Dear Friends,

This is the second message in a series on Jesus’ statements in the Sermon on the Mount called the Beatitudes. Jesus was turning the conventional ideas of “blessing” — material prosperity, beauty and physical health — on their heads. The worst places of human experience is where God can do his best work is the point of the Beatitudes.

Jesus was speaking of a blessing much different and deeper than the mere happiness of getting what we want. What he called “blessing” is the profound sense of well-being and satisfaction that one is loved and cared for regardless of circumstance. It is more than a feeling. It is a “take-it-to-the-bank” assurance that “All is well and all manner of things are well” in the famous phrase of Julian of Norwich.

The key truth of this sense of well-being is that it is not self-generated by our effort and practice. It has an external source, Jesus Christ, the Son of God,  who promises to live within us in truth and power if we will open our hearts to him and say that we want his life to be our life. He is the satisfaction of our gnawing hungers and restless desires.

To access Christ is an act of surrender to his power, not to the circumstances that threaten or dissipate us. The New Testament doesn’t use the word “surrender” but it is the human description of what it means to unconditionally give up and give in to God.

The text most commonly cited for the proposition of surrender is James 4:7: “Submit yourselves therefore to God.” The “therefore” is a description of how neither fighting nor compromise with the world will satisfy our cravings.

Human illusions only postpone the revelation of our inadequacy to work things out for ourselves. In the Beatitudes, Jesus was saying, the contentment that can’t be achieved and the broken things that can’t be fixed are signposts pointing the shattered and disappointed to God the true source of blessing.

. . .

Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matt 5:3).

What does the phrase “labored breathing” bring to your mind?

When the heart and lungs are placed under the stress of great physical exertion they have a hard time taking in enough oxygen to fuel and cleanse the cells of the body. Twice in my life, I have witnessed loved ones starved of oxygen and literally battling for their last breaths. The resulting wheezing, rattling, sobbing gasps are horrifying and memorable.

Human function depends on breathing. Think of the phrases that tell this truth like “I am going to take a breather” or “Let me catch my breath.” The first concern at our birth was getting us to breathe on our own. For most of us, it took a cry to get that done.

Jesus strained to breathe on the cross. One of the particular cruelties of crucifixion is the stress it places on a body already weakened by scourging, blood loss, dehydration and shock. Nailed through the wrists to the crossbeam and through the feet to the vertical shaft, the body sags on itself and the heart and lungs pump harder to less effect as blood pools around it adding to the burden until suffocation occurs and the whole cardiovascular system collapses.

Just before Jesus died, he somehow found the strength to rise up on his pierced feet to obtain enough breath to cry out, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Luke wrote, “Having said this, he breathed his last” (Luke 23:46)

The spirit Jesus was giving up was his breath, pneuma in the Greek. Jesus was yielding the essence of his human life, his capacity to breathe, to his heavenly Father. It was not the last time that Jesus breathed on this earth (John 20:22). The next breaths he took were the gift of his Father who resurrected him to life.

Jesus was speaking to an impoverished and distressed people on that mountain. They were oppressed under the iron hand of Rome. Their religion had been reduced to dry ritual and irresolvable arguments. Most of them were engaged in subsistence farming and fishing weary of the effort to just stay alive. They were ready for something different.

“You are blessed,” Jesus taught them, “when you have nothing of your own to claim and have to beg God for every breath you take. Taking nothing for granted and depending on God for the most basic things like breathing is how you live with God”

This teaching of Jesus is devastating to “I’ll do my part and then God will do his part” religion. When “the Lord God formed man from dust, he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living being (Gen 2:7).

Our very being starts with God’s breath. Our new birth begins with the wind of the Holy Spirit in our lungs (John 3:6-8). The Apostle Paul quoted Greek poetry to make the same point: “In him we move and breathe and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

The truth is that God gives us life and then we live that life in obedient relationship to him. As the Psalmist prayed, “Give us life, and we will call on your name” (Ps 80:18).

It is human nature to want to live our lives our way, in our own strength and wisdom. That’s our pride talking. But then comes the crisis that tells us we have no deposits from which to withdraw what we need to live on.

Luke’s account of Jesus statement simply says, “Blessed are the poor” and leaves out the “in spirit.” That is often interpreted to mean that Jesus was referring to economic and social conditions. Neither poverty nor wealth imbues one with any spiritual status or power. As Solomon observed: “The poor and the oppressor have this in common: the Lord gives light to the eyes of both” (Pr 29:13).

The poor can be just as obsessed with material things as the rich. Jesus was saying that real poverty is to be bereft of God the giver of breath and bread. The wise, with open and honest heart, sing, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.”

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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