10 June 2024 Matthew 5:1-12
“Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad for your reward will be great in heaven. Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” Matthew 5:11-12
A platitude is something that has been repeated so often that it no longer has any real meaning. We have heard it so many times that we no longer hear it. The statement may be true, even deeply true, but its truth has been trivialized by overuse.
The Beatitudes are like that.
The Beatitudes are on posters and bumper-stickers. They are pleasing pastel decorations. Nobody is startled by them. Nobody, that is, who isn’t being intentional about being startled. If you try to imagine yourself reading them for the first time, like someone who is just finding out about Jesus, then maybe some of them will rise up from the page a little, maybe take you by the nose and shake you a little bit.
For instance, who was Jesus talking to? The text says that when Jesus saw the crowd, he did not address them. He turned and went up a mountain, and the disciples followed. He wasn’t talking to the crowd. He was talking to the people who would talk to the crowd. The Beatitudes, in other words, are not for beginners. They are for people who have been following Jesus for a little while, and are receiving training on how to talk to people who arebeginners.
For another thing, some of the Beatitudes seem to be in conflict with one another. It is hard to see, for example, how someone who “hungers and thirsts for righteousness” (Matthew 5:6) can also be “meek” (5:5). It is hard to see how someone who is “persecuted because of righteousness” (5:10) can also be a “peacemaker” (5:9). Someone who is persecuted for the sake of righteousness is more likely to rile up a community rather than calm it down. Perhaps what Jesus was driving at was that different situations call for people with different gifts. Rabble-rousers will be blessings in one setting where pacifiers would fail miserably. Small wonder, then, that when the Apostolic Age began, evangelists went out in teams with a variety of spiritual gifts. Paul’s tendency to start arguments was balanced by Barnabas’ charm and encouragement (he wasn’t called “Son of Encouragement” for nothing).
The longest Beatitude is the most disturbing: “Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me…. Rejoice and be glad…for thus they treated the prophets who were before you” (5:11-12). Jesus was commending the example of the prophets to his evangelists, and the prophets were some of the most disturbing people who ever lived. They did weirdly provocative things to call attention to the judgment of God. Isaiah preached naked. Hosea married a prostitute and gave his children weird names like “Not-My-People.” Ezekiel lay of his side for 390 days “to bear the punishment for the house of Israel.” What is more, the prophets all failed. The house of Israel and the house of Judah did not repent, and both were sent into Exile, which, next to losing the Ark of the Covenant, was the worst calamity in the history of the Old Testament. This is another indication that the Beatitudes were not intended for beginners, for the example of the prophets was too strong a brew for people just starting as disciples. Jesus was aware that the message of the Gospel was going to strike so many as radical that experience and spiritual maturity were going to be necessary for its messengers to bear the opposition and the tough questions that were bound to come.
If the Beatitudes are platitudes, that may be because you are not intentional enough yet to be startled by them. The first steps toward spiritual maturity begin when you try to read the Beatitudes like someone who is seeing them for the first time. That’s when the sharp edges and the weight of glory come out. It is not a tame message. The good ones never are.
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