An Upside-Down Picture of Success
“One day as he saw the crowds gathering, Jesus went up on the mountainside and sat down. His disciples gathered around him, and he began to teach them.” – Matthew 5:1-2
Throughout Scripture, mountains carry a special significance. The early Biblical audience would have known that when a story was set on a mountainside, it indicated an intimate connection or closeness with God. Think back to when Moses received the Ten Commandments from God on Mount Sinai, or when Elijah called down fire from Heaven to engulf his altar in the presence of King Ahab and 450 prophets of Baal (go read 1 Kings 18 if you don’t remember this story. Seriously, it’s well worth your time).
So when Jesus sits on a mountainside and begins teaching his disciples in Matthew 5, it’s not just a convenient location. It’s a foreshadowing of what’s to come. By this time, Jesus had been baptized by John in the Jordan River, overcome the temptation of the devil in the wilderness, called a few of his first disciples, preached a sermon or two, and performed his first miracles. He was beginning to attract crowds of people, but what would he do now that he had captured their attention?
The introduction to the Sermon on the Mount provides a concrete – albeit surprising – answer. The irony with mountaintops is that they are, well, high. They signify power, grandeur, and importance. They serve as an intriguing representation of the status that everyone hoped to achieve in the ancient Greco-Roman world, driven by the desire for honor and the avoidance of shame – which, in many ways, is still very prevalent in our world today.
In a manner both beautiful and puzzling, Jesus rejects this narrative of success in favor of something entirely different. Jesus begins the Sermon on the Mount by championing the marginalized, the suffering, and the seemingly unlucky. He proclaims blessings for the poor, those who mourn, those who are humble, and even those who are persecuted. He gives special attention to peacemakers, those who are merciful, and those who hunger and thirst for justice.
When you grow up hearing these words, it’s easy for them to grow stale over time. However, we can’t forget how unexpected and counter-cultural they would have sounded to Jesus’ original audience. Jesus was going against the grain of all their societal expectations and showing them a new and better way to live. He wasn’t just calling them back to something they had heard before and simply forgotten. He was beginning a revolution. He was rewriting their entire playbook and setting them on an entirely different course from anything they had done before.
While we may not sit alongside the original crowd and hear Jesus’ words in real-time, we’re still a part of his audience as people who read this passage in Scripture. So, what will we do in response to Jesus’ words? Will we continue to live as if nothing has changed? Or will we respond to Jesus’ new definition of what it means to live a “blessed” life, even if God’s definition of success looks nothing like the one we’re used to hearing?
“God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.” – Matthew 5:3