Because nothing can ever be simple, even in the wider Church, there is confusion and even controversy over, of all things, who Jesus was talking to during the Sermon on the Mount, which began with what we just heard, the Beatitudes.
A beatitude, by the way, is a statement of supreme blessing, or a state of being blessed. When the Church begins the process of making a person a Saint, it’s called their beatification. Like when we call our bishop “Your Excellency,” in the Orthodox Church they call their patriarchs “Your Beatitude.”
Anyway, who was Jesus talking to, and why does it matter? Well, it appears, for all the world, that He was talking to His inner circle, THE disciples, as opposed to the crowds that had been circling Him, looking for the healing of their infirmities.
This matters because Jesus is here not laying out a roadmap toward salvation but rather what life is like inside the Kingdom of God. As I read this week, “Each beatitude declares that a group of people usually regarded as afflicted is actually blessed. Those blessed do not have to do anything to attain this blessing. Jesus simply declares that they have already been blessed. Thus the beatitudes are first of all declarations of God’s grace. They are not conditions of salvation or roadmaps to earn entry to God’s kingdom.”[1]
They also seem completely counterintuitive, don’t they? Blessed are those who mourn? We’ve had an awful lot of mournful moments here and in our city over the last month, and no one has told me how happy they were to be mourning a loved one. But Jesus is not telling us that mourning itself is fun; He’s telling us that in the Kingdom of God, mourning becomes a blessing because the mourners “will be comforted.” The implication is that God himself will do the comforting. The affliction of mourning becomes the blessing of profound relationship with God.”
“The beatitudes describe the character of God’s kingdom, but they are not conditions of salvation. Jesus does not say, for example, “Only the pure in heart may enter the kingdom of heaven.” This is good news because the beatitudes are impossibly hard to fulfill. The beatitudes are not a judgment against all who fail to measure up. Instead, they are a blessing for any who consent to join themselves to God’s kingdom as it “comes near.”” [2]
The great Anglican cleric John Stott, whose book Basic Christianity was required reading in Episcopal circles back in the 70s and 80s, called the beatitudes the “privileges” of citizenship in the kingdom of God.” What a way to put that, considering that none of these things, being poor, mournful, meek, hungry, merciful, pure, peacemaking, and persecuted seem to be qualities associated with privilege. But this is, of course, privilege as we construct it, not how God sees it. The values of this world clash wholly and completely with what God values, and what God knows is truly good for us.
If social media counts for anything, we don’t even understand what the word blessed means anymore, considering that any time you see hashtag-blessed next to a photo, it’s inevitably a picture of something shiny and beautiful, the new car or dress or experience the plebeians can’t manage.
But all of that, of course, ignores the realities of this life. Not so with Jesus. He knew that things are not always shiny and beautiful, that the world mocks the pure and the peacemaker. And Jesus tells us this morning that true blessedness is not about temporary happiness but about eternal joy. The joy of knowing that though we may be mournful and meek and hungry now, God will satisfy our every need. Though we may be poor and persecuted now, ours is, is right now, the Kingdom of Heaven. Whatever our circumstances might be, Jesus is telling us, His disciples, His inner circle, that by the promise of His coming near to us, we are already the blessed.
[1] https://www.theologyofwork.org/new-testament/matthew/the-kingdom-of-heaven-at-work-in-us-matthew-5-7/the-beatitudes-matthew-51-12
[2] Ibid.