Jesus defines life and well-being in a profoundly different way. Who are the honoured? What kinds of people should we seek to be identified with?

• The poor and those in solidarity with them.
• Those who mourn, who feel grief and loss.
• The nonviolent and gentle.
• Those who hunger and thirst for the common good and aren’t satisfied with the status quo.
• The merciful and compassionate.
• Those characterized by openness, sincerity, and unadulterated motives.
• Those who work for peace and reconciliation.
• Those who keep seeking justice even when they’re misunderstood & misjudged.
• Those who stand for justice, as the prophets did, who refuse to back down or quiet down when they are slandered, mocked, misrepresented, threatened, and harmed.

Imagine a Christian identity characterised by solidarity, sensitivity, and nonviolence?  Imagine a Christian identity that champions those who long for justice, embody compassion, and manifest integrity and non-duplicity?  

The heros in the Kingdom Jesus point to are those who are brave and determined activists for preemptive peace; those willing to suffer with Jesus himself, in the prophetic tradition of justice and proclaiming the Kingdom.

If we want to be disciples of Jesus in our time,  we won’t be able to simply coast along.  Our call in these beatitudes is costly.  It’s gonna take courage to live this Good News in our time.  And it will take community, not individualism to make it happen.

It will take love, not individual toughness to make it happen, 

It will take compassion, not aggression to live the Sermon,

It will take tender, brave and honest heart work, to live into these Realities.

And so, it is with some good sobriety, that I note theologian Gil Bailie  words of reality: “In both life and death, Jesus was opposed by the most respected institutions of his world. Not surprisingly, therefore, the prospects of institutionalizing either the Sermon on the Mount or the revelation of the Cross are not great. “

As institutions of the Western world are culling under the power of lies: and

As the church becomes marginal in community life,

the call in our following of Jesus becomes not only more possible: but also requires of us something profound.  To be the realities these beatitudes speak.

So, where do we find ourselves living the Beatitudes… because it’s by living them: and calling others to their higher-selves, that we find this thing Jesus ushers in: the kingdom he point to … For theirs is the kingdom… and that there is comfort, mercy, justice, the very beholding of the Holy, and the peacemakers are recognised as the people of God…

Gil Bailie comments that… “Perhaps the anthropological role of the Christian Church in human history might be oversimplified as follows: To undermine the structures of sacred violence by making it impossible to forget how Jesus died, and to show the world how to live without such structures by making it impossible forget how Jesus lived.”