At a Goldmine

(The Kingdom of God in the Beatitudes)

our host: Indigenous People in Mines

The Beatitudes: a Goldmine. We continue our search for the meaning of the Kingdom of God. Our present stop is a community of indigenous people living atop a goldmine!

Are you looking for a compact concentration of data about the Kingdom of God, deposited in one single place? You will find it in the beatitudes (Mt 5:3-10; Lk 6:20-21).27 These beatitudes are a goldmine. A mine for its wealth. Gold for its inspiration.

Dirt or Gold? Unfortunately, our usual theological technology brings up more dirt than gold. This happens, for example, when we treat the beatitudes as moral imperatives rather than as proclamations of good news. The litany of ‘blessed are you who …’ seems to be endorsements of virtue or imperatives for meritorious moral behavior. ‘Blessed are the hungry.…’ Hey, the hungry are being blessed! That sounds great. It sounds like hunger is a recommended Christian way of life! Alas, such a reading is antipodes apart from Jesus’ mind. While some of us might start to be a bit fidgety, our indigenous hosts smile as if they knew this intuitively.

Well, strange as it may sound, the beatitudes do not tell us how to live or how to be. In fact, some of them tell us what Jesus does not want us to be! When he pronounced the beatitude on the hungry, he did not mean that he was recommending hunger as a virtue. On the contrary, he was proclaiming liberation from hunger.

There are elegant pitfalls in the study of the beatitudes. We proceed with care, as we resume our search for other meanings of the Kingdom of God, buried in the beatitudes.

A Key: The Second Part. For Isaiah and Jesus, the Kingdom of God, as we have seen in the last stopover, is not to be identified with heaven. It is a new earth. We now pick up the same nugget of wisdom from our next signpost, the beatitudes (Mt 5:3-10; Lk 6:20-21). And the clue to that wisdom is simple: the meaning of Kingdom of God is embedded in the second part of each beatitude (and not in the first).

‘Blessed are the meek (first part), for they shall inherit the earth (second part).’ The Kingdom of God is a new earth! – and indeed based not only on this beatitude but on the others too. Our guileless hosts let out a chortle of agreement. Look for the Kingdom of God in the second part of the beatitude. That is a simple key. Easy to use. But beware, it is also easy to lose.

Guidelines for Digging

But let us put some system into our excavation. We need to hold on firmly to the following pointers:

Proclamations. First, the beatitudes are proclamations or announcements of salvation. For example: ‘Blessed are you that hunger, for you shall be satisfied’ is a proclamation of salvation to people who are hungry. And the salvation being proclaimed is satisfaction of hunger – food, in plain words. The different beatitudes proclaim different forms of salvation to different groups of people.

Salvation Is Synonymous with Kingdom of God. Second, for Jesus and his contemporaries, ‘salvation’ and‘Kingdom of God’ are interchangeable. In expectation of salvation, the Jew did not say: ‘I pray to go to heaven.’ Rather he would say: ‘I pray that the Kingdom of God may come.’ This is a fundamental and pivotal insight to hold on to. Salvation did not mean ‘going to heaven.’ It meant the coming of the Kingdom of God. Kingdom of God and salvation are equivalents. They are one and the same thing.

The beatitudes are therefore proclamations of salvation or Kingdom of God.

Second Part of the Beatitude. Thirdly then, where or how do we find salvation or Kingdom of God expressed in the beatitudes? ‘Kingdom of God’ and ‘salvation’ are to be found, as I have said, in the second part of each beatitude. The second part represents a biblical term for salvation and Kingdom of God. If you want to know what Kingdom of God and salvation meant for Jesus, look for it in the second part of each beatitude. There you will find the different faces of Kingdom of God, its different aspects, its different descriptions. The assertions in the second portion of each beatitude are nothing but different ways of talking about the Kingdom and its salvific blessings.

Spotlight on the Second Part

The Kingdom of God, in the Scriptures’ own words, is satisfaction of hunger, laughter, comfort, inheriting the earth, obtaining mercy, seeing God, becoming children of God. It is a place under the sun where all of us, together with our hosts, the indigenous community, would want to live.

This Kingdom of God has both a present and a future aspect. As present, it took the form of Kingdom-blessings that Jesus imparted during his ministry. As future, it is our final destiny; it is the biblical equivalent of the longed for Utopia, of Shangri-la, of Nirvana. It is this future aspect, or some aspects of it, that is sketched in the second part of each beatitude. Let us now look more closely into each of the beatitudes. We begin towards the bottom of the list.

