The Entire Thought

Beatitudes, Not Rewards

The Sermon on the Mount has been called the crown of the Gospels, the high point of the teaching of Jesus, the new law replacing the Ten
Commandments. . . it has been called all kinds of extravagant things.
At the risk of seeming churlish, I think that none of those things are precisely true. In the first place, Jesus did not preach this so-called
sermon. Jesus did not slave over his sermons the way I do. He simply said whatever was on his mind at the moment and reacted to listeners’
questions.
Jesus probably said all these things in some way or other at some time or other. But it was Matthew who brought them together as one sermon. Then Luke modified them to suit his own Gospel agenda. So, seeing any special meaning in the sequence of beatitudes might tell us something about Matthew and Luke, but perhaps nothing about how Jesus ordered his separate sayings.
The most obvious thing about the beatitudes is the reversal of roles in some of them: The hungry will be satisfied, the mourning will be
comforted, the merciful shall be shown mercy. We should recognize this as a common theme of scripture. Sterile Sarah is given a son, David is God’s favorite king in spite of his lecherous ways, the virgin Mary bears God’s own Son, childless Abraham becomes the father of a great nation, poor Lazarus gets heavenly riches, the humble are exalted.
But what does all of this rearrangement of the world actually mean? Probably not what it literally says. If all the poor people changed places with all the rich people and all the humble people traded their position with all the proud people, and all of the sorrowing people exchanged their tears for laughter—would that bring about the Kingdom of God? No. It would be the same old world with different people on top. And within a few generations, people being what they are, roles would be reversed again. Jesus would have wasted his time.
Then what does this role reversal mean? Probably it means that the values of the Kingdom are at odds with the values of this world, or that there is some hidden purpose in sorrow, some unknown value in
poverty, some precious ingredient in humility. But most of all, the
beatitudes offer hope to disenfranchised people and a promise that God does notice their plight and will take care of them.
On a deeper level, our status in life is not that consequential. Nor are the individual beatitudes. It is not as if you have to be poor to
become rich or that people inherit land because they are gentle.
Beatitudes, blessings, are not rewards for good action; God’s
blessing does not depend on our needs. A blessing is a free, unearned,
unexpected gift from the blessed, unpredictable God.
And yet there does seem to be some connection between sorrow and joy, hunger and satisfaction—some internal shift when desperate need on one level is changed into joy at another level.
Sorrowful Nietzsche, who died broken and despairing in an insane
asylum, wrote: “Joy is deeper than agony.” If anyone would know, Nietzsche would know. It is only when things are hopeless that hope
happens. It is only when we have reached the breaking point that God can heal. When suffering wears out our ego, our better self can emerge.

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