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1 John 4. 7-16 God is love. That's it. The text for today.

Comprehending the incomprehensible,

re-educating our minds to wonder,

following a logic that defies our usual categories,

being humble enough to admit love is always gift and not our doing,

taking the risk of letting a love into our lives that won't leave us alone, or unchanged,

admitting that in the end, the end is to discover ourselves held no matter what,

by a God so profoundly personal that our deepest fears and highest hopes and longest longings are understood.

Or something like that.

I'm glad Culpepper doesn't like the word "Happy" as a translation of 'makarios'. "The translation 'happy' expresses one's response to being blessed, but misses the objective fact of being blessed." To be on the receiving end of God's promises is to be in the best place possible, which is within the realm and orbit of the Kingdom of God. That's a fact of Kingdom existence which is established by the fact of God's say so! How I feel about that promissory fact is significant, but what makes me feel that way, God's surprising promises, is what makes these sayings Beatitudes. My subjective happiness isn't the point; God's objective promises are precisely the point. To inhabit the space promised by the beatitudes is to be in a good place.  

That point established, Culpepper gets to work arguing for a biblical theology of blessing. God is good, that is a given from the start. Quoting Tertullian with approval,

"Now this very fact, that he begins with Beatitudes, is characteristic of the Creator who used no other voice than that of blessing either in the first fiat or in the final dedication of the universe…" (86)

Abraham's call was so that all the peoples of earth would be blessed; Numbers 6.24 "The Lord bless you and keep you", Culpepper points out, is the oldest extant piece of scripture, found in an amulet from around late 7th C BCE. Blessing is what God is about, and these beatitudinal blessings are embedded in covenant promises made by a faithful God. So, the Beatitudes may well make us happy, and people may even call us happy, but the cause of that happiness is plunged deeply into the very foundations of God's goodness. To be blessed is to be rooted and grounded in the love of a faithful God. 

Each Beatitude contains "a present reality and a promise." Blessed are…because they shall…" This isn't a series of conditional promises, but a string of connected realities attached to surprising outcomes which are already promised and underwritten by the faithful goodness of God. These are the blessings that prevail in the Kingdom of God. The poor and the meek, those who mourn or are merciful, the pure in heart and the hungry and thirsty for food and justice – they each have God's blessing now and will be rewarded in the future.

The Beatitudes are about a reversal of values; not the complacently self-confident but the pure in spirit have the keys of the Kingdom of God; not the arrogant and powerful but the meek will inherit the land of God's promise; not the double minded and deviously successful, but the pure in heart shall see God. For as Kierkegaard has it, "Purity of heart is to will one thing", to seek first the Kingdom. They are the ones who shall see God, and want to.  

The term "Kingdom of God", we are told, appears nowhere else in the NT but 31 times in Matthew. Culpepper supports the suggestion that the Beatitudes, and the use of the term the "kingdom of heaven", are challenges to the Imperial realities of Roman Empire and occupation.

"Proclaiming the kingdom of heaven was also a means of subverting Roman oppression, because the establishment of God's kingdom implied the end of all earthly kingdoms. In God's kingdom, the great ones are not tyrants, (Matt 20.25-27) but the poor in spirit."

There follows a careful exegesis of each saying in which Culpepper explores the lexical and grammatical evidence, draws in further biblical connections from both Testaments and beyond, and probes the theological consequences of his readings. Each saying is placed in its setting within the Sermon on the Mount and also the rest of Matthew's gospel, and compared with a wide range of biblical material. The links of words and ideas in the Beatitudes, with what Matthew is saying and doing in other parts of his gospel are especially rich in intra-textual insight, and show just how thoroughly Culpepper has tilled the soil of the Matthean field.

For example, the saying about peacemakers is a stone hewn largely from Isaiah, the burden of the saying is woven through numerous NT texts, the rabbis are also included amongst the peace witnesses, then its connections with reconciliation in Matthew and a reminder of how this saying would sound in the ears of the Zealots. It's a rich and lucid page and a half of comment that enables the reader to grasp the full consequences of peace-making – "Becoming children of God promises both intimacy with God and a likeness to God." (5.48) 

There is significant guidance for the preacher, stimulus for those seeking the spiritual meaning of Jesus words for their own life in the Kingdom of God, and a gathering of useful information written up by an author who cares about this stuff. I'm not sure there is more we can ask of a commentary.