They Shall be Called Children of God

Kingdom of God As Divine Filiation.

In Jesus’ beatitude, we savor the quality of this blessing when we recall how special children were to Jesus. "Then little children were being brought to him in order that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples spoke sternly to those who brought them; but Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.’ And he laid his hands on them and went on his way" (Mt 19:14-15).

Feel too the heartbeat of this ‘our father,’ ‘my father,’ ‘your father’ whose parenthood we will relish as a Kingdom-blessing. ‘If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!’ (Mt 7:11; 6:7-8; 6:26)

It is a parent who has the traits of a mother: ‘Your Father knows what you need before you ask him’ (Mt 6:8). ‘ Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?’ (Mt 6:26. Cf. Mt 23:37) It is of such a Father-Mother that we shall become children when we come into possession of divine daughtership and sonship in the Kingdom—in the fullest, most exhaustive, most absolute way.

They Shall See God

Kingdom of God As the Vision of God.

One can indeed say that this vision of God represents the pinnacle of any experience, other than which there is nothing more sublime.

‘Seeing God’ in this beatitude could be roughly equivalent to the Second Look’s ‘beatific vision,’ meaning a direct experience of the divine essence. But note: whereas in the Second Look this vision is practically the only blessing, in the First Look it is one of several. Another difference is that in the Second, it is the disembodied soul that will see God; in the First, it is the risen body-person.

As I look at the cloudless eyes of our hosts, I sense that it is people like them who can have a better appreciation of this Kingdom-blessing. Indigenous peoples are more in touch with primordials: not only with the song and discourse of the rocks and trees but also with the luminous silence of the outer and inner worlds. There are fewer lowering clouds in their spiritual worlds. More openings to the clear blue sky. Thus, more knowing-without-knowing is a (fore-)taste of the essence-to-Essence experience.

They Will Obtain Mercy

Kingdom of God As the Compassion of Social Justice.

They Shall Inherit the Earth

Land in Biblical Consciousness.

They remembered that Moses, in his Deuteronomic homilies, constantly reminded them of the gift of the land (Dt 8:1;12:1; 19:14; 30:5; Num 33:53; Lev 20:24, etc.). They endearingly called it a land ‘broad and good, flowing with milk and honey.’ At this point, let us adjust our Third Look glasses well and pause long enough to ingest this piece of truth: Land was salvation for the Israelites. Our hosts are wrapped in appreciative silence.

Real Not Symbolic Earth. Is the land for real?—our hosts wonder in their hearts. In the minds of Jesus’ Jewish hearers this land was real land, not metaphorical. ‘For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper. You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land that he has given you’ (Dt 8:7-10).

What was in the mind of Jesus when he spoke of a land to be inherited? Did he find the Jewish hope too earthy? No. He also meant a real earth. In the absence of contrary evidence, we must take Jesus’ words at face value, and not automate him and his words into a program assembled for him by a later theology. Did you hear our hosts, particularly the elders, breathe a sigh of relief?

Kingdom of God As Land or New Earth. What is the Kingdom of God in this beatitude? A First and Third Look tells us that it is land. It is earth. This could be one of our most startling discoveries. Salvation – final salvation – is not heaven, but earth! This beatitude has a message for my childhood Second Look theology. Let us be exceedingly clear and thoroughly familiar with the following statement. ‘There is a heaven, BUT.…’ Although there is indeed a heaven to go to after death, final salvation is not ‘going to heaven,’ but ‘inheriting the earth.’ Our ultimate destiny is a new earth.

This beatitude now begins to open the window of our mind. We begin to get a glimpse of that biblical vista of ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ which will become a reality at the end of our present history (Rev 21:1-5). It is not a symbolic earth. It is not an ethereal earth for bodiless souls. It is as real as the ancestral lands of the indigenous peoples which they are in danger of losing, or have already lost, to the big mining enterprises and their talon-like bulldozers.

Meek = ‘anawim. To whom does Jesus’ beatitude assign the earth? By way of exception to our way of proceeding, we look briefly to the first part for our answer, to the meek. Who are these? The ‘humbled poor and oppressed’ would be the best designation. Actually, this beatitude is a quotation of Psalm 37:11. It reads: ‘The ‘anawim shall inherit the land, and delight themselves in abundant prosperity.’ Read the whole psalm. You will see that the ‘anawim is counterpoised with ‘the wicked,’ reshaim. Reshaim in certain contexts, such as Psalm 37, refers to oppressors who possess wealth and power.

