progressive involvement: Lectionary blogging: All Saints' Sunday, Matthew 5: 1-12

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

‘Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Literally: Seeing the crowds, he went up into the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And opening his mouth, he taught them, saying, "Blessed (are) the poor of spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed (are) those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed (are) the gentle of spirit, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed (are) the ones who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be filled. Blessed (are) the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Blessed (are) the pure of heart, for they will see God. Blessed (are) the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed (are) the ones being persecuted for the cause of justice, for of them is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed (are) you when they revile you and persecute you and say every evil toward you falsely on account of me. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad for your reward is great in the heavens, for in this manner they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

The practice of commemorating martyrs on the anniversaries of their deaths began early in church history. An all-night vigil would be held at some designated place, often the place of martyrdom, then eucharist would be celebrated in the early morning.

The problem was that the number of martyrs was exceeding the days available to commemorate them. In response to this problem, a day was set aside for "all martyrs" in AD 270. In AD 609, the day of May 13 was designated to observe "St. Mary and All Martyrs."

In the fourth century, Ireland had converted to Christianity. Prior to that time, druidism was the native religion. Druidic priests acted as intermediaries between humans and the Other World. The druids were attracted to things on the "boundary." They liked mist, for example, because it is not quite rain, but not quite not rain either. They liked twilight--not quite day, not quite night.

They divided the year into the light part of the year, and the dark part. The swing from light to dark was considered to be late October. It was at this time of year that the "membrane"--the boundary--separating the living and the dead was believed to be at its thinnest. It was even thought that communication between the living and the dead was possible.

Old religions don't die out so much. They get re-interpreted. The church was bothered by people still observing certain features of the old religion. In the mid 8th century, it moved the date for St. Mary and All Martyrs to November 1, and changed the name to All Saints Day. It was a way of "baptizing" the late October observances of the druids and re-interpreting them in a Christian way. People could still observe the season, even encounter the dead, after their fashion, but they could now do it in a Christian context. In other words, if people still wanted to spook around on All Hallows Eve, at least they could be Christians about it.

Many churches observe All Saints Sunday by reading a "necrology," a list of people who have died within the past year. This is certainly in keeping with the ancient roots of the day, especially when combined with All Souls Day on November 2, and especially in Mexico with its "dia de la muerta"--the day of the dead.

Personally, I avoid this practice, not because it's a bad idea to recognize the dead, but because the memory of those who have died is so powerful emotionally that it tends to overshadow the richer associations of the day.

All Saints Day is not primarily a churchified memorial day. It's a day for celebrating the church throughout the centuries. This includes the church of the past, of course, but it also includes the church of the present and the future. Commemorating the dead is primarily backward-looking, while the true message of All Saints Day is forward-looking. It celebrates a vision of the future in which the people of God are assembled in joy and celebration in heaven.

The Beatitudes fit well with All Saints Day since they call for and anticipate the reign of God. As has been oft-noted, they are the "charter" of the kingdom of heaven. This is how heaven--and God--operates.

To me, the interpretive key lies in the introduction. Note the formality of the language. Jesus "saw" the crowds, and goes up "into" the mountain. Mountains are places of special events and proclamations in Matthew's gospel. The mention of the mountain is a signal that something special is about to happen.

Jesus then sat down. Today, speakers stand up when they have something to say. In the time of Jesus, they sat down. His disciples "came to him," says Matthew. Imagine this as theater. Jesus went up to the place of special revelation. He sat down. His disciples "came to him" and arrayed themselves around him. There is a tableau of formality to this description. The table has been set for special proclamation.

To whom was Jesus making this special proclamation? In 5: 1, we are told that Jesus saw the crowds. At the close of the sermon on the mount, which the Beatitudes introduce, "the crowds were astonished at his teaching" (7: 28). On the other hand, when the disciples "came to him," Jesus "opened his mouth and taught them." It appears, therefore, that Jesus was primarily instructing the disciples, but doing so within ear-shot of the crowds.

Jesus is teaching about the "reign of God," which is not, incidentally, solely about life in heaven. The "reign of God" is meant for the here-and-now as well as in heaven. This is what we pray for in the Lord's Prayer: "...thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven..."--or, as my seminary advisor used to say, "The Beatitudes are there for the purpose of being done." (Luther said the Beatitudes were there to remind us of our hopelessness of fulfilling the law and its impossible demands, which is true enough, but Luther tended to say that about everything.)

The disciples are being instructed in the ways of God in the context of a larger audience, the crowds. As Fred Craddock notes, "The presence of the multitudes keeps the disciples honest as to who they are and what price is to be paid for the commitments." Put another way, the disciples represent the church, and the crowds help to hold the disciples (church) accountable for the teaching of Jesus.

Beatitudes were not a new thing in the world of Jesus. Usually, they were common sense sayings that expressed what everyone already knew. They were short sayings that expressed the conventional wisdom. "Blessed are those on a low-fat diet, for they will have healthy arteries"--that sort of thing.

