Those Baffling Beatitudes

The more I read the Beatitudes, the more questions I have. Why is Jesus so cryptic? How are the poor and the persecuted fortunate? Why should mourners be happy, the meek have hope? Who of us is ever pure in heart? Is it really worth thirsting and hungering for justice in a world that rarely delivers? I am left unsure, even disturbed.

Honestly, the Beatitudes often baffle me. I feel drawn to them; I want to experience their truth. But I can’t tell my refugee neighbor, about to be evicted with her three children: “Blessed are the poor!” I can’t tell a black colleague who’s gotten redlined, denied a mortgage in a white neighborhood: “Get over it, remain meek and mild, and you’ll eventually inherit a house and land.”

And what about me, with my comfortable if not affluent life? Am I blessed? Is God blessing me? I’m certainly not poor, nor in mourning. I’m not especially meek (ask my wife), nor do I thirst and hunger for righteousness, at least not the way I do for my morning coffee. I’m hardly merciful or a peacemaker, since I’m rarely around those who really suffer and I avoid conflict at all costs. Need I mention purity of heart or being persecuted? I want to respond to the Beatitudes, but am I alone in feeling that they are beyond reach?

One can’t just pull the Beatitudes apart. They belong together. In the words of Eberhard Arnold, “They portray the heart of the people of the kingdom – a heart whose veins cannot be dissected and pulled to pieces.” The Beatitudes as a whole reflect the nature of God’s kingdom. We don’t get to pick the ones we like. That would be, James C. Howell writes, “like noticing and yanking out a loose thread, unraveling the fabric, and forgetting that each thread is woven into a larger cloth with its own beauty.”

The beauty of the Beatitudes captivated Saint Augustine, who described them as the ladder of ascent for the soul. Other writers have noted the Beatitudes’ symmetry: the poor in spirit, who know their need and sin before God, are the ones who naturally mourn; the meek, those without power, often hunger and thirst for righteousness most; the merciful are not only quick to forgive but find peace in doing so. Some observe that, not unlike the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer, the first four Beatitudes describe our relationship with God and our need of him, whereas the remaining four highlight our relationship with others.

Károly Ferenczy, Sermon on the Mountain, oil on canvas, 1896. Creative Commons.

Yes, the Beatitudes belong together. But something else is even more important to note: the one who utters these blessings. It is Jesus who is on the mountain. No one would be there if it were not for him. Jesus isn’t just another Moses or a Galilean Socrates, he is the kingdom of God in person. He doesn’t just proclaim the good news of the kingdom but demonstrates its power. Long before he utters the Beatitudes, he has compassion on the crowds, healing every infirmity and disease, and calling people to himself. The Beatitudes, therefore, are not just a string of spiritual virtues that float in midair: Jesus is describing a reality. He is articulating his very own identity.

Jesus is the poor one who made himself nothing, having no place to lay his head, and yet has everything he needs. It is he who mourns, as he sheds tears over Jerusalem and his blood on the cross, and is comforted, even by angels. He is the meek one, never retaliating, even doing good to his enemies. It is he who hungers and thirsts for righteousness, as he defends the outcasts, bestows mercy on the lame, frees the captives, and feeds the multitudes. He is God’s peace, the pure one who reconciles us to God and to each other. He is the one who helps me to imagine what the blessed life is all about. “It is enough,” Jesus says, “for the disciple to be like the teacher” (Matt. 10:25). The Beatitudes are about Jesus.

In Matthew’s account, unlike Luke’s, it is the poor in spirit, not just the poor, who are blessed. Is Jesus spiritualizing poverty? Who are the poor in spirit? Jesus most likely has in view economically disadvantaged Jews who were awaiting God’s kingdom; those who put their trust in God even in the face of material hardship. People like Mary, or Simeon and Anna, or like his disciples, who left everything to follow him. Even the crowds are included, people suffering from pain, possessed by demons, afflicted with diseases and disabilities (Matt. 4:24), vulnerable to the vicissitudes of life and suspecting that they are somehow under God’s judgment (John 9:2). It is these people who prick up their ears and crowd around Jesus. It is them Jesus addresses and calls blessed. Theirs is the kingdom!

This is surely good news for some. But what do I hear? I’m startled for sure, but I also feel uneasy. In the background I hear something else: Jesus’ woes in Luke 6: “But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry.” They ring far louder in my ears than the “blesseds.” Granted, I don’t live lavishly. But I’m certainly not downtrodden. I live free of want and pain, and I’m not persecuted. Is this, as Jesus warns in Luke, all I will ever receive?

The Beatitudes are meant to be good news. Good in what sense? After all, Jesus also says, “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also” (John 15:20). Blessed are the persecuted. Again, where does this leave me? I can’t help but think of Jesus’ words to the church in Laodicea, whose deeds are neither hot or cold, but lukewarm (Rev. 3:15–16). Can the Beatitudes be realized in tepid waters? Am I hot or cold or somewhere in between? 

Whenever I make a firm resolution to try harder and dare more, I am tempted to treat the Beatitudes the same way I did doing chores as a child. When I was ten, I started earning an allowance. I was responsible for cleaning the swimming pool, trimming hedges, mowing the lawn, chopping firewood. Do X and get Y. What could be better than that? If you want to inherit the earth, just become more earnest and obey more. But one can’t just decide: “Now I am going to mourn.” One can’t simply wake up in the morning and declare: “Now I am going to hunger and thirst for righteousness!” One can’t make oneself be moved with compassion at the sight of a homeless person.

