What Jesus Offers the Underdog

Matthew 5:1-16

This huge crowd of people from all over the place is following Jesus around, some probably because they wanted to be entertained and some because of the irresistibility of groupthink, but definitely also some who really don't know why they are following him around hoping for a glimpse of something special, but they just feel very compelled to follow him, like the salmon feel when it's time for them to leave the salt water and take to fighting upstream.

So Jesus climbs up onto this slope and sits down, then his disciples come and join him and he just starts teaching.

He starts listing types of people, many of them associated with labels that most people would rather not have for one reason or another - the meek, the persecuted, the mourners, the poor in spirit. Others might carry labels which sound like really good qualities, but if you think about it people who are characterized by these things are often taken advantage of or trampled upon and forgotten in this dog eat dog world of ours - the people who are hungry for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers.

All of these people probably had a really tough time living in Jesus' day, and probably led a very frustrating existence, feeling as though perhaps the whole world was against them. They are misfits - going through life always feeling like they have to oppose the whole world, always overwhelmed by this feeling that this isn't their home, that maybe they are missing something, that things really should be very different. These people certainly don't feel blessed or happy or fortunate, they aren't favored but instead feel much more like the little guy, the underdog.

Jesus offers that these people too can be "makarios" - blessed - and offers to them not acceptance or integration into a culture or a system, but instead offers them a place in a Kingdom Family.

He then makes them new. He takes these newly "blessed" people and gives them a new identity. No longer is their name meek or merciful or persecuted or poor in spirit, but instead they receive a new name from Jesus. He calls them Salt and tells them to go change the world, and then he also calls them Light and tells them that they are to be a beacon that advertises God's glory.

Pretty cool assignment for this band of misfits.

This seems to be somewhat of a central theme in Jesus' teachings. He's opening the door wide, and he wants the downtrodden and the perpetually disenfranchised to join him in Kingdom living.

This kind of bothers me, because the churches that I have always gone to in my life have not been full of people you might describe as disenfranchised at all. Where are the lepers and the prostitutes and the poor in spirit in our churches?