Using his method of approaching Bible passages from an unusual angle or a unique starting point, J. Ellsworth Kalas presents new insight into the beatitudes, Jesus’ blessings from the Sermon on the Mount. When we start examining the beatitudes we realize that in Jesus’ view, happiness is not something we get by pursuing it; indeed, almost the contrary. We are told that we will be happy—or blessed, if you prefer—in what appears to be the near antithesis of happiness. If we choose to live by the beatitudes, we make a declaration of dependence. We put ourselves into bondage to such things as poverty of spirit, purity of heart, and a readiness for persecution. This isn’t the sort of product they advertise on prime-time television; indeed, I’m not sure that it appears overly often in our prime-time worship services. That is because this is not a spiritual quick fix. It doesn’t come in a five-easy-lessons capsule. Instead, it is largely contrary to the way we live and to the way we think. Before we go any further, however, let me say that over the past twenty centuries a very great many people have found in these beatitudes a depth of peace and joy beyond anything our common culture promotes and seeks. But it isn’t easy, and it isn’t obvious. There’s nothing easy or soft about this kind of dependence. Rather, it is an attitude that demands a huge store of courage. It’s the kind of dependence the trapeze artist displays when he or she lets go of the bar and with no safety net awaiting, flies off into space, trusting. Welcome to the beatitudes. And may you be eternally happy, beginning now. —adapted from the introduction

Beatitudes From the Back Side

By J. Ellsworth Kalas

Abingdon Press

Copyright © 2008 The United Methodist Publishing House
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-687-65084-2

Chapter One

A Declaration of Dependence

Some years ago, during a church conference in California, the Reverend Faith Conklin approached me in a bookstore to thank me for the books I have written. She then went on to suggest a book she hoped I would write someday. I was grateful for both words. Authors don't have that many opportunities to talk with the persons who have read their books, so a word of thanks is always welcome. But so, too, is an idea for another book because often readers know better than authors what people are interested in reading.

"I wish you'd do another book with your 'Back Side' approach," she said. "The Beatitudes from the Back Side." I agreed readily that it was a good idea, but I explained that it was also a very difficult one.

It's not only that the Beatitudes—a series of blessings spoken by Jesus—are a challenging subject; the point is that they're already "from the back side." If we approach the Beatitudes just the way they appear in the Sermon on the Mount (see Matthew 5:3-12; Luke 6:20-23), we discover within the first sentence that we are looking at things in a manner utterly at odds with our usual outlook on life. From where we generally live out our lives, the Beatitudes seem so contrary as to be coming from "the back side."

And all the more so because of their key word, blessed. This is a very upbeat word. The synonyms for the particular Greek word that is used in the New Testament include "supremely blest," "fortunate," "happy." In the late William Barclay's translation of the New Testament, that fascinating British scholar began each sentence, not with "blessed," but with "O the bliss!"

Ironically, therefore, the Beatitudes are introduced to us with the kind of language we love in the Western world. Anything that has to do with happiness is the stuff on which advertisers and sales executives build their careers. And of course in America we see such a life as our divine right so that we've written it into our Declaration of Independence: We believe that humans "are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." We think we not only have a right to happiness, we even have a right to pursue it.

But when we start examining the Beatitudes we realize that in Jesus' view happiness is not something we get by pursuing it; indeed, almost the contrary. We're told that we will be happy—or blessed, if you prefer—in what appears to be the near antithesis of happiness. If we choose to live by the Beatitudes, we make a declaration of dependence. We put ourselves in bondage to such things as poverty of spirit, purity of heart, and a readiness for persecution. This isn't the sort of product they advertise on prime-time television; indeed, I'm not sure that it appears overly often in our prime-time worship services. That is because this is not a spiritual quick fix. It doesn't come in a five-easy-lessons capsule. Instead, it is largely contrary to the way we live and to the way we think.

Before we go any further, however, let me say that over the past twenty centuries a very great many people have found in these Beatitudes a depth of peace and joy beyond anything our common culture promotes and seeks. But it isn't easy, and it isn't obvious. And although I intend to do my best with this book, I'm not sure you'll buy into the Beatitudes after you've finished your reading. I say this because even as the author, I struggle to live up to what in my heart I know is true.

I suppose that this is partly because I'm looking for logic in the Beatitudes—that is, logic as I define it. Something in me wants to know why the poor in spirit are blessed, and why or how the meek will inherit the earth. And can you really guarantee that the merciful will receive mercy? I think I've seen some merciful people who, it seems, were exploited because they were so merciful.

