Over the past years, I have seen some of the world’s extremes of poverty and human suffering. Perhaps the most striking being the streets of Calcutta. I saw children bathing in gutters and eating from dumpsters, beggars on every street corner, deformed lepers lying motionless by the roadside and entire communities living in makeshift housing in the middle of a cesspool that smelled of human waste. People seemed to be literally dying on the streets. I believe as a missionary, rather as a Christian, I am called to seek those people out and minister to the totality of their needs – both physical and spiritual. But my experience in Calcutta left me asking God one question – “How on earth can I really do this?”
In Guatemala, I had a more personal, intimate look into the heart of suffering. This time, each suffering face had a name and was a child I had grown to love. I sat across from one child after another listening to the stories of rejection, abandonment, and heinous abuse suffered at the hands of the ones who were supposed to love and protect them. After every conversation, I remember having the same feeling in my gut that cried out to God – “How on earth can I really bring healing here?”
In Thailand I moved into a slum built over a swamp filled with garbage. I believed some enthusiastic trash pick-up days would begin to change things until the familiar stink of Buddhist fatalism reminded me that true transformative change comes only from the heart - and the heart of a man is a much more difficult mission field than a garbage-filled swamp. And as I lived with them over that swamp I recall thinking, on more than one occasion, "How on earth can I really make a difference here?"
I think the Beatitudes are Jesus’ response to exactly these questions in His disciples - then, now and forever. In Matthew 4:23-25, the writer sets the scene for the Sermon on the Mount. The disciples, who have just left everything to follow Jesus, are introduced to ministry and must be wondering what they have gotten themselves into. Jesus is teaching and preaching, and people begin to follow Him from afar. But Jesus did not just attract your average person – the sick, suffering, diseased, demon-possessed and paralytics all came to Him. Most were probably carried by desperate family members hoping to help their suffering mother, brother or child. They probably came weeping and crying out for help. There were multitudes that came, and Jesus healed them. I do not know if He healed them all or, if being bound by human flesh, He wasn’t physically able to get to each one. But I bet Jesus probably went up to that mountain where the Sermon on the Mount is given because He was exhausted. His body and soul needed a rest.
And how much more needy were the disciples. This is their baptism into ministry, and the sights, sounds and smells of suffering must have left them physically, emotionally and spiritually exhausted. When they responded to the call to follow the long-awaited King of Israel, this is probably not at all what they had envisioned. They were waiting for a Messiah that would begin a political revolution; instead they followed their Messiah straight into suffering and servanthood. I imagine when they followed Jesus up that mountain they all had one common thought – “How on earth can I really do this?”
“Blessed are the poor in spirit” and all that follows in the Beatitudes is the only thing I’ve found that allows me to keep going back to those situations I have described. The counsel of well-meaning people that say "at least you are doing something", or "at least those children are better off than before," eventually leaves me empty and discouraged. However, if I truly believe that blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness - or Luke’s powerful version of the same, blessed are the poor, blessed are those who hunger, blessed are those who weep - then I not only look upon my neighbors who are suffering as truly blessed, but I am forced to look at myself and recognize that in my pride, my ease and my self-sufficiency I will never be able to fully receive all that God wants to give me.
The Beatitudes produce despair in the heart of the proud, and that is exactly what Jesus means it to do. Immediately when we reach the point of despair, we are willing to come to Jesus as beggars and receive from Him. The cornerstone of the Kingdom is poverty, not possession; humility, not self-sufficiency; receiving, not working for God. Seeing God's Kingdom come begins with a sense of absolute futility that says, “I cannot begin to do this.” Then the knowledge of our own poverty of spirit brings us to the frontier where Jesus Christ works.
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