August 29

I am always surprise when, right before the ascension, the apostles ask Jesus, “ Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom of Israel?” I would think by that time in their relationship with Jesus, the apostles would have figured out that he did not have a nationalistic bone in his body.
While Jesus did not fulfill their expectation of restoring their country to some former glory, he did offer something like a verbal manifesto - the beatitudes. Yet the four beatitudes given to us in Luke’s Gospel confuse me. How blessed is a person when he or she is poor, hungry, weeping or hated? My initial response would be not too blessed! Yet recently I put myself into the picture of Jesus speaking to the crowd, with his disciples beside him. Perhaps the people listening to Jesus for the first time, eyeing his followers standing near him, heard something like this:

Blessed are you who are poor; we once were poor but now we share what we have with each other. We will share with you.
Blessed are you who are hungry; we can offer you some bread and fish to fill your stomach.
Blessed are you who are weeping; come with us and, after a while, you will find you can laugh again.
Blessed are you when people hate you, exclude you, insult you; for with us you will find welcome, we will not treat you that way.

This is not the interpretation of the beatitudes that I was given by religious teachers. It came to me in the silence of the night. What struck me as I torn back the covers and rose from my bed to write this down is that this interpretation is not about what God can do for me, but rather about what I can do for God, in Christ, with you.