By Johnny Zokovitch
Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount is one of those sections of Scripture that contains so much that is familiar to most Christians, and yet is so confoundingly ignored, passed over, and spiritualized that it loses its inherent power to transform those who hear it. Gandhi, a Hindu, held the Sermon in the highest esteem while lamenting how few Christians he had met understood or practiced it.
And yet the thrust of the Sermon, especially the Beatitudes, is such that its very nature makes it resistant to being co-opted by warped versions of Christianity, and it acts as an antidote for those who would meld Christianity with ideologies like white nationalism.
In the verses immediately prior to the Beatitudes, Jesus has begun his public ministry, taking on the mantle of the recently-arrested John the Baptist. Jesus’ fame has spread throughout the region, and those who were sick, in pain, possessed, disturbed, and disabled flocked to him. We imagine a crowd of the broken and bedraggled, outsiders and the marginal, those rejected and scorned – marked as fallen, sinful, and cursed – surrounding him he begins.
Jesus starts, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” He begins by elevating as “blessed” those very ones his culture, religion, and society call “cursed.” And while the kingdoms of this world may not belong to the poor in spirit, the new order which Jesus proclaims – the kingdom of heaven – belongs precisely to them.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” In the Israel of Jesus’ time, mourning was endemic. Israel was a conquered nation, occupied and oppressed by a foreign power, with corrupt and accommodating political and religious leaders. It was a situation of hardship, suffering and sacrifice for the vast majority of the population. So much had been lost — lives of loved ones, lands, livelihoods. The people coming to Jesus represent those disinherited. We think then of those who mourn today: immigrant families with loved ones deported or detained; the families of Renee Good and Alex Pretti; those dying of poverty and treatable diseases the world over because of US cuts to foreign aid — all mourning. In a situation of widespread grief, Jesus promises comfort, not more pain, division, war, or suffering.
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.” Meek is such a funny word. It encompasses the humble, but also the humiliated; the quiet, or passive; the weak, the reserved. The promise of land meant everything in Jesus’ time. It was the basis of one’s status and stability. Those listening to Jesus were living in exile in their own land, occupied by Rome, turned over to the needs and desires of the Romans and their Hebrew collaborators. The promise of land for the meek, humbled and humiliated, was another reversal of the way things were, a turning upside down of the strong taking from those they humiliate.
“Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.” In our culture, we are taught, encouraged and rewarded for hungering and thirsting after power, prestige, money, and success. Yet none of these ever amount to enough; none satisfies. But the promise that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, or as other translations have it, justice — this hunger and thirst Jesus promises to satisfy.
Jesus then promises that those who show mercy will be shown mercy. It is an ethic of reciprocity that Jesus will come to again and again in the Sermon. We are more concerned about what is fair, what is just even, rather than showing mercy. And yet, the second part of verse 6 implies that we all shall need mercy someday, and that those who practice mercy, will be shown mercy when their time comes.
Jesus’ assertion that those with a “clean heart” will see God subverts every law and disposition which judges people based on outer appearances. Jesus lived in a society of purity codes, where someone’s purity or cleanness was based on physical manifestations of sinfulness — sickness, rashes, deformities, disabilities. Imagine being one of the lepers, paralytics, or diseased ones who have not the standing or money to be made clean again through the proper channels (the Temple system). How liberating for them! And how threatening to the priests whose livelihood is based on the people’s willingness to cede control to them.
Like the poor in spirit, those persecuted for the sake of righteousness are promised the same thing: the kingdom of heaven. The tense is different here than in the earlier verse; no “they will be satisfied,” but rather “theirs IS the kingdom of heaven.” Right now, right here.
In the final Beatitude, verses 11-12, Jesus changes the object from the third person to the second person, aiming what he now says directly at the disciples, those who followed him up the mountain and whom he began to teach. The Beatitude states, “Blessed are you WHEN they insult you and persecute you…” No “ifs,” but a resounding “when.” The implication is not to be missed: If you follow this Jesus, if you choose to align yourself with him, “they” will insult you, persecute, slander you. “They” is defined by the next statement: “Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” Jesus places those who will follow him in the line of the prophets — Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, et al. And the “they” who persecuted those prophets were the political and religious powers of their time.
This then is to be the task of Jesus’ disciples, of the church. To stand with those who are named “blessed” in the Beatitudes, to prophetically speak the truth of Jesus to those in power, and to suffer the persecution that flows from such actions.
Johnny Zokovitch is the former executive director of Pax Christi USA. He currently serves on the board of thePax Christi International Fund for Peace and is in pastoral leadership atSt. Cronan Catholic Church in St. Louis. Read more from Johnny at https://johnnyzokovitch.substack.com/.
Thanks Johnny. Words to live by for sure.