The Beatitudes form the introduction to what is no doubt the best-known sermon ever preached. We call it the Sermon on the Mount, and of course it was preached by Jesus. We'll talk more about that later. Just now I want to confess my fascination with the way this sermon begins, because if we have read the New Testament just a bit, the Beatitudes catch us off guard. The Gospel of Matthew tells us that when Jesus began his ministry, he said (in the same style as John the Baptist), "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near" (Matthew 4:17). Repent is not a happy-sounding word. There's a condemnatory quality to it, as if the judge were saying "guilty" before you've even presented your case.

The Beatitudes, by contrast, begin in a wonderfully positive way. Listen to these opening words from the Sermon on the Mount: "Jesus saw the crowds and went up a hill, where he sat down. His disciples gathered around him, and he began to teach them: 'Happy are those who ...'" (Matthew 5:1-3 GNT, emphasis added). That's how Jesus began. Not "Repent," not "Be sorry," not even "Do" or "Be," but "Happy." At first hearing, you might think Jesus was changing his approach from the earlier preaching, as if he were trying to be more audience-friendly. But by the end of each sentence you realize that our Lord's message is basically as unsettling as ever—and as contrary to much of our usual thinking. He does want us to know, however, that the way he invites us to join him is ultimately and dramatically a blessed and happy one. He does not pretend that it is easy, but it is blessed.

I suspect that most of us need to work on a better definition of happiness. The word has its problems, of course. Happy is built on the root word hap, which means "chance"—as when we say happen or happenstance. This would make it seem as if happiness were a gamble, and perhaps with bad odds at that. But the Beatitudes are in no way chancy; there is no sense of uncertainty in them. Jesus said, "Happy are ..." and he added no qualifying phrase such as "in many instances," "given the right circumstances," or "in certain age or economic groups."

Around the middle of the twentieth century, Henry C. Link, at the time probably America's best-known psychologist, came back to the Christian faith. In his book The Return to Religion, he took issue with those who measured the abundant life in terms of dollars and the things money can buy. He called such thinking "the most disastrous and destroying ideal which could possibly be offered"; his long years of experience with well-to-do clients were evidence of that. The abundant life, Dr. Link said, "can only be defined in terms of habits, that is, character."

That fits perfectly with the mood of the Beatitudes. These rules of life have nothing to do with have and havenot, or with any circumstances of life, but with character—or perhaps to put it another way, with our very structures of living.

William Barclay, the British Bible scholar to whom I referred earlier, is helpful at this point. He tells us that the word in our Greek New Testament that is translated as "blessed" or "happy" is the word the Greeks used to describe the island of Cyprus. They call it he makaria—that is, "the Happy Isle." They felt that Cyprus was so beautiful and so rich in resources, and so fertile, that a person would never need to go beyond its coastline to find everything he or she needed for perfect happiness. Professor Barclay then went on to say, "Makarios then describes that joy which has its secret within itself, that joy which is serene and untouchable, and self-contained ... completely independent of all the chances and changes of life."

So when we say that the Beatitudes describe the happy life, we are speaking of a very special kind of happiness. It has little or nothing to do with chance or circumstances, and it doesn't depend on health or wealth or even achievements. It is (as the Greeks perceived the island of Cyprus) complete within itself. One doesn't need to go beyond its borders to fulfill the quest.

Thus, the happiness of which I speak—contrary to its root word—doesn't depend on happenings. It is not a gamble. The person at the racetrack calculates his odds on matters such as the condition of the track, the skill of the jockey, and the mood of the horse on that particular day. The financial consultant calculates the volatility of the market. The farmer has to be concerned not only with the weather but, at season's end, with the price in the marketplace. But there are no odds to be reckoned with in the Beatitudes. They offer a happiness that has no hap.

Our Lord demonstrated this quality of happiness during his earthly ministry. On the night of his betrayal—perhaps within the hour itself—Jesus told his disciples that the time had come "when you will be scattered, each one to his home, and you will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone.... In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!" (John 16:32-33). It hardly looked that way. The world, in the form of Roman soldiers accompanied by one of Jesus' former disciples, came to Jesus' garden of prayer, hustled him through mock trials and sundry abuse, and in little more than a dozen hours had him at the place of crucifixion. But he had conquered, no doubt about it. The people who are best remembered from the first century A.D. are those persons who are remembered either for allying with Jesus or for opposing him. He is the polestar around whom the rest of the world has since then found its significance. No wonder, then, that the supposed dying words of the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate— "You have won, Galilean"—have become a symbol of the continuing conquering power of Christ.

