Wrestling with the Logic of the Beatitudes

 6 Epiphany C, February 16, 2025
Jeremiah 17:5-10 Psalm 1
1 Corinthians 15:12-20 Luke 6:17-26

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We romantically place the Beatitudes upon a pedestal of lofty ideals, even while in our practical lives we contradict their literal implication.  And if we're honest, we must admit that we don't really live the life of the Beatitudes or even aspire to, and so we should honestly wrestle with them in applicable situations where their meaning might have some significant coherence.

Should anyone desire to be poor, sad, hungry, and persecuted and call such conditions blessed, or favorable?  This would be like wishing for bad luck.  To wish for such conditions for oneself might be regarded to be masochistic and such would be a significant pathology of poor psychological health.

The philosopher Nietzsche was so troubled by the logic of the Beatitudes, that he called them a system of slave morality.  The master morality for him was the preferred morality because it is honest to the will to power which expresses psychological health.  Nietzsche called this slave morality of the Beatitudes, a transvaluation of values, as in a switch to calling poverty, persecution, sadness, and hunger, good, and conversely designating wealth, happiness, being well fed, and popularity as bad.

I don't think that we should concede the meaning of the Beatitudes as being bad psychology or as the flipping of the morals of a good life on its head.

The Beatitudes appear in slightly different forms in two of the Gospels, Matthew and Luke.  Biblical scholars note that Matthew and Luke re-use the writings of the Gospel of Mark, but they also have access to another literary tradition, which scholars designate as "Q," meaning Quelle, or the German word for "source."  The Beatitudes occur in this "Q" source.

How might we understand the lifestyle significance of the Beatitudes?  I would call the Beatitudes, a Christly martial arts required by people who have conditions of oppression forced upon them.  They either have to adopt a winsome style of living in order to survive their oppressive conditions or die in open resistance.

For members of the churches at various times in the first centuries, the conditions of oppression were a fact of life.  How do we live when the powers that be threaten our very existence and our freedom to practice our faith?  How do we live winsomely, and fly under the radar to avoid being crushed to death?

Ironically, in colonial missionary work done after captor nations came to foreign lands, the Beatitude living was forced upon indigenous peoples.  In the oppressive practice of slavery, the slaves had the choice of living winsome lives for their slave masters or face horrendous consequences if they tried to resist or escape their slavery.  In these forced conditions, Nietzsche was right in calling it a "slave morality."  However, I think it is better called a profound martial arts lifestyle of living with the worst situation of life and doing it in such a ways as to be winsome, and even awe inspiring.  This does not mean that the conditions which required such heroic living is how the God who called us to love our neighbor as ourselves intended life to be.

So it is not enough for us to admire the heroic lifestyle of those who have been forced to live in conditions of oppression.   The Gospel means the good news of liberating the captive and the ending the conditions of oppression.

What should our response to the Beatitudes be now today?  It should be to love God and our neighbor as ourselves.  And what does loving our neighbor as ourselves mean?

It means ending poverty through sharing, it means comforting the sad and the mourning, it means ending bias, prejudice, and marginalization of people, it means everyone having enough to eat.

Let us today, be sad that the Beatitudes had to be an extreme martial arts lifestyle for oppressed people to survive.  Let us be thankful for those who have heroically lived this lifestyle and survived.  But let us be those who love God and our neighbors as ourselves and do all in our power to bring about the good news of the Gospel conditions of all having enough, all being comforted, adequately fed, and having their dignity affirmed.  This is what the beatitudes should mean to Christians who have wealth, power, and influence, because in the words of Jesus, "to whom much has been given, much is required."  The Gospel question of Jesus for us today, is what is required of us in loving our neighbor as ourselves.  Amen.