The Beatitudes are not like this. They describe the blessed life; they don’t prescribe it. The word “blessed” bears this out; it essentially means “Good news for you!” or “Fortunate are you!” or “God is with you!” The blessings Jesus promises don’t just await us in the future (verses 4–6) but make themselves known now (verses 3 and 8). For the poor and the oppressed, “theirs is the kingdom,” present tense. This suggests that the Beatitudes are not rewards for doing or being good, but assurances for anyone who trusts and follows Jesus. Despite hardship, deprivation, loss, and grief, God’s blessing is upon those who make Christ their master and purpose in life.

Seen in this light, the Beatitudes feel less out of reach. Jesus does not say, “If you are meek, you will be blessed, for you will eventually inherit the earth.” Rather, Jesus’ life demonstrates how being meek possesses its own kind of strength, one which can’t be taken away and doesn’t need to fight for its rights. And when I mourn, I don’t have to despair. Mourning is good. As Evagrios the Solitary (d. 399) puts it, “Pray for the gift of tears, so that through sorrowing what is savage in your soul may be tamed.” A cold heart is a dead heart. Blessed are those who care enough to cry.

Could it be, then, that wealth, honor, being in control, having one’s own way, gaining victory over another, and being untouched by the sorrow of others are not blessings but a desert mirage that ultimately leaves us empty? Could it be that the way of descent is in fact the rewarding life? What could be more freeing than to recognize one’s own sin and leave it behind? What could be more satisfying than to hunger and thirst after righteousness, which alone satisfies the soul? What could be more fulfilling than to release someone else from their debt? What could be more exhilarating than becoming single-hearted enough to see God? This, Jesus tells us, is the blessed life, the life that lasts.

I want the blessed life. What do I do? Do I devote myself, like Mother Teresa, to doing works of mercy? Do I thrust myself, like Martin Luther King Jr., into causes that seek social justice? Do I, like Saint Francis, renounce self-sufficiency and go begging? I have known people who have done such things, but it didn’t guarantee them blessedness.

One thing I have found is that experiencing the Beatitudes requires following Jesus where he goes. And where did he go? He hung around those who were considered losers. So, I began to volunteer at a ministry in the inner city devoted to befriending those on the street. But in the ensuing years I underwent a tremendous change. I discovered how poor I really was, how little I had to offer and how much “the least of these” could teach me. Jed never had enough money, and that was because he would spend his SSI check at the beginning of every month treating his friends to a good meal. Bonnie, who talked to buildings, took time to come to our house and bless it. Ralph was my angel. He always had my back as I walked the streets, telling his friends I was one of them and that they should look out for me.

Over time, my pursuit of academic achievement and recognition, and my passion to change the world, imploded. I began to learn what God’s unconditional and transforming love really meant. I saw how the world’s pain was not just a problem to be studied and fixed but something to be carried with others in friendship. I began to see what generosity really looked like, not through the lens of one who had too much money, but through the eyes of those one who shared his tent with others. I began to see what living by faith involved for those who barely had their daily bread. Slowly, the Beatitudes started to take hold of me, having snuck into my life through the back door. 

Eventually, my wife and I felt God calling us to leave our teaching positions, friends, and family and throw in our lot with a community committed to living daily life in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount. It was a circuitous route, and at several junctures we found ourselves jobless and pretty much alone. At one point, I took a janitorial position at an adult care facility. For the next year I cleaned toilets, washed and vacuumed floors, painted walls, handled trash, took residents to medical appointments, and listened to their stories. It eventually dawned on me: this is all it would take to share everyday life with others. Was I ready? Could I find joy in simply serving those right beside me, for the sake of Christ?

That was thirty years ago. I still find the lowly way hard. I want to impress. I want to achieve great things. One thing has become clear: how impossible it is to live the life Jesus calls blessed on my own. Jesus said as much, for in the Beatitudes he repeatedly uses collective nouns. In other words, the blessed life is all about a certain kind of life together. It’s hard to forgive my brother seventy times seven unless he is in my life; hard to be meek if I don’t have to defer to anyone; hard to mourn if I keep my distance from others’ afflictions; hard to show mercy if I hide my own needs; hard to pursue justice for the poor while making more and more money for myself.

Kathy Escobar writes, “The Beatitudes should inspire us toward a better way. Jesus’ words of blessing to the poor, marginalized, and downwardly mobile were not a threat or a coercion technique to force us into a miserable life. His call to go downward is a methodology for the abundant life. It is the easier yoke.”

The Beatitudes are the easier yoke (Matt. 11:29–30), but accepting this yoke involve choices, choices that are sometimes hard and often humbling. The downward descent Escobar speaks of is the narrow way that Jesus says few will find (Matt. 7:13–14). Along the way there will be temptations: the temptation to turn back, to give up, to compromise, to just fit in. The Beatitudes never come naturally.

Yet the Beatitudes keep beckoning. They call us to seek the world revealed in Christ and made possible by him. For in him is life in abundance (John. 10:10). We need his assurance that the blessed life, as crazy as it may appear to others, is not far off. Like doubting Thomas, we need him to renew our faith again and again. “Because you have seen me, you have believed,” Jesus tells Thomas. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29).