But I think I would not find so much strength and consolation in the example of our Lord if I had not seen the same qualities in the lives of everyday persons I have known. Otherwise I might say that the living-out of the Beatitudes is possible only for the divine, when in fact Jesus has given his followers and potential followers the promise that this is the kind of life he offers to all who will follow him, including you and me. "I have conquered the world." No need, then, to be afraid.

Most of us have known someone whose happiness had nothing to do with chance, with hap. I've been thinking this week of a farm woman from my first congregation, Tillie Roth. Tillie had never married; I think she was in her mid-fifties, but since I was barely thirty at the time I was not too adept at judging ages of those half a generation or more beyond me. Tillie was always a delight. Greeting her before or after a worship service or some other church event was an unfailing reason for laughter. It wasn't that she had some store of jokes; it was simply that she exuded goodwill; I always began smiling involuntarily when I saw her approaching.

Then, quite without warning, she was diagnosed with cancer. The malignancy took over her body with breakneck speed. She would apologize as soon as I visited her because there was an odor of decay in her room, but once that formality was out of the way she was the same fun Tillie I had always known. She was going down, but she was far from out. She would not, as Dylan Thomas phrased it, "go gentle" into the night, but neither would she rage against it. Instead, she mocked it. It was not that she issued any grand statements; it was simply very clear that death had no dominion over her. Since her happiness didn't come from or depend upon chance or circumstances, it remained undiminished. Indeed, if anything, her happiness seemed at times to gain strength even as her body decayed, as if her happiness fed on the stuff that sought to destroy her.

Since then I've known more than one Tillie Roth, people who continued to be owned by blessedness even as they were in the territory of presumed disaster. At another level, I've been impressed by those who aren't undone by what so many consider the tedium of life; they find gladness and laughter in life's ordinariness. So many in our culture pursue diversion and distraction as if life itself were something to be hurried through in a preoccupied state. They don't so much live their days as avoid them. By contrast, the people of faith of whom I am speaking have a remarkable grasp on life. C. S. Lewis said that his mother "had the talent for happiness in a high degree—went straight for it as the experienced travelers go for the best seat in a train." Or as William Barclay put it, the Beatitudes are not "nebulous prophecies of some future bliss; they are congratulations on what is."

I like that! Congratulations on what is. I believe in heaven, but just now I'm living on this planet, and by God's grace I don't want to wish this life away or to get through it as quickly as possible. And for sure, I don't want simply to endure it or to seek to prolong it only because I fear what may follow it. The Beatitudes are for living this life now, in the midst of the is. And the Beatitudes have been given to us for life on this earth. They may indeed strike us as impractical, but perhaps that's because our definition of practical or realistic is so one-dimensional. A way of life that works only at the most superficial levels isn't worthy of eternal creatures—and never forget that you and I are eternal creatures. Nor can we be satisfied with a philosophy of life that bends or breaks when tested. And especially, we shouldn't be content with a life or a presumed faith that simply endures this life. I surely wouldn't trust eternity to a God who gave us a life on this planet that was only to be endured and survived!

So we look for a life—and a Lord of life—that takes life captive, whatever and however it is. A life that, by God's grace, is blessed. Happy. Not held by chance.

But we need to know from the beginning of our study that many of our old definitions will suffer demolition as we explore this beatific life. Did you expect that word, beatific? You should have, of course, since it is a first cousin of Beatitude. But do you remember its definition? "Beatitude: bestowing bliss, blessings, happiness, or the like." That's what the Beatitudes offer: a beatific life.

But here's the back side. This happiness is not by way of any Declaration of Independence, admirable as that document is. Rather, this happiness comes by our personal declaration of dependence. It is the magnificent trust in God that the medieval nun Julian of Norwich expressed when she declared that "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."

But contrary to what you might think, there's nothing easy or soft about this kind of dependence. Rather, it is an attitude that demands a huge store of courage. It's the kind of dependence the trapeze artist displays when he or she lets go of the bar and with no safety net awaiting, flies off into space, trusting.

So, welcome to the Beatitudes. And may you be eternally happy, beginning now.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Beatitudes From the Back Sideby J. Ellsworth Kalas Copyright © 2008 by The United Methodist Publishing House. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.