In any case, seldom does ‘anaw have a positive meaning (Num 12:3 ‘the meek or humble Moses’). Most of the time it refers to the afflicted, humbled, subjugated, lowly, and the frequent application is to the poor (e.g. Ps 9:12,18; 10:12,17; Pr 14:21; Isa 11:4; Am 2:7). Moreover, the root stem here is ‘anah’, which, as we shall soon see, has the basic meaning of ‘oppressed.’ Consequently, the people who are referred to as ‘meek’ in this beatitude are actually the ‘oppressed poor who are humbled and afflicted.’ Our hosts understand little of this philological excursus, but they tune in very well.

What, Not How or Who. Before we move on to the next beatitude, a word of caution. The beatitude tells us that one of the blessings of the Kingdom is a new earth. It tells us what Jesus and his God want for humankind. It stops there. It does not say how this will be brought about or who is to bring it about. However, just the ‘what’ – namely, that salvation or Kingdom means a new earth – is already one giant step away from the Second Look for which final salvation is heaven.

You Shall Laugh. They Shall Be Comforted

Kingdom of God As Laughter and Comfort.

They Shall Be Satisfied

Kingdom of God As Food.

Matthew’s Moralizing Tendency. Here and elsewhere, Matthew has the tendency to shift from the concrete-sociological (‘no food in one’s stomach’) to the religious-moral (‘hungry for righteousness’), as can be observed also below (from ‘poor’ to ‘poor in spirit’). This moralizing tendency, a Matthean characteristic, is due to the social circumstances in which Matthew wrote. He was ministering to a community where the matter of contention was righteousness or uprightness. Who was upright? The Jew of the mother religion? Or the break-away Jesus-follower? Matthew’s concern was to show that Christian righteousness was as good as, if not better than, Jewish uprightness (Mt 5:20). Thus, the reformulation of the present beatitude. When this moralizing tendency is present, we have Matthew’s adaptation and modification of the original statement of Jesus.

Luke: Closer to Jesus. It is Luke that more accurately reports what Jesus actually said. On the lips of Jesus, the beatitude referred to bodily hunger and to physical food. The Kingdom of God means rice, fish, vegetables, meat for hungry people. Bodily food for bodily hunger. But – goes my Second Look rejoinder — how can that be when food is ‘material’? This is a stumbling block for the Second Look for which only things ‘spiritual’ are to be catalogued for eternal salvation. Can something ‘material’ 28 then be part of eternal salvation? A simple response for the moment is: it can be and is so for Jesus. Here is a bit of learning I picked up along the way: when tempted to be more Catholic than Jesus, resist. It is one temptation worth resisting.

Nourishing Meal. As we ponder this, we share a sparse meal of root crops and salt with our hosts. But they and we hope that one day their and our continuing education and common struggle will bring more nourishing meals to their tables. That will indeed be a nutritive bit of Kingdom of God in palpable form.

For the Hungry. Take note that the blessing is not food as such. It is food for the hungry. The beatitude does not bestow the blessing of more food for the (over) satiated. Certain people in the world overproduce grain, are overfed and dump the leftovers of their national economy into the sea. That is not the sort of situation to which Jesus refers in his beatitude. In fact, the opposite is true. Some of the harshest words of Luke, and perhaps of Jesus himself, are found in the value judgment pronounced on the overfed. ‘Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry’ (Lk 6:25).

Yours Is the Kingdom of God

Differences Between Matthew and Luke.

First Difference. Luke has ‘Kingdom of God’ whereas Matthew has ‘Kingdom of heaven.’ We are sufficiently familiar by now with the Kingdom of God. But what is this Kingdom of heaven? We have touched on this earlier. But now is the time for a fuller explanation. At the outset, it must be said emphatically that ‘Kingdom of heaven’ and ‘heaven’ are two very different things. Why so? The matter is simple, if one holds on to the elementary biblical fact that sometimes the word ‘heaven’ substitutes for the word ‘God.’

Heaven: Entity, Word. Heaven, in biblical culture is an entity, commonly understood as a ‘place’ up above where God ordinarily resides. Thus, in the Lord’s Prayer we find: ‘Our Father who are in heaven.’ There too, according to our Faith, is where good people go after death.

