Reading Journal 2024: The Beatitudes: Living In Sync With The Reign of God

Reading Journal 2024: The Beatitudes: Living In Sync With The Reign of God
Author: Darrell Johnson

“On first reading [the Sermon on the Mount] you feel that it turns everything upside down, but the second time you read it you discover that it turns everything right side up. The first time you read it you feel that it is impossible; the second time, you feel that nothing else is possible.”

An easy read that affords readers a significant window into a familiar text. Johnson’s approach is a bit paradigm shifting, and there are places and points where I remain unsure about some of his assertions, but he nevertheless offers an intriguing way to read the beatitudes in light of some long standing disparities and disagreements, most of which revolve around the the theoretical differences between Matthew’s addition of the Spirit and the, at least by appearances, more socially concerned nature of Luke’s summation of the same teaching.

To start, Johnson alludes to the larger paradigm through which he sees the Beatitudes to be operating- the kingdom of God having arrived in Jesus. It is here, then, that he pushes back against certain normative readings which want to see the Beatitudes as saying, do this and you WILL inherit the kingdom of God. Rather, he sees the Beatitudes as the outcome of participating IN the Kingdom. The beatitudes don’t exist as a set of requirements we must meet in order to be saved, they exist as part of the proclamation that Jesus has in fact done a saving work in bringing about the promised kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. And these beatitudes are expressions or markers of the character of this kingdom. “Makarios (blessing) does not refer to how you and I assess ourselves or our condition; makarios refers to how God assesses us and our condition.”

It’s not, do this and be blessed, it is blessed are those BECAUSE this is the character of the kingdom of God in Jesus. As Johnson notes, “if we separate His Beatitudes from the context in which He first spoke them, His words, meant to give life, become either frustrating idealism or oppressive legalism.” Words that are actually, meant to imply freedom and liberation.

If, indeed, “He speaks His Beatitudes in the context of gospel,” and if it is true that the call to repentance, or turning around and moving in a different direction, that proceeds from the Gospels proclamation emerges from the following:
“The gospel according to Jesus is the announcement of a great fact that impacts all other facts. The gospel according to Jesus is that in Him, and because of Him, history has reached a major crisis point—“The time is fulfilled.” We are now passing from one era into a whole new era. The gospel according to Jesus is that in Him, and because of Him, the long-awaited, glorious, re-creating reign of God is invading the world.”

Then, “The clearest sign that human beings are in fact “turning around and believing” is that they are becoming “Beatitude people.” The clearest sign that human beings are in fact making a U-turn and embracing Jesus and His gospel is that they are becoming “blessed-are people.”

The other aspect Johnson challenges is the notion that the Beatitudes are describing different kinds of peope. “Jesus is not describing eight different persons, but is describing eight different qualities of the same person.”

Further, and this is what he will flesh out in the rest of the book as he walks through each beatitude, “one Beatitude flows into the next.” He sees in the construction of the Beatitudes a clear, literary design, anchored on one side by the “poor in spirit”, and the proclamation of the promised kingdom of God on the other.

Meaning, if you have one then you have them all, as each one is predicated on the other by their nature. One of the reasons he insists on this reading is because, any other approach creates division and turns things like poverty into virtues. More than that, the minute we seprrate them is the minute we find ourselves stumbling over the disparate nature that a descriptive like poor and a qualification like meekness or pure in heart creates. Rather, he says that poor means the same thing in both Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospel, underscoring this simple truth about the beatitudes- the proclamation of the kingdom breaking in begins with the truth that there is an enslaved creation this kingdom needs to break in to. We live in a world enslaved to Sin and Death, therefore we need Jesus to liberate it from this enslavement. Poor (in spirit), a phrase that denotes a lack of something, or a position defined by a lack of something, must be the natural starting point for the blessed life to take root. Blessings emerge not because of the poverty but in response to it. Which allows us then to mourn, not because mourning is a virtue, but because the blessing shines a light on the current state of things. Which creates meekness (or gentleness), a hunger and thirst for what is wrong to be made right, which flows through mercy and the pure of heart. All things which ultimately represent the upside down nature of the kingdom, which faces resistance from that which oppresses the world, a resistance ultimately layed powerless by Jesus.

In the beatitudes we find the great evangelical Word that the Gospel brings to all people in all times- the kingdom has arrived, therefore the blessed (right side up) life is now, even in the midst of the poverty it is responding to.

This does afford the beatitudes a nice narrative punch. And it seems to make sense, even if it feels like some elements of this reading don’t quite feel convincing (certainly when it comes to bringing a social context into the picture). I feel like one reading that makes sense to me is paralleling the beatitudes with the ten commandments, which has a natural break in terms of the two sumations- love God and love others. Johnson’s approach has definitely challenged my own percieved paradigms, though, and that’s certainly what one would hope for from any worthwhile read.