Sermon on the Mount part 3
Last week I used Rob Bell and Don Golden’s
suggestion that the Bible is the story of God’s desire to build a community
that enfleshes God’s compassion, mercy, justice and love.[1]
We can see this in the Beatitudes which we read
two weeks ago. Using the work of several commentators I proposed that a better
translation of the word “blessed” might be “honour”. Given that Jesus lived in
a society build on honour this is an important shift. We can easily think that
Jesus is being nice when he says blessed are the poor in spirit. But honouring
them is a whole different ball game. The Beatitudes can then be read as
questioning the basis on which his society functioned. Instead of the normal
elite of the wealthy, the powerful and the religious the beatitudes can be read
as a statement that the most honoured should be the poor in the spirit, the
ones who mourn, the meek, the ones who hunger for and thirst for the
righteousness, the merciful, the pure in the heart, the ones who have been
persecuted on account of righteousness. Not your normal list.
Jesus
goes on to say that this is what the law and the prophets are really about,
rather than the normally understood code of moral behaviour that allows one to
see if they are in or out. The law, the prophets and Jesus were in the business
of creating societies built on God’s compassion, mercy, justice and love. How
we see and treat all other people is to be a reflection of these divine
qualities.
Last
week we heard Jesus explore some implications of these ideas, and we hear him
carry on this line this week. As we near Lent we are invited to reflect on how we
are marked by the Beatitudes, and what habits we need to lose and what we need
to learn that we might be numbered among the honoured, and in our communal life
work with God to bring into being a community that lives out God’s compassion,
mercy, justice and love.
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