You are really walking in the good news of the kingdom if you can go with confidence to any of the hopeless people around you and effortlessly convey assurance that they can now enter a blessed life with God.
This alone provides basis for a new way of living our lives. Just stop and think of all the people you will run into in a given day. The grocer at Safeway. The security guard on the light rail. The guy with headphones who sits across from you. The girl who brings you coffee. Your boss. Your manager. Your best friend.
These people live a life that is human and that is ordinary. Can you confidently walk up to any of them and give them the good news that they can enter a blessed life with God? Do you believe they can? Jesus certainly did. He did more than that. He approached, not the ordinary, but the hopelessly unordinary. He took to the outcast and the outlier, and he told them that they, too, could enter the blessed life of relation with God.
Who would be on your list of "hopeless blessables" as found in today's world? Who would you regard as the most unfortunate people around you?
I mentioned this thought before in the concept of making a neighbor of people that the most common example is the poor and the homeless. However, I understand that not everyone is at a point where they feel comfortable talking to such outcasts as these. Perhaps a smaller step is in order. The outcasts of Jesus' day were all those who didn't have what the rich and powerful had. They didn't have land or power or religious knowledge. Hence they were ostracized. What criteria would we use to form such a list today?
If you judge from what people devote time and effort to, you come to the stark realization that to be fat, have thinning hair or a bad complexion, be wrinkled or flabby, is experienced by them as unconditional personal condemnation. Jesus took time to point out the natural beauty of every human being.
I doubt many of us could do the same. We tend to laugh at the fat ones, the ugly ones, the smelly ones, the drunken ones, the high ones, and those without style or taste. These people can't possibly be blessed in our eyes. Just look at how far off the mark they are. Funny, because I think Jesus would have had something different to say were he preaching his sermon today.
Blessed are the physically repulsive,
Blessed are those who smell bad,
The twisted, misshapen, deformed,
The too big, too little, too loud,
The bald, the fat, and the old -
For they are all riotously celebrated in the party of Jesus.
Oh, and we are just getting started. What about the people we haven't brought up yet because, well let's be honest, they aren't talked about in church or in polite company. We can't mention the word Jesus and then bring in:
The flunk-outs and drop-outs and burned-outs.
The broke and the broken.
The drug heads and the divorced.
The HIV-positive and herpes-ridden.
The brain-damaged, the incurably ill.
The pregnant-too-many-times and pregnant-too-early.
The overemployed, the underemployed, the unemployed.
The emotionally starved or emotionally dead.
The lonely, the incompetent, the stupid.
Have we gone too far? Have we not gone far enough? What of:
The brutal and the bigoted.
The murderers and the child-molesters.
The drug lords and pornographers.
The war criminals and sadists.
Terrorists.
I believe we can all agree with Willard's words here when he states:
Sometimes I feel I don't really want the kingdom to be open to such people. But it is. That is the heart of God. And, as Jonah learned from his experience preaching to those wretched Ninevites, we can't shrink him down to our size.
Living out the Beatitudes as a set of laws seems nearly impossible. Living them out in the way Jesus meant them seems not only impossible but downright insane. At least, it does to anyone who has not experienced his kingdom already.
Paul's policy with regard to the redemptive community simply followed the gospel of the Beatitudes. He refused to base anything on excellence of speech, understanding, and culture as attainments of human beings. Rather, "I resolved to regard nothing in your midst except Jesus Christ and him crucified." (1 Cor 2:2)
Jesus Christ offers access to the kingdom of God, the kingdom of the heavens, kingdom living, and, as we shall see in the next chapter, a new kingdom heart. Upon receiving this, loving your neighbor, even the homeless, stinking, drunken man on the
street corner, suddenly becomes as natural as loving yourself. And loving your enemy, even to the point of terrorists, suddenly doesn't seem the uncrossable void it once did.
Unbelievable? Believe it.
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