Blessing
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The blessing passes from Abraham to Isaac to Esau to Jacob, and causes so much conflict, we ought to consider it isn’t a reward.
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In the Beatitudes, we find ourselves pushing against our own priorities, against the priorities the world pushes upon us, to divide us, despise us.
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Jesus opens the sermon on the mount with an evocative recasting of the nature of humanity’s relationship to God, and ultimately, to one another.
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The first challenge in Jesus’s vision of blessing is it counters the common one. The second is that the powerful like things the way they are.
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The saints help us see the alternative vision that Jesus offers: that we can actually love as we are loved and give as God gives.
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The damning truth of it is that so many Christians reject Jesus’s approach to blessing. It’s not a competition, but a co-op.