When Jesus says blessed are the poor in spirit and those who mourn and are meek and merciful, he is not giving preemptive encouragement for the challenging times that surely will come in our lives. He is not saying, if you someday have sadness and grief, you will be blessed, or if you are wronged or persecuted, you can count on God using it in some way. What he describes are not possibilities, nor probabilities, but the actual current realities of those who follow him.
There is no “maybe” in any of his statements, and there is no future tense. He says, “Blessed are you—right now—when…,” not “Blessed are you—in the future—if….” The magnet of God’s blessing tugs strongest at those who already know poverty of spirit and grief, who know humility and loss and what it means to hunger for the food of God. They lean toward mercy, probably because they have suffered the withholding of mercy in their own lives. They see life simply, with pure hearts, because events have stripped away the clouds of ego and pretense. They tend to be peacemakers because they already have experienced persecution and blame. When Jesus says, “Blessed are you when…,” he is talking to folks who already have known the heavy boot of oppression and are uniquely prepared to rise up and follow. People who are low in spirit, hungering for justice and hoping for some hope, right now.
Until we, too, are stripped down to the bare bones of our need for God, until we know the depths of our own vulnerability, we are unlikely to experience the radical good news of the beatitudes. We have much to learn from these early followers. They were not seeking adventure or prestige or a break from their regular jobs. They were not trying to please others or adhere to religious tradition. They were not trying to “get it right” or save their souls. They were trying to stay alive, to come alive, to touch and to know what is real. People followed him, not because they had gifts to bring or ideas to offer, but because they had nowhere else to go. Until we run out of other options to protect us against what we fear, we will not understand the nature of this life to which Jesus calls us. We will not fully know his way of blessing.