Now, normally the word ‘heaven’ designates the entity heaven. But there are times when the word ‘heaven’ does not refer to the entity ‘heaven.’ This happens when the word ‘heaven’ substitutes for the word ‘God.’ To show reverence for the sacred name of God, the Jews avoided pronouncing it and, instead of the word ‘God,’ they used other words, such as ‘the Glory,’ ‘the Power’ (Mk 14:62), ‘the Almighty’ (2 Cor 6:18), ‘Heaven.’ For example: "I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven [=against God] and before you’" (Lk 15:18)—are the words of the so-called prodigal son to his earthly father.

‘Kingdom of Heaven’ and ‘Kingdom of God.’ In the phrase ‘Kingdom of heaven,’ the word ‘heaven’ substitutes for the word ‘God.’ For example, consider the same statement of Jesus in the two parallel versions of Luke and Matthew:

‘Let the little children come to me … for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs’ (Lk 18:16)

Let the little children come to me … for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs’ (Mt 19:14)

‘Kingdom of heaven’ and ‘Kingdom of God’ mean exactly one and the same thing, and neither of them refer to the entity, heaven. Each of them refers to a new earth where there is food and laughter.

Matthew’s Poor in Spirit. Who are Matthew’s ‘poor in spirit’? Here are two possible meanings:

(a) Matthew is referring to people who are inwardly poor, i.e., humble. In this meaning, anyone, economically rich or poor, can be poor in spirit. Matthew has the tendency to shift from the concrete-sociological (‘poor’) to the religious-moral (‘poor in spirit’), as we have observed above. Again, we have Matthew’s adaptation and modification of an original statement of Jesus, which is still found in Luke.

(b) Matthew is talking about the concrete-sociological poor who, in their economic poverty, are religiously (=‘in spirit’) humble and open to God’s salvation. In this meaning, the ‘poor in spirit’ are still the economically poor but the religious dimension is given emphasis.

Poor and Oppressed. In fact ‘poor and oppressed’ is the most accurate expression. Why? Because—our hosts submit with good grace to more philology—the underlying Hebrew word ‘anawim’ or ‘aniyim in the Hebrew Scriptures frequently referred to (a) people who were oppressed (b) due to economic poverty. (See Ps 37:11; Ex 22:25; Lev 23:22, etc.)

The root word is ‘anah which has some or all of the following connotations: look down, browbeat, afflict, humble, force, trouble, weaken, oppress, put down, become low, humiliate, stoop, mishandle. As you can see, ‘anah conveys the meaning of oppression or violence being done to someone of a low status.

The violence or oppression can be political (Gen 15:13), personal-psychological (Gen 16:6), cultural (Gen 16:9), social (Ex 22:22), sexual (Gen 34:2; 2 Sam 13:12-32), economic (Isa 11:4). ‘Anawim in actual life, then, are people who suffer some form of oppression; frequently the oppression is due to economic poverty (Ex 22:25; Lev 19:10; Dt 15:11; Job 24:4; Ps 10:12,17, 72:12; Isa 3:14; Jer 22:16; Ezek 18:12; Am 8:4).

Kingdom of God As Justice and Liberation for the Poor. We return to our original quest. What is the meaning of Kingdom of God in this beatitude: ‘Blessed are you poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God’? According to our key, we should look at the second part. The second part already explicitly speaks about the Kingdom of God. But can we explore further? What is implied? Recall that a beatitude is a proclamation of salvation. What then is a proclamation of salvation to the poor and oppressed? The answer to that question will lead us to discover one underlying meaning of the Kingdom of God.

That underlying meaning of Kingdom of God in this beatitude is: justice and liberation. The salvation which this beatitude proclaims to the poor and oppressed should at least include their deliverance from poverty and oppression. In other words, salvation in this particular beatitude, whatever else it is, must include what we call today liberation and justice.

Therefore, the first beatitude makes sense only if it means: Blessed are the poor and oppressed because the biblical God wants liberation and justice for them. The words ‘justice and liberation’ are contemporary words of our time. They are not Jesus’ words. Yet, they are the sum and substance of the very first beatitude that falls from the lips of Jesus! And they make supreme sense to our hosts. Try your glasses, if they don’t to you.

Humane Life, Not Wealth. Note, however, that Jesus does not say ‘Blessed are you ‘anawim, for you will become wealthy.’ Jesus does not proffer wealth as the antithesis of poverty. Wealth has a minus valuation in Jesus’ books (Lk 6:24; 12:16-21; 33-34; 16:19-23; Mk 10:23-25). If we may read the mind of Jesus, a life worthy of a human being is what he wants for the poor. To be able to own and run a transnational mining enterprise would not be Jesus’ idea of liberation for our hosts, the indigenous peoples. Neither should we be miserly, however, and allow the poor, as we sometimes patronizingly do, only ‘the basic necessities.’

