(The Beatitudes Luke 6:22-30)

Jesus had grown up in Nazareth living faithfully with his parents (Lk 2:52). There is only one story recorded of his childhood: his parents lost him on the way back from Jerusalem and then later found him teaching in the Temple (Lk 2:41-50). At the age of 30 John baptizes him; he goes away into the desert, comes back and starts to preach. He will be dead within three years, killed by the very people that he came to save. These are the words with which Jesus begins his teaching ministry and thereby announces his arrival to the Israelites

Jesus is a visionary, creating a new world through words. He is teasing, enticing, cajoling, challenging. What he is saying is that if people are perfectly happy as they are, then there is nothing more for them. Woe to you who are rich, well fed now, laugh and well spoken of. If people are looking for something more then he has a message from God for them to hear. ‘The time has come the Kingdom of God is near (Mk 1:15)… Blessed are you who are poor, hunger weeping, hated, excluded and insulted. It is a dramatic way to start a new movement that in time will change the world. Jesus wants to persuade the Israelites to rethink how they do their religion. He wants them to think wider than there being just one main Temple in Jerusalem as the way to worship God. He wants them to understand that since he is the Son of God he becomes a de-facto Temple. If people believe in him they will have their own way to the Father.

What Jesus has to say is dramatic, decisive and thrilling. It is Good news to the poor: freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed (Lk 1:46). This passage known as the Beatitudes. It is as if Jesus is starting his ministry off with a ‘health warning’ – take care what you are going to hear might change your life!  In the Old Testament there is the story of Gideon preparing to go off to war against the Mideonites (Judges 7). God tells him that he has too many men. Gideon takes his men to the water and tells them to drink. Most of the men kneel down to drink; 300 lap at the water like dogs. Gideon is told to take the 300 and to leave the rest behind. They are the suitable warriors because they are not cautious or careful like the others. They throw themselves into the situation without reserve or hesitation. This is the question asked of us in this passage by Jesus.

The gift offered to us in the Beatitudes is the chance for us to learn how to suffer well – attitude is always our choice. The idea that we should do good to those who hate us is a subversion of accepted social practices.  A more typical social posture is to bless those who bless us and curse those who don't.  Doing to others, as we ourselves would like to be treated, whether friend or enemy, is a radical re-interpretation of social practice.  Our relationship with others need no longer be determined by their past actions towards us, but rather by the new reign of God in which the poor are blessed and enemies are loved. 

We have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for the day. We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can always do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude - life is 10% what happens and 90% of how I react. It is with this mood that we approach the “BE-attitudes” of Jesus - put a hyphen in the religious word, beatitude, and we get BE-attitude. - attitudes of being, attitudes of existence, attitudes for life and living. Jesus talked to his disciples about the fundamental attitudes of life, about the kind of people that God wanted his disciples to be. Jesus didn’t talk about money; he didn’t talk about health; he didn’t talk about jobs and job security and job possibility; he didn’t talk about kids and living one’s life through one’s children or grandchildren. Jesus talked about the BE-attitudes, the fundamental attitudes of being, the basic attitudes of life and living.