Matthew 5

One of our university lecturers used to live in a Middle Eastern country where they had just replaced one dictator for another.  He learnt about this not on the news or from watching events unfold outside his door but rather when he turned up to work one day.  They worked in an out of the way place far from the capital and every day they would go through the obligatory loyalty ritual in front of a tacky looking photo of the dictator.

He turned up to work to find everyone carrying out the same ritual but this time in front of a photo of the new guy.  During the long and involved series of gestures of abeisance he looked to his colleagues in an effort to ask, "Who's this? What happened to the old guy?" without drawing too much attention to himself.  They simply shrugged their shoulders in the universal language of "I don't know!" and carried on as before.

This is the way of human kingdoms and earthly empires.  Outward loyalty is everything but often what goes on in your head is something completely different.  When we had finished Chapter 4 Jesus sat enthroned amongst the poor, the sick, the possessed and the dispossessed.  His kingdom stood in stark contrast to the one offered him by Satan.  The people who surrounded him were certainly not big fish, they were not even the small fry of the Roman Empire, they were merely the detritus washed upon its shores.

It is upon these people, the non-citizens, the people who were less than nothing, that Jesus begins to pronounce a series of blessings.  They are the antithesis of the Roman vision and in many ways they are the antithesis of our own culture.  Maybe it is easiest to understand just how radical they are by reversing them and showing our own culture's values.

Kingdom of Heaven	Our Culture
Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven	Being poor in anything means you are bad or a failure.  For many Conservative Evangelicals poverty is increasingly seen as a sign of immorality and God’s displeasure
Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.	Mourning is something that should be done out of sight in our pleasure driven culture.  In church we worry that if we cry we will be seen as odd.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.	Blessed are the pushy for they shall get what they want
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled	Don’t try too hard at this God stuff otherwise you will just look keen.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy	No mercy.  Tough love is the only language people like that understand.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God	When was the last time you heard “He’s so innocent” and it was a positive statement?
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God	Unless we stand up to our enemies and show them how strong we are then they will walk all over us!
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven	Success is everything.  Unless you are growing in your ministry and being praised by all the right magazines and pundits then there is something really wrong.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.	What do you mean you aren't going to toe the Evangelical / Fundamentalist / Denominational / Catholic / High Church / whatever… party line?

The next set of teachings moves between telling the people in front of Jesus just how valuable they are in the work of God and pointing out to them that being part of this movement, being part of this kingdom is not like the story above where lip service is shown to the king but people's hearts just aren't in it.  They're righteousness has to exceed the outward and legalistic righteousness of the religious people of the day.  By righteousness Jesus does not simply mean good behaviour but righteousness is something like "right relationship with" ie you could legalistically keep all the rules but it would be just like the people going through the motions for the new dictator.  There would be no inward change.

What this is not is a form of internalising that says something like, "As long as you feel all lovey towards God on the inside then whatever you do on the outside does not matter."  This is not a case of making the law some kind of inward psychological checklist.  Rather it is about saying that Kingdom of God is about the outside and the inside in equal measure.  In other words becoming a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven is an inward change that has a strong outward effect