Beauty will Save the World - The Beatitudes

In the past two posts I shared from the book Beauty Will Save the World by Brian Zahnd (see here and here). In the final chapter of the book the author says that our technocratic world which is "awash in the unimaginative prose of technical language" needs correct metaphors to understand the shape of beauty and what we are meant to become.

A beautiful metaphor that Zahnd proposes for the church is "a shelter from the storm." In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus concludes His teaching with just such a picture, telling us that "if we will live his teaching, we will build a house on the rock-solid foundation that will stand when the rains fall, the winds blow, and the floods arise...a church that lives the Sermon on the Mount will be a shelter from the storm."

Jesus begins this, His greatest "sermon", with an eightfold declaration of the nature of the kingdom of God (Matthew 5:3-12) and ends by saying that any kingdom not built on these Beatitudes is doomed to collapse. 

"Jesus's vision was the establishment of a new kind of kingdom and the construction of a new kind of temple...Wherever the church seeks to live according to the way of Christ, there is found a shelter from the storm...An aesthetic Christianity expressing the beauty that saves the world will excel in these eight things:

• Welcoming the poor in spirit
• Comforting those who mourn
• Esteeming the meek
• Hungering for justice
• Extending mercy
• Having a pure heart
• Being peacemakers
• Enduring persecution

The author points out that the Beatitudes are counter-intuitive and subversive to the established order because they turn the assumed values of a super-power culture (like ours) on its head.  "The Beatitudes are the antithetical ethos to the superpower mantra of 'we're number one!' The Beatitudes are deliberately designed to shock us...They do not yield their treasures to the casual inquirer. They require thought, reflection, and meditation. The wisdom of the Beatitudes will only dawn on us slowly. We have much to learn and just as much to unlearn...despite their obvious significance, the Beatitudes remain foreign to us. We have not been formed by the values of the Beatitudes; we have been raised on the received text of a superpower...Contemporary Americans are scripted in a way that is completely counter to the values of the Beatitudes. We don't bless poverty or sorrow or meekness or hunger or persecution - yet it is (these) that we find Jesus blessing in the Beatitudes...this should perplex us.

"What Jesus is announcing in the Beatitudes is a radical reordering of assumed values; some will hear it as good news, while others will be threatened by it...This is going to place Jesus at odds with the power brokers of the age - then and now. After all, it wasn't the poor and marginalized who conspired to crucify Jesus; it was Caiaphas and Herod and Pilate - those who had a powerful stake in the present arrangement. But for the losers in the game - those scraping the bottom of life's barrel, the marginalized and forgotten, the left out - what Jesus announces is indeed good news."

In the next few posts I plan to go through these eight declarations of the kingdom values. If you're looking for material to meditate on (as Zahnd alludes to above), this would be a wonderful portion for meditation.