This treatment of the Beatitudes compares favourably with such shelf companions as Davies and Allison, Hagner, Luz, and France. Where I think it scores highly is that Culpepper uses the first three as constant conversation partners.

However, R T France appears nowhere in the index or bibliography – that surprises me because France was an acknowledged Synoptic specialist with a widely respected commentary on the Greek text of Mark, and a substantial volume on Matthew in the NICNT series. My guess is that Culpepper has done what an increasing number of commentary writers have done – selected several of the most important peers in the field, and engaged them thoroughly. And that's OK. But I do wonder at such a significant omission.    

"Not even Solomon…

if God so clothes the flowers…

How much more…"

There are times when the words of Jesus have the complex simplicity of a children's talk.

Three flowers contradicting anxiety and all our hoarding of resources "just in case…"

Three flowers celebrating unselfconscious beauty at our back door.

Of course the whole argument presupposes "your Heavenly Father."

Your Heavenly Father clothes, knows, sees, gives.

The Lord's Prayer is our daily renewal of that life transforming presupposition.

"Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven",

in my mind and heart, in my neighbourhood,

in my thinking and my motives, in my decisions and actions,

in my words, and in all of these gathered into this prayer,

"Your Kingdom Come."  

 

 

 

From Augustine to Aquinas, Luther to Zwingli to Calvin, Kierkegaard to Tolstoy, and Bultmann to Bonhoeffer to Windisch to W D Davies to Guelich to Betz, Christians have wrestled with the stringent demands and far-fetched promises of the Sermon on the Mount.

I still have a 35,000 word typewritten exegesis paper I wrote over 40 years ago as my probationary studies in my first years of Baptist ministry here in Scotland. For three years off and on I read and made notes, typed (with a typewriter), edited and retyped (no delete or cut and paste) until it was ready to present as evidence I was continuing to engage with biblical scholarship and theological study and reflection. I also still have the assessment, feedback and comments. The examiner suggested it should be the basis of a publication on the Sermon on the Mount. That never happened.

What did happen was a lifelong wrestling with a text that grabs you by the ankles every time you read it and give it the slightest chance to tackle. I've kept reasonably up to date with scholarship, but that's the easier part. I go back to several of the classic texts, not least Bonhoeffer's discipleship. The big commentaries on Matthew and Luke keep coming, and the occasional dedicated monograph like Pennington's recent Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing – these add information, perspective, context and theological reflection. 

But what long term exposure to the scholarship on the text does not do, is adequately explain why so many who do the exegesis of Matthew 5-7 end up domesticating the text, toning down the demand, blunting the edge of words meant to cut through our moral complacency and comfort zones. Culpepper acknowledges this unseemly rush to compromise right at the start of his own exegetical account of these troublesome and disruptive sayings of Jesus. He wryly observes that "The history of interpretation can be viewed as a succession of ingenious evasions and responses to these evasions." (81)

Culpepper himself quotes Tertullian who claimed the Sermon is Jesus' "official proclamation of the Christ",  an allusion to the practice of Roman officials who upon taking office, announced the rules of their administration." He recalls Bonhoeffer's more astringent approach which he describes like this: "The Sermon does not call us to interpret it, to study it, or to debate it: it calls us to obey it. Obedience is possible however, only in the context of fellowship with the crucified." (83) 

Now over the years I've preached on the Sermon on the Mount. Twice I've taken a congregation through it section by section. The Beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer have been recurring texts in my sermons. But I'm still left wondering if I have given the words of Jesus the same exposure and weight as some of the celebrated Pauline texts.

I was forced to think about this by one of Culpepper's sharp comments. He notes Jesus "went up on the mountain…the disciples came… he opened his mouth and began to teach them." 5.1 But then Culpepper jumps to Matthew 28.20 the end of Matthew's gospel where Jesus again goes up on the mountain, probably the same mountain, and commands his disciples to "teach all nations to keep all I have commanded you."

