Lent 15 When It All Starts Getting Personal

[HKHaugan]

Lent 15 Matt.5;11

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in Heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Now is when the full impact of the Beatitudes, their progressive buildup, climaxes in the individual heart. Up until now they have been objectified in the third person, ‘blessed are those.’ It is as though Jesus were looking across the world and maybe even into the future, teaching beyond the disciples. And now He shifts directly to them, eye to eye, and in this last Beatitude, goes directly to the disciples’ hearts and says in the second person, ‘You,’ ‘Blessed are ‘you’ when people insult ‘you’…Then He connects it in the first person to Himself, ‘…because of me.’

Jesus is telling them that He is the issue. He is the center all existence. He is what life is all about. The real issue is not about how good they are. It is no longer about them. It is about Him and how He is right and good. From that point on the disciples are to keep Him before them in mind and heart because it is His mind and heart that define true humanity. Again, to emphasize, the focus is not on how good the disciples are but on how good and different and truly God Jesus is. How He is truth, life and the way to live. It is Jesus that people will be against, not the disciples. Just His presence will cause man’s real problems to come to the surface. Without Him mankind drowns in the stormy ocean of self-centeredness and self-indulgence, loveless and lost.

Further, He wants the disciples to know He is always with them. They are in this together. They are His disciples who will soon be His apostles. Their experience of Him and how they respond because of Him will set the stage for future believers to see and experience Him for themselves.

There are three things to note as we look at this last Beatitude. First, it is not just faith that is being persecuted as indicated in the last Beatitude; it is Jesus who is the devil’s target. He has not stopped his aggression against Jesus and continues it against His followers. Second, keep in mind that this is a spiritual assault on individual believers. What the devil threw against Jesus he throws against us. Third, the responsibility of faith, the response of the heart, the mission Jesus is preparing them for, is on their shoulders and consequently on ours also.

Now, perhaps, we can see why Jesus took them progressively along the Beatitudinal path. The key to all of the Beatitudes was the first one about spiritual poverty. Without the Holy Spirit they are impossible to grasp. It takes a spiritual mind to understand spiritual things. As Paul rightly noted, “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned (1Cor.2:14).”

Jesus was very much the master teacher by getting the disciples to identify and ponder each quality from a personal perspective. He probably waited in between each, letting them sink in. He also was very specific about the order He chose since it led them logically from one step to the next as though they were climbing. After all, they had just come up a mountainside, which was fresh in their minds. Each Beatitude brought more light until finally the last one identified Him as THE Light. He was not dictating in staccato fashion, He was teaching, He was bringing them into the Light.

Again, follow the order: recognize the concept of each, ponder and ask of each, why and why in this order and where am I in regards to each? The order: spiritual poverty, real mourning, humility, hunger and thirst for being right, showing mercy, making peace, persecution of the righteous and finally, persecution when it happens to me, ---each one building on the other.

This ninth Beatitude shifts the Light directly upon the hearts of each of the disciples. What will they do when they are personally under fire? Will they react defensively out of pride or will they react spiritually, knowing that the devil is using the sin in others to attack them? Will they remember that Jesus, on the Cross, prayed for His tormentors, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” Will they be looking for someone or something to blame for the treatment they receive? Or will they remember Jesus’ words, “Love your enemies…do good to those who hurt you…if someone asks you to go a mile, go two...”?

The final touch is that in each Beatitude is the recognition of spiritual need that is the blessing. They are being blessed, touched, by God. The Holy Spirit is lifting them into the spiritual dimension step by step. They are being triggered to respond like Jesus. Thus Jesus does the work through their trust in Him, Jesus gets the glory, the power and presence of the Holy Spirit is experienced and it is ‘mission accomplished’ with each encounter seen this way.

Now the Kingdom has been advanced, souls are touched, some saved and the world changes regardless of non-response, one heart at a time. The world changes because the Spirit has acted through the faith of the believer even if there is no apparent change in the offender. The believer at that moment is the world. What might have happened without a Spirit-led response would simply have continued evil in the world of the offender as well as the believer. Thus it is incumbent on us to keep Jesus lifted up as the mission to and for the heart continues. Stay tuned.