To All Of God's Children: Here Is Abba's Final 'Will And Testament'

Expect some big surprises when God's will is read.

As executor of my older sister's estate, I met with other members of our family after her funeral last year to read her will. My sister, a missionary nurse much of her life, had few assets to leave behind, but some thirty of us met together for this significant occasion.

There were no surprises. The two nieces with whom she shared a duplex and who provided special care for her as she aged were to have all of her limited tangible assets, and her congregation, Pilgrim Christian Fellowship, which had generously helped with funding for her nursing care in her final months, were to have any money left after funeral and other expenses were paid. Meanwhile, the nieces kindly urged all of us to take whatever keepsakes we wished, so all of us became her heirs in that respect, though the greatest blessings my sister left behind were intangible ones.

Jesus's Sermon on the Mount begins with what could be considered God's final 'will and testament,' with Jesus as the divinely appointed executor. His Eight Beatitudes are all about God's true beneficiaries, and about the incomparable blessings members of God's family inherit. These eight declarations could be called "Sure Signs of God's Shalom," signs of a salvation that is not merely a ticket to paradise, but the certification of full citizenship in the worldwide kingdom, or kin-dom, of heaven show-cased right here on earth. This shalom community is one in which there is to be "nothing marred and nothing missing."

Here are some of the characteristic of such a community:

Blessed are those who acknowledge their utter poverty before God, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

Membership in this heaven-governed family is not based on merit, money or power. It is the possession of the least of these, the marginalized, the impoverished, the poor in spirit.  

Once when I was out with some friends for breakfast the waitress asked each of us whether we wanted coffee or tea, that is, asked each of us except me. I actually wanted neither, but was curious about why I wasn't offered the choice, until someone pointed out that I had not turned my cup up in its saucer, as in signaling I wanted it filled.

This is our first step in experiencing "seligkeit," the German word for salvation. Selig is the word for blessed, and Jesus makes it clear that it is the destitute who are to experience the full measure of God-blest-ness. As the needy persons we are, we hold out our cup as beggars, admit our brokenness and  make room for the incoming of God's shalom.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. 

In a recent CBS news "On the Road" segment, Steve Hartman narrates the story of a nine-year-old boy who had been horribly abused as a child and was adopted by a loving set of parents. From the beginning the boy became obsessed with wanting to adopt unwanted and abused dogs at the local animal shelter, and his parents allowed him to take in and care for a number of them.

One of their concerns was that their new son seemed unable to cry. Then one day one of his beloved dogs became very ill and died in his arms, resulting in his sobbing and crying for the first time in years. His parents welcomed this as a great turning point in his young life.

In this second step in God's stairway of grace we are able to deeply mourn what breaks God's heart, including feeling deep sorrow for all our own wrongdoing, for all of the ways we and our fellow human beings have failed to love God and show mercy to our neighbors in need.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Just prior to Jesus giving this inaugural address to his followers, he had been put to a severe test in which he was offered immediate control of all the world's kingdoms if only he would give up establishing God's reign in God's way and would instead collaborate with the principalities and powers of evil to gain control. Thus he could experience a short-cut means of inheriting the earth and avoid the path of suffering for which he was destined.

The meek are not passive or inactive, but are like impressionable children, eager to follow and imitate  the upside-down, counter-cultural Kin-dom of which Jesus is Lord. Unless we become as children, with no claim to our own power, position or possessions, we cannot become the heirs of the earth that is forever and always the Lord's.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for what is right, for they will be satisfied.

Jesus is clearly steeped in the Hebrew Bible, and amplifies the message of the ancient prophets and their passion for justice and mercy, as in Micah's "What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?"

Here again it is helpful to remember Jesus's recent temptation, after a long fast, to use his miracle working power to "turn stones into bread." While he is moved to compassionate and supernatural action when he blesses and multiplies a few loaves and some fish to feed a hungry crowd, we are to be motivated to crave for righteousness and justice above all else.

As we can see, these blessings build on each other, and find their climax in God's children being able to courageously endure suffering and persecution as Jesus himself did, as in the last of the Beatitudes. The blessing of "for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" in the eighth is identical to the first. Each of those two is in the present tense.

More on the rest of the inheritance later.