"Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." (Matt 5.10)
It's an interesting thought that getting into trouble is inevitable for those who faithfully follow Jesus. You could argue that if as a Christian, my life is untroubled and in harmony with all that's going on around me, I have settled for less than the least of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.
TheQuestions of justice, peace and mercy are not optional interests for those who are into that kind of thing. They lie at the heart of what it means to live as a child of God, to conduct ourselves as a citizen of the Kingdom of God, to be committed as a follower of Jesus.
Paul told the Roman believers, "The kingdom of God is...righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." (Rom 14.17) Christian living is counter cultural and endlessly questioning of all those everyday situations when people are treated unjustly, when life is made harder for the vulnerable, and people are diminished by systems loaded against them. Any reading of the Gospels confronts us with Jesus causing trouble for the powerful, questioning the acceptance of human suffering, challenging with anger and compassion the complacency of the rich, the powerful and those served best by the status quo.
To be persecuted because of righteousness, means to be in trouble for not remaining silent about poverty that dehumanises, and hunger which demoralises. It is to notice, and pay attention to, and refuse to be complicit in structures and systems that grind down the poor, inflate the resources of the rich, create oceans and mountains of waste to satisfy the inordinate greed of global consumerism.
I know. That's all political, and whatever else the Sermon on the Mount was about, it was never spoken, remembered and written as a solution to global capitalism or as an alternative political platform for economic visionaries. Except that the underlying assumptions of the Beatitudes are full on contradictions of human life organised on assumptions of domination, exploitation, exclusion, individual self-interest, and life as economic and social rivalry.
In other words, the Sermon on the Mount sets the follower of Jesus on a collision course with all those forms of injustice that are built in assumptions of systemic power, constructed social worlds of exclusion, the reification of profit as the be all and end all of human life, and that contentment and complacency with the status quo so deeply characteristic of those for whom systems of exploitation are working well thank you very much.
Which means to follow Jesus is to be out of step with the working assumptions of "the world", which in the New Testament is shorthand for "the way the world is organised." A Christian community is "a community of contradiction", "an incendiary fellowship", "a new humanity". Each of these phrases is the title of a book written by the Quaker philosopher Elton Trueblood. They are telling phrases, and deeply indebted to the teaching of Jesus.
I suppose one way of quality checking our Christian obedience to Jesus is to ask if this Beatitude comes anywhere near reality in our life experience. And if not, we may wish to consider the world that is our daily world, of work, family, neighbourhood, and media mediated realities. When was I last persecuted for righteousness sake? When has my life been made harder by my protest at injustice, my persistent contradiction of lies, my questioning of the way things are for the poor, the hungry, the uncared for and the homeless?
I guess if I am living in a comfort zone, I'm doing this Christian thing all wrong. And I will only be Blessed, when my passion for righteousness, for things to be done rightly, justly, and humanely, ignites and fuels a life that cares enough to get into trouble for righteousness' sake.
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