Why had I never linked those two mountains like this? Culpepper is suggesting that the Great Commission has at its heart the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, communicating and demonstrating the ethos, principles, rules and values of the Kingdom of God. Jesus' own way of being, is to be spoken, remembered and written, and from then on to be taught as the distilled essence and essential demonstration of human lives transformed in the Kingdom of God.

Oh I know the Great Commission and the good news is more than this; but it is not less than this; and often enough the church's witness has been demonstrably less than this. 

My next reflection on Culpepper's commentary will be about what he makes of the Beatitudes.    

  

This tapestry was created to explore the beautiful Jewish idea of "tikkun olam" – to repair the world.

The overall idea of the design comes from Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem God's Grandeur, and especially the last two lines:

I have never doubted that the presence of God the Creator is discernible in the world around us. Obvious examples are when a lovely sunset can move me to wonder, or a hazy horizon can evoke the kind of longing that feels like an ache in the heart. When I go for a walk in the country, through a wood, across a field, up a hill, the movement and purpose begin to feel like a pilgrimage, that is, a walk that starts as a keep fit discipline, gives way to a more contemplative mood.

The Bible is full of this stuff. Jesus clearly understood the rhythms of the seasons and harvest, the survival tricks of the birds, and noticed enough of the fauna of Galilee to know how fully clothed flowers have a beauty all their own that leaves royal robes looking second rate – "not even Solomon in all his splendour is arrayed like one of these…" Quite so

Today I went to a favourite place. It's been a long week, full of intense exchanges with various people – a funeral service speaking about my teacher of 50 years ago, and my friend for just about as long; a visitor who stayed with us bringing the riches of conversations about art, theology, dealing with grief and fundamental changes in life, news of people's sudden illness, and yet more news of folk I know contracting Covid. So yes, a favourite walk and a camera would be just fine, thank you.

Jesus wasn't the only one who paid attention to birds and learned wisdom from their ways. Along the path we walk there's a small loch where two swans are expecting cygnets any day soon. We watched them build the nest, and the cob throwing together his watching place, a roughly made raft guarding the only waterway to the nest. There are waterhen, coots, mallard, heron and even the occasional cormorant on vacation. The industry and determination to build, brood and bring their young into life is part of that instinctive drive we call life. 

Whatever else we make of the creation stories in Genesis, it's impossible to miss the impetus towards life, fruitfulness and more life. Be fruitful and multiply was said to the first humans, but that urge to produce and reproduce is part of the great symphony of our world, a symphony as yet unfinished, and of a new world every year. There is a profound mystery in the surge of the seed, the protective stubbornness of a brooding swan, the  blizzard of blossom petals and later seeds cascading from the trees.

So yes, I look at the world around me and discern the movement of God in the waves across wheat fields still green, and hear the music of the wind through the trees, playing variations on a theme of Creation. And yes I look at a pearl bordered fritillary and simply wonder that it is there at all, and then wonder at this delicate miracle, resting in sunlight to absorb energy before continuing its exhibition of winged ballet.

In preparation for a recently published essay, I did some work on natural theology, the belief that God reveals Godself through the created order, that is, God's fingerprints and footprints can be seen all over the place. Amongst other arguments for a theology of nature and a natural theology is the way the prophets speak of God's actions and purposes revealed in the world around.

When Isaiah wanted to give pictures of hope, and clues to what God was about, he often turned to the natural world for illustrations. Trees in the field clap their hands, mountains are made low and valleys lifted up, the desert blossoms, there are springs erupting in the desert. Sir George Adam Smith wrote one of the great commentaries on Isaiah. Here are his words about what was going on when the psalmists and prophets knew God was moving and new things were afoot. 

“When psalmist or prophet calls Israel to lift their eyes to the hills, or behold how the heavens declare the glory of God, or to listen to that unspoken tradition which day passes to day and night to night, of the knowledge of the Creator, it is not proofs to doubting minds which he offers; it is spiritual nourishment to hungry souls. These are not arguments—they are sacraments.”

