December 16, 2007
By Jack Price

What's a beatitude? Where are the beatitudes? Well the answer to the second question is that the beatitudes are part of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5. They include, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, and they who mourn." Beatitudes are statements of blessing. To be blessed means to experience deep joy, to be touched by God with a profound sense of being both known and loved. But there is a beatitude that only turns up several chapters after the Sermon on the Mount. It involves John the Baptist who is a pivotal figure in the New Testament primarily because of the way he influenced Jesus.

John often provides for us a point of entry into the nature of Jesus' message. When a small group of John's disciples came to Jesus, they brought a question from John who was in prison: "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" John needs to know, "Are you the one?" We always seem to be waiting for the one. John saw his ministry as preparation for the one who would come after him. Now in prison, with the real likelihood that he would not get out, John wonders if he was pointing in the right direction when he pointed to Jesus. Who should his own disciples follow now? John was not sounding too sure now about Jesus. He was confused by how Jesus was doing his job.

John was looking for a certain kind of Messiah -- the one who would bring the end of the age with fire. He might have been looking for a Messiah who would take over and maybe throw out the Romans, who would lay a cosmic ax at the root of tree of humanity! He wanted action now, but he was not seeing it in Jesus of Nazareth. So, Jesus sent John's disciples back to their master with a challenge. "Tell him what you've seen." Then, with reference to the words from Isaiah that John used to announce his ministry in the synagogue of his hometown, he said that the blind are seeing and the lame walking. Lepers are healed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor are receiving good news. The unspoken challenge from Jesus to John was this: given all this, you tell me if I'm the one!

Jesus had his own expectations for his life and ministry. He was doing what he felt was right for him in the way that seemed best to him. Evidently, his mentor John the Baptist did not necessarily agree. He might even have been finding the direction Jesus was taking to be somewhat offensive. People don't always like it when you choose your own direction. People who have known you a long time often don't respond positively when you follow the pathway of your own vision because it does not always match up with their vision of you. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote:

You compel many to change their opinion about you; they hold that very much against you. You approached them and yet went on past them: that they will never forgive you. You go above and beyond them: but the higher you climb, the smaller you appear to the eye of envy. And he who flies is hated most of all. (Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra)

Jesus told the people, "Blessed is he who is not offended by me." The way to find deep joy and experience the deep sense of being known and loved by God is by not being offended by Jesus. How can you and I, in following Jesus, find the path of deep joy, divine blessing, meaning in life, and abundant living today? What I read in this passage and in other parts of the New Testament is that the way to that sense of deep joy and life meaning lies in hearing and understanding what Jesus was saying and doing – really getting what Jesus was all about and not being offended by it.

What do you think Jesus did that offended people? He healed people on the Sabbath thereby violating the restriction on work. He forgave sins in the process of healing people and, in so doing, pre-empted the Temple's monopoly on providing forgiveness (for a fee). He told the truth about his own people's xenophobia. He criticized the hypocrisy of the religious leaders and prophesied the destruction of the Temple. It may seem extreme to us that these things so offended people in Jesus' day, but his day just look today at portions of the Islamic world that have been so offended by perceived insults to the prophet Muhammad. Jesus was offensive by challenging strongly held views, frustrating best laid plans, threatening vested interests, and confronting comfortable ideas. More people than John the Baptist were offended by Jesus. The Jewish leaders and later the Romans were offended. That's why Jesus was crucified and why the early church was so persecuted.

Let me ask a related question. What offends you? I am not talking about being irritated or frustrated. I mean offended. In my youth, many adults were offended by young men with long hair and by rock music. Young people were consistently offended by their parents' generation. President Putin of Russia appears to be offended by American plans to establish a missile defense system with outposts near its borders. President Bush appears to be offended by opponents of his foreign policy. Half the Episcopal Church appears to be offended by the installation of an openly gay bishop. What really offends you? You may be offended when the dignity of any person is compromised or when people are denied the means to get their basic life needs met. You are probably offended by violence toward children, by the use of torture, and by the hypocrisy of people in places of power. I find that I am offended by actions that foster dependence rather than promote independence in societies, in families, or in churches.

When something or someone offends you, what do you do about it? When something or someone offends me, I have three options before acting in response to my sense of being offended. I can just try to get over it, an approach that is seldom satisfying. I can simply write off the offending party as not worthy of my further attention, an approach that actually diminishes me. Or I can find a way to get past feeling offended by enlarging the offending party – by learning something of their motivation and their passion. This third way means allowing someone who offends me to become more fully human in my sight

The Christian message today has come a long way from the teaching of the itinerant Jewish mystic who walked the hills of Galilee and the streets of Jerusalem 2000 years ago. Modern scholarship and scientific inquiry have given today's disciples insights into that early Jesus message. His focus was much more about social change than individual salvation. His view of the Kingdom of God was much more a present reality than a future reward. His priority was more about our being inclusive than exclusive. And I wonder if much of the Christian Church takes offense at this message because we avoid its call to action with a passion.

Jesus calls us to love like God, yet we avoid the hard work of making space in our lives for people who are different, with whom we feel uncomfortable. Jesus calls us to do justice, yet we are daunted by the difficulty and the complexity of the task and give up trying. Jesus calls us to be peacemakers, yet we have such a hard time working together for peace with those who see the pathway there in a very different light. It can be easier to blame and vilifying them and then wonder why peace does not come to the earth.

The JustFaith group here at Crossroads had a discussion about peace the other night at our meeting – specifically about what writer Walter Wink called the myth of redemptive violence. I share his belief that violence does not lead to peace. We also realized that the reality of our world today is that, without the ability to resist the violence of evil, there may well be no opportunity for growth or even to seek abundant life. This connects at many places for us as church in our efforts to work on behalf of the Prince of Peace today. Few people favor war on general principles, but we differ on when or if war is ever necessary.

The Christian Church has too often found itself on the side of supporting war, enabling violent people to remain in power, and opposing the efforts of poor people to find liberty, freedom, and opportunity. We cannot afford to be on those sides of these issues – not as followers of Jesus. In the long run, the pursuit of peace must include the means by which we pursue peace – not violent means, but peaceful means. We cannot rest until that day when we find adequate non-violent means to resolve the violence in our world.

Blessed are those who are not offended by Jesus' words and the challenge of Jesus' life. There is deep joy in celebrating the incredible potential in every person. We are blessed to see the potential of abundance beginning to awaken in others and in ourselves. For this, a child has been born. For this, a son has been given. He shall be called the Prince of Peace. The world is incredibly varied. It is a place of significant differences between people. We have our issues: wealth and poverty, war and peace, capitalism and socialism, freedom and responsibility. As each of us looks toward Christmas, anticipating the coming of the One we are expecting, let us remember that the reality of who Jesus was, how he represented God 2000 years ago, and how he points us to God today does not change. It does not change because of our preferences or our sensibilities. It does not change even though we might take offense at some of what Jesus seemed to stand for.

I invite you consider this question: What will following Jesus look like for me (you) if I get passed being offended and move to being faithful? When we decide to follow Jesus faithfully, stepping out to stand for the values of justice, love, and peace as Jesus did, what will that mean for how we will live our lives? It takes a journey to discover your answers to these questions -- not only a journey through this Advent season, but a life journey. Let us walk together and find the way to the deep joy we seek in Jesus' name.