The Sermon on the Mount is one of the most familiar passages in the New Testament, if not in the whole Bible. Mention the Sermon on the Mount and most people think of it as a lovely collection of Jesus’s main teachings. It tends to be seen as a Good Thing.

Our Gospel reading this morning is from Matthew, and is a list of circumstances or happenstances known as the Beatitudes. In this passage, Jesus tells his listeners that when certain unpleasant things happen to them, or if they are poor, for instance, they are to consider themselves ‘happy’ or ‘blessed’.

We may have heard these words so many times that the disturbing and surprising nature of this teaching washes over us but I doubt that is how the disciples first heard them!

Rather, I expect that they were confused and somewhat affronted. What do you mean that we are blessed when people say all kinds of unpleasant things about us?

One can only hope that they had the opportunity to talk later with Jesus about his strange teachings and to get him to expand on what he meant.

Now we understand that he wanted his followers to understand that whatever happened to them and regardless of their circumstances, if they trusted in him and remained faithful to him, their eternal salvation was assured. But was that all Jesus meant? Was what he said only intended to be about pie in the sky by and by?

I believe that at the core of his teachings was the message that by trusting in him, by following his Way of love and forgiveness, they would see and experience everything they were going through with new eyes. If they looked to Jesus in the midst of their troubles, they would begin to see with the eyes of Christ. They would be transformed from within and given the grace and strength to endure. In their own strength the disciples would have known this was impossible. Jesus wasn’t really telling his friends how he wanted them to TRY to react to difficulties. He was telling them that by trusting in him this is how they WOULD react.

Revd Christina Rees