Yesterday I finished the four-part Advent series I’ve been preaching on The Beatitudes, and as I wrap up the Advent posts today, I find it striking how different the sermons are from these blog posts. They are different in tone but also in content, for the most part. A person could explore the depths of these eight lines for a very long time and never discover all that is inside them. Indeed, the whole of the Gospel might be there, as well as the entirety of theological reflection.
Matthew 5:9
The Seventh Beatitude is beautiful in its sentiment of peace.
Happy are those who work for peace, for they will be called God’s children.
The word usually translated as peacemaker only appears in this one place in the New Testament. It has a cognate in Colossians 1:20, which is about Jesus making peace between us and God, but in this kind of usage it found only here. I have rendered it rather clunkily, I know. That was to emphasis the compound nature of the word which is clunky, if I may say so, in Greek as well. It is the noun ‘peace’ shoved together with the verb ‘to do’ or ‘to make’ or ‘to work.’ Peace doers. Peace workers. Peace agents.
The only other interesting part of the translation here is the word for children which is the masculine plural and as in most languages of the world, the masculine plural in Greek is best translated as children rather than sons, unless of course it is only referencing known groups of exclusively males.
What do these peace doers receive for their efforts? They get a new name, that is what happens. I don’t think most of us who read this understand (I know that for most of my life I certainly didn’t) that ‘being called’ is nearly identical to ‘being named.’ The famous first line of Lewis’ the The Voyage of the Dawn Treader proves this point well enough: ‘There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.’ That was his name. He was called Eustace, he was named Eustace. And that was the joke.
Most Americans probably use the term ‘called’ as ‘they called him rude’ or perhaps nicknames, ‘they called him Stinky Sam.’ But the actual meaning is to name something. I wonder about the connection here between this idea of peace workers being given a new name and the enigmatic teaching in Revelation where Jesus gives new names (Revelation 2:17, 3;12, see also Isaiah 62:2).
This new name, though, doesn’t seem to be given by God to the peace doers. It seems to be what other people name them, and they name them God’s children. I put before you this is because we never look as much like God as when we diligently work toward reconciliation and peace among groups, between people, or within those whose darkest conflict and war is inside their own soul. People will start to say we look like God, we look like our Father, and they will call us by that name because of the family resemblance. Now, the serious Bible student will remember it was at Antioch that we were first called ‘Christians’ (Acts 11:26).
Fortunate are those people who do all they can to bring peace in the world, for they will be recognized by everyone as behaving just as God’s children should.
Matthew 5:10
There is a lot going on with this last Beatitude, but first let’s get to a working translation.
Happy are those persecuted for the cause of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
First, the easy part. I end the section here, because of the inclusio of ‘kingdom of heaven.’ That phrase ends the First Beatitude and it ends the last one, bringing the section to a conclusion. That is simply the way ancient people denoted material that should be taken as a unit, with these little inclusios, the same word of phrase at the beginning and ending. I know there are verses 11 and 12 following that are often lumped in, and they are good, solid verses that have meaning and are important elongations on the idea of persecution, but they do not have the cadence, rhythm, or style of the other eight lines here and as such should not properly be included in The Beatitudes.
The verb, persecute, essential means to chase or drive away; perhaps it could be rendered as ‘hunt down.’ As a child of the south, thoughts of dogs in the night running through the woods chasing the scent of a raccoon leap to my mind. That is what happens to persecuted people, they are chased down, hunted, pursued like animals. They are driven from their homes, homelands, and families.
I have two thoughts on persecution and then I will turn toward righteousness.
- It is an oddity of history that the first thing people who are persecuted do when they experience liberation from their attackers is find someone to immediately persecute. But notice Jesus does not say, ‘blessed are the persecuted, for they shall one day persecute others.’ Nope. Never. Not a good idea. If you ever find yourself persecuting anyone, you are in the wrong and not modeling Christlike behavior.
- Being made uncomfortable or even mocked for your beliefs is not persecution. It is an affront to people in parts of the world right now who are murdered, imprisoned, and driven out from their homes because of their faith in Jesus to equate that with someone saying something mean to you because of your Facebook post or because you go to church. These are not the same. The actual usage of the verb here is a verbal form that indicates evidence or lasting results. In other words, a literal translation is ‘happy are those who bear the wounds of being tortured.’
Now, I turn to righteousness. Righteousness equals justice here, and it is a key theme in the whole teaching of The Beatitudes, underlying everything. Take note how it is mentioned twice — in the Fourth Beatitude those people who are satisfied are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (click here to re-read that excellent blog post).
Do not miss the point that our Lord qualifies the kind of persecution he is talking about. If we are persecuted because of our identity, or our success, or our accent, or because we are jerks, well, then that is probably not what our Lord is speaking of. But when the persecution is related to a group of people using the levers of power and of society in a legal or economic manner to silence the gospel, justice, or righteousness, we are arriving at the meaning Christ has: It is the murder of John the Baptist by the maniacal king, it is the torture of Christians in Ancient Rome, it is the Catholic suppression of Huguenots in France, it is the suppression of preaching in liberal leaning nations (click here for an interesting discussion of a recent Canadian governmental proposal) today by labeling it hate speech, and it is what Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is doing by bringing suit (click here) against a Roman Catholic charity feeding and clothing immigrants.
When I began working on these as translations and as meditation pieces for my own personal study, the whole point was to get them away from the religious jargon that often saps the power and blood out of meaning. I love great religious words, but sometimes their overfamiliarity sanitizes. This is never more true than this last one. And so, one final rendering to get your mind thinking:
Fortunate are people who bear the wounds of being chased down and hunted by the powerful oppressors of this world because of their dedication and work for righteousness and justice, because those very wounds will be symbols of honor and respect in the next world.