At the Heart of Jesus’ Message. When I was a theology student, we were made to identify and memorize the most important tenets of the Faith. To the best of my recollection, social justice and liberation was not one of them. In fact, a few years later, Christians who proclaimed and worked for social justice were called communists and were arrested, tortured, and killed. And Church people were deathly afraid of the word ‘liberation.’

And yet there it is, at the very heart of Jesus’ message. Why have we missed out? Because it is merely implicit in the Kingdom of God? Hardly, I think. One reason for missing out is the greater emphasis given to abstract dogmatic truths and less to Jesus’ simple, down-to-earth commentaries about real life. In any case, as a Second Looker I would find it difficult to extract justice and liberation from a Second Look concept of the Kingdom of God.

Economic, Not Moral, Standing. Another thing to note: the poor are blessed not because they are upright or virtuous. ‘Poor’ or ‘poverty’ here does not refer to a moral standing. It refers to an economic condition. Whether the poor are simple, open, pious or gifted with any other noble quality is beside the point. Jesus is referring to their situation of privation, want, and oppression. His words are a pronouncement of reversal, issuing a manifesto for humane living, justice, liberation.

Equivalents. Note that this beatitude on the poor is just another way of saying ‘Good news to the poor.’ ‘Good news to the poor’ and ‘Blessed are the poor …’ are equivalents. We have repetition and variety – an indication of the weight of this all-important datum.

Some More Cartloads

Three Kinds of Poverty. In the New Testament, we can discern three different kinds of poverty. It is good to keep them apart. Otherwise, we fall into no-sense statements such as, ‘God loves the poor. He wants us to be like the poor.’ This makes no sense. The first sentence is correct. The second is wrong.

One is the poverty of destitution. It is dehumanizing. This is what Jesus’ original beatitude was about. It is not a blessing. It is an evil which the God of the Bible wants liberation from. 29 This is the poverty that the majority of the world’s population, including most indigenous peoples, experience.

The other one is poverty of spirit. This is what Matthew speaks about. It most likely meant humility. In later times, it got to mean detachment from possessions. This poverty of spirit is good and is a high form of spirituality.

There is a third kind, which, in religious circles is referred to as ‘evangelical poverty.’ This is the practice of leaving home, family, possessions in the following of Jesus. Thus the first followers of Jesus left their boats, nets, parents, servants and followed Jesus (Mk 1:16-20). Levi left his tax collection office (Mk 2:14; cf. Lk 8:2; See also Mk 10:17-20). This form of poverty is, of course, commendable.

If we mix up these three types of poverty, we are bound to make confusing and ambiguous statements, such as: ‘Poverty is good.’ ‘God calls us to be poor.’ Which poor? Which poverty?

Both poverty of spirit and evangelical poverty are praiseworthy. Men and women in religious life have, in the course of centuries, taken vows of poverty. Being candid about it, we must admit that often on the stage of real life, we religious vow evangelical poverty while the lay people practice it. And the poor, like our hosts, practice the poverty of destitution.

The ideal would be that those who practice poverty of spirit and evangelical poverty would band with the poor and uproot dehumanizing poverty from our earth.

The Poor, the Hungry, the Weeping, the Meek. The first three or four beatitudes are about the poor, the hungry, the sorrowing and the afflicted. These beatitudes refer to one group of people, the ‘anawim, the poor and oppressed. They are not therefore three different sets of people. They are the ‘anawim who are poor, hungry and weeping, afflicted. And the salvation that Jesus wants for them is liberation, food, laughter and land. People like our hosts are the addressees of these beatitudes.

‘Spiritual Gifts?’ There could, however, be a lingering question: does not Jesus wish more than just liberation, justice, food, land for the poor? Does he not want also spiritual gifts for them? The response is: of course, he does. He wishes gifts of the spirit to all of us, poor or non-poor alike. But let us be clear on this: in the face of the ‘anawim and poverty, his unequivocal wish is liberation; in the face of the hungry and hunger, his unequivocal response is food. And this is what he unequivocably states in the beatitudes. There is no side-stepping the issue for Jesus. There is no stealthy retreat into irrelevant sermonizing which skirts around the summons of the moment.