Those words were new to me. But they describe with passion and precision exactly what can happen when you go for a walk, pay attention to the world around you, imagine the Creator's presence in his own creation – spiritual nourishment for our hungry souls, sacraments by which grace takes us by surprise.

Women Remembered. Jesus’ Female Disciples. Helen Bond and Joan Taylor. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2022.

The two authors are in the first rank of scholarship exploring Christian origins and the socio-religious context of Jesus and the Early Church. They are also experienced TV broadcasters, well used to reconstructing historical detail and social settings in their treatment of the New Testament world and the texts that give us windows into the Early Church and its environment.

Both authors are well known for their work in redressing the gender representation and interpretation balance in the contextual and textual world of the New Testament. They are committed to a rehabilitation of the role, significance and pervasive presence of women in Early Christianity. The result in this book is a fascinating study of how women have been “silenced, tamed, or slurred by innuendo” in subsequent representations of women in biblical interpretation, art, inscriptions and archaeological evidence.

The book sparkles with serious wit, sharpened and informed by immersion in the NT world, and the result is a book that compels the reader to look more closely and recognise the prejudice and even misogyny evident in the portrayals of the women around Jesus and in the emerging communities of the early church. Now before we react either in denial or offence to the word ‘misogyny’ being used to describe the depictions and representations of women in Greco-Roman and Jewish culture, it’s a salutary exercise to view and read the evidence – of which there is more than enough to "suffer us to learn in silence”, before pre-judging! And the lessons are well taught and stimulating.  

A clearing the ground chapter on women in the world of Jesus explains the experience of women in the cultural and social realities of the first Christian century. The conclusion is that in language, assumed values, attitudes and social expectations women were largely erased from the action, silenced in the big discussions, and in politics, religion and family matters, women lived under a burden of diminished opportunity and constrained expectations. Bond and Taylor convey this in lucid and at times wry commentary with illustrative texts such as Celsus who dismissed the resurrection accounts as the bletherings of delirious women and sorcery. (p.18)

There follows a series of chapters exploring the experience of Salome, Joanna, Mary Magdalene, Martha and Mary, the Anointing Woman, and some mentioned in the apostolic history including Prisca and Junia. Each chapter examines the textual fabric of the stories. A particularly telling example is of the anointing woman. Several stories and allusions in the Gospels are traced into a history of the three main narratives in Luke 7, Matthew 26 and John 11. Far from being a side-show in the male driven narratives of the Twelve, each of the women is seen to have a relationship with Jesus in which they are affirmed and at times become exemplars of what real discipleship actually looks like. This chapter ends, “The moral seems to be: take your cue from what the women do.” (120) The same combination of contextualising the narrative, exploiting evidence of cultural and social practices and attitudes, and careful comparisons of the Synoptic texts and these with John, opens up other key figures, such as a sane yet imaginative account of Mary Magdalene, determinedly earthed in the text, but with illuminating side glances at subsequent portrayals in art and the apocryphal Gospels.  

I’m quite sure that any sermon will be the more interesting, and accurate and fair, if traditional commentaries and unexamined assumptions by the preacher are exposed to Bond and Taylor’s careful, well evidenced and soundly argued treatments of the figures, stories and texts of each of the women examined in the chapters of this book. Further, there are times when it should be as clear as day, that certain passages require the insight and empathy that can only come from a female perspective on women’s experience. An obvious example being the sympathetic realism with which they explore the story of the woman with the flow of blood as it is told, with differences, in all three Synoptic Gospels.

Bond and Taylor’s expertise in the social context of the Gospels, and their interest in restoring the portrayals of women in the NT, could be compared to the work of art restorers. In these chapters they set about removing the varnish and accretions of time’s dust, and recovering at least some of the vivid colours to present a fresh perspective on figures too easily ignored, erased or distorted by uninformed or unexamined assumptions, and at times even male prejudice or scholarly laziness.

The book finishes on this optimistic note: “We hope we have set these women disciples of Jesus in their rightful place, close to Jesus in his mission in Galilee, and active in establishing, serving and leading Christian communities as the faith spread around the Mediterranean and the wider ancient world.“ (184)

I think a careful reading of this book will go a long way to achieving that hope. The cumulative case is rather strong.