The Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:1-12a), also known as the Beatitudes, is Matthew’s compilation of some of the most notable and uplifting sayings of Jesus. Luke uses some of the same sayings, in a different context and with much more of a good cop / bad cop style: “Blessed are you who are poor / woe to you who are rich”.
Matthew focuses on comfort and encouragement. But we need to be careful in recognizing where the comfort comes from. There is a long tradition of using these sayings to promise “jam tomorrow” – life may be tough now but don’t worry it’ll all be great in the next. This is particularly perverse when used as a framework to excuse the suffering of the poor or the weak or the unwanted. Yes, the final saying talks about heavenly rewards, but that is not the general framework here. What is common to all of them is that God is turning things upside down. Jesus wants us to look at things in a different way. The way we look at things is not the way God sees them.
Paul reminds the community in Corinth (1 Cor 1:26-31) that they were a typical bunch of average people (just like us). And that’s the point. God isn’t about collecting the brightest and the strongest. “God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something”
And why?
So that we shouldn’t “boast before God” – in other words, so that we shouldn’t imagine we are in control, that we have it all figured out.
God sees the world differently. The poor are not poor, the mourners are not devastated, the meek are not powerless, the persecuted are not destroyed. To live in the Kingdom we need to see the world through God’s eyes, which might seem impossible – that’s why Jesus came to show us how.
How this all plays out for any one person is in God’s hands. We don’t know how His blessings will work out. Some may be in this life, some in the next. But it is He who is working it out. That is why Paul tells us: “Whoever boasts, should boast in the Lord.”