Jesus (24 page)

Once again, this is not to drive anyone away from the church. Most of my adult life has been dedicated to the church. But the church is made up of people who fail, who sin, and who commit grave error, even crimes. The church has been imperfect since its beginning. Christians who read this Gospel passage from Luke know that all three of these men will fail Jesus at crucial moments. James and John will misunderstand him when they proclaim that they want to be “first” in the kingdom of heaven. More seriously, Peter will fail Jesus three times during the Passion. The initial enthusiastic response on the shore of Galilee draws us into a human tension between fidelity and failure, which will be repeated over and over as the disciples' pilgrimage unfolds.

It is our pilgrimage too. In belonging to a church, we sometimes feel unworthy of membership. We also feel, at times, that the church is unworthy of the one who founded it. We walk both a pilgrimage of power in the light of the Resurrection and a pilgrimage of powerlessness in the face of sin. We have the benefit of knowing all this now. Peter did not. He said yes to Jesus with utter trust, having seen what Jesus could do. But he could not have known to what shores his yes would take him.

W
HAT WAS
P
ETER THINKING
as he rowed back to the shore? On one retreat, I realized that after Jesus said, “From now on you will be catching people,” Peter and the disciples still needed to return to shore. There was ample time for him to decide to say no to Jesus's offer. To have second thoughts. Peter must have wondered when he saw the astonishing, alarming, unbelievable catch of fish,
Is this really happening?
For he is no longer seeing things as they are in the natural world, but as they are in the reign of God. Now he has to make a choice about how he is going to see.

F. J. Sheed has a wonderful insight about this miracle. Peter, he notes, had already seen other miracles—the healing of his mother-in-law, for instance. Perhaps he was also present at the Wedding Feast at Cana, traditionally Jesus's first miracle, as recorded in the Gospel of John. But these phenomena—healing bodies and making wine—were outside Peter's experience. “But fish were different: he knew all about fish. This miracle hit home to him as the others had not.”
⁶

As Peter rowed or sailed back to the shore, he may have considered everything that he would have to give up: his livelihood, his family, everything he knew. He must have had doubts. As Peter strained against the waves on Lake Gennesaret, he must have asked himself whether he would be able to leave so much behind. He must have toggled between worry about the future and amazement over the miraculous catch of fish.

I imagined being in the scene and asking Peter, “How could you do it?” And in my prayer he seemed to point to the net and say, “Just look at all those fish!”

All of us need to leave things behind in order to follow God. For some of us, it is addictive patterns of behavior, for others an overweening emphasis on our own success, for others the adulation of the crowd. It helps sometimes to look not just at what we're leaving behind and what God promises us, but also at what God has shown us
already
.

Just look at all those fish.

T
HE
M
IRACULOUS
C
ATCH OF
F
ISH

Luke 5:1–11

Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

C
HAPTER
10

Happy

“Rejoice and be glad.”

B
LESSED WERE WE TO
be staying at the Mount of Beatitudes hostel. Not simply because of the air-conditioned rooms, the titanic breakfasts, the proximity to so many sites in Galilee, or even the gracious Franciscan hospitality, but something else: the ease of prayer. Whenever we emerged from our hotel we stepped on holy ground: the spot where Jesus, by tradition, preached the Beatitudes during his Sermon on the Mount. And in case we ever forgot, tour buses rumbled into the parking lot every few hours, from early morning to late afternoon.

The Church of the Beatitudes, the centerpiece of the complex, was surrounded by a lush garden filled with date-palm and cypress trees and carpeted with scented flowers and bougainvillea. A few days into our stay, George and I decided to spend the morning praying. So shortly after dawn, I sat on a bench and leaned against a tall eucalyptus tree.

Naturally, I prayed about the Beatitudes. It would have been almost impossible not to. Scattered throughout the garden were small granite markers, six inches off the ground, featuring lines from Matthew's version of the Beatitudes:
Beati Pauperes Spiritu, Quoniam Ipsorum Est Regnum Caelorum
, read a sign almost obscured by red flowers. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

T
HE
B
EATITUDES ARE THE
series of Jesus's statements that begin with “Blessed are,” found in both Matthew and Luke, which offer different versions of Jesus's list. In the Gospel of Matthew, the Beatitudes begin what is commonly called the Sermon on the Mount: “When Jesus saw the crowds,” writes Matthew, “he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit . . .'”

On a mountain, but where? As I've mentioned, scholars debate and sometimes despair over finding the precise locations of Jesus's miracles and speeches. Daniel Harrington says about the Sermon on the Mount that “attempts at determining the exact site are useless.”
¹

Jerome Murphy-O'Connor arrives at the same conclusion and employs some ingenious sociological deduction to explain the current location of the Mount of Beatitudes. It was inevitable, he wrote, that the well-watered and shady spot on the shores of the Sea of Galilee where pilgrims picnicked in Byzantine times would become identified as the scene of many feeding miracles, including the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes. “Then,” he adds tartly, “it became convenient to localize the Sermon on the Mount on a small hill nearby.”
²
So conceivably I was praying miles from the real location.

Still, somewhere on the western side of the Sea of Galilee, on a rise (unless the evangelists were using the mountain as an allegorical place of revelation—that is, comparing this incident to the revelation of the Torah to Moses on Mt. Sinai), the Gospel of Matthew tells us that Jesus named those he considered blessed.

Matthew's version of the Sermon on the Mount, however, includes more than just the Beatitudes. Stretching leisurely through chapters 5 to 7, it continues with some condemnations against the rich and complacent as well as many other teachings—on judging, anger, adultery, serving two masters, anxiety—and it also includes the Lord's Prayer. Most likely these are a collection of sayings from Jesus gathered into one place in Matthew's narrative. By contrast, Luke scatters some of these same teachings throughout his Gospel in various places.

Luke also situates the sermon elsewhere. Jesus has just come down from the mountain, after naming the twelve apostles. From there, with a “multitude” in tow, he stops on a “level place,” where he heals many people before beginning to preach. As he often does, Luke connects the ministry of healing with the ministry of the word: one gives authority and meaning to the other. Because of this “level place,” Luke's version is often known as the Sermon on the Plain.
³

In both cases “crowds” or “multitudes” follow the Teacher. In Matthew, Jesus goes up the mountain in sight of the crowds and begins to instruct the disciples. But this does not exclude the crowds, who presumably are listening in. Luke's narrative refers to the “great crowd” of disciples (
ochlos polus
), then a “great multitude” of people (
plēthos polu
), and finally a “crowd” (
ochlos
). In Luke, Jesus has just called the Twelve so the sermon serves as a set of operating instructions for them, with the crowds listening in.

In both cases, though, many people are around. Jesus intends his message for a large audience. And Matthew and Luke are implicitly saying, “That includes you.”

“Blessed are,” Jesus says, and he names those whom he favors.
⁴
In Matthew's version they are: the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, and those who are persecuted, reviled, and slandered because they follow Jesus. Now, the entire Sermon on the Mount, as gathered together in Matthew, was probably not delivered in full on that