The poor

The Lord hears the cry of the poor;blessed be the Lord! Psalm

Looking at his disciples, he said:  “Blessed are you who are poor,     for yours is the kingdom of God.
Luke 6:20 NIV

The second quote is from Jesus and part of a longer passage.

Here was a man whose words were like fire.

Even now Jesus words can penetrate our comfortable world and challenge us so that we can dare to be different.

Here is a man who presents to us an altered perception of what it means to be living the human life. Here is a man whose words can make us question our existing value system and drag us out of our introspection.

Jesus trades in paradox. We start to listen to him and when we hear him say "BLESSED", "POOR", "KINGDOM OF GOD" in the same sentence we begin to question what he could possibly mean.

The Good News translation even says "Happy" instead of "Blessed "How can poor people be happy? How can the hungry be satisfied? In a way the beatitudes are one of the most frightening passages that Jesus teaches. Because what he says invades our life. We spend most of our lives working hard to feed our family, clothe them, pay a mortgage, buy a car (and of course be a success in the process) and yet Jesus comes close to us in today's gospel and says "alas for you who are rich: you are having your consolation now."

It is not something that we should explain away or dilute. Jesus words are addressed to us all at an individual level. To each one who listens they are a challenge. They are a challenge to our hearts and directly to our interior lives. Jesus is prompting us in a very direct way to change the orientation of our lives, so that we put the God who Is Love first and everything else second. He is inviting us to have spiritual integrity and part of having this is to be able to detach from material possessions so that they no longer own us.

You could also say that Jesus words are addressed to us so that we change our hearts from stone to compassionate hearts of flesh. This invitation is from a Jesus who wants to usher in the new reign of God. A lot of the teaching in the gospel of Luke is about the "Kingdom of God" and how to bring it into our lives. Jesus expects his followers to be "yeast" in society, to have integrity. Changing society by their very presence. If our hearts are in the right place then this starts to happen. Christians are not called to be passive. If our faith does anything for us at all it should stir us into a more pure kind of love which isn't at all selfish.

...and yes then the beatitudes start to come true. We are happy (or happier) when we change and live by the gospel.

Of course we are only human and will struggle with temptation and even fall back at times. But what we need to watch is that the direction of our lives is going the right way. That is towards God and towards each other and not the other way... We need to set our rudder straight. Set our love straight. Set our integrity straight and head for the goal. Then rich or poor becomes irrelevant. I remember a good friend reminding me that we pray daily for our food in the Lord's prayer "give us this day our daily bread"

Dear Jesus, I have so much help me to know this and to live fully as an heir to the kingdom. Amen