In Matthew 5, we find the Sermon on the Mount. It begins with what has become known as the Beatitudes.
The beatitudes are honors or honorific language Jesus uses to endow upon his listeners. I remind my bible classes that there are three questions that you must ask before reading any text of scripture. Those questions are “Who is the author of the text, or who is ascribed the author?” “Who are the recipients or listeners of the message of the text?” Finally, “What is the issue being addressed in the text?”
One must clarify these three questions to interpret any biblical text adequately. In this text, we are informed that the tax collector turned disciple, Matthew, is the author of the text [the authorship of Matthew has been debated by scholars].
We also know by the opening of the text in Matthew 5:1-2 that the recipients are Jesus’ four disciples [the rest have not been chosen yet] and the audience is the unidentified crowd. The text opens with “Jesus saw the crowds, went up on a mountain and sat down. His disciples came to him and he began to teach them.”
The issue being addressed is setting the principles and ethics of living in an alternative community by addressing wrong interpretations of the law.
After Jesus lists the honors or beatitudes, he then gives about six reinterpretations of the law.
We will discuss the six reinterpretations in next week’s installment.
Today we address the special honors that Jesus shares with his disciples and the crowd. Remember, the crowd would have consisted of the peasant class of biblical Palestine in northeast Africa.
These people are, therefore, African Jews who have been colonized by the Europeans from Rome. These facts are essential to understanding what Jesus is doing in the Sermon on the Mount.
Jesus is setting an ethical and theological standard for living in an alternative community that would set itself up against the dominant community of Rome.
That would make the Sermon on the Mount a subversive message to the underclass, inspiring and instructing them in how to organize a community with different values from the society they presently live in.
The new community would be judged by how they treated and cared for one another. Their community would focus on community, cooperation, and compassion rather than competition.
The honors Jesus lists are “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” “Blessed are those who mourn,’ Blessed are the meek,” Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” Blessed are the merciful,” “Blessed are the pure in heart,” Blessed are the peacemakers,” and Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness, sake.”
We could spend weeks on each of these honors, gleaning the powerful and subversive meaning each one held for living in a society based on inequality, but we don’t have the time to do each sufficiently.
In a society of “dog eat dog,” militarism, materialism and domination, these beatitudes would sound like weaknesses to those beholden to Rome and the system of domination.
But to Jesus and his spiritual principles, these characteristics are the foundation of a society or community that values life and seeks to live in one accord with Godly values.
Jesus is not trying to purify the present society because evil is too entrenched; he is organizing a new community from the grassroots or ground up to challenge the domination system.
These characteristics or beatitudes are ethical components that every person must aspire to in all human relationships in order to live under the sovereignty of God.
These characteristics may seem like weaknesses in our society of “big stick diplomacy” and bellicose bluster, which is the framework of toxic masculinity that dominates our nation, but far from weak, they are strengths.
They take what Dr, King called the “Strength to Love.”
The society Jesus is seeking to organize is a society that makes sure the least, are cherished and revered. It is a society of divine reversals as in the scripture that says, “The last shall be first and the first shall be last.” It is an alternative society that Jesus has already begun in his incarnation and that his disciples are being charged with organizing and maintaining.
To further emphasize his point Jesus says to peasant people who are steeped in abject poverty and subjugation that “You are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.” Jesus is saying that in the words of Gustavo Gutierrez, the liberation theologian from Latin America that “God has a preferential option for the poor, disinherited and disallowed.
This is a subversive message to the poor to demonstrate that poor people have more power than they realize.
Let us remember that in these present chaotic times where, the Supreme Court grants full immunity to presidents, literally opening the door to fascism and dictatorship. Uhuru Sassa!
Rev. Dr. John E. Jackson, Sr. is the Senior Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ-Gary, 1276 W. 20th Ave. in Gary. “We are not just another church but we are a culturally conscious, Christ-centered church, committed to the community; we are unashamedly Black and unapologetically Christian.” Contact the church by email at [email protected] or by phone at 219-944-0500.
Rev. John E. Jackson
Rev. Dr. John E. Jackson, Sr. is the Senior Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ-Gary, 1276 W. 20th Ave. in Gary. “We are not just another church but we are a culturally conscious, Christ-centered church, committed to the community; we are unashamedly Black and unapologetically Christian.”
