Congratulations
Congratulations
Jesus’s beatitudes are neither impossible imperatives, nor irrelevant idealization. They are indicatives of what God has done that retain their prospectiveness. Between the indicative and prospective is where we are truly blessed.
“Blessed” translates the Greek markorios which translates the Hebrew asher, “happy.” So, “Happy are the poor in spirit” — But as these “blessings” are prospective, we should also hear, “Congratulations to those who know their need of God, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven (a paraphrase of “poor in spirit” that captures the more personal meaning). Congratulations to the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth…Congratulations to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and justice, for they shall be filled…Congratulations to those who are persecuted in the cause of righteousness, for the kingdom of Heaven is theirs.”
When we invest our financial resources, we get a prospectus. These beatitudes are a prospectus for prospective blessings, for Jesus as much as for us. This is only chapter five. He would respond to provocation after provocation with gentleness or meekness. He would hunger and thirst for righteousness and justice as no other human could. No human before or since would be as persecuted as he was in the hope of God’s kingdom. Jesus has received the reward of resurrection, but his success in bringing us into the kingdom of Heaven remains prospective for him precisely because it remains prospective for us.
I wonder if some of us of a certain generation presumed the continuation of material blessings, or equated the successes of our liberal political and economic order with the kingdom of Heaven. Did we forget how utterly we need God? Did we think we might avoid persecution in the cause of righteousness and justice? Did we suppose, as one author speculated in the 1990s, that History would end with us?
So what do we get out of our prospective congratulations? This Sermon on the Mount, chs. 5-7, is about how to live as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. In ch. 10, Jesus will teach us about mission or outreach. Ch. 13 contains Jesus’s parables of the Kingdom itself. In ch. 18, Jesus teaches his church about living together in love. Chs. 24-25 are about the rewards of having lived as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven.
And ch. 25 ends with the judgment of the nations, the feeding of the hungry and thirsty, the clothing of the naked, the visitation of the imprisoned, and Jesus’s summary, “in so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers or sisters of mine, you did it to me.” We’ve taken it as our responsibility as Christians to accomplish, and that’s one valid interpretation. But wherever Jesus refers to his “brothers and sisters” in Matthew’s Gospel, it’s to members of his Church. So those disciples of Jesus who first heard this Gospel would have understood themselves to be the imprisoned, the exposed, the deprived. And it would be those who respond to our Christ-like vulnerability who would share with us in the rewards of living as dependent on God, as gentle, as merciful, as hungering for justice, and prepared to suffer.
There are many today who expect Christians to be winners. The Jesus who speaks to us today expects us to be losers, as he himself was by the world’s standards of winning and losing, success and failure. But we have a different standard, a different prospectus. Congratulations.
February 1st, 2026
The 4th Sunday after Epiphany Year A
The Rev. David Kendrick