Beatitudes in context of the other readings

Jeremiah gives the curses and blessedness of trust. If we trust in our hearts and mortal flesh we are miserable, but if we trust in God we are happy. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.

The psalmist echoes that strain while extolling the blessedness of delighting in the law.

Paul also tells us not to trust the flesh, but rather tells us that we are blessed because Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.

If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

If we fail to see Christ as risen, or trust the flesh that perishes, we are of all men most miserable. But Christ has been raised and we are counted among the men most blessed.

Dallas Willard suggests that unlike the if then formulation of the blessings and curses that formed prophetic covenants, Jesus is simply stating that those in front of him are blessed because the kingdom of heaven is at hand. He contends that the beatitudes are not prescriptions, but descriptions. See this excerpt.

An excerpt from "The Divine Conspiracy" by Dallas Wilalrd

The Beatitudes as Kingdom Proclamation What then does Jesus say with his Beatitudes?How are we to live in response to them? That is the question we asked at the outset of this chapter, and it is now time to answer it.

We have already indicated the key to understanding the Beatitudes. They serve to clarify Jesus’ fundamental message: the free availability of God’s rule and righteousness to all of humanity through reliance upon Jesus himself, the person now loose in the world among us. They do this simply by taking those who, from the human point of view, are regarded as most helpless, most beyond all possibility of God’s blessing or even interest, and exhibiting them as enjoying God’s touch and abundant provision for their lives.

This fact of God’s care and provision proves to all that no human condition excludes blessedness, that God may come to any person with his care and deliverance. God does sometimes help those who cannot, or perhaps just do not, help themselves. (So much for another well known generalization!) The religious system of his day left the multitudes out, but Jesus welcomed them all into his kingdom. Anyone could come as well as any other….

And on Your list of the Blessed? You are really waling in the good news of the kingdom if you can go with confidence to any of the hopeless people around you and effortlessly convey assurance that they can now enter a blessed life with God.

Who would be on your list of “hopeless blessables” as found in today’s world? Certainly all of those on Jesus’ lists, for though they are merely illustrative, they are also timeless. But can we, following his lead as a teacher, concretize the gospel even more for those around us? Who would you regard as the most unfortunate people around you?

A Silly Side of Salvation? There is first of all, a silly side to this question-which turns suddenly somber. If you look at advertising and current events in print and other media-for example, as you encounter them in supermarket checkouts, newsstands, and bookstores or even on television and radio-you might think that the most unfortunate people in the world today are the fat, the misshapen, the bald, the ugly, the old, and those not relentlessly engaged in romance, sex and fashionably equipped physical activities….

Instead Jesus took time in his teaching to point out the natural beauty of every human being (Matt 6:30)…

This is the gospel for a silly world, all the more needed because the silly is made a matter of life and death for many. Sin, for that matter, is silly. If the kingdom did not reach us in our silliness who would be saved? Lostness does not have to wear a stuffed shirt to find redemption.

So we must see from our heart that:

• Blessed are the physically repulsive,


• Blessed are those who smell bad,


• The twisted, misshapen, deformed,


• The too big, too little, too loud,


• The bald, the fat, and the old -


• For they are all riotously celebrated in the party of Jesus.

And the more serious side Then there are the seriously crushed ones: The flunk-outs and drop-outs and burn-outs. The broke and the broken. The drug heads and the divorced. The HIV-positive and herpes-ridden. The brain-damaged, the incurably ill. The barren and pregnant too-many-times or at the wrong time. The overemployed, the underemployed, the unemployed. The unemployable. The swindled the shoved aside, the replaced. The parents with children living on the street, the children with parents not dying in the “rest” home. The lonely, the incompetent, the stupid. The emotionally starved or emotionally dead. And on and on and on. Is it true that “Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal?” It is true! That is precisely the gospel of heaven’s availability that comes to us through the Beatitudes. And you don’t have to wait until you’re dead. Jesus offers to all such people as these the present blessedness of the present kingdom - regardless of circumstances. The condition of life sought for human beings through the ages is attained in the quietly transforming friendship of Jesus.

And the Immoral Even the moral disasters will be received by God as they come to rely on Jesus, count on him, and make him their companion in his kingdom. Murders and child-molesters. The brutal and bigoted. Drug lords and pornographers. War criminals and sadists. Terrorists. The perverted and the filthy and the filthy rich. The David Berkowitzs (Son of Sam), Jeffery Dahmers, and Colonel Noriegas….

If, as a recovering sinner myself, accept Jesus’ good new, I can go to the mass murderer and say, “you can be blessed in the kingdoms of the heavens. There is forgiveness that knows no limits.” To the pederast and the perpetrator of incest. To the worshiper of Satan. To those who rob the aged and weak. To the cheat and the liar, the bloodsucker and the vengeful: Blessed! Blessed! Blessed! As they flee into the arms of the Kingdom Among Us.