In the Advent of this most peculiar calendar year, and thus in the beginning of a new liturgical year, it seemed to me that a few thoughts on the Sermon on the Mount might not be out of place. The Sermon, after all, is, we are told, the new Torah, the new Law; so that just as in Lent , before the celebration of the Redeemer we may usefully study the Law the obedience to which we invariably muck up enough to need redeeming.
As in the New Testament, specifically Matthew's Gospel, I thought I would begin with what are usually known as the Beatitudes; of which the first is
We do not know what Yeshua said in Aramaic, but whoever translated the shorthand notes of ‘Matthew the Exciseman’ into clear if clumsy Greek said it thus: ‘Makarioi hoi ptōchoi tōi pneumati, hoti autōn hè basileia tōn ouranōn.’ Let’s try to parse this. Makarios (some us are old enough to remember a Greek political bishop of that name) means ‘fortunate, lucky’ more than religiously ‘blessed’: but St Jerome clearly thought this unworthy of both the speaker and the occasion and translated it as Beati; and all English translators from Wyclif on followed him. A ptōchos in ordinary Greek is a beggar: here, though, it is at once metaphorised by being followed by ‘in the spirit’ (spiritus/pneuma/ruach, the great noun of which the meaning runs from Him Who brooded over the primeval waters in Genesis to the breath that comes out of our nose or mouth. So it does not necessarily limit itself to the beggar in rags at the gate: a rich man may well be ptōchos tōi pneumati.
Considering that these people, whoever they are, are fortunate, because theirs is the rule of the heavens, it seems important to find out who and what they are. How is one poor in spirit? To start with the highest: one cannot imagine that the Heavens will be ruled by those who have little of the Holy Spirit. Poor, perhaps, in divine inspiration? In a year of Covid-19 there are of course many who are poor in breath and hooked up to respirators; but those surely also are not meant. (If I sound deliberately obtuse it is because I’m trying to recover the way this must have read to those original readers who were not already converted.) The consensus among theologians is that those who are meant are those who are spiritually poor, and especially who are so in their own estimation: those who know that they have few resources and that they are dependent on the Father for literally everything. It is those who have that kind of humility, and therefore that kind of instinctive trusting dependence on the Father, who – beggars as they feel themselves to be – are fortunate, He reassures them. Why? Because theirs is – to them rightfully belongs – the basileia, the kingship, the rule, of the heavens. (ouranos in daily Greek was the sky, the vault of heaven, but also the heaven of the deities, a heaven which in the Old Testament’s Psalm 96/7 had become plural.)
Goodness. The last shall be first, indeed. At least, those who see themselves as the last, those who do not think much of their powers, those who are, in fact, ‘as little children’, utterly dependent on their parent and content to be so because living in complete unquestioned trust. Those who, as Yeshua puts it later on in the same discourse, do not take thought for the morrow, but take each day as the Father sends it. Those who, like the Samaritan trader, interrupt their business trip when they chance upon a bleeding robbery-victim, take him to the nearest pub, tell the landlord to see to him, promise to pay all costs on the return journey, and go on to their destination. Those who, working in a hospital, do not think much about being saintly but just do their job and say a prayer while doing it. Those who, without metaphysics or other philosophy, can see that ‘heaven and earth are full of Thy glory’ because they are so little occupied with their career plan that they have eyes to spot glory, divinity, in all the tiny nooks and crannies where it lodges.
They are makarioi. Already here on earth, because being what they are they are happier than others: not given to bitching, kvetching, grouching, glooming, weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. And this happiness, this good fortune, this makaria, follows them to heaven. To heaven where, true to the ancient Athenian wisdom that governance should be given only to those who do not desire it, they will be placed in charge. It is a comfort to think that Heaven will be ruled by the simple, the einfach, the onefold, those for whom one Father, whose Will they happily do from day to day, is enough.
Now, who are they? Referred to here as a class, they might appear to us as people with a specific gift. Poverty of spirit: well, A has it, B doesn’t. Like blue eyes, or an inborn talent for mathematics. But the whole trend of the Sermon is not that way. The Sermon is the new Torah. The fulfilled, not the abolished, Torah. The Torah fulfilled in inwardness. So it is filled with what we should learn, learn to do, learn to understand, learn to become, as was the old Torah: see Psalm 119, which is a lingering love-song to that old Torah. Hence the ptōchoi tōi pneumati, those lucky, fortunate people, those makarioi, are Us. They are what we could be. What we should be. What we may be, if we learn not to be too clever or too ambitious or too rebellious for our own good.
No comments:
Post a Comment