Willard's World 4 - You Are Blessed (Period!)

The next four chapters of The Divine Conspiracy deal with Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. Go read those chapters now to get the idea of what Jesus is saying, from the horse’s mouth as it were, before getting Willard’s take on it all.

In the medical world I am a part of, much of life revolves around the idea of a talk. One of the aspects of a doctor’s career as every med school applicant knows is life long learning and the talk is the most common way this occurs. Talks vary in many ways from the quality of food offered to lure in an audience to the color of the power point slides. What is common to them all though is that the person delivering the talk is an expert.

During the obstetrics rotation we as medical student were required to give a talk which broke this vital criterion of an expert presenter. A friend of mine came up with the solution though. He realized that he lacked the normal letters that followed the presenters name on the title slide of the power point. These usually are MD, FRCSC, PhD etc. Instead he put the letters we had never seen before, AHSD, after his name to assert himself as an expert. His talk went far better than mine which I attribute entirely to the letters after his name. Being jealous I asked where he had gotten his AHSD from. He replied that it stood for Alberta High School Diploma.

All this to say that Willard presents Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as a talk from an expert (although I doubt there was power point back in the day). Willard calls us to remember that Jesus was an expert. “If you play a game of word association today, in almost any setting, you will collect some familiar names around words such as smart, knowledgeable, intelligent, and so forth…. But one person who pretty certainly will not come up in this connection is Jesus.” If we are to learn anything from Jesus talk we need to grasp the reality that he really was and is an expert in the topics he is addressing. “Someone who as John says was, ‘with God in the beginning’, should be a world leader in every topic but especially moral law and the practical execution thereof.

What exactly was Jesus topic? Willard clarifies, “The aim of the sermon--forcefully illustrated by its concluding verses—is to help people come to hopeful and realistic terms with there lives here on earth by clarifying in concrete terms, the make up of the kingdom into which they are now invited by Jesus call: ‘Repent for life in the kingdom of the heavens is now one of your options.” This is the thesis which all parts of Jesus talk are to support.

Lets then look to the first section of the talk on the hill which we know as the Beatitudes. Willard argues that this section of the talk answers the question, “Who is blessed?” This is a radical departure from the traditional reading in which we ask, what do I do in order to achieve the blessed state?

The scene just prior to the Beatitudes shows Jesus healing all sorts of people in the enormous crowd. The kingdom of heaven had just broken into peoples lives in a full and real way. Another way of putting this would be that those in the crowd were blessed. “[Jesus] could point out in the crowd now this individual who was blessed because the kingdom among us had just reached out and touched them with Jesus heart and voice and hands.” Willard then supposes that with this context in mind the original audience would hear blessed are the poor in spirit as a declaration that the kingdom of heaven is available to even the poor in spirit rather than we should become poor in spirit because it is an admirable quality and we might come into the kingdom if we lose enough spirit.

Willard states that in a traditional reading where one is blessed because of poverty of spirit, “we have full-blown, if not salvation by works, then possibly salvation by attitude. Or even by situation and chance, in case you happen to be persecuted, for example—meritorious attitude or circumstance guarantees acceptance with God!” So then, “The Beatitudes, in particular, are not teachings on how to be blessed. They are not instructions to do anything. They do not indicate conditions that are particularly pleasing to God or man…. They single out cases that provide proof that, in him, the rule of God from the heavens truly is available in life circumstances that are beyond all hope.”

As we read through the list of, “those who, from the human point of view, are regarded as most hopeless, most beyond all possibility of God’s blessing or even interest…” we find that the mourners, the shy ones, the ones who want to be right, the merciful, the perfectionists, the peacemakers, and the persecuted all have access to the kingdom.

Now allow me to add a little of my two cents here at the end. This part is for free! This is a very novel way of reading the Beatitudes and I’ve tried to lay out the important bits of Willard’s argument for reading them this way. I think though that elsewhere in the bible some of the qualities spoken of in the beatitudes: mercy, desire for righteousness, and peacemaking specifically, are commended as things we as people trying to align our kingdom with God’s should strive for. I suppose it doesn’t negate Willard’s ideas to think that God would call us to join some of the groups that are blessed. I just haven’t entirely understood the implications of this new reading yet. Read it again for yourself and see what you think.