Holy Week has its readings. Along with that I am still working my way through my “ancient wells” Scriptures and have come once again to the Sermon on the Mount.
It is tough to concentrate because I just finished Dallas Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy, which focuses on the Sermon on the Mount so my mind is already full on this passage right now. Yet, in Holy Week, I can’t get away from the beauty of what Jesus is doing in the Beatitudes.
Dallas Willard’s contention is that this isn’t a list to “attain” in our lives. This is a list of losers in Jesus’ culture. In a Roman world of power, lust, and greed, the poor, the meek, etc., get shoved aside. And here comes the Kingdom of God blessing the losers. The message Willard sees is clear:
No one is beyond Kingdom blessing!
We watch our own world focus on power and domination. We watch the world systems lift up power dynamics. And in all of it, people get run over.
Famine victims in the Sudan. Refugees in Gaza. Homeless in America. Immigrants at the borders. They become pawns in our power games.
They are beat down, cast aside, and ignored. In our power systems, they don’t matter.
They matter to God. And the Kingdom of God blesses them.
Even these people, the ones sitting at a border looking for relief, the ones huddled in decimated camps waiting for food trucks in Gaza, even these people are not beyond Kingdom blessing.
This is Holy Week. Jesus came for these lovely losers.
Apprentice 2 Jesus 