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The Beatitudes Part 2

Part 2: Makarios

Jesus said, “blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, blessed are the merciful, blessed are the pure in spirit, blessed are the peacemakers, and blessed are the persecuted who follow Christ.”

A shocking list indeed.  Very few would be tempted to include these people in their list of blessed.  How exactly are they blessed?  To find an answer to that question we need to get straight what Jesus means when he says blessed.  In the original Greek, the word used here is makarios.

In ancient Greece, makarios was a description for the gods.  The gods had happiness that was beyond all the cares of everyday life.  They didn’t need to worry about the problems of mortal men.  They lived in a world that was free of such inconveniences.  Later, makarios was extended to the dead.  By dying, a human reached the world of the gods.  Subsequently, makarios was applied to the elite and wealthy members of society.  Because of their wealth and power, they no longer needed to mind the normal cares of ordinary folk.

All these uses of makarios describe a blessedness that belongs to those who live in a higher plain.  For the Ancient Greek, the blessed are those who live beyond the cares, problems and worries of normal people.  To be blessed is to have a joy which transcends everyday circumstances.

Jesus uses the term in a very surprising way.  The blessed are not the elite, rich or powerful.  It is not the high and mighty, living in luxury.  Rather it is the lowly: the poor, hungry, thirsty, meek and mourning who are blessed.  Jesus turns it upside down.  The ones who live in the higher plain, who have the joy that transcends everyday circumstances, are at the bottom of the human heap.

What is this higher plane to which the lowly belong?  God’s kingdom.  Jesus says, seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself (Matt 6:33-34). It is through God’s kingdom that we are anchored to the true source of blessing, God Himself.  Compared to the blessing that comes directly from God, all other “blessings” fade away.  It is through His grace and mercy that He allows the weak and downtrodden access to a permanent joy which surpasses all understanding.

Some translate makarios as happy, coming from the old english world hap, meaning fortune or luck.   Happiness often implies  a fleeting feeling, dependent on favorable circumstances.  But the happiness here described is the inner joy, that state of blessedness, which comes from the everlasting grace of God.

Next Entry: Blessed are the Poor in Spirit

The Beatitudes

The Beatitudes

Part 1

A Bible Teacher at a Christian High School regularly assigns passages of Scripture for her students to memorize.  She decided to assign portions of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, beginning with the Beatitudes.  As is routine, her students stand up at the beginning of class and recite the passage.  They’d begin in the most apathetic monotone, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.  Blessed are the meek...”.  This went on and on as if they were reciting it in their sleep.  After a few days of this, the teacher finally interrupted them and said,  “What is wrong with you guys?! Why do you sound so bored?”  The students responded with looks of confusion, until one student shrugged and said, “what’s the big deal?  We get it, we are supposed to be nice.”

Wow. Had these students missed the boat.  If anyone reads the Beatitudes and comes away with nice, they have severely misunderstood Christ’s words.  Unfortunately, this is common practice. When we come across passages we find uncomfortable, we are tempted to reduce their meaning to something “safer”.  But Scripture is not “safe” and will not always be comfortable.  Scripture is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart (Heb. 4:12).  When we dampen the meaning of Scripture, we diminish Its power in our lives.

This seems to be the case for these student’s interpretation of Christ’s words in the Sermon on the Mount.  His words are radical; they are unlike any ethical system ever devised.  Jesus pierces through the beliefs and desires of, not only His time, but our time as well.

There are many recipes for blessedness.  Just about all of them consist of some combination of the same ingredients.  They would all say in order to be blessed you must have: resources (i.e. money, materials, or abilities), relatively little pain, success (win or conquer), a good self-esteem, justice (i.e. your rights), access to fleshly fulfillment, and acceptance.  These seem like reasonable ingredients for happiness.  Or at the very least, we would find it unreasonable if someone said that happiness consisted of their opposites.  But that is just what Jesus did.

To our desire for resources, Jesus said blessed are the poor in spirit.

To our desire for painlessness, Jesus said blessed are those who mourn.

To our desire for conquest, Jesus said blessed are the meek and blessed are the peacemakers.

To our desire for contentment with ourselves, Jesus said blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

To our desire for justice, Jesus said blessed are the merciful.

To our desires of the flesh, Jesus said blessed are the pure in spirit.

To our desire for acceptance, Jesus said blessed are the persecuted.

