Blessed people (3)

We’re on a hillside in Galilee around AD 30 where Jesus Christ is sitting down and teaching his disciples. Great crowds are all around them, listening in. He’s around 30 years old himself and his new teaching is radically different.

Nine times he uses the Greek word “makarios”. Its basic meaning is “large” or "great". From it we derive our English word “macro”. The opposite of macro is micro, from the Greek “mikros” meaning small. To be great in the teaching of Jesus is to be blessed - really blessed.

But this teaching is not about nine different people being blessed in nine different ways. It’s about what one person should be like in nine different ways. Nine attributes of the same happy, blessed person. Six of them (the first six) seem to be internal, heart-related, spirit-related attributes. These six would only be discerned by close contact with the truly-blessed person.

 

They are these: “Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed are those who sorrow; blessed are the meek; blessed are those hungering and thirsting for rightness; blessed are the merciful; blessed are the clean in heart.” What a catalogue of characteristics! Wouldn't you love a person like that?

For what reasons are people like these “blessed” – according to Jesus? It’s because “theirs is the realm of the skies; they shall be comforted; they shall inherit the earth; they shall be satisfied [with rightness]; they shall receive mercy; they shall see God.” 

But the last three blessings are a tad different. They are, as it were, more readily visible to an observer.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, because they shall be called sons of God.” Those who make peace are blessed in Jesus’ teaching. Of all human beings who ever lived the greatest peacemaker was Jesus himself. He actually died in the place of his enemies so that his enemies could become at total peace with his Father in the skies. Others, his followers, are blessed in his eyes when their focus is to make peace – even putting themselves in the wrong to do so.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted on account of rightness because theirs is the realm of the skies.” In our world rightness is not appreciated since it is often seen by others as a judgment of their lifestyle and other choices. Those others will, alone or with others, be forceful in shaming, social-media criticizing, betraying, harming and even killing - to remove rightness, even unspoken rightness, around them. But those “persecuted on account of rightness” are blessed for one particular reason - not because of persecution but because they are and will be totally at home in the rightness of the realm of the skies.

 

 

This is even more "different". Did you notice the words “on my account”? Blessed, great, indeed is the person who, on account of Jesus Christ, is reproached, persecuted and bad-mouthed in all kinds of ways. Why on earth should he or she be blessed? Jesus says that it’s because of that person’s great reward – that person’s reward in the realm of the skies. Where there's nohing but rightness..

Nine attributes, according to the Sermon on the Mount, make a person into a happy, blessed human being. Surprisingly (at first blush), being blessed has nothing to do with being clever, strong or wealthy. It has everything to do with what a person really is – inside - and how he or she lives that out, for Jesus' sake.

But the most persuasive thing about all this is that the man who taught the blessedness of men and women in this way - on a hillside in Galilee around AD 30 - was exactly like that himself. He had (and has) all nine attributes. That why he himself was (and is) blessed. In fact that's why he's so great.