Yesterday at CBC, as a part of our series looking at the Kingdom of God, we looked at the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12) - helping us to explore a bit more what life in the kingdom looks like and recognising that the kingdom Jesus is inviting us to be a part of is very much an upside down kingdom.
That is to say, those values and people which are usually looked down on and despised suddenly find themselves at the top of the pile rather than at the bottom.
We'll have a look at the individual Beatitudes later in the week but today I want just to think about what it means to be 'blessed'.
The word used in the New Testament here is 'makarios'. In the NIV this is mostly translated 'blessed' but is also translated in a few verses as good (e.g. Matt. 24:46), fortunate (Acts 26:2) and happier (1 Cor. 7:40).
Some translations, such as the Good News, translate 'makarios' here in Matthew 5 as 'happy' - e.g. "Happy are those who mourn; God will comfort them!"
In his Life Builders Bible Study notes on the Sermon on the Mount, John Stott writes,
...it is seriously misleading to render makarios "happy". For happiness is a subjective state, whereas Jesus is making an objective judgement about these people. He is declaring not what they may feel like ("happy"), but what God thinks of them and what on that account they are ("blessed"). [page 56].A while ago at CBC we started singing a few songs by Rend Collective, and for Christmas I got their latest CD - As Family We Go. One of the tracks on this album is 'Joy of the Lord' and the story behind this song demonstrates the Upside Down nature of the kingdom - how that even at times of great personal difficulty and pain we can still choose joy.
Listen to Ali and Gareth from Rend Collective talk about a difficult time in their marriage due to a miscarriage and how the song "Joy Of The Lord" came about.
