Blessed Are the Poor/ Poor in Spirit

What exactly are the Beatitudes? Why are there two sets and why are they different? Who are they for? How many of them are there really? If you are in the gospel of Matthew then Jesus gives the Sermon on the Mount. In Luke, it is the Sermon on the Plain? Matthew has more blessings, while Luke has more woes. Are the Beatitudes meant to serve as a list of virtues? Are they a course on Christian ethics? Do they invite us into a new way of being, give us a command, or are they as Allen Verhey describes them, “God’s good future?”

While Jesus’s sermon given in poetic fashion may seem rather short, it was no less packed with rich layers of meaning. Jesus began by blessing those on the fringe. They were blessings that seemed to turn everything upside down. Over the next few weeks, we will begin to take these blessings one piece at a time, examining them on Sunday and then during our study group as well.

Today we use the word blessing like we use the word love. We say bless you when you sneeze, bless your heart when we don’t like you all that much, and bless when we feel pity.

Makarioi (ma-car-eyay) is the word here for blessing, and rather than something trite it means wise, true, whole, and flourishing.

Wise, true, whole, flourishing, happy, and favored are the poor, the grieving, the powerless, the hungry, the oppressed, the lonely, and the outsider.

How do these blessings land on your ears this morning? Micha Barton says “Blessed is the word Jesus assigns to the weak, the weary, and the worn out…This poem is how Jesus chose to answer the mysterious and seemingly eternal question of human happiness. It’s a revolutionary reimagining of authentic community in the form of provocations and surprising promises…This crowd had lived a script that said blessing was equated with empire, wealth, and ease. Jesus was there to take their old script of what it meant to be human and toss it.”

Instead, Jesus changes the script to say “wise, true, and whole are the ones who suffer, the ones who are downtrodden, the ones who are just surviving, the ones who are mistreated.” Last week I referenced the Beatitudes as the dream of God, and this dream begins with blessing the poor. In Matthew, it says the poor in spirit while Luke just sticks with poor. Which one is intended? Is Jesus blessing those who have spiritual poverty or physical poverty or somehow both? What does it even mean to be poor in spirit?

Some feel that poverty of spirit relates to humility, or essentially humbling oneself before the Lord. This comes from those who see the Beatitudes as a list of virtues where Jesus blesses humility as opposed to pride. Some feel this is why Jesus began with blessing the poor in spirit, seeing humility as “the queen of all virtues,” a matter of genuine dependence on God or even “the ability to ask for God’s help.”

Then there are those who believe that Jesus was also acknowledging those of material poverty, the oppressed and the crushed in spirit, the downtrodden and heartbroken. These individuals feel Jesus was blessing the “spiritual zero’s or spiritually bankrupt.” Thus, some say that Jesus is not just blessing the virtue of humility but also the condition of desperation for God. One of the early church fathers Tertullian renamed this blessing “blessed are the beggars.”

Now, some have confused this first Beatitude as a blessing of poverty itself. We need to be careful in seeing it this way. This poverty is not a blessing of involuntary poverty. As Rebekah Eklund says, “The beatitude is prescriptive, not descriptive. It promises; it promises a reversal to the suffering. The poor are blessed not because their poverty is desirable but because the reign of God is at hand and with it, the eventual end of poverty. Jesus’s teaching encourages not only help for the poor but a new society with economic justice for all.”

If you find yourself worn out, downtrodden, or are feeling a little like a spiritual zero lately, then receive the blessing of Christ this day. Maybe you want to receive the blessing, but feel a disconnect. Perhaps you are wondering what happened to the crowd after Jesus blessed them? But what about today. Maybe you read or hear this passage and then go back to your life finding not much has changed?

In both Matthew and Luke,Jesus had healed all who had need before the Beatitudes. These blessings were given in wake of a fresh healing so they were almost a follow-up poem about the reign of God. What was Jesus doing with these blessings? In a sense, the blessings of the Beatitudes weren’t something that Jesus was giving as much as they were declaring a way of being in the world, a way of being that is desperate for God.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Notice the present tense here. The reign of healing and equality and justice and freedom is already happening before them in part, and one day will fully be. Until then, we keep coming back to the Beatitudes, to these invitations to a new way of being and to the comfort brought about by a God sees us and meets us where we are.

What it would look like to be a community rooted in the Beatitudes? What does it look like for God to meet your in your desperation and say “I see you.” If God meets us in the middle of our own desperation, then it changes how we relate to others in the midst of theirs.

Maybe the Beatitudes are blessings of the uncool, and maybe that’s exactly what we need. Back in 2011, the late Rachel Held Evans wrote “I want to be part of an un-cool church because I want to be part of a community that shares the reputation of Jesus, and like it or not, Jesus’ favorite people in the world were not cool. They were mostly sinners, misfits, outcasts, weirdos, poor people, sick people, and crazy people.

So blessed are the uncool, the poor in spirit, the downtrodden. For the reign of God, the very kingdom of heaven, is yours.