Confessing the Beatitudes

Hori­zons Bible Study Les­son: Matthew 5:6; Luke 6:21a, 25a; Psalm 107:1–9

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Memo­r­ial in Dublin by Rowan Gille­spie, titled “Famine.” Photo by “bxtr”.

Key Idea
Jesus promises sus­te­nance to the fam­ished, but calls the “stuffed” to account.

Pre­pare To Study
Read the les­son. Read Psalm 107:1–9.

Christ Can­dle Liturgy (an open­ing liturgy)
Light­ing the Christ Can­dle: As we con­sider the thirsty and the hun­gry, we recall that God will sat­isfy them. As we con­sider those suf­fer­ing from injus­tice, we recall that God will wipe every tear from their eyes. (Can­dle burns through­out the ses­sion as a visual reminder of God’s presence.)

Prayer: Lord, with our sis­ters and broth­ers, we affirm: “We believe that we are called in the Spirit to account for the hope that is within us through Jesus Christ and believe that jus­tice shall pre­vail and peace shall reign” (Accra Con­fes­sion, para. 32). May it be so. Amen.

You Who Are Fam­ished: The Ver­sion in Luke
“Mom, I’m hun­gry! I’m thirsty!” It is the refrain of child­hood all over the world. For the most part, here in the global north, such a com­plaint is eas­ily answered with a snack or a promise that a meal will soon fol­low. For many of us, hunger is a tem­po­rary sen­sa­tion, eas­ily addressed by plen­ti­ful access to food and drink. How­ever, when we turn to the fourth beat­i­tude, we dis­cover a hunger nei­ther quickly nor eas­ily sat­is­fied. Jesus teaches this beat­i­tude both to the crowd on the plain in Luke and to the dis­ci­ples on the moun­tain in Matthew. How­ever, each of these teach­ings is slightly dif­fer­ent, and each reveals to us dif­fer­ent truths about the nature of God and about Christ’s call to discipleship.

We begin with the shorter of the two ver­sions: the one in Luke. Jesus is sit­ting on a plain in front of peo­ple, many of whom may be among the poor­est of soci­ety, the des­ti­tute. To this crowd, Jesus declares: “You who are peinontes (pay-NOHN-tes), you who are fam­ished are greatly hon­ored.” Here, Jesus uses a deeply descrip­tive word, one that speaks not of the mild hunger of a child com­ing from play, but of the chronic, deep-seated, life-threatening hunger that the poor­est of the poor know on a daily basis. When this word occurs in the Bible, it often describes those who are fast­ing for extended peri­ods of time, like Jesus in the wilder­ness (Lk. 4:2), or those expe­ri­enc­ing famine, like the Egyp­tians under Joseph’s rule (Gen. 41:55). To be fam­ished is to under­stand vis­cer­ally the need for, and the bless­ing of, daily bread.

Under Roman impe­r­ial rule, the fam­ished were every­where. As the city of Rome grew, it demanded more and more crops from its colonies. The result was that those under Roman rule had access to less and less nour­ish­ment. Famines were very com­mon, even in the Roman provinces in north­ern Africa, the bread­bas­ket of Rome. What nutri­tious food there was went to feed the afflu­ent of Rome’s colonies, those who ruled on behalf of Rome. The poor, those who had noth­ing to do but fol­low a wan­der­ing preacher on the plains of Pales­tine, they would have known noth­ing but daily, per­sis­tent hunger. These are the fam­ished whom Jesus calls honorable.

If a mem­ber of the afflu­ent class hap­pened to be lis­ten­ing to Jesus as he spoke on the plain, this beat­i­tude would have been just as con­fus­ing as the first three. For, in Jesus’ cul­ture, to be a “real man” meant to be able to feed one­self and one’s fam­ily. To not be able to do so, par­tic­u­larly if one was a man, was a mark of shame. Beg­gars, thus, were less than human because they could not care for them­selves. The afflu­ent would have ignored beg­gars like Bar­ti­maeus in Mark 10:46–52, or the man at the Beau­ti­ful Gate of the tem­ple in Acts 3:1–10. And, if they gave them alms, it was to show how much more upright these afflu­ent folk were than the rest of the com­mu­nity. Cer­tainly, it would have aston­ished them to con­sider the fam­ished as honored.

Dis­cus­sion Ques­tion
Does it sur­prise you that Jesus calls those who are fam­ished “greatly hon­ored?” Why or why not?

Those Who Are Fam­ished and Parched for Jus­tice: The Ver­sion in Matthew
When we turn to the beat­i­tudes that Jesus teaches his dis­ci­ples on the moun­tain, we find that his teach­ing here is some­what dif­fer­ent. In Matthew, Jesus declares, “Greatly hon­ored are those who are fam­ished and parched for dikaiosyne (di-ky-oh-SOON-ay),” for jus­tice.

Any of you who are astute read­ers will note imme­di­ately that your Eng­lish trans­la­tions of the Bible all use the word right­eous­ness here. Most Eng­lish trans­la­tions do. They are fol­low­ing a tra­di­tion that dates back to the six­teenth cen­tury when bib­li­cal trans­la­tor William Tyn­dale trans­lated the Greek word dikaiosyne into the Old Eng­lish rihtwis, which became our Eng­lish word right­eous­ness. As the word became more and more used by Eng­lish speak­ers of the Bible, we began to assume that there was a dis­tinc­tion between right­eous­ness and jus­tice. Right­eous­ness was seen as more of an indi­vid­ual state of moral­ity or holi­ness. Jus­tice was some­thing imposed on us from the out­side. The chasm became so great that some argued forth­rightly that jus­tice was not a key con­cept in Christianity.

How­ever, if you were to look back in his­tory six­teen cen­turies before Tyn­dale, and much far­ther back than that, you would find that the Greek dikaiosyne meant “jus­tice,” and this cer­tainly was its pri­mary mean­ing dur­ing Jesus’ day. “Jus­tice,” here, should not be con­fused with “judg­ment.” Rather, jus­tice is a state of right rela­tion­ship with God and neigh­bor. In Leviti­cus 19:9–10, 15, it means deal­ing as fairly with the poor as with the rich. In Deuteron­omy 24:17–22, it means treat­ing wid­ows, orphans, and for­eign­ers exactly as you would treat the mar­ried, those with par­ents, and citizens.

In Matthew, Jesus charges his dis­ci­ples to honor those who are fam­ished and parched for jus­tice, for the kind of right rela­tion­ships between peo­ple and God that were the orig­i­nal vision of God. These are the peo­ple who, even if they were not mourn­ing or des­ti­tute or hum­bled, yearned as if they were fam­ished and parched, for right rela­tion­ships among all peo­ple. While they them­selves might have had no power to bring about this vision of right rela­tion­ship, they knew it to be God’s heart, and they longed for the day it would be brought about.

Dis­cus­sion Ques­tion
Do you know peo­ple who are fam­ished and parched for jus­tice, for right rela­tion­ships between God and neigh­bor? Who are they and what causes you to think of them in this way?

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