In my younger days, my idea of a retreat for workers was to teach them prayers, to remind them of the commandments, especially sobriety, obedience to authority, fidelity to their spouses and dedication to their family, to make them sorry for their sins, to talk to them about God’s love, to bring them to the sacraments – but nary a word about their human right to food, land, health, decent wages, participation and organization. I am grateful to people like our hosts who have given me several jolts. They have given me a re-education in the University of Life.

How to Avoid Pitfall 1

Correct Method. With simple pick and shovel, we have just quarried a goldmine. The gold nuggets have been the data and insights about the true nature of the Kingdom of God and salvation. Since there are many pitfalls, one cannot be sufficiently forewarned about the correct method for digging.

Focus on Second, Ignore First Part of Beatitudes. In quarrying the beatitudes for Jesus’ understanding of the Kingdom of God, one must focus on the second part and ignore the first part.

For, the question is: What is salvation or Kingdom of God? And this is answered in the second part of each beatitude.

It is the second part which contains the blessings of salvation.

The first part tells us about who is to take possession of the Kingdom of God or what human situation is entitled to salvation. The first part merely indicates the recipients or the human situation for whom salvation is envisioned.

For example: Blessed are the pure in heart (=recipient) for they shall see God (=salvation or Kingdom of God).

Another important company secret: the first part does not contain virtues. Or, more accurately, it does not intend to propose virtues to be practiced. More of this in the next section. Nor does it contain blessings to be enjoyed.

First Part Second Part

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. (Lk)

… poor in spirit, … the kingdom of heaven. (Mt)

… you who are hungry now, … you will be filled. (Lk)

… those who hunger for righteousness, … they will be filled (Mt)

… you who weep now, … you will laugh. (Lk)

… those who mourn, … they will be comforted. (Mt)

… the meek, … they will inherit the earth. (Mt)

… the merciful, … will receive mercy. (Mt)

… the pure in heart, … they will see God. (Mt)

… the peacemakers, … they will be called children of God. (Mt)

How to Avoid Pitfall 2

Proclamation, Not Exhortation. Second, we must insist that the beatitudes are proclamations or announcements. They are not exhortations. There is a big difference between a proclamation and an exhortation. ‘I announce an exemption from exams’ is a proclamation. ‘Work hard on your studies’ is an exhortation. ‘There is plenty of gold in this mountain’ is an announcement. ‘Let us put in our best efforts’ is an exhortation.

You treat the beatitudes as exhortations when you hold views such as: ‘The beatitudes give us a blueprint for living.’ ‘The beatitudes are a list of virtues to be practiced.’ ‘God blesses poverty.’ ‘Poverty is a virtue.’ ‘The beatitudes teach us to be poor.’ ‘Poverty is the will of God.’ ‘Let us be poor.’ ‘In order to enter heaven, you must be poor.’ ‘Let us practice poverty.’ ‘God wants us to be like the poor whom he loves.’ These and similar statements are exhortative in nature. That is not the way to treat the beatitudes.

Why is it easy to slip and stumble? Because the language of the beatitudes is slippery ground. ‘Blessed are the poor, etc.’ seems to have a positive ring. It seems to applaud the poor and poverty, etc. That is the slippery part. The beatitudes announce various blessings; it is important to know why. Is it because it is good to be poor, because poverty is a virtue, because God wants people to practice poverty? No. People are declared blessed or fortunate in that a form of salvation is being announced to them. ‘Blessed are you poor, yours is the Kingdom of God’ does not mean, ‘Fortunate are you, because poverty is good, and God will reward you with the Kingdom.’ On the contrary, it means, ‘God wants you to be liberated from your poverty. Fortunate are you, because to you is announced your liberation from poverty.’

When you say to a ward of cancer patients: ‘Blessed are you, cancer patients, because yours is a new miracle drug against cancer,’ you do not mean that cancer is good, a virtue to be practiced, a condition to be desired. You mean the opposite. Cancer is a non-blessing and you are announcing liberation from cancer. That is why they are fortunate.

Kerygmatic; Declarative. It pays to know what kind of language is used in the beatitudes. It is declarative, not imperative. Although the tone begins to change with Matthew, the beatitudes were originally kerygma (announcement of good news) and not paraenesis (exhortation to virtue and good moral acts). They were joyful indicatives, not imperatives. They announce, they do not offer counsel or advice or command. Originally, that is, on the lips of Jesus, the beatitudes were intended to be announcements of salvation: ‘I am proclaiming such-and-such salvation to you who are (already) poor, pure in heart, hungry. And so, blessed, happy, graced, fortunate are you.’

