to consider that they are not individualistic ways of being but refer to the community of believers.
3. I want to suggest that they are focused on wholeness and both declare and evoke the realization of the wholeness they declare.

The Beatitudes as Reversals

Let’s first look at the beatitudes as reversals. Boring tells us that neither Jesus nor Matthew invented the beatitude. This literary form appears in the Jewish tradition, both in the wisdom literature and in the prophets. In wisdom literature, a beatitude will often state how those in fortunate circumstances are blessed, and that’s what we typically observe and experience when we are flying high. But In the prophetic tradition, beatitudes are used to declare the future blessedness of those currently in dire circumstances, but who will be vindicated in the future at the eschatological coming of God’s kingdom (this use of the form appears in Isaiah and Daniel).

In a sense, we can see Matthew’s use of these beatitudes as a reversal of the beatitudes of wisdom literature. Here, we don’t see blessedness associated with good fortune or with riches and power. Instead, we see blessedness associated with the opposite and unexpected characteristics – mourning, hopelessness, and humility. Rather than seeing ruthless leaders or conquering warriors lifted up as blessed by God, we see the merciful and the peacemakers being held up as exemplars. And it’s those who are persecuted – as the followers of Jesus would have been in those days – that are said to be blessed.
Matthew uses this form more like the way they’re used in the prophetic tradition, but even reverses this, because he’s saying this community is already the eschatological community, not just that they’ll experience the blessedness at some future time.

The Beatitudes as Communal

Now let’s look at these beatitudes as communal. Matthew saw his community of believers as the messianic community. They are the people who will finally be present at the wedding banquet of the Son.
And so these verses are not commandments for good behavior or the recipe for successful living. Matthew is urging his community to embrace the broader, hopeful vision that Jesus revealed when he told them that the kingdom of God is at hand. He’s prophetically declaring that the kingdom of God is both coming and already here, and that even the suffering that Jesus’ followers are experiencing now is held within the present kingdom of God.

The beatitudes point to the now and future reality, in ways that evoke Israel’s long-held yearnings. And they are communal blessings. The “poor in spirit” are those who know how much they need God, they see themselves as utterly dependent on God, and they, therefore, are the people of God to whom the kingdom belongs.

Those who mourn are not just individual people experiencing loss and grief but are the true people of God because they “lament the present condition of God’s people and God’s program in the world.” These are the people who understand how God’s kingdom should be and who grieve that the world is not able to realize that kingdom.

The meek are not the weak or mealy-mouthed but are the community who actively adopt other-worldly ideas of kingship, “those who have renounced the violent methods of this-worldly power.” To inherit the earth is to participate in the renewed earth that God has promised in the messianic age.

Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are not people who merely seek to be individually pious but refers to those who long for the coming of God’s kingdom, a beloved community marked by justice, mercy, and wholeness.

The merciful are those who, empowered by Christ, perform “concrete acts of mercy” not just those who have a merciful attitude. The merciful are actively compassionate, forgiving, gracious, humane, and lenient. Those who show mercy will then receive that same mercy in the coming kingdom.

The pure in heart are not the people with only pure thoughts but are those whose hearts are not divided. A divided heart tries to serve two or more masters, but people who are pure of heart devote themselves wholly to God, the one thing that is needed.

The word peacemakers again refers to those who take concrete action to reconcile conflicting groups. Those who do this are declared children of God in the fulfillment of God’s kingdom.

Finally we learn that it’s the people who risk being persecuted for their commitment to God’s justice and to the truth of God’s revelation in Jesus who will receive the kingdom of heaven and the joy that is found there. And that joy is not in spite of that persecution but because of it. According to Boring, this is not about having some kind of martyr complex, but is about the “joyful acceptance of the badge of belonging to the eschatological community of faith, the people of God who are out of step with the value system of this age.”

The Beatitudes Evoke and Realize Wholeness

Finally, I want to talk about how the beatitudes evoke and realize wholeness. The word “beatitude” is rooted in Latin, but the Greek word in the New Testament is makarism. The Greek adjective makarios is translated in this passage as “blessed.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary links this word to the German heil and also the Greek soteria. Soteria usually means saved, and from the German heil we get health, healthy, and whole.

While the beatitudes are about community, they’re not required behaviors for acceptance into the community. Instead, they declare what the community is. Matthew’s community of Jesus followers were being persecuted by others who did not share their belief. And so the beatitudes declare that this community, despite all that it is suffering, is blessed by God. In hearing this good news, they would then be moved to act in alignment with the kingdom of God.

They declare a hopeful reality, and then are meant to bring about the reality that they describe. Boring writes that the beatitude doesn’t say if you will be this, then you’ll get that. Instead, it “unconditionally” declares that those who are this will be that. The beatitude “brings into being what it states…[they] are not entrance requirements for outsiders, but a declaration about insiders.” They have this power because of the authority of Jesus. Through the Christ, these declarations of blessedness are realized.

Some translations of this passage use the word “happy” instead of “blessed,” but the beatitudes are not about our subjective feelings – whether we feel happy or unhappy. They’re about declaring an objective divine reality that breaks into our human experience as the result of God’s action in Jesus Christ. In these verses, Matthew is telling his community of Jesus followers that they should not interpret their experiences of sorrow, of hopelessness, of persecution as being signs of being cursed by God or out of favor with God. No, Matthew is stressing that even within this suffering, even within our hopelessness, as a community following Jesus we are blessed by God.