If you’ve been following my Blogs these last eight weeks, you’ll be aware that week after week we’ve considered various people whom Jesus pronounces to be “blessed”.  The problem is that in today’s society we’re likely to have a rather shallow understanding of what it is to be blessed.

It may have happened to you – possibly more than once – that you sneezed in public – only to have someone react by saying, “Bless you...!”  Why do people say that?  (And some do it habitually.)  Well, it has a very long history that goes back to the time when The Plague ravished English cities.  Sneezing was one of the first symptoms of being afflicted by The Plague.  So people would (in effect) say to the person who sneezed, “May God bless you and protect you from The Plague.”  And since many folk don’t like to take the word ‘God’ on their lips, it was commonly abbreviated to just: Bless you..!  Sadly, for many people it’s a mere superstition – as if the exclamation itself will protect someone from colds and flus... or something even worse.

It that kind of setting what does it mean when Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit... blessed are the meek... blessed are the peacemakers...?”  He is certainly doing much more than wishing such people protection from illness.  Some modern translations have substituted the word ‘happy’.  Happy are the meek... happy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.  But that only tends to trivialise these profound statements even more.  As the saying goes: happiness is a puppy!

The late R.C. Sproul put it well.  He said, “When the Hebrew says, “May the Lord bless you!” he’s not saying, “Don’t worry, be happy.”  He’s saying, “May you understand in the depths of your soul, in the deepest chamber of your heart, the sweetness of the presence of God as you live before His face every moment.”

In other words, what The Beatitudes are doing is showing us what a personal relationship with God through faith in Jesus really looks like... or should look like.  Living in daily fellowship with Jesus... is being meek just as He was meek; being peacemakers just as He is a peacemaker; being pure in heart just as He was pure in heart.  And the more you and I live up to the kind of character portrayed in The Beatitudes the more we experience the richness of God’s daily presence with us.

Let me put it another way.  In some ways we could call Jesus’ “Sermon On The Mount” the Constitution of Christ’s Kingdom.  It sets out how Christ our King desires us to live in a world that pulls us in opposite directions.  And Jesus begins His “Sermon On The Mount” with The Beatitudes – in effect saying to us: This is what the citizens of my Kingdom ought to look like.

That also helps us with a problem we sometimes have.  Some have read The Beatitudes and concluded that they cannot bear arms or ever go to war.  I don’t wish to start a debate on pacifism.  However we do need to keep in mind that in Romans 13 the apostle Paul puts a sword into the hand of the civil authorities – which seems to conflict with the blessing pronounced on the meek and the peacemakers.

We need to keep in mind that there is a big difference between what I may or may not do as an individual and what a government may or may not do as those appointed by God to rule, guard and protect the nation.  Christianity long ago agreed that there is such a thing as a just war.  But the point is that it’s not a war that I as a private individual may wage.  My calling is to reflect in my life the character and attitudes on which Jesus pronounces His blessing.  And if I was called up to serve in an army to fight injustice I would have to work through that issue with other teachings of the Bible.  German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, struggled through that issue.  Bonhoeffer wrote a book on the “Sermon On The Mount” called. The Cost Of Discipleship.  It galvanised his views as a pacifist.  But he came to the point where he became involved in a plot against Hitler that cost him his life.

Meanwhile you and I just need to get on with living our daily lives according to The Beatitudes and find in that, great blessing from the Lord.

John Westendorp