Jesus’ roadmap to happiness is a complete “about face” from the traditional view.  Is this because Jesus’ roadmap is unreasonable or is the traditional view unreasonable?  G. K. Chesterton believed the later, he said, It is because we are standing on our heads with our nose to the ground and our feet kicking up at the heavens. That is why Christ’s philosophy looks upside down to us. Over the next few weeks we will focus on the individual beatitudes within Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, as Matthew presents in Matthew 5:3-10.  Next week, we will begin our discussion with the term “blessed”.  To understand the Beatitudes, it is crucial to know what Christ means when He says “blessed”.

The Word Became Flesh

There once was a crippled man sitting around a pool called Bethesda.  This man believed that if he could just be the first to get into that pool, after it has been stirred, he would be healed by it’s waters.  But what’s the problem?  He is crippled!  He cannot get into the pool before someone else gets in before him.  How ironic. The very condition he is trying to fix is preventing him from doing so.  Imagine a man so weak from hunger that he cannot even pick up food to feed himself.

This story is a paradigmatic picture of the human condition.  Like this cripple, man is broken, we are sick, and it is our infirmity that prevents us from doing anything about it.  Scripture would say that this is because we are dead in our trespasses.  Like the cripple, we cannot get ourselves into the saving water; we need the water to come to us.

Enter stage left, the Word (Jesus Christ).  In one of the most shocking verses in all of Scripture, John tells us that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14).  The Creator of heaven and earth, the Alpha and Omega, the Perfect, the Holy One, the Second Person of the Trinity came down to earth and took on lowly human flesh.    This has become known as the Incarnation which literally means embodied in flesh or taking on flesh. The Living Water came down to our level, we who cannot save ourselves.

Jesus cuts to the core of the cripple’s condition “Don’t you want to become well?”. Notice the man’s answer, the sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up. While I am trying to get into the water, someone else goes down there before me.” (John 5:7).  Notice, he didn’t answer “yes, I want to become well!”, instead he explains why he hasn’t been able to make himself well.  I have no one to help me and because of my condition I cannot help myself.

This is the profound truth about ourselves.  There is no one else to help us and we cannot help ourselves.  When we are confronted by this depressing fact it is no surprise that whole ideologies and schools of thought have been built around the belief that life is meaningless and empty.  But it is also when we are confronted by this depressing fact that Christianity shines brightest.  It is in the stormy waters of our own inability that the incarnation speaks the loudest.  I cannot save myself, I am in the dark.  I cannot build my own life raft.  I don’t have the resources; I am spiritually dead.  I need some one to bring the light to me.  I need someone to throw a life raft to me.  And that is just what Jesus Christ did.  He came to us.  And like Lazarus, He raises us from the dead.

Jesus said to the crippled man, “Stand up! Pick up your mat and walk.” (John 5:8).  What was His response to the cripple’s condition? Here, let Me save you.  What is His response to our condition? Here I am at your level, let Me save you. We often focus on the humility of Christ’s death.  And rightly so! But we cannot forget the humility of His life.  In love that surpasses all understanding, the Transcendent One took on a human body.  The Creator took the form of His creation, so that we could be healed and made alive.

A quote from John Bunyan

“Pray often, for prayer is a shield to the soul, a sacrifice to God, and a scourge for Satan.”

Divine Transcendence and Immanence: Part 2

Last week’s entry focused on Divine Transcendence.  This week’s focus is Divine Immanence.

Johnny is the self proclaimed “Supreme Emperor of ants”.  He is utterly fascinated by them.  He found his fathers old ant farm, filled it with sand and captured ants one by one so he could give them a “home”.  He will sit for hours at a time watching the ants make their intricate tunnels.  But, whenever he so feels, he takes the farm and shakes it up so that the ants have start all over again.  On sunny days, Johnny can often be seen exploring the yard with magnifying glass in hand.  He sometimes sprinkles cookie crumbs around ant holes so that they will have food.  Other times He will spray water down the holes so they will have water.  Johnny is not what one would call a benevolent leader.  But he is immanent in the ants’ world.  He is active within the ants’ life (though they may wish it otherwise).

Scripture teaches us that God is immanent in our world.  He is present and active within creation. He is involved in the processes of the world, including human history.  The Psalmist says, These [creation] all wait for You, That You may give them their food in due season. What You give them they gather in; You open Your hand, they are filled with good. You hide Your face, they are troubled; You take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. You send forth Your Spirit, they are created; And You renew the face of the earth (Ps. 104:27-30). Paul told the Athenians that God is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:27-28).  Job says, If He should gather to Himself His Spirit and His breath, All flesh would perish together, And man would return to dust. (Job 34:14-15).  Jesus says, the Father causes the sun to rise... and sends rain (Matt 5:45).  He even sustains sparrows and grows the flowers & wild grass (Matt 6:26-30 10:29-30).

