'When he saw the crowds, he went up on the 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.' (Matthew 5.1-3).
I was a student in 1970 at the time when students were revolting! In many university campuses around the world then, students were known for their radical idealism.
I was very moved in my first year when I read a letter from a South American student written to his fiancee explaining why he was breaking off their engagement: 'We have a high casualty rate. We get shot, lynched, jailed, slandered, fired from our jobs; we live in virtual poverty; we give away every penny we make above what is absolutely necessary to keep us alive. We don't have time for movies or concerts. We are described as fanatics and perhaps we are, for our lives are dominated by one great over-arching cause. This is the one thing about which I am in deadly earnest; it is my life, my business, my hobby, my sweetheart. I work for it in the daytime and I dream of it at night. I cannot carry on any friendship or love affair or even conversation without relating it to this force which drives and guides my life.' He had been converted - to Marxism, something which shaped his decisions, shaped his ambitions, shaped his motivations.
These days our culture expresses indifference, there is very little room for that kind of passion or enthusiasm. People get sucked into the routine boredom of their day-to-day lives, their horizons shrink and they settle very comfortably for the status quo. Maybe it's also true of us Christians. We don't want to be branded fanatics - do we? So we blend in and are little different from non-Christians. The values of this world, not the values of God's kingdom, shape our priorities. I was recently interviewing a young man who was applying for a job in a Christian organisation. I asked him: 'What is it that makes you want to go into what we call full-time Christian work?' He thought for a while and said: 'Well, there are two reasons: first of all, I'd like to travel round Europe and, secondly, I'd like to be financially secure.' It was not only naive in its expectation, it was secular in its motivation.
Out of this world
Now Jesus was clear about this one thing: 'My kingdom is not of this world.' The Sermon on the Mount has been called the manifesto of the kingdom of God. It is the essence of Jesus' radical teaching, and the Beatitudes are the 'essence of the essence'. They describe for us the attitudes, the behaviour, the blessings of those who have submitted their lives to the control of Jesus the King.
It's quite difficult to find an English equivalent of these Beatitudes. The force of them is something like: 'Oh, you lucky so and so!', but it has even more dynamism and power because of the shocking collision of ideas that we find in them. They begin with God's blessing. Well, that was familiar enough to Jesus' Jewish listeners. But then came something completely unexpected. Who were the beneficiaries of his blessing? 'Blessed are the poor in spirit.' 'Blessed are those who mourn.' 'Blessed are the meek.' 'Blessed are the persecuted.' Jesus completely reverses the expectations of those around him. Someone has put it like this: 'It's almost as if Jesus had crept into life's window and swapped all the price tags around.' What was of great value is now of little value, and what was of little value is now of great value.
How do we live this kind of life? We do it by seeing what Jesus says at the beginning: 'Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.'
Self-evaluation
First, Jesus calls for a realistic self-evaluation. His opening statement concerns this fundamental question of our identity, our self-evaluation before God.
There are a number of Greek words for 'the poor'. One describes the man who has nothing to spare but can get by. The other word describes the person who is absolutely destitute. It is a very strong word used here for 'poor' in spirit; it not only describes the desperate circumstances this person is in but also the attitude with which other people look at him. He's despised, rejected, and some of the early Christian writers paraphrased it as 'blessed are the beggars'. Jesus' words had an Old Testament background. Originally the word literally meant 'the poor man', the man who had no resources and no champion, no-one defending him, no-one on his side, and therefore he had to come to God - there was nowhere else he could go (e.g. Psalm 34.6).
So Matthew begins with Jesus' manifesto: 'Blessed are the poor in spirit' - the ones who are going to enter God's kingdom and know God's blessing are those who, in their deepest evaluation of themselves, know their utter spiritual bankruptcy. That is why I like the NEB when it translates this: 'Blessed are those who know their need of God.'
This kind of humility before God is not a politically correct idea these days. I read a book the other day which said we had to wear 'power shoes' and carry a 'power briefcase'. And that's our society, that's our culture. Notice the tone: it is assertion, it's not humility, it's not dependence on God.
