The Rev. Marek Zabriskie
Episcopal writer Madeleine L’Engle once wrote a book entitled The Irrational Season, which tried to make sense of the Church Year. She could easily have written a book on the Beatitudes and called it Jesus’ Irrational Sermon: Impractical Lessons for Leading Your Life.
Between the time of choosing the twelve disciples and sending them out on a missionary journey, Jesus took his followers to a hillside overlooking the Sea of Galilee for a retreat. He sat down and gave them a sort of ordination address.
When rabbis taught, they generally walked as they spoke to their followers. But when a rabbi wanted to give his most definitive teaching, he always sat down. So, Jesus sat down to give his Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes.
By now, crowds were following Jesus. They came from the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and other places beyond the Jordan. Something about his teaching and authority drew them to want to hear more.
What Jesus shared on this day is generally considered to be his greatest teaching. Some scholars debate whether the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes were delivered in one session or were put together from a series of sermons. What matters most is the content of what Jesus taught. It was earthy, demanding, and radical.
The Beatitudes are not like the Ten Commandments. They are not list of dos and don’ts, but rather a statement of times and conditions in which people can be happy and blessed.
Jesus is essentially answering questions that people have been asking since the beginning of time. How can we be happy? What is the state of enduring joy? So, Jesus says, “You want to be happy? Well, listen carefully. Here’s how you go about it.” And he goes on to show us what real blessings for our lives look like and what kind of happy people we can become.
As he does, he is challenging people in our culture and at the bottom of the happiness pile, about what abundant life looks like. What really makes people happy turns out not to be somewhat surprising.
Happiness, he says, is not conferred by power, wealth, or status, by opulent living, accumulating only for ourselves, or trusting solely in our own efforts. In these eight short sayings, Jesus turns the world upside down.
It is the meek who inherent the earth, the poor where are blessed, the hungry who receive, and the simple and pure of heart who see through the superficiality of life.
Most of us have only been exposed to a low dose of this message, but the great evangelist John Stott said that the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes are “the nearest thing to a manifesto that [Jesus] every uttered, for it is his own description of what he wanted his followers to be and to do.”
And yet, on first glance, the Beatitudes seem to be completely impractical.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven…
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth…
Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against your falsely on my account.
These are not the lessons that we normally teach our children. Instead, we teach them that we live in a highly competitive world. We must work hard, set goals and reach them, or we will be left behind. We will either succeed or fail in life.
This leads our culture to be riddled with fear and anxiety, and it is to this anxiety that the Beatitudes speak. “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” the “meek,” the “merciful,” the “pure in heart,” the “peacemakers,” and those who are “persecuted for righteousness sake.” Jesus appears to be turning reality on its head.
To understand what Jesus is offering us, we must recall that the “be-attitudes” offer an attitude or an outlook for leading a good human life. Each beatitude begins with a simple Greek word “makarios,” which means “happy,” “be blessed,” or “enjoy abundance.” We should never forget that God wants us to be happy and joyful and to share that joy with others.
But this doesn’t work for people who are reticent to take responsibility for their own lives or who want to go through life as a victim and blame others for their situation. The Beatitudes only work for those who believe that God created them to find joy, share it with others, and to live for something larger than themselves.
Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’” To live into Jesus’ Beatitudes is to ask ourselves that question constantly.
Some would cynically say that the Beatitudes are no longer practical, but I would disagree. They are a window to the Kingdom of God and time-tested wisdom to leading a life full of simplicity, hope, and compassion in a world where values are often turned upside down.
The Rev. Marek P. Zabriskie has been privileged to serve as Rector of Christ Church Greenwich since 2018.