Not Virtues. The beatitudes then are not recommendations to certain virtues as in statements such as ‘Poverty is a virtue.’ ‘Hunger is a virtue.’ ‘Purity of heart is a virtue.’ Does this mean that a positive quality, such as purity of heart, is not a virtue and that Jesus does not exhort us to it? Purity of heart is indeed a virtue and Jesus strongly exhorts his followers to it, but not in and through the beatitudes. The exhortation is found at great length, for example, in the whole chapter 7 of Mark’s gospel. Mark 7 is exhortative. The beatitudes are announcements.

Not Blueprint for Living. They do not offer advice towards a certain way of living. ‘Be poor!’ ‘Be pure in heart!’ ‘Be a peacemaker.’ ‘Be hungry!’ ‘Strive to be hungry; salvation will be yours.’ The beatitudes take for granted that the hearers are already poor or pure in heart or a peacemaker or hungry.

Missalettes and Songbooks. All this needs to be explained and stressed. Many preachers, even theologians, need to be alerted to this elementary aspect of the beatitudes. I once came across a missalette that said something to this effect: ‘This Sunday’s gospel is about the beatitudes. Jesus here teaches us how to live. He gives us a plan of life. He gives us a blueprint for living.’ Thus, unwittingly, we make poverty, hunger, sorrow a Christian way of living! No wonder that without our intending it, we preach a pie-in-the-sky religion. Mag-antus aron masantos.30 Some of our religious songs, too, inadvertently treat the beatitudes as exhortations when they sing about poverty as a Jesus-virtue to be imitated. Mapapalad kayong mahihirap … mapapalad ang mga katulad ni Hesus.31

Not a Moral Code. Not Conditions for Entry. The beatitudes do not offer precepts to follow. They are not a moral code. They do not list rules of conduct. The moral code is another aspect of Jesus’ message, the ethical aspect, which will be taken up later in Stopover 14.

They are not conditions for entry into the Kingdom of God. ‘In order to enter the Kingdom of God, you must be poor or pure or hungry.’

Some Samples:

For the sake of our pastoral concerns in the Third World, I risk being repetitive. Let us take some samples.

Not: ‘It is good to be poor and oppressed, for yours is the Kingdom of God. God loves you. Suffer your poverty for the sake of the Kingdom.’

Rather: ‘God wants you to be free from poverty. Therefore, rejoice. You are blessed.’ From this understanding today’s ‘Anawim can rightly draw the unspoken truth: Therefore God is in solidarity with us in our struggle.

Not: ‘Be resigned to your family’s hunger, for you shall be satisfied in heaven.’

Rather: ‘I take for granted that you are pure in heart. And to you who are (already) pure in heart I proclaim the salvation of seeing God.’

Criterion for Interpretation: The Practice of Jesus. The beatitudes do pose a problem of interpretation. They may look blissfully simple. But the way they are expressed is, in fact, ambivalent. We must recognize this fact. They can be taken to be declarative. They can also be imperative. In fact, at first blush, they sound imperative. And this is why we, even pastors and theologians, are misled.

How to choose the correct reading? Happily, there is a deciding factor—the practice and actions of Jesus. Interpret Jesus’ words through his practice and actions. When Jesus encountered the hungry, the sick, the sorrowing, what was his practice? What did he do? Did he counsel hunger, sickness, sorrow as virtues to be practiced? Did he not rather have the people fed, healed, and consoled? It is in that spirit that we must interpret the beatitudes of Jesus.

When in doubt about anything theological, avoid speculation; go back to Jesus and his practice. Interpret what Jesus says through what he does. This is a safe and sure criterion.

Additional Cartloads

Promised Future Only?

Let us consider one possible objection. The salvation proclaimed in the beatitudes is still for the future. What good is that for people who are suffering now? It is true that in the beatitudes the blessings of salvation are mostly future. Later in our journey we will encounter signposts that talk about the present aspect of the Kingdom. These blessings which Jesus proclaimed in the beatitudes were not just future blessings but also blessings for the here-and-now. But even in the first beatitude, one can find a hint in the use of the present tense of the verb: ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God’ (Lk 6:20).

