A Better Way: The Beattitudes

Take a moment and write down 8 characteristics of someone who you would consider for leadership in our church.

Most of us imagine a leader as someone who has a dominant personality, strong vision, extroverted, experienced, or has superior public speaking skills.  Not many of us will describe a meek, humble, gentle person.

Matthew 5:1-12 gives us a description of the person who is truly happy in the Kingdom of God. It looks quite a bit different from the person we might put in leadership in our church. This reveals for us the upside down nature of God's economy. While our culture promotes the outrageous, the royal, the powerful, the rich, the famous, or the influencer, God promotes the meek, the humble, the mourner, the gentle, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemaker, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, and, probably most unexpected, the persecuted.

These are the people who are blessed, or happy, in God's Kingdom.

Here are some principles to help us process this passage:

• Jesus came to help us understand the true nature of the Kingdom of God.
• Jesus turned our expectations of power and righteousness on their heads.
• Jesus identified with the lowly and outcast, and set them up as those closer to God.
• These qualities are not achieved, but revealed in the lives of believers as they cooperate with God's work in their lives.

The best way I've found to help students develop these characteristics is to give them opportunities to serve the people around them. When we are aware of and active in meeting the needs of people in our community and around the world, we are less likely to respond in prideful and self-serving ways, and we are less likely to place too high a value on material possessions.

And we happen to look a lot like Jesus.