Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Craig

We certainly aren’t being naive when we acknowledge that seeking to live the Beatitudes can be socially and politically costly. People will seek to take advantage of us, and we will appear to be weak. So we experience inner discomfort as we begin to perceive and think differently, and there are wider consequences as we swim against the flow.

Simon

Matthew calls our goal the “Kingdom of heaven” because a good Jew wouldn’t say the name of God out loud. Using this phrase makes it seem like we are pursuing the ultimate thing. This is what everyone was waiting for: God’s reign to be established. We know that this is what Jesus says the gospel is, and that he saw the kingdom breaking in. So this feels like a pinnacle and I find it strange to think of the kingdom as belonging to anyone. 

And so, as you say Craig, if you do try to make peace, if you are merciful, if you hunger and thirst for righteousness, don’t expect any thanks for it. But you will see the kingdom come. The kingdom is yours. Just don’t expect any praise. Don’t look for the people around you to tell you that you’re a great person and pat you on the back. That’s unlikely to happen.

Craig

You talk about the pinnacle Simon, and I think you’re right. But it also closes a circle, because the promised blessing is the same blessing that is promised to the poor in spirit right at the very beginning. So the path that begins with inner emptying and moves through grief, groundedness, longing and wholeness-making arrives at the same place it began. And that’s not because nothing has changed. The journey has revealed what was always already there. It’s as if anyone who walks this path all the way to the end discovers that they were standing at the destination at that very first step. So persecution is not sought or celebrated. It’s simply a natural consequence of a genuine alignment with a deeper reality in a world which is organised around its opposites.

James

I think I would agree with that, because the Kingdom of Heaven is like a pair of book-ends to the Beatitudes. The phrase ‘theirs is the kingdom of heaven’ suggests that it’s a present reality in the lives of those to whom Jesus is speaking. All the other Beatitudes are future tense… they will be filled, they will receive mercy, they will see God, they will be called children of God. But this persecution is our expected present experience if we are doing things for Jesus’ sake.

Craig

Yes James, and I wonder if you’ve helped me solve a problem I’ve had throughout this series. I’ve really struggled with this idea that everything is going to be made right in heaven, because I don’t think that’s what Jesus was living and teaching, and it certainly wasn’t an idea rooted in his Jewish heritage. But now I’m wondering whether, as Jesus is listing these future-tense Beatitudes, he is anticipating this final verse in which he will draw us back to the present. Cooperating with eternal reality in the present is never going to be rewarded in the moment, and in fact will lead to persecution. And so maybe the solution to my yearning is contained within the flow of the Beatitudes. We’re always looking forward in the same way Jesus did. The way we behave now matters, not because it works immediately or that we will be rewarded when we die, but because we are cooperating with God.

James

Yeah, nice.

Roy

What are you saying, Craig? Is it that we struggle to view things from an eternal perspective?

Craig

Yes, but we can use a phrase like ‘eternal perspective’ and none of us really know what we mean by it. You can use it, and I can use it. I’m interpreting what you say and vice-versa, but neither of us really know whether we’re meaning the same thing. I think what I’m doing is pushing back against the theology that I inherited as a young Christian: say yes to Jesus now, he’ll become your friend and you’ll go to heaven – as if all Jesus cared about was my assured future.

Roy

No, when I’m thinking about ‘eternal perspective’ in this context, I’m desiring the prospect that one day love will conquer hatred, evil will be defeated and suffering will come to an end. That’s what I mean by eternal perspective: that the Beatitudes do challenge and may invert the world’s values. We see an inversion of power – currently power, wealth and physical force determine our security, success and achievement – Jesus is saying there’s a different way in which we are called to live. And this is what the kingdom of God is like.

Craig

I’m with you. And so is Jesus, because surely this is what he means when he talks about hungering and thirsting for righteousness. Because righteousness, as we’ve said all the way through these conversations, draws on that deep and rich seam of shalom and justice. It’s about right relationship and covenant faithfulness. And so the blessing is for those who suffer because they insist on doing what is just and what is faithful, and they are laying the foundations for the values you have just described. This passion has to lead to us doing differently: we do in the present because we believe the Kingdom of Heaven is a real possibility. 

Simon

I think it is worth acknowledging that, at this time, people believed in a multi-layered universe. So the word for heaven is the same as the word for sky. And people believed that above them was a dome, and that this place was called heaven. So, to them, heaven is not in the future. It’s there, it’s quite close, but we are cut off from it. And beneath us is the world of the dead.

I think it’s probably fair to say that our default setting is to accept the possibility of a multi-dimensional universe. It then becomes possible for good and evil, or heaven and hell if you like, to exist within a spiritual, or hidden, dimension of our universe. So it’s not another place, but it may feel as inaccessible to us as if it were on the other side of some barrier. So the fact that these references to heaven are in the present tense is, I think, reflective of the First Century worldview. But the worldview that we have now also makes it conceivable that heaven, or connecting with God if you like, is possible to us to right now. So it’s not something that we’re waiting for. 

Jesus clearly believed that a breaking in of the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ could lead to a different future and, whether it’s over time or at a specific dramatic moment, God’s reign would increase. So in the book of Revelation there’s a new city. God originally came down to live in a garden, but now it’s a city. So, even within our modern worldview, there is a possibility that heaven is available to us right now. I think there has to be a sense that God is working towards a new future that we can have hope in.

Roy

We’re envisaging the renewing, remaking and recreating of the world.

Craig

I think Simon has helped us to see that it was when we replaced a layered cosmology with an idea of linear progress that the damage was done. What those very simple forms of Christianity that predominated when I was young did was extend the then-current idea of linear process beyond death. Heaven was presented as a future reality in which we are rewarded. So, just as we resisted a First century cosmology, I’ve been resisting this idea that all the blessing is in a future when we get to heaven because Jesus wasn’t talking about that either. He wasn’t buying into the layered cosmology idea, and neither does he think in a linear way. Jesus was grounding the possibility of God’s activity in the now, and insisting that it had future implications. Simon has shown us how a ideas of multi-dimensional universe makes Jesus’ vision possible.

Simon

Yeah, I think we can have both/and. So I can have hope for the future, and the sacrifice and suffering I experience now can be linked to greater goodness and more of the kingdom in that future. What we long for might be tomorrow or it might be in some unknowable, indefinable future in which all things come together under God. I think I want to have it as a both/and because I think leaping one way or the other closes down the possibilities.

To be continued…