By Phil Wood
The Beatitudes
"How happy are the poor in spirit;
theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Happy the gentle:
they shall have the earth for their heritage.
Happy those who mourn:
they shall be comforted.
Happy those who hunger and thirst for what is right:
they shall be satisfied.
Happy the merciful:
they shall have mercy shown them.
Happy the pure in heart:
they shall see God.
Happy the peacemakers:
they shall be called sons of God.
Happy those who are persecuted in the cause of right:
theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
Luke 5:3-10 The Jerusalem Bible
Many have written about the upside-down principles that
Jesus came to establish on earth. In Streams
of Living Water, Richard Foster writes, "In the Beatitudes... Jesus
takes all those kinds and classes of people that in the natural order of things
are thought to be unblessed or unblessable and shows that in the forgiving,
receiving, accepting life of God's kingdom they too are blessed."
To our way of thinking, especially when you look at The
Jerusalem Bible translation of Jesus' words, some of the statements in the
Beatitudes really do seem contradictory. How in the world, I wonder, can
someone who is poor in spirit (which I translate loosely to mean down in the
dumps) be happy?
When I contemplate and pray about these questions, the
Spirit reveals that in the kingdom of heaven the lonely and the depressed are
noticed. Someone attends to them. Someone listens. They are encouraged. They
are loved, perhaps for the first time, by someone empowered by Christ to seek
good for them, and who sets aside their own agenda to come to them and be a
friend.
There is so much more to be said about the upside-down-ness
of God's kingdom, but I want to stop and reflect for a moment on what seems to
be a key ingredient in the kingdom as shown in just this one, short,
contradictory passage of the Beatitudes. And that is selfless love. Sacrificial
love. Christ-like love.
In The Eternal Journey,
Daily Meditations on the Stages of Transformation, Jonathan R. Bailey
writes, "Selfless love...characterizes God's kind of love. Selfless love
is...passionately committed to the well-being of others, even at the expense of
itself...Rather than someone just wanting or hoping or wishing for another
person's good, [selfless love] is someone willing
it – someone stopping on the side of the freeway to hold an umbrella while a
tire is being changed, someone setting down a book to play hide-and-seek with a
four-year-old, someone who will not just pray but be the answer to what they
pray for."
A little later in the Sermon on the Mount, further pressing
the upside-down nature of his kingdom, Jesus starts talking about loving your
enemies and praying for those who persecute you (Matt 5:43-44). In Luke 6:27,
he goes even further: "...Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you." See, now, this is a little bit
harder for me. Okay, it's a lot
harder for me. My natural, worldly thoughts turn to hate when I think of my
enemies.
When I contemplate and pray about this issue, the Spirit scolds
me. Would it be so hard to pray something good for your enemy? Would it be so
bad if something good actually happened to your enemy, and his eyes were opened
to God's love? Would it be so bad if you were the one who helped bring about
something good in his life and helped change the course of his life?
Selfless love, it seems to me, is the game-changer. It's
what makes the kingdom of heaven so
different from all the kingdoms of this world. It's what makes the kingdom
visible and makes people sit up and take notice that something different is
going on here. Driven by Christ in us, selfless love – passionate commitment to
the well-being of others, even at the expense of ourselves – is the thing that
gives the kingdom of God the power to transform the world.
Kingdom life, a dear friend told me recently, "is a
life worth living." I couldn't agree more.
Father, turn my
thinking upside-down. Make Christ so real in me that I can set aside what's
going on in my own life and make a difference in someone else's life, to bless
them and bring them happiness. Help me to live a life that reveals Christ so
vividly that others want to be a part of the kingdom of heaven. Help me be the
answer to what I pray for. In the loving name of Jesus, amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment