Blessed are Those Who Hunger for Justice!

“Blessed are the poor in spirit.”
“Blessed are those who mourn.”
“Blessed are the meek.”
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice.” (from Matthew 5:2-5)

These are some of the opening lines from Jesus’ ‘Sermon on the Mount,’ and they’re amongst the most familiar words Jesus ever spoke. I’ve stopped halfway through the list of blessings, but I suspect you can complete the rest from memory, including the cheesemakers, who should always get an honorary mention.

These are ‘the Beatitudes’, and you’ll find them in the fifth chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. You’ll also find them printed on any number of posters, bookmarks, and inspirational calendars—often framed by a sunrise, implying that these are words designed to soothe and uplift.

Moreover, I’ve found these verses to be amongst the favourites quoted by preachers of the ‘prosperity gospel’, which claims that God wants to make all of us rich by blessing our efforts as entrepreneurs in God’s own free-market capitalist system.

I remember many years ago I purchased a translation of the Bible that had been published by some of these people. It was called “The Positive Bible,” and it promised “all the good stuff and nothing else”. It also said on the inside cover that you could read their whole translation in about half an hour, which I thought spoke for itself.

You’ve got to cut out a lot of the Scriptures before you can end up with a Bible that depicts God as your business partner. Even so, whatever they cut out, they left these ‘BE-attitudes’ in, as these were the sort of ‘attitudes’ you needed to ‘BE’ if you want to become the healthy, wealthy, and wise person God wants you to BE.

In truth, to get this from the Christian Scriptures, you not only have to cut a lot of the Bible out. You also need to trim down this list of beatitudes, which concludes with “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you” (Matthew 5:11). That’s not even an attitude, and, moreover, what sense does it make to say that you are being blessed when you are being cursed?

In truth, the more closely I listen to these words, the more difficult they become.

The people listed here are not those that we would normally describe as “blessed”, let alone (as some translations would render it) ‘happy’. Indeed, in almost every culture—including our own—these are the people we pity, avoid, and often think of as cursed! How can poverty be a blessed state? How can being sad make you happy?

I think, as a starting point, we need to drop the idea that Jesus is offering us a self-improvement programme here. This is not a list of spiritual techniques for becoming wealthy, successful and triumphant. If anything, these Beatitudes dismantle the idea that prosperity is a sign of divine favour. They point in the opposite direction.

The poor, the grieving and the persecuted are blessed, not because their circumstances make them happy, but because God is with them in their struggle. Their blessing is not their poverty or pain, but the presence of God in their pain.

This is the great reversal at the heart of the Gospel. This is the God that Jesus reveals to us – a God who is to be found not at the top but at the bottom – not in triumph but in struggle. Not in the palaces of the powerful, but among those who hunger for justice and cling to hope.

The prosperity gospel imagines God as a kind of celestial operations manager, rewarding all those who have the right kind of faith with worldly success. But the Jesus who speaks to us here from a Galilean hillside says something far more radical – that God has already chosen where to stand and is standing alongside those who have nothing to offer but their need.

In truth, the Beatitudes aren’t really attitudes at all, and they’re not even primarily about us. The Beatitudes speak to us of the location of God.

Where is God? Not at the top with the successful, but at the bottom with the broken.
Not with the powerful, but with the powerless. Not with those who have everything, but with those who have nothing but their need.

This is the great reversal at the heart of the Gospel. The Beatitudes invite us to look for God in the places we least expect – in grief, in disappointment, in the long and bitter struggle for justice, in the quiet perseverance of those who refuse to give up.

If we find ourselves poor, grieving, or pained at injustice, these words are a promise to us that God is near. And if, on the other hand, our lives are comfortable, insulated, and untroubled, perhaps these words are an invitation to adjust our be-attitudes, and to take a step closer to the places where God has chosen to dwell.

Our Sunday Eucharist

We celebrated another wonderful Sunday Eucharist last weekend, and it was a privilege to have both Jakob Pyeatt and Costandi Bastoli joining me on the panel.

Our discussion of 1 Corinthians 1 – the Scandal of the Cross – was particularly good, I thought, and we were ably assisted by AI Saint Paul. Catch the full recording at the end of today’s newsletter. It’s 20 minutes long and worth every second! 😉

As per usual, the highest-ranking shorts from the last week are directly below. I’ve been encouraged to see some of these getting thousands of views on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as well as on YouTube. We must be having an influence!

Unfortunately, this Sunday’s broadcast is still a work in progress. The pic of Tom Toby and David Baldwin appears below as per usual for the first Sunday of the month, which is a semi-permanent fixture for the two of them. Even so, when I finally conected with Tom this week he made profuse apologies and told me that he’d be in transit at the time of our broadcast. I’m not exactly sure if he’s in Iraq or Iran or where he is at the moment. The last Facebook pic of his that I saw had him in Egypt!

David Baldwin will be with us (thanks be to God), and I’m waiting on a response from one other good soul who has never been on the panel with us before but whom I’m sure you’ll love if we can make it happen. Be ready for a surprise! 😊

So … the team is still a mystery but the other details are as per usual: Sunday at noon via Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Faithia, Streamyard and TheSundayEucharist.com. Invite your friends by directing them to the Facebook Event, the YouTube link or to the Streamyard registration page.

Let me work your corner

If you’d like to see my work continue, please click here to make a one-off donation. If you can afford a monthly contribution, sign up at Patreon.com and choose either:

Middleweight—$10/month (community mentoring)

Enrol in the Fighting Fit training program
Access member-only training videos
Engage in the members-only forum

Super-Middleweight – $50/month (remote mentoring)

All of the above +
One-on-one mentoring via email, phone, or Skype

Heavyweight—$100/month (in-person mentoring)

All of the above +
Training with Father Dave’s Old School Boxing Academy

Superheavyweight – $200/month (intensive in-person mentoring)

All of the above +
One weekend per month at Binacrombi Bush Camp.

Every dollar helps keep the wheels turning—the websites, the newsletters, the broadcasts, the boxing club, and the bush camp. Sign up at Patreon.com.

What’s On?

Saturday, March 31st – Boxing at Legend’s Gym in Kensington from 3 pm
Sunday, February 1st – Our Eucharist from noon @thesundayeucharist.com, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Faithia or Streamyard
Tuesday, February 3rd – Boxing at the Mundine Gym in Redfern from 7 pm
Thursday, February 5th – Online Bible study group meeting from noon @ www.thesundayeucharist.com/bible
Thursday, February 5th – Boxing at the Mundine Gym in Redfern from 7 pm
Saturday, February 7th – Boxing at Legend’s Gym in Kensington from 3 pm

As you can see from the pics above, I’ve had some weird and wonderful sparring partners over the last week. That’s CJ Mundine, top left. Getting knocked about by him last Tuesday brought back good memories of being thumped by his dad. Yes, I know that’s not everyone’s form of nostalgia, but I’m an unusual soul.

Either way, I must report that the numbers training with me of late have been very thin. I appreciate that school and university have been on holidays, and the tempo may pick up soon. Even so, if you’re still holding on to that New Year’s resolution to build up your fitness and drop the extra kilos, I’d love to help.

I could also do with your help in trialling the new members’ site that I set up last week. I’m trying a paid option this time (skool.com) that advertises itself as the ultimate platform for growing online communities. Unfortunately, only administrators can post to the group calendar, but everyone is able to share their wisdom and ideas through publishing posts and responding to the posts of others.

Please give it a go by clicking here and signing up for a free account. Let me know if you find it helpful or unhelpful. Let me know if you know of a better platform. However we accomplish it, let’s develop a structure through which we can support each other effectively should the days grow darker.

And there does seem to be plenty of darkness on the horizon. I know some say I catastrophise. Even so, a US attack on Iran looks imminent, and I don’t think any of us are ready for the fallout. If Iran strikes back hard, we could see much of the world economy collapse. Oil prices will skyrocket, and the violence could well reverberate across the globe. We can only hope and pray that common sense prevails. Even so, we haven’t seen much of that lately in the corridors of power.

Perhaps this is a good time to be reading the Beatitudes and reminding ourselves that God regularly works in ways that are invisible to most of us because God mostly chooses to work through people whose names never make it to the headlines.

May God give us grace to be a part of that light that continues to shine in the darkness.

Your brother in the Good Fight,