Why is New Age so popular in sophisticated countries? In the Western world, North America, and when you travel eastwards to the former Communist territories, New Age is expanding rapidly. And the reason it is so popular is that you don't need a Saviour from outside. You explore inside - you believe in yourself. And that's why the message of the cross, just as it was in the first century, is utter foolishness at this end of the 20th century. Emil Brunner put it like this: 'All other religions but the gospel save us the utter humiliation of being stripped naked before God.' There is no room for God in a life that has not been emptied. There is no way of entering God's kingdom without this humble admission of our own bankruptcy. 'Nothing in my hand I bring - simply to thy cross I cling.' So first Jesus calls for realistic self-evaluation.
Challenging complacency
Secondly, Jesus challenges our religious complacency. Some years ago you might have seen a TV documentary where children were asked: 'How do you get to heaven?' and the answer kept coming back: 'By being good.' The interviewer pressed one little girl a bit further and said: 'Well, is anyone not going to heaven?' and she thought for a moment and said: 'Yes - my brother.' So he pressed a little further and said: 'Why's that?' 'Because he broke Daddy's window.' 'So there's no chance for him?' 'Well, perhaps - if he pays for it with his pocket money.'
That is exactly the religious attitude Jesus was addressing in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector from Luke 18. It is a very common religious attitude: 'I'm going to heaven because basically I'm good and even if I fail, I can make up for it. I'm proud of my upbringing, I'm proud of my education, I'm proud of my achievements, I'm proud of my Christian pedigree.'
The problem is that we become so familiar with these Beatitudes. We become so comfortable that it is easy for us to miss the impact of the parable in Luke 18. They condemn the Pharisee in an almost self-righteous way. It is like the Sunday School teacher who told this story to her class and then gathered the children round and said: 'Now, children, let's thank God that we're not like that proud Pharisee.' Might there not be a danger that we sit back with a sense of religious pride - that we have a good Christian pedigree, that we are very active Christians? We're out and out Christians. We're never in!
Stephen Charnock put it like this: 'A proud faith is as much a contradiction as a humble devil,' and the first words of Jesus' manifesto explains that the door into God's kingdom is so low that we enter it on our hands and knees. And this is the constant characteristic of the person who wants to know the blessing of God upon their life. 'God be merciful to me, a sinner.'
Invitation to the needy
Finally, Jesus offers a radical invitation to the needy. Just look at Luke 14 and the parables Jesus told. He was having a meal in the home of a prominent Pharisee, and the stories Jesus told highlighted the values of the kingdom of God - and it became increasingly uncomfortable listening for his guests. Look at verse 7 - the undignified scramble for the best seats; so his after-dinner speech suggested that it is much better to go for the lower place. You can't get into his kingdom laden with a sense of your own importance. He disturbed the religious guests even further when he tells the story of the great banquet. Now the shock of this parable was not just that the religious people were in danger of missing God's banquet; the shock was also the kind of people who would take their place. In verse 21: 'Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.' Recently I spoke to a lady whose family life had been shattered by sin and she said that she felt an outsider in her rather respectable church, and it took much encouragement from a friend to realise God wasn't treating her like an outsider. Jesus' parable in Luke 14 deliberately stresses this. No one is excluded, however much they have messed up. However much we might feel outside, the invitation is to us. 'Blessed are those who know their need of God.'
Maybe that is why in verse 23 the master told his servant to make them come in so 'my house may be full'. Go and compel them. He wasn't suggesting that the servant should go out and use force to bring people in. After all, there was only one servant. I think what Jesus was getting at in this story is that such people - the poor, the blind, the lame - will need a lot of persuading. They don't expect an invitation to God's banquet.
His kingdom - the magnificent celebration - that Jesus was pointing towards will be enjoyed only by those who know their need of God. In fact, the word Luke uses here for the poor who will be dragged in off the streets and into God's party is the same word that Matthew uses: 'Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.' Jesus offers a radical invitation to the needy.
We may have a deep spiritual dryness as we are busy in Christian activity, stretched to the limit in service in this country or around the world.
Jesus promises you, as you fix your eyes on him: 'Blessed are those who know their need of God.' We may be carrying all sorts of heavy burdens - perhaps the burden of recent failure, or the pain of a broken relationship. We are in the right place for Jesus to bless us - because we know our need of God. Or we may be feeling OK - life is all right. It would be desperately sad if, because of my comfortable self-sufficiency, I missed God's blessing on my life.
Jonathan Lamb
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