This all would be really bad news if God were like Johnny.  Johnny gives and takes away out of mere whim.  He is the supreme sustainer of ant life but his sustenance comes not from love, goodness, or holiness but from fickleness.  However, God is good and holy and he loves us greatly.

Some have taken God’s immanence too far so as to bring Him down to the level of creation.  We see an extreme of this in Romans, Paul condemns the unrighteous because they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man--and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things (Romans 1:22).  Today, there is less danger of worshipping idols (at least in this traditional sense).  But how often do we treat God as common in our worship? In our prayer life? In our approach to Scripture? It is important that we recognize we are having communion with the almighty God and this demands our reverence.

On the other hand, if we ignore God’s immanence and wholly focus on His Transcendence, He becomes irrelevant to our lives.  There is no way we can possibly know Him or have any kind of relationship with Him.  If this were the case, we might as well live our lives as we see fit because either God could care less about what we do or there is no way we could know what He cares about.

Thankfully God does care about us.  And He has revealed Himself to us because He desires a relationship with us.  God is transcendent, He is wholly other than creation but, incomprehensibly, He actually reaches out and interacts with creation.  There is no more dramatic example of this than when He comes down, not as a burning bush or great light, but as a human baby with all the lowliness, humility, and weakness that come from human flesh.  Human beings actually walked, talked, and ate with the Infinite!

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Divine Transcendence and Immanence

Part 1: Transcendence

It is important for Christians to find a balance between two doctrines of God: His transcendence and His immanence. Part 1, will focus on Divine Transcendence. Part 2, will focus on Divine Immanence.

Scripture teaches us that God is above the universe, that He Comes to our world from beyond it.  That is, He transcends our world.  The Preacher says, God is in heaven and you are on earth (Eccles 5:2). Isaiah sees the Lord, seated on a throne, high and exalted (Is. 6:1).  The Psalmist says, Your knowledge is beyond my comprehension; it is so far beyond me, I am unable to fathom it (Psalms 139:6).

These passages seem to be about physical distance.  But God is spirit (John 4:24) and physical distance does not apply to Him.  So terms such as “above” or “far” are analogies for God’s transcendence, just as they are when someone says the man is far above the ant.  This is true even though the ant may be crawling on a shelf above the man’s head.

We might view God as the top link in the great chain of being.  This view suggests all living things exist in a certain hierarchy; single cell organisms are at the lowest level, God is at the top,  and we are somewhere in the middle.  But this view is mistaken, we may be very far above a single cell organism, but the distance between us is still finite.  Whereas the separation between God and any other thing is infinite.  It is not a matter of degrees.  It is not as if we are a shack and God is the Sears Tower.  God doesn’t just have more “Godness” than us, making Him God and us not.  No, God is wholly other than we. He is distinct from creation and the gap is infinite.

To lose sight of God’s transcendence is to have an incomplete and even harmful (to us) view of Him.  We run the risk of making Him in our image rather than the other way around.  To do so, is to treat God as ordinary.  But there is nothing ordinary about the Lord.  Scripture is full of examples where people respond in terror to His presence.  Upon coming into the presence of the Lord, Isaiah cried, “Woe is me! I am destroyed, for my lips are contaminated by sin” (Is 6:5). When the Lord appeared to Daniel, his companions run away and hide from fear, while he is left without strength (Dan 10:7-8).  Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look upon the Lord (Ex 3:6).  John falls at the Lord’s feet like a dead man (Rev. 1:17). What’s more, Scripture suggests that these men are wise to fear the Lord.  Proverbs 9:10, says that the beginning of wisdom is to fear the Lord.

The reader may worry that in painting such a picture of God, we are portraying Him as a terrifying tyrant or even worse a Being who is indifferent toward us.  But this is the wrong way to look at it.  God’s transcendence does not negate His love and involvement in our lives; it makes them more amazing and wonderful.  The Psalmist has that sense of wonder when he says, What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You care for him? (Psalms 8:4).  How wonderful it is that God, the Holy One, the One Who is Wholly Other, cares about us and loves us.  It is truly incomprehensible that the Infinite would have any interest (let alone love) for the finite.