“Wonderful News.” Blessed Are Those…       Matthew 5

What if we were to take these Beatitude behaviors and attitudes as descriptions of the way things already are in the world, as if we were hearing Jesus giving a kind of analysis of society as it really is? We’d have to flat out say He’s wrong. Are all the mourners being comforted? Are the meek and humble inheriting the earth? Are the thirsters for justice being satisfied? Not by my newscasts…

But we know that with these words Jesus is speaking a profound truth. So what are we listening to as we sit with the disciples on the Mountain?

We’re listening to what you might call an account of beginnings, the start of something, the down payment, in Paul’s phrase, on the full payment that’s coming. These are first glimpses of what the coming world of Jesus’ Father actually looks like — and in the flesh.  (And the flesh that it’s in, of course, is none other than the human flesh and blood and mind and heart of Jesus himself – the way He’s moving through the world, the window through which He is looking out on life and making decisions and acting.)

These attitudes and behaviors of His contained in these beatitudes are descriptions of what’s starting to show up in the world, of what glimmers of His Father’s house are just breaking through.  And they surely are different. In the sight of a business-as-usual mentality, they’re all backwards and could never make it in “the real world.”

In Jesus’ mind that’s true. They’re not for this so-called real world as it is. They fit rather in the world that’s just dawning. Rather than all backwards, they’re behaviors and attitudes which look forwards, life stances arriving from the future.

And so “good news” can have two meanings.  What is the good news the present world holds out? It consists of things like money and success in battle and beating out your competitor. What does good news look like in the Kingdom world? Things like the raising up of the downtrodden, the accomplishment of justice, reconciliation and peacemaking, transparency and cleanness of heart, perseverance through persecutions, and perhaps most of all, the showing of mercy.

In laying out these beatitudes, Jesus is laying down markers for recognizing the places where that coming world is already taking root. He’s saying, “When and where you see these beatitudes happening, (people being comforted, being truthful at cost, extending forgiveness), you’re looking at the Kingdom of My Father already appearing in the here and now, already making its way into this present world.

Or in the language of Jesus’ own prayer, “Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” Where in fact is God’s will being done here as it is in heaven? The answer: here in these places on earth where this new beatitude life-style is actually being put into practice and carried out.

And that’s the “other worldly” call Jesus is extending to His disciples through the ages. “Will you live in the present age by these ways which only make full sense in the age of God’s promised future? Will you do what you can in the Spirit to live with a foot in both worlds, but lean more into that other dawning world, into the Kingdom that’s both on the way and already here?”

One description of this Sermon on the Mount is the charter for life “as it is in heaven; i.e., this is the tone of living, the way it will be, when we get there after this life is finished. But as one writer put it, heaven is not some place out there in space or some time off in the future. A fuller meaning is “God’s space,” i.e., wherever God is and whenever God reigns, anywhere (past, future and especially present) where there’s fullness, where things come together as they were meant to. Or even better, where things begin to appear “on earth as they are in heaven.”

I once heard a substitute phrase for the word beatitudes. It was “wonderful news.” It’s wonderful news when the poor are recognized and even made special. It’s wonderful news when people can see God because their hearts are open and transparent and honest. It’s wonderful news when in humility, people recognize themselves as they really stand before God.

And doesn’t all this shed more light on the insistence (even prodding) of a Vincent and Louise that in living out  these beatitude realities, these “wonderful news” behaviors and attitudes and virtues, we are not only following The Lord Jesus, but also joining in His great work of bringing the Kingdom of God onto this earth.

Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done – both hereafter and here.