1704AFC012717 – Blesséd are you
Read it online here, please. And please, when you visit there, use one of the social media links at the bottom of the page to share this post. Thank you!
Matthew 5:1 – 1 When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him.
Aloha nui loa, ʻŌmea! Yes, you are Belovéd, greatly loved by God – El Shaddai Olam – the Holy Trinity. Jehovah the Father Loves you. Jesus the Son loves you. Ruach Elohim, אֱלֹהִ֔ים ר֫וּחַ, the Spirit of The Living God loves you. And I love you, too.
Today we want to follow Jesus up the mountain and, as his disciples did then, we will go to him and listen to what he says about “Living the Good Life.” First, though, I want to direct your attention to the Gospel reading for this coming Sunday: Matthew 5:1-12 (← Check it out!). Every Christian is familiar with this passage from the Gospel of Matthew. It is usually referred to as The Beatitudes. Let’s start with that word – beatitude. Just what is a beatitude?
A beatitude is a declaration of blessedness. It is a guidepost to supreme happiness. It refers to a state of happiness that is unshakable and cannot be negated. It is the harmonious bliss that arises from Grace – the unmerited favor of God – and remains with us eternally.
The list of “The Beatitudes” is – in a way – a prescription for living in Peace and Harmony with God, with Neighbor, and with self. It is a way to find Peace in body, mind, and spirit. It is a gift from God that is not available to us through mechanical meditations or spiritual exercises or chants or trances or any other human act. It is very simply a true and lasting happiness we become aware of when we realize the God loves us. Period. When we know, when we really, really know that God loves us, that is indeed a declaration of blessedness. I have heard others speak of this list of blessings in the Gospel of Matthew as the “Be-Attitudes.” If you want to be happy, then be humble, be repentant, be generous and just, be thirsty and hungry for righteousness; be blessed because God has blessed you and when you accept his blessing …you bless God. (← Check it out!) We give God GLORY by accepting his gifts of many blessings. (↔ Music Link) We might ask, though, how we can bless God, and how can anything we do give GLORY to God?
Q: What can my puny existence add to his Glory?
A: Nothing.
Q: What does God need from me?
A: Nothing.
Q: Then what can I give to God?
A: Everything.
Huh?
Q: If he’s got everything and he created everything and he is everything and he’s in everything, and everything I have comes from him … how can I give him everything?!?
A: By extolling, praising, exalting, applauding, revering, lauding, glorifying, and thanking God. That is how we bless God.
In the fifth chapter of Matthew, where we find the Beatitudes, Jesus talks about the way to blessedness. It is the way of humility and compassion. It is not the rigid justice imposed by the law. It is the flowing compassion given through love. It is to go beyond that which is required by doing more than is expected and doing so out of humble love and obedience. It is doing good things by exceeding the expectations of others, and exceeding even our own expectations for kindness. It is called being righteous.
In Matthew 5:6, we read, 6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” So, let me ask you: Are the Beatitudes found in Matthew 5 more about personal virtue and morality, or more about social justice? Of course you know I am going to take the middle road and say, “Both.” Here’s why. Take a look at Matthew 22:36-40: 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Today we know that the Spiritual Thirst Isaiah spoke of and to which Jesus responded by saying he could give a spring of water gushing up to eternal life is the Holy Spirit. The image occurs more than once in Jesus’ words, as in John 7:37 where we read On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.'”
There are a number of different ideas in the Old Testament to which Jesus referred (See Cross References here), and the one among those that speaks most to me is Isaiah 44:3 – For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants. In the poetically-phrased prophecies of Isaiah, I think this probably resonated with Israel in exile very strongly. It is a message of hope – water for the People dying of thirst in the desert. As I look around the world today, I see there is still a lot of desert surrounding God’s People; not just the People called Israel, but all the people who are called by God in every way that he calls them. He calls them and us to quench their thirst and hunger for righteousness – justice. And he even tells everyone who will listen where to find that which quenches this thirst and satisfies this hunger, which gives us rest and solace in the desert: My soul rests in God alone. My salvation is from him. (Psalm 62:1)
Resting in God alone is extraordinarily wonderful – hard to do, that’s true – but blissful beyond words. Take into your heart, mind, and soul these “Be-Attitudes” and learn the inexpressible joy of his Beatitudes for you. He, indeed, loves you, loves me, loves us in ways that surpass all our understanding. If we accept that, if we accept HIS love, we make him happy – we bless God, and blessed are they who bless the lord! Give God the GLORY! How? Like the Bible says, “his disciples came to him.” He will welcome us just as we are whenever and wherever we come to him. (↔ Music Link!) Come! Be blessed in The Lord!
Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture passages are from the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE) New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Aloha Friday Messages by Charles O. Todd, III is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
1704AFC012717 – Blesséd are you
Read it online here, please. And please, when you visit there, use one of the social media links at the bottom of the page to share this post. Thank you!
