I ran across this video clip today with Bono of U2 talking about and performing a song originally written back in the 80's during the recording of Joshua Tree. Its about his experience visiting Ethiopia in 1984. Its a great song, and I love pretty much everything from U2. But what caught my attention was the retelling of the Beatitudes at the end of the song. The lyrics go like this:

Blessed are the meek who scratch in the dirt
For they shall inherit what's left of the earth
Blessed are the kings who've left their thrones
They are buried in this valley of dry bones

Blessed all of you with an empty heart
For you got nothing from which you cannot part
Blessed is the ego, it's all we got this hour
Blessed is the voice that speaks truth to power

Blessed is the sex worker who sold her body tonight
She used what she got to save her children's life
Blessed are you, the deaf cannot hear a scream
Blessed are the stupid who can dream

Blessed are the tin canned cardboard slums
Blessed is the spirit that overcomes.

I've been pondering over the Beatitudes for almost as long as I've been reading the Bible, and I've read and considered more than a few theological interpretations of them. Bono's is more poetry than theology, of course, but you can sense his theological vision within the poetry, which I would assume is rooted in some variation of liberation theology. But is that what the Beatitudes are really trying to say?

I remember reading Dallas Willard's "The Divine Conspiracy" a few years back, and then again last year. It continues to be one of my all time favorite books. In fact, I think my next post will be a list of my favorite snippets from Conspiracy. But given my love for the book, I still completely disagreed with Willard's exegesis of the Beatitudes.

And I think that's the whole point. The Beatitudes are so mysteriously profound, so deeply "right" at some basic level, that they can be taken in so many different directions, all of them spiritually edifying.

But I think there was a very specific way that they were initially intended to be communicated to their original audience. There was a central point that Jesus was trying to make to his 1st century Jewish audience, and it was not until I read N.T. Wright's take on them from that context that I finally got the sense that I was hearing what Jesus of Nazareth was saying. See if you don't get the same sense after reading the following excerpt from "Matthew for Everyone, Part One:"

"Jesus is not suggesting that [the Beatitudes] are simply timeless truths about the way the world is, about human behavior. If he was saying that, he is wrong. Mourners often go uncomforted, the meek don't inherit the earth, those who long for justice often take that longing to the grave. This is an upside-down world, or perhaps a right-way-up world; and Jesus is saying that with his work its starting to come true. This is an announcement, not a philosophical analysis of the world. It's about something that's starting to happen, not about a general truth of life. It is gospel: good news, not good advice.

Follow me, Jesus said to the first disciples; because in him the living God was doing a new thing, and this list of 'wonderful news' is part of his invitation, part of his summons, part of his way of saying that God is at work in a fresh way and that this is what it looks like. Jesus is beginning a new era for God's people and God's world. From here on, all the controls people thought they knew about are going to work the other way round. In our world, still, most people think that wonderful news consists of success, wealth, long life, victory in battle. Jesus is offering wonderful news for the humble, the poor, the mourners, the peacemakers.

The world for 'wonderful news' is often translated 'blessed,' and part of the point is that this is God's wonderful news. God is acting in and through Jesus to turn the world upside down, to turn Israel upside down, to pour out lavish 'blessings' on all who now turn to him and accept the new thing that he is doing. But the point is not to offer a list of what sort of people God normally blesses. The point is to announce God's new covenant.

In Deuteronomy, the people came through the wilderness and arrived at the border of the promised land, and God gave them a solemn covenant. He listed the blessings and curses that would come if they were obedient or disobedient. Now Matthew has shown us Jesus, coming out of Egypt, through the water and the wilderness, and into the land of promise. Here, now, is his new covenant.

So when do these promises come true? There is a great temptation for Christians to answer: in heaven, after death. At first sight, verses 3, 10 and 11 seem to say this: 'the kingdom of heaven' belongs to the poor in spirit and the persecuted, and there's a great reward in heaven for those who suffer persecution for Jesus' sake. That, though, is a misunderstanding of the meaning of 'heaven.' Heaven is God's space, where full reality exists, close by our ordinary ('earthly') reality and interlocking with it. One day heaven and earth will be joined together forever, and the true state of affairs, at present out of sight, will be unveiled. After all, verse 5 says that the meek will inherit the earth, and that can hardly happen in a disembodied heaven after death.

No: the clue comes in the next chapter, in the prayer Jesus taught his followers. We are to pray that God's kingdom will come, and God's will be done, 'on earth as it is in heaven.' The life of heaven--the life of the realm where God is already king--is to become the life of the world, transforming the present 'earth' into a place of beauty and delight that God always intended. And those who follow Jesus are to begin to live by this rule here and now. That's the point of the Sermon on the Mount, and these 'beatitudes' in particular. They are a summons to live in the present in the way that will make sense in God's promised future; because that future has arrived in the present in Jesus of Nazareth. It may seem upside down, but we are called to believe, with great daring, that it it in fact the right way up. Try it and see."

One other thing that Wright pointed out to me that I had never before considered when contemplating the Beatitudes, and the Sermon on the Mount in general (though I don't recall the particular source). Notice how Jesus took his own statements deadly seriously. These were not lofty goals that he asked his followers to obey. These were the markings and precursors of his own agenda. He would be the city set on the hill. He would walk the second mile, all the way out of the city. He would turn the other cheek. And in so doing, he would be the light and salt of the earth.

Grace and Peace,
Raffi