Princes and Paupers: The Backwards Kingdom of God
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:1-12)
The Thankful Poor by Henry Ossawa Tanner. 1894
Blessed Are…
In the Beatitudes, Jesus lists several groups of people and calls them “blessed.” In order, they are the poor in spirit, the mourning, the meek, those in need of righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those who are persecuted because of righteousness, and those persecuted because of Jesus. Jesus didn’t pick this group of people arbitrarily. Each represents a station of life that would not typically be considered (politically/societally) powerful. The Beatitudes are often taken as virtues which Jesus’ disciples are to adopt, but I don’t think that’s what he’s doing here. Crowds are starting to gather around him because he has announced that the kingdom of heaven was at hand, that the time for God to fulfill his promises to Israel had finally come. Standing there,1 looking at the crowds, Jesus wants to make sure everyone’s expectations are set right. He has not come to bring the Kingdom to the powerful; that’s the way of Rome. No, he has come to give the Kingdom to the weak, the poor, and the marginalized.
The Beatitudes are not virtues to acquire. Rather, they are descriptions of the kind of people that God is placing at the center of his Kingdom. This certainly isn’t to say that we shouldn’t seek to be meek, peacemakers, pure in heart, etc., but Jesus isn’t giving us instructions here. He’s giving hope to those who are often placed on the margins of his society, and quite frankly, ours as well. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus and his followers are constantly in conflict with the religious elite, typified as the scribes and Pharisees, who have a habit of calling Jesus’ followers “sinners.”2 They used this as an othering term. They were the righteous, and they felt sure of God’s goodness to them. The sinners, on the other hand, were destined for judgment. Jesus came and flipped the script. It was precisely those who would be ostracized by the elite, political, religious, or otherwise, who he would make the recipients of God’s promises and goodness.
After all, Jesus himself said he had not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.3
Jesus is indicating that given the reality of the kingdom we should not be surprised to find among those who follow him those who are poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who are meek. Moreover, Jesus does not suggest that everyone who follows him will possess all the Beatitudes, but we can be sure that some will be poor, some will mourn, and some will be meek.
Stanley Hauerwas
Matthew4
Blessed
The Greek word translated “blessed” is makarios, which, along with “blessed,” means something like “fortunate” or “happy.”5 The way Jesus uses the word is reminiscent of the Hebrew word ashrey, which is used in Psalm 1:1, “Blessed (ashrey) is the man who does not walk in the advice of the wicked.” The Psalmist is saying the person who doesn’t follow the way of the wicked is happy. This kind of blessedness is also characterized by divine favor.6 The one who is blessed, ashrey or makarios, is so because they have God’s grace on them.
Why then, does Jesus say the poor, the mourning, and the persecuted are happy? Why does he say that have divine grace and favor? Simply stated, and I don’t know that much commentary is needed on this, they’re makarios because they are being given God’s kingdom through Jesus.
This is completely opposite of the way kingdoms worked in the ancient world, and completely opposite of the way kingdoms and nations work today. Who is at the center of today’s empires? The rich, the powerful, the conniving, the war hungry. We’re constantly struggling against oppression and injustice within our political systems, even when there are lights of righteousness shining. Yet, in God’s Kingdom, it won’t be the rich and powerful, it won’t be the warlike and cunning who are happy. No, it will be those Jesus named in the Beatitudes. There’s an eschatological7 dimension to this, certainly, but it is still hope and promise. In Luke, when Jesus gives this teaching, the poor, hungry, and the mourners are blessed now,8 and we can bring that idea into Matthew. They are blessed now because their state of life is the sign of the promise of God. You're poor, hungry, in need of justice, persecuted today, but the Kingdom of God will come, and it's to you that Jesus will give the keys of Kingdom.
Yet, God’s promise of blessing isn’t relegated to some distant future that can be very difficult to imagine. The church is called by Jesus to be little manifestations of God’s kingdom in the world. This is partly why Jesus starts with the Beatitudes. These are the people God is seeking. Therefore, these are the kinds of people the church should be seeking. Though it unfortunately has not always been the case, the church is where the poor are to find resources, where the mourning can be comforted, where the meek are reminded of their goals, and where the persecuted, oppressed, and peacemakers can find a sense of relief and rest. This is the reality we are called to live with one another and with those whom we would call into God’s kingdom.
The Father’s Covenant with Jesus’ Disciples
There is a catch to all this. It can be tempting to think that Jesus is making these statements categorically. Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed are the merciful, period. But, God is a covenant and covenant-keeping God. In some really interesting ways, Matthew 5 mirrors the giving of the Mosaic Covenant at Mt. Sinai.9
Matthew tells us that when Jesus saw the crowds gathering around him, he went up the mountain and sat down. After this, Jesus’ disciples come to him, and when the disciples come to him, then Jesus begins to speak. This is an important distinction. Jesus doesn’t teach the crowds, he teaches his disciples. Therefore, Jesus doesn’t make his promise of blessing to the crowds, but to his disciples. Moses ascended the mountain to receive the Covenant from God, and the disciples ascend the mountain to receive the Covenant from Jesus. The whole Sermon on the Mount is, in fact, Jesus giving the terms of the Covenant to those who would follow him.
What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus? We’ll go over that in the weeks to come as we look at rest of the Sermon on the Mount. For now, suffice it to say that a disciple of Jesus is a person who follows his life and teaching. The disciple is one who places their trust in Jesus’ word and promises. In a word, it is faithfulness to Jesus in the Christian life. That is how we come into covenant with Jesus. In this Covenant, God promises to look out for those the kingdoms of the world will oppress and marginalize, to remember those that society will ignore and forget. God’s side of the covenant is to give them the kingdom.
Later next week, I will make a post going through each Beatitude in more detail, so if you’re interested in that stay tuned, and subscribe if you haven’t already.
For now, if you find yourself exasperated by life, if it’s not going your way, remember you are blessed. Not because your situation is good, but because God won’t forget you. While God does ask us to be have our eyes in the future, which can be exceedingly difficult sometimes, his promises are real. One day this life will end, then God will call us forth from our graves and bring us into the kingdom of his Son. On that day, he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will no longer exist. Neither mourning nor crying nor affliction will exist. The former things have passed away.10
Matthew 4:17
Cf. Matthew 9:11
Luke 5:32
Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2009), 61.
Arndt, William, Frederick W. Danker, Walter Bauer, and F. Wilbur Gingrich. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Brannan, Rick, ed. Lexham Research Lexicon of the Greek New Testament. Lexham Research Lexicons. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2020.
Eschatological - having to do with the end of the age, the return of Jesus, and the rule of God coming finally and fully to the world and its people.
Cf. Luke 6:20-21.
Cf. Exodus 19 and 20 for examples.
Revelation 20:4, my translation.
Love this. I have moments of overwhelming anger and despair regarding the amount of suffering and poverty we are confronted with daily. Today, after driving home from time
spent with someone in the township, I told my daughter, “sometimes all this makes me so angry.” And I didn’t have much more to say. I needed this reminder today - one not of exaggerated religious jargon but of solid theology. Thanks.
"The Beatitudes are not virtues to acquire. Rather, they are descriptions of the kind of people that God is placing at the center of his Kingdom." beautiful. every time we get into the "backwards kingdom" aspect of how Jesus reigns, something within me settles and is deeply comforted. things won't always be like this. and there is a King unlike all the ones we've seen 😭