Matthew 5:1-12
The Beatitudes
1 Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2 and he began to teach them saying:
3 "Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
5 Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called sons of God.
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 "Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
We need God and His Son, and maybe we need Them more than we think...But there seems to be this unintentional lapse in our mood and feelings toward God and His Son from the sublime to the trivial -to the I don't want to talk about Them and Their importance in our daily lives...Jesus said He is Truth...And we are not standing up against those who speak falsehoods which are guised as Truth...And when we have reached the "good-life" it is not good enough, because more is wanted...In God and His Son, the Truth and contentment are found...In Truth and in contentment there is a gentleness, meekness, righteousness, and a willingness to serve others as Jesus served when He dwelt among us...Jesus taught us this mutual community service and love for each other...
Theologian Stanley Hauerwas writes these things on Truth: “The threat to truth for Christians comes not from the difficulty of developing an unproblematic correspondence theory of truth, but rather from the lies that speak us disguised as truth...Those are the lies Bonhoeffer rightly feared made possible the rise of Hitler, and the ongoing lies necessary to sustain Hitler in power...The failure of the church to oppose Hitler was but the outcome of the failure of Christians to speak the truth to one another and to the world.”...“All these lies, whether their authors know it or not, harbor an element of violence; organized lying always tends to destroy whatever it has decided to negate, although only totalitarian governments have consciously adopted lying as a first step to murder.”...
On the subject of society Hauerwas says: “As a society of unbelief, Western culture is devoid of a sense of journey, of adventure, because it lacks belief in much more than the cultivation of an ever-shrinking horizon of self-preservation and and self-expression.”...“The problem with our society is not that democracy has not worked, but that it has, and the results are less than good...We have been freed to pursue happiness and “every citizen has been granted the desired freedom and material goods in such quantity and of such quality as to guarantee in theory the achievement of happiness...In the process, however, one psychological detail has been overlooked: the constant desire to have still more things and a still better life and the struggle to obtain them imprints many Western faces with worry and even depression, though it is customary to conceal such feelings”...So because of this Hauerwas says “No wonder modern humanity, even as it loudly proclaims its freedom and power to choose, is really an impotent herd drive this way and that, paralyzed by the disconnectedness of it all...It's just one damn thing after another.”...
And on who God is, God's Kingdom, His Word and His Son he says these things: “Gentleness is given to those who have learned that God will not have His kingdom triumph through the violence of the world, for such a triumph came through the meekness of a cross.”...“The omnipotent Grace of God rules all world-occurrence as providence...But it does so from this starting point...It is at work here, in this particular, central sphere of history.”...“The basis for the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount is not what works, but rather who God is.”...“the Word of God makes its way not by argument but as men and women bear witness to what has happened.”...And St. Paul was one who bore witness to the gospel of Jesus, Hauerwas says: “Paul’s gospel is centered on “God’s liberating invasion of the cosmos...Christ’s LOVE enacted in the cross has the power to change the world because it is embodied in the new community of mutual service.”...“We think it is really very simple: Jesus had to die because we needed and need to be forgiven...But, ironically, such a focus shifts attention from Jesus to us...This is a fatal turn, I fear, because as soon as we begin to think this is all about us, about our need for forgiveness, bathos drapes the cross, hiding from us the reality that here we first and foremost see God.”...“Jesus is the parable of the Father's LOVE given to transform us so that we might be drawn into the new creation called the kingdom of God.”...