MT means us to see another connection with Moses when Jesus goes 'up the mountain'. High ground that compares with Sinai  in that a momentous event is delivered there. Where Moses goes up his mountain alone, leaving the others well behind, Jesus goes in company with newly chosen disciples, with a lot of others tagging on. His ministry is inclusive. A joint-venture from the start.

Whatever else it is, the 'sermon' is very much the distilled essence of the prophetic message of old. How much is addressed to the crowd & how much to the disciples? How much of our talking is 'in house language', meaningful only to 'in' people? How much reaches to the outer rings & ripples, those not in a position to hear properly? (Remember John Cleese's 'Life of Brian &  its "Blessed are the Cheese-makers"? How to preach Jesus' wisdom in a way that the Brians of this world can hear & under- stand, cheesemakers & all?

William Barclay ad loc maintains that 'blessed' is best understood as 'congratulations on an existing state of affairs' rather than a future hope. The 'woes' that LK adds [6:24-26] could be 'damn you's or 'curse you's giving a Psalm-like touch.Don't let's avoid them. Jesus springs from a background used to blessing & cursing. Preach a Sanitised Blessing Service by Mr.Nice Guy & we do Jesus a disservice, & place ourselves out on the fringe somewhere with those others who mayn't have heard him properly.

MT turns LK's 'poor' into 'poor in spirit'. Spiritualising things too hard to bear goes back a long way! There's no middle class back then. Only the wealthy & those dependent upon them. Jesus uses 'poor' to gather up all those who know their place; i.e. they don't have one! But they are so conscious of their dependence upon God that they're more open to God's Rule than the rest of us. But his actions show he understands that no-one's state is purely economic any more than anyone's state is purely spiritual. Jesus demonstrates how spiritually bereft are those who rule today's no-ones by means of de-compassioned, de-humanised economic doctrines like globalisation. If we need to be at loggerheads with economic rationalists & their ilk on behalf of their victims, why aren't we? Woe to them!

Are the mourners sad because of personal loss, or grieving for a lost world? Jesus' words will be incomprehensible to most actual mourners. Jesus' words are incomprehensible to most actual mourners in a society that won't come to terms with its mortality. Surely the only mourner to be congratulated is one so close to God as to know God's consolation in their depths because God is down there with them! Modern counselling insights into grieving miss the mark if they don't take that on board. Blessedness in mourning will remain odd & unattainable till we are grasped by Jesus & the dimension he opens us up to. 'Closure', the in-word in the field, doesn't get us anywhere. What we need isn't closure at all, but opening up to God, where we find blessedness even in our grieving. .

In addressing himself to the meek, or gentle (the root meaning seems to mean 'having one's passions under control') Jesus draws on PS 37:11, reminding us it's still true. Gentleness is the antithesis of the arrogances, aggression, racial hatreds, road- rage & all the other rages of a society running out of kilter. In this society we inherit not the earth but only the increasingly out of control passions we unleash on each other. Only God can help us break the cycle & help us find blessing in the process.

Those who hunger & thirst for righteousness might well end up on bread & water, victims of legal systems that masquerade as justice. Jesus reflects on MIC 6:8. God's Rule necessarily involves us in campaigning against all odds for God's justice to prevail. Righteousness is all about living rightly towards God & one another.

As Jesus illustrates in parables, mercy isn't always easy to give or receive. MIC & perhaps HOS are in mind. Doing mercy means getting inside someone's situation, being there with them as the agent of God's blessing. Pity is only me walking past & tossing a coin in someone's hat. In Jesus, God gets inside our human need, warts & all, & staying there even as far as the cross, his & ours. Corollary: when we're in Jesus we're ipse facto inside God. Mercy, Compassion, & their Sisters are inside jobs.

The Psalmist [e.g.24:3-5] highlights that transparency of the pure in heart that lets us see straight through them to God's own self. Centre Of All Being at the centre of their being. Why not at ours, too? We can trust what we read on the label. Pureness of heart  is no pious escape exercise. Pure hearts are always out & about hard at work in God's name even when battered & bruised by - or, for - their efforts.

The sting in the next is in the tail: peace-makers. Those who actually become something, do something to make peace happen, even if it's only in their small corner. Peace has become the victim of the doublespeaking propagandist spin doctors & the politicians who pay them to justify war. And keep on justifying it. We mostly assume that everyone's a child of God, & so we all are in some sense, but proof that we're a chip off the Old Block is that we peacemake as God makes peace in Jesus the Christ. What local or world scenario is crying out for this to be put to the test?

It's easy to think we're being persecuted for righteousness' sake when all that's happening is some doing of our own coming home to roost! What imagined wrongs are in our baggage? That's not to play down real wrongs. Jesus takes his place by the side of those persecuted for the sake of what's right only when we are in there with them & for them, with him & for him. As him, even. That's the way God's Rule becomes real for those under pressure. That's when congratulations are in order. Says who? Says Jesus!

Been abused, threatened, persecuted, slandered lately on account of Jesus? For most of us that's not really likely? Is it that there's just no mileage in persecuting us any more; that we're not worth the effort? That persecutors have moved on to better targets? There's no point in courting persecution, but a bit of flack because we're doing right for God's sake wouldn't do any blessed harm, would it? Or would it?