Moreover, it is shown by Jesus’ practice. It was a practice which was undoubtedly exercised in favor of the oppressed poor of his own here-and-now. In fact, the beatitudes and their promises must have derived their credibility from the tangible here-and-now blessings which Jesus wrought. But more of the present aspect later in our journey ….

The What, Not the By Whom, When, How. We have explored the beatitudes for the meaning of the Kingdom of God and in the course of it, we have discovered only what the Kingdom of God is. What I had said earlier bears repeating: we have not yet dealt with the by whom, the when, the how. The beatitudes convey information about what the Kingdom of God is and what the God of the First Look wants for humankind.

But the beatitudes do not tell us by whom this Kingdom of God is to be brought about, nor when and how it will come about. There will be other signposts for this. I underscore this in order to avoid expecting too much from the beatitudes or reading too much into them. The beatitudes tell us what blessings the God of the Bible wants for us and especially for people like our indigenous hosts. Impatient as we might understandably be, we cannot yet derive answers about ‘who’ are to bring about these blessings and ‘how’ they will come about.

Why No Explicit Beatitude on Women? We cannot expect Jesus to be a twenty-first century person like us. Our feminist consciousness has been awakened and raised. However, Jesus was one who began to depart from customary ways of treating women. One of the more obvious examples is his formulation of the divorce prohibition, where the woman, not just the man, is seen as a possible litigant (Mk 10:12).

In the Christian tradition, Jesus can be considered as having initiated the movement towards women’s equality and liberation … or pointed our steps toward it. It has taken twenty centuries and we are still far from home. We are still exiles in a land of patriarchy and hardness of heart. But women, and men too, have begun to lead us home where gender is a way of being human, not a weapon for the ego.

Beatitudes, Not Parables. Much treasure, one spot—that is what the beatitudes have been for us in our search for the meaning of the Kingdom of God. Others have tapped the parables. We have not and we will not. The theme of most of the parables is indeed the Kingdom of God. However, while the parables give us some aspects of the Kingdom of God, they say little about its basic nature and substance. They exhibit its characteristics rather than ‘it.’

The parables assume that the Kingdom of God is a new world of blessings and merely give us some of its features. The Mustard Seed (Mk 4:30-32; Mt 13:31, 32; Lk 13:18-19) is about small beginnings. The Sower (Mk 4:3-8; Mt 13:3-8; Lk 8:5-8) is about various responses to the proclamation. The Lost Sheep Story (Mt 18:12-13; Lk 15:4-6) is about God’s care for the lost. The Pearl (Mt 13:45-46) is about the great value of the Kingdom. The ten Bridesmaids (Mt 25:1-12) is about watchful waiting for the Kingdom.

The Beatitudes: Original Words of Jesus? Before we conclude this visit, we would like to address a scholarly concern of one of our co-travelers. Are each of the beatitudes an original utterance of Jesus? Well, perhaps not letter by letter, word for word. But the general thrust and spirit is certainly Jesus. All of the beatitudes are of the same color-scheme as the core of the Jesus-story. And what have we so far seen of this core? Well, we have seen the Jesus of the Kingdom proclamation, of the mission statements. We have more to see as we proceed.

And how do we proceed? Not by major premise to minor premise to conclusion. Rather as we proceed, our roadsigns reveal various vignettes of Jesus. A vignette, according to a dictionary, is ‘a picture, photograph, film image, etc. with no definite border, shading off gradually at the edges into the background’ and (I would like to add) into one another. I might also add, that our vignettes are like living cells, reciprocally interacting with another and growing together to eventually take the shape and form of the biblical Jesus.

The Aggregate

New World, New History. Working hard, avoiding pitfalls we and our genial indigenous hosts have found some precious ore: The Kingdom of God which emerges from the study of the beatitudes, is a new world and a new history. What does this new world look like? How does this new history look? It is a world and history where the oppressed poor of our present human history will have justice, liberation, joy; will inherit the earth; will be satisfied; and where people in general will experience compassion; will have a direct experience of God and will be called children of God.

This new world is far from the ethereal heaven I once thought our ultimate destiny to be! We will see that we, like Jesus, are called to fashion something of this new world—an alternative economic, social, political, religio-cultural order—in our here-and-now. And, as in the case of Jesus, people will believe that the future new world can and will come only if they see samples and anticipations of it now.

We have been so pre-occupied with prospecting, that until now we have failed to notice the trees, so tall, so sturdy; the brooks, the ancient boulders, the brown mud, the wild vegetation, the earthworm. All together they put on a symphony of stillness. We join them.

Be Still and Know…