Matthew 5:9, the good life belongs to those who are peacemakers, because they will be called the children of God. The good life belongs to those who are being persecuted for the sake of doing what is right, when people insult us or spread evil lies about us, all on account of Jesus, because theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. We need to celebrate and shout for joy when that happens, because our reward is great in heaven and because, this is the way they persecuted the prophets who have all come before us. The ethic of Jesus’ generous mercy, Jesus is summoning his followers to get out there and get in the arenas of conflict, where the generous mercy of Jesus’ ethic is going to do its most important work, get in there and turn the chaos into something beautiful or be present in the midst of arenas of conflict, so that we can introduce the ethic of Jesus as a resource that’s available to help solve these conflicts. We are peace doers, it’s something that we actively have to create, this biblical peace is not the absence of conflict, it’s the presence of harmony. Peacemakers is something that has to be made, it doesn’t happen in nature.
There is a very important boots on the ground reality for way Jesus would include this among the core traits of the good life of his Kingdom communities. Jesus lives in occupied militarized zone, there’s a unique type of psychology and mindset that somebody would have if they grew up in a place that’s their ancestral land, but it’s being occupied by a military and an Empire from a land far away, that you’ve never been to, ruled by people that you’ll never meet and they in the presence of their soldiers and their tax system determines everything in the life of you and your family and your friends.
No matter what context we live in, everybody knows the experience in some way of people in power and influence we’ve never met, in some way determines our daily realities. This social, political context has existed for a century in Jesus’ day and already in Jesus’ time, the Israelite community has fractured along the lines of how to respond to this reality. The good life belongs to the people who don’t withdraw, we can’t broker peace between parties of conflict if we don’t live among the people who are in conflict. These ones who make peace are the ones who show themselves to be members of God’s family, because they will be called children of God. They reflect the character traits of the Father.
Teaching and announcing the good news of the Kingdom of God, God has sent the human ruler and leader that he always promised in the storyline of Hebrew scriptures to do for humanity what we can’t seem to do for ourselves, to create a new humanity that lives by God’s will and can partner with him and ruling the world with wisdom and love that’s the Kingdom of God. God’s rule over the world is happening by Jesus teaching humans how to be wise generous rulers over creation. The kind of people that are the salt of the earth, city on the hill and the light of the world and through those images, Jesus is saying, right now we are carrying the legacy through Jesus of the renewed covenant people of God, who will be God’s Royal Priests, representing God. What does this superior way of doing right by God and therefore doing right by other people, what does that look like?
Jesus is giving ethical wisdom to show how we can discern the will of God through the laws of the Torah, it’s all about forming a community of people whose relationships are grounded in a different view of human dignity and value, they’re grounded in a different way of cooperating together. How do humans get things done in the world that usually causes a lot of conflict and Jesus is offering wisdom on how to reimagine human relationships and how we get stuff done together. The dignity of every human and specifically showing how murder is the ultimate way to degrade another human life, but so also is adultery and so also is a man divorcing a woman for an illegitimate reason and so what Jesus does is locate the issue way upstream in how we think about the value and worth of another human being and when we begin to degrade other humans in our thoughts and imaginations, then inevitably it will lead to these other things downstream.
But it’s the same basic crime we’re committing, it’s a different manifestation of degrading another person’s dignity, whether it’s in your thoughts or with your body. Jesus wants to take the beginning seed, just as deadly serious as we would the end result of it. The beginning seed, that’s why the cut off your hand or tear out your eye, which are hyperboles, but Jesus means something by being so extreme, take it very seriously how you think and imagine other people’s value and worth, because it will have deadly consequences given enough time. Oath keeping, keeping your word, more specifically to be vigilant about how I try to persuade other people, through just honestly and vulnerability, trusting honest conversation that honors both parties, that you can get somewhere that way without having to resort to manipulation. Jesus especially targets manipulation where you bring God into it, you use God to manipulate other people’s perception of you to get stuff done, that’s what he’s targeting.
Cooperation, in a way if you break that word down, co-operate, that is what it’s about, if we’re going to rule the world together, we have to co-operate. I think this thing needs to be done and I need to convince you of that, how am I going to do that, I have a choice to make, so underneath that is this core issue of dignity, am I going to honor your dignity, but it’s specifically about the means of that co-operation, especially if our wills are in conflict with each other and then it’s when two wills or people are not just different, but then are at odds. You can use creative nonviolence, but still with a stick it to a attitude, it’s about the transformation of the heart, that creative nonviolence when it’s generated by love for the person wronging you. When you’re able to cultivate a place of empathy in your mind and heart to say this person somehow feels the need to assert their dominance to put me in my place to try and shame me and it’s about finding some place or way or story to live within, where I can come to a place to show them generosity and kindness and love and when creative nonviolence comes out of that, then you get a revolutionary force and that’s what Jesus is after here.
