Remember the prophets...

Matthew 5:10-12

10 ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven 11 ‘Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. ¹²Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

The seventh and eighth beatitudes, the blessings of God and the promise of authentic happiness are revealed by Jesus in Matthew 5: 10-12. It is a pathway of costly, participative commitment. As we have seen, Jesus is in the Sermon on the Mount is explaining the content of the Nazareth Sermon, His exposition of Isaiah 61 that resulted in His rejection and homelessness. Jesus became homeless because of His faithful commitment to the teaching and practicing the good news that the Kingdom of God has come. His detractors continued the resistance to the message of Jesus by putting it around that Jesus rejected the teachings of the prophets. Firstly, they make Him homeless and then they attack His reputation.  Jesus however, makes it clear, that His life is the life of fulfilment of the scripture not their denial (Matthew 5: 17-20). He teaches us at the outset of His work among us, that to follow Him will be costly for us too. Luke 9: 57-62 again finds Jesus clearly teaching that homelessness, rejection and persecution may result in following Him. We should all count the cost before we follow Him. The cost we will all pay will be our part in other stories that teach other gospels. If we come and follow Jesus we will bring nothing with us because we have nothing worth bringing other than the life Jesus died to save; we will come mourning the wasted years and empty strategies of meeting our own needs our own way; we will come having experienced the violence, discrimination and bigotry as the fuel of our suffering and so we will come and embrace nonviolence, gentleness and humility; we will come for the common good, justice and the need of the ‘Righteousness of God’ much more than for our own personal gain; we will come because we need to share what we have received, the generosity of God  too great for individual consumption, it has to be shared communally; we will come because God has revealed to us who we really are in what Jesus has taught and practiced; we will come because our identity is renewed and we have a new name ‘peacemaker’: no more war. This is the message of the prophets and their fulfilment in Jesus. Those who come and follow will like Jesus be made to pay the price of their participation in the cause of bringing peace to the lives we touch.  We should remember and celebrate the recovery of who we are and who God has created us to be because the reward is great; joint membership of the Kingdom of peace, the comfort of community presence and participation, a new earth, a new humanity to fill it, an interdependent community serving each other, seeing Jesus in each other and living under the rule of the peace-making King Jesus. Surely the price is worth paying for such an outcome.