Jesus’ Kingdom platform is good news for the underdog.
By Neil Earle
“So what is Christianity all about anyway?”
Pastors and members get this question often.
One could do a lot worse than pointing questioners to those nine piercing verbal lightning flashes called the Beatitudes, or beautiful attitudes. They are found in Matthew 5:1-12. The way Matthew tells the story, this is the very beginning of the Master’s teaching. Just as Genesis 1 repeats the refrain “and God blessed them” and the Psalms begin with “Blessed is the man,” so it is in synch for Jesus – the second and greater Moses – to open his teaching with a compressed series of high-toned slogans so skillfully compacted that they are often overlooked.
In some ways this is Jesus’ Kingdom Platform, an echo of his Nazareth Manifesto in Luke 4:16-18, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those that are oppressed.” This is a direct citation from Isaiah 61 with the important difference that Jesus does not quote the more threatening language of “the great and dreadful day of the Lord.” At the end of the decade which Time magazine is calling “the decade from Hell” it is more than a little comforting to know that Jesus is on the side of the underdog, the little guys – the poor, the broken-hearted, the prisoners, the blind, the oppressed.”
We see the same concern reflected in the Beatitudes which is Matthew’s version of Luke’s Nazareth Manifesto. In Matthew 5:1-12 Jesus offers a brilliantly condensed summary of that attitudes H prizes in his followers – this can easily get bypassed. For Shakespeare was right when he said, “Brevity is the soul of wit” meaning the really skilful teacher knows how to boil things down in a way that makes you do further thinking.
That’s what these nine succinct phrases are like – “thought bombs” that pierce like a laser:
Blessed the poor in spirit – not, notice, the bossy and the obnoxiously aggressive.
How well off are those who mourn – not the party-hearty “we-only-go-through-life-once-so-live-it up” hedonists.
Congratulations to you, the meek – not the schemers, crafty manipulators, control freaks and oppressors.
In this sermon let’s stop and linger over Jesus’ fourth “Blessed.” As indicated above, many commentators translate the Greek makarios (Blessed) as “Happy,” “Well off,” or even “Congratulations.” Our focus is Matthew 5:6: “Blessed those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, they will be satisfied.”
Now if this were just talking about our own personal righteousness we might all hang our heads and walk away in sorrow and shame from the Master. Righteous? Man, that very word can engender guilt. Especially when Jesus follows this up with the startling Matthew 5:20, “Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Wow – that seems hard. Matthew ends the chapter with this corker – “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (5:48). Gulp. That is even tougher, or so it seems. Can a Christian ever be righteous? We’ll answer that later.
But who can measure up to these standards? We might as well ask like Peter on another occasion: “Lord, who then can be saved?”
But there is more, much more to this little sharp epigram in Matthew 5:6 than at first meets the eye. Of course personal righteousness is in view. Matters of morality really matter to Jesus as the rest of the Sermon on the Mount shows (Matthew 5:27, 43). But his real emphasis here can perhaps best be understood by a word study of that term “righteousness.” Let’s take a brief tour of where Jesus was coming from. The Old Testament was his Bible and he knew it intimately. So what did the Old Testament (OT) mean by this term “righteousness?”
Expect a few surprises.
Reaching back into the Old Testament for a word study necessitates a brief look at the Hebrew language. And in the Hebrew language the word for “righteousness” is usually the Hebrew feminine noun transliterated “sadaqa” or “zadaqa” and often “tsadaqa.” There was a priest named Zadok in 1 Kings. Genesis 14:18 introduces a mysterious Canaanite king named “Melchisedec” whose role as both Priest and King is combined in the Hebrew “Melek” for King and “sadaqa” or “zadaqa” for righteous one. There is thus a rich tradition of OT exposition behind this word “zadaqa” as it unfolds in the text. Even the name Melchisedec links it to government and kingly rule. Leviticus 19:15 underscores that context. Here the rulers are told not to “pervert justice,” but to judge your neighbor fairly – or “in righteousness” as the King James and New King James put it. Here is a clear link between righteousness and rulers doing justice. And sure enough the phrases “Mishpat and Zadaqa” occur like a refrain across the Old Testament, especially where rulership is concerned. In 1 Chronicles 18:14 and 1 Kings 10:9 both David and Solomon – with their faults and all – are nevertheless singled out for ruling with Mishpat and Zadaqa.
This theme continues on especially in the Prophets. Isaiah foretold that the Messianic king would judge the poor in righteousness (Isaiah 11:4-5). Cyrus the Persian – a gentile ruler – was praised for being a ruler who is attuned to zadaqa (Isaiah 45:13). Yes. God is no respecter of persons.
That’s the Law and the Prophets, now what about the Writings, the third section of the OT canon (Luke 24:44)?
Here it occurs more than anywhere else. Psalm 85:10 has the beautiful line that “righteousness and peace” have kissed each other. In Psalm 96:13 Yahweh judges the world with zadaqa – ask Adolph Hitler and Idi Amin and Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein next time you see them. Yahweh’s faithful priests are clothed with righteousness = “right dealings” (Psalm 132:9). Proverbs 2:9 takes up the theme of zadaqa linked to justice and fairness and good results. Proverbs 21:21 says that he who follows after righteousness and mercy finds life, righteousness and honor as well. Interestingly, in Matthew 5:7 Jesus follows his “righteousness” manifesto with an encouragement to the merciful.
Already the meaning of Jesus’ fourth Beatitude seems to be leaking out. The Word Commentary summarizes that the Greek word used here for righteousness does indeed mean “justice” rather than “personal morality” though it includes that as well: “The poor, the grieving and the downtrodden (i.e. those who have experienced injustice) are by definition those who look for God to act. They are the righteous who will inherit the kingdom” (Word Commentary: Matthew, page 93).
Hence the link is clearly drawn between righteousness and justice. This is reemphasized in Jeremiah 9:24, Jeremiah 23:5-6 and especially the famous Amos 5:24 where righteousness and justice emanating from the national leadership is seen as a crying need. Amos lived in a time of horrendous gaps opening up between the rich and the poor (Amos 2:6-8). By all accounts we seem to be as well in a day when even the Congressional Budget Overseer laments “socialism for the rich.”
The rich oppressing or victimizing the poor? A hunger and thirst for true justice? Hmmm. Seems like the Beatitudes might be more than “nice sayings” after all. Seems like they are speaking to the mess we have gotten ourselves into as a nation where the gap between rich and poor seems to widen every day in spite of all that has happened. That’s the thing about Jesus: His words sure have a tendency to puncture our complacent prejudices. Let’s never loose our hunger for justice and fair dealing whether we work in the cabinet room, the board room, the family room or among the genuinely needy people we encounter every day. And all the people said…Amen!