Jesus turns all this upside down. Nobody would have associated blessings with being poor or in grief. In the reign of God, however, God's favor is upon those who have been left behind--the little, the lone, the least, and the lost. These marginalized ones--the poor, lost, and bereft--constituted the major constituency of Jesus. They found his message of God's favor to be empowering and uplifting.

The Greek word we translate as "blessed" is makarioi. Makarioi refers to God's favor. It could also be translated as "honored." "Happy," as some translations have it, doesn't work. The original French translation of the Jerusalem Bible had debonair, which, while it does have a certain appeal, doesn't really work either. Debonair are the poor in spirit?

There are nine beatitudes in Matthew--two groups of four, followed by a final one. The first four beatitudes speak to the victims of injustice, those in poverty, grief, the meek, and those with a deep desire for justice.

Greek has two words for "poor"--penes and ptochos. Penes means "working poor," and is contrasted with plousios, people with land who don't work. Ptochos, on the other hand, means being destitute. Penes means having to work. Ptochos means having to beg.

Matthew makes this "poor in spirit," which, a bit unfortunately, tends to spiritualize the text for modern readers and takes the accent off ptochos. Who isn't "poor in spirit" at least some of the time? That might preach, and not inappropriately so, but Matthew's emphasis seems more to be on those who understand themselves as being in solidarity with the ptochos. Such people would likely have constituted a majority of the listening crowds.

People in the time of Jesus were regularly forced off their land, and many--perhaps as many as 15-20% of the population--would have been destitute. Moreover, another 60-70% of the people stood in real danger of being forced to join that already large core of the homeless and destitute.

The second "makarism"--"blessed are those who mourn"--dove-tails with the first. One way to become destitute in the first century was to lose one's place in their family. Family identity was exceptionally important in the ancient world. People were known as the "son of" or "daughter of" their father and mother. One could be reduced to ptochos--begging--through loss of land or loss of family. Family could be lost through the death of one's parents, or through being cast out of the family. (This would be especially applicable to early Christians, c. AD 80, who had been tossed out of their family because they were followers of Jesus.)

Loss of land and loss of family would make a person "meek." Either one represented loss of status. This was especially important in a society where status revolved around honor and shame. Loss of land and/or family could move a person from an honored place in society to a shameful one--from high social standing within the context of one's village to social ostracism.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn and those who are meek. Blessed are those, in other words, who are down-and-out, rejected, destitute, without a home. They have honor with God. They are not despised and rejected. They are lifted up, held in high esteem, blessed by God. This is "preferential option for the poor."

These first three "makarisms" are underlined by the fourth: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice"--dikaiosunane. One suspects that Matthew chose the words "hunger" and "thirst" with a purpose--they recall those who genuinely did hunger and thirst--and then turned these words in the direction not only of food and drink, but also justice. Blessed are those who yearn for a world where all are honored and none are shamed.

If the first four "makarisms" are for those who lack justice, the next four "makarisms" are for those who work for justice. They promise reward at the end of time for those who live into the reign of God now--the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and (again) the persecuted.

Mercy has a wide range of meaning, everything from forgiving sins to healing the sick. "Pure in heart" is about the center of a person being "cleansed"--katharoi, from which we get "catharsis"--from the old way of living. The "pure in heart" are "cleaned up," in other words, from heirarchy and support of what Walter Wink calls "the domination system."

The "peacemakers" are those who bring God's shalom into expression in the world. This is in marked contrast to the supposed "peacemakers" of the day, the Roman Army. As J.D. Crossan has argued, Rome believed in "peace through victory." Rome brought peace to the world by defeating her enemies. When Octavian defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra, he ended the Roman Civil War and was acclaimed a "peacemaker." The early Christians, however, believed in "peace through justice"--peace through righting wrongs and treating all people, particularly the bereft, with dignity.

The eighth beatitude closes this second pair of four with the same promise extended to the "poor in spirit" in the first beatitude. Those who are persecuted for the cause of justice, like the "poor in spirit," receive the kingdom of heaven. The verb is a perfect participle which indicates a past action with ongoing effects in the present. The cause of justice has been and is going on.

This eighth beatitude, with its theme of persecution, transitions to the ninth. Here, though, Jesus shifts from the third person to the second person--not "blessed are they" this time, but "blessed are you." This word is at least partly for the people of Matthew's church who had, indeed, suffered at least some persecution for following Jesus. (Luke has persecuted "on account of the son of man." Matthew changes this to persecuted "on my account," thus underlining the close link between Jesus and the disciple.)

Those who suffer for the cause of Jesus are to "rejoice and be exceedingly glad" for their reward is great in heaven. They are the unfortunate victims of persecution, yes, but they are in a line with the great prophets of the past as well as John the Baptist and Jesus himself.

Image: Wassily Kandinsky, All Saints 1911