Matthew 5:1 – 1 When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him.
Aloha nui loa, ʻŌmea! Yes, you are Belovéd, greatly loved by God – El Shaddai Olam – the Holy Trinity. Jehovah the Father Loves you. Jesus the Son loves you. Ruach Elohim, אֱלֹהִ֔ים ר֫וּחַ, the Spirit of The Living God loves you. And I love you, too.
Today we want to follow Jesus up the mountain and, as his disciples did then, we will go to him and listen to what he says about “Living the Good Life.” First, though, I want to direct your attention to the Gospel reading for this coming Sunday: Matthew 5:1-12 (← Check it out!). Every Christian is familiar with this passage from the Gospel of Matthew. It is usually referred to as The Beatitudes. Let’s start with that word – beatitude. Just what is a beatitude?
A beatitude is a declaration of blessedness. It is a guidepost to supreme happiness. It refers to a state of happiness that is unshakable and cannot be negated. It is the harmonious bliss that arises from Grace – the unmerited favor of God – and remains with us eternally.
The list of “The Beatitudes” is – in a way – a prescription for living in Peace and Harmony with God, with Neighbor, and with self. It is a way to find Peace in body, mind, and spirit. It is a gift from God that is not available to us through mechanical meditations or spiritual exercises or chants or trances or any other human act. It is very simply a true and lasting happiness we become aware of when we realize the God loves us. Period. When we know, when we really, really know that God loves us, that is indeed a declaration of blessedness. I have heard others speak of this list of blessings in the Gospel of Matthew as the “Be-Attitudes.” If you want to be happy, then be humble, be repentant, be generous and just, be thirsty and hungry for righteousness; be blessed because God has blessed you and when you accept his blessing …you bless God. (← Check it out!) We give God GLORY by accepting his gifts of many blessings. (↔ Music Link) We might ask, though, how we can bless God, and how can anything we do give GLORY to God?
Q: What can my puny existence add to his Glory?
A: Nothing.
Q: What does God need from me?
A: Nothing.
Q: Then what can I give to God?
A: Everything.
Huh?
Q: If he’s got everything and he created everything and he is everything and he’s in everything, and everything I have comes from him … how can I give him everything?!?
A: By extolling, praising, exalting, applauding, revering, lauding, glorifying, and thanking God. That is how we bless God.
In the fifth chapter of Matthew, where we find the Beatitudes, Jesus talks about the way to blessedness. It is the way of humility and compassion. It is not the rigid justice imposed by the law. It is the flowing compassion given through love. It is to go beyond that which is required by doing more than is expected and doing so out of humble love and obedience. It is doing good things by exceeding the expectations of others, and exceeding even our own expectations for kindness. It is called being righteous.
In Matthew 5:6, we read, 6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” So, let me ask you: Are the Beatitudes found in Matthew 5 more about personal virtue and morality, or more about social justice? Of course you know I am going to take the middle road and say, “Both.” Here’s why. Take a look at Matthew 22:36-40: 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Today we know that the Spiritual Thirst Isaiah spoke of and to which Jesus responded by saying he could give a spring of water gushing up to eternal life is the Holy Spirit. The image occurs more than once in Jesus’ words, as in John 7:37 where we read On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.'”
There are a number of different ideas in the Old Testament to which Jesus referred (See Cross References here), and the one among those that speaks most to me is Isaiah 44:3 – For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants. In the poetically-phrased prophecies of Isaiah, I think this probably resonated with Israel in exile very strongly. It is a message of hope – water for the People dying of thirst in the desert. As I look around the world today, I see there is still a lot of desert surrounding God’s People; not just the People called Israel, but all the people who are called by God in every way that he calls them. He calls them and us to quench their thirst and hunger for righteousness – justice. And he even tells everyone who will listen where to find that which quenches this thirst and satisfies this hunger, which gives us rest and solace in the desert: My soul rests in God alone. My salvation is from him. (Psalm 62:1)
Resting in God alone is extraordinarily wonderful – hard to do, that’s true – but blissful beyond words. Take into your heart, mind, and soul these “Be-Attitudes” and learn the inexpressible joy of his Beatitudes for you. He, indeed, loves you, loves me, loves us in ways that surpass all our understanding. If we accept that, if we accept HIS love, we make him happy – we bless God, and blessed are they who bless the lord! Give God the GLORY! How? Like the Bible says, “his disciples came to him.” He will welcome us just as we are whenever and wherever we come to him. (↔ Music Link!) Come! Be blessed in The Lord!
Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture passages are from the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE) New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Aloha Friday Messages by Charles O. Todd, III is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
About Chick Todd
American Roman Catholic reared as a "Baptiterian" in Denver Colorado. Now living on Kauaʻi. USAF Vet. Married for over 50 years. Scripture study has been my passion ever since my first "Bible talk" at age 6 in VBS.
