The Pastor’s Page

Hello My Friends,

The Sermon on the Mount is where Jesus preaches on ethical, spiritual, and moral principles of the kingdom of God. The first part of this multi-chapter teaching in the book of Matthew is called the Beatitudes which translated from Latin means to bless and make happy. At the time, Jesus was speaking to the disciples as well as the multitudes that followed. He provided the people with a series of blessings that would have come as a shock. This is mainly because the people were under economic, political, and religious oppression at the hands of the Roman empire and the appointed local leader King Herod.

Resources were being siphoned away not only to support Rome but to fund the construction of monuments and buildings locally to grow Herod’s kingdom. Religious leaders were sanctioning the works being done by the oppressors making it even more difficult to stand up. The people were struggling at every turn. Following the Israelite understanding, they would have felt they were being punished for turning from God. As happened many other times in the Old Testament when the people turned from God, they were punished in such ways as Babylonian exile, wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, and plague and sickness after the golden calf. So being under Roman rule and oppression they would have felt that God had abandoned them for the things they had done.

Then Jesus invites them onto the mountainside. He tells them blessed are the meek, the poor in Spirit, those who mourn, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers. He is speaking right to them. Jesus is telling them they are not being punished but are being reconciled with God. This message brings the people hope in an about face from where they thought they were. The blessings are not at all what the people would have been expecting. Which is not too different from how they might be received today.

When we read the Beatitudes today they tend to stand in stark contrast with society. We need to let Jesus’s words challenge our assumptions rather than dismissing them as impractical and not in touch with reality. Allow them to re-orient our thinking as we are inundated with messages from advertising, social media, and popular culture about what makes life meaningful. Jesus’ teachings are so often counter-culture that we need to train ourselves, train our eyes, and train our minds to recognize the contrasting views so we can quickly be able to discern which one leads towards God and which one does not.

When we see the importance of Jesus’ words about what a blessing looks like, we can inventory our daily choices, how we spend money, time, energy, and attention and ask ourselves the question…do they reflect the world’s values rather than God’s kingdom values?

As brothers and sisters in Christ, the beatitudes function as an invitation to resist cultural conformity and embrace a radically different way of measuring success, worth, and happiness. One rooted in God’s kingdom rather than worldly achievement.

This mental shift, this willingness to question what we’ve been taught to want, is where transformation begins. Let us hold the Beatitudes and the counter-culture message close in our hearts.

With much love,

-Pastor Brian