There is a very important boots on the ground reality for way Jesus would include this among the core traits of the good life of his Kingdom communities. Jesus lives in occupied militarized zone, there’s a unique type of psychology and mindset that somebody would have if they grew up in a place that’s their ancestral land, but it’s being occupied by a military and an Empire from a land far away, that you’ve never been to, ruled by people that you’ll never meet and they in the presence of their soldiers and their tax system determines everything in the life of you and your family and your friends.
No matter what context we live in, everybody knows the experience in some way of people in power and influence we’ve never met, in some way determines our daily realities. This social, political context has existed for a century in Jesus’ day and already in Jesus’ time, the Israelite community has fractured along the lines of how to respond to this reality. The good life belongs to the people who don’t withdraw, we can’t broker peace between parties of conflict if we don’t live among the people who are in conflict. These ones who make peace are the ones who show themselves to be members of God’s family, because they will be called children of God. They reflect the character traits of the Father.
Teaching and announcing the good news of the Kingdom of God, God has sent the human ruler and leader that he always promised in the storyline of Hebrew scriptures to do for humanity what we can’t seem to do for ourselves, to create a new humanity that lives by God’s will and can partner with him and ruling the world with wisdom and love that’s the Kingdom of God. God’s rule over the world is happening by Jesus teaching humans how to be wise generous rulers over creation. The kind of people that are the salt of the earth, city on the hill and the light of the world and through those images, Jesus is saying, right now we are carrying the legacy through Jesus of the renewed covenant people of God, who will be God’s Royal Priests, representing God. What does this superior way of doing right by God and therefore doing right by other people, what does that look like?
Jesus is giving ethical wisdom to show how we can discern the will of God through the laws of the Torah, it’s all about forming a community of people whose relationships are grounded in a different view of human dignity and value, they’re grounded in a different way of cooperating together. How do humans get things done in the world that usually causes a lot of conflict and Jesus is offering wisdom on how to reimagine human relationships and how we get stuff done together. The dignity of every human and specifically showing how murder is the ultimate way to degrade another human life, but so also is adultery and so also is a man divorcing a woman for an illegitimate reason and so what Jesus does is locate the issue way upstream in how we think about the value and worth of another human being and when we begin to degrade other humans in our thoughts and imaginations, then inevitably it will lead to these other things downstream.
But it’s the same basic crime we’re committing, it’s a different manifestation of degrading another person’s dignity, whether it’s in your thoughts or with your body. Jesus wants to take the beginning seed, just as deadly serious as we would the end result of it. The beginning seed, that’s why the cut off your hand or tear out your eye, which are hyperboles, but Jesus means something by being so extreme, take it very seriously how you think and imagine other people’s value and worth, because it will have deadly consequences given enough time. Oath keeping, keeping your word, more specifically to be vigilant about how I try to persuade other people, through just honestly and vulnerability, trusting honest conversation that honors both parties, that you can get somewhere that way without having to resort to manipulation. Jesus especially targets manipulation where you bring God into it, you use God to manipulate other people’s perception of you to get stuff done, that’s what he’s targeting.
Cooperation, in a way if you break that word down, co-operate, that is what it’s about, if we’re going to rule the world together, we have to co-operate. I think this thing needs to be done and I need to convince you of that, how am I going to do that, I have a choice to make, so underneath that is this core issue of dignity, am I going to honor your dignity, but it’s specifically about the means of that co-operation, especially if our wills are in conflict with each other and then it’s when two wills or people are not just different, but then are at odds. You can use creative nonviolence, but still with a stick it to a attitude, it’s about the transformation of the heart, that creative nonviolence when it’s generated by love for the person wronging you. When you’re able to cultivate a place of empathy in your mind and heart to say this person somehow feels the need to assert their dominance to put me in my place to try and shame me and it’s about finding some place or way or story to live within, where I can come to a place to show them generosity and kindness and love and when creative nonviolence comes out of that, then you get a revolutionary force and that’s what Jesus is after here.