Matthew 5:1-12
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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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How many of us conceive of blessing is predicated on an ancient prejudice. That we are good and deserving and others aren’t.
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We are participating in the reimagining of sainthood and of our place in the world. And yet, the reason behind it remains the same.
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In both gospels for this week, we are invited to see things differently—about our world, the people around us, and how it all works.