VICAR'S LETTER
17
Sundon Road
Streatley
March, 2008
Dear
All
Our focus this Lent in the Lent Groups, in Sunday School, and in the Seasonal Holy Communion has been the Beatitudes. These sayings of Jesus are one of the central documents of our faith. As Moses went up the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments, so Jesus stands on the mount to offer his eight Beatitudes. But unlike the words delivered by Moses, the Beatitudes are not commandments. Rather, they function as signposts directing each of us, all of us, towards the kingdom of God..
When Jesus first delivered the Beatitudes, he seems to have addressed them to people as individuals. They were about having the right spiritual attitudes. The poor in spirit were those who had gladly given away all they had to follow Jesus. Those who mourn were those who grieved over the state of the world. The meek were those who thought nothing of themselves and their wants. but of doing God's will. Those who hungered and thirsted for righteousness did so literally. They were those who prayed and fasted for the world's return to obedience to God. The merciful were those who showed to others the mercy that they recognised God had shown to them. The pure in heart were those single-minded in their dedication to seeking and doing God's will. The "peacemakers" may have been those who were concerned to recover the sense of being at peace with God, but the words may be a mistake. Several scholars believe that the Beatitude should read "The honest," that is those who have a clear sense of their own failings. The persecuted are those who stand up unflinchingly for their belief regardless of the personal cost.
The Beatitudes originally spoke about the state of mind to be looked for in the person who sought admission to the kingdom of heaven. They were individual and spiritual. Over time. however, the general understanding of their significance changed. They came to be seen as something that spoke not so much to the individual as to people as a whole, and not so much about their personal spiritual state as about their pastoral duty. This change began quite early. We can already see it happening in St. Luke. He gives us four Beatitudes - "Blessed are you poor" (not "the poor in spirit). "Blessed are you that hunger now" (not "hunger and thirst after righteousness"). "Blessed are you that weep now" (not mourn) and the relatively unchanged "Blessed are you when men hate you." St. Luke paves the way for the predominant understanding of the Beatitudes in our times. In them Jesus seems to be endorsing a pastoral care for the poor, the troubled, the humble, and the hungry, a readiness to forgive, and working for peace, as well as purity of heart and fineness in faith.
So is our modern understanding of Jesus' words a distortion of the original meaning of the Beatitudes? My own belief is that it is rather an extension of their meaning but in a way that is in accordance with Jesus' overall intentions. In the wilderness Jesus was tempted to use his God-given power to feed the hungry of the world ("Command these stones that they become bread"), to impose peace on the world ("Then the devil took him to a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world"), or to put on a spectacular demonstration that would compel allegiance. ("Then the devil set him on a pinnacle of the Temple and said "Throw yourself down"). But Jesus rejected the way of power. Instead he chose the way of transforming love. He would seek by his words and actions to persuade people so to be and so to act that the hungry would be fed and the world would be at peace. The Beatitudes both as understood then and as understood now are exactly in line with that intention. They speak of the discipline of self that each of us will have to exercise and of the pastoral care that all of us will have to show if the world is to become the kingdom of God.
A world in which the poor are cared for, the grieving are comforted, the meek are respected, the hungry are fed and in which mercy, purity, peaceableness, and a willingness to stand up for right against wrong are manifest is not far from the Kingdom of God. It is to such a world that the Beatitudes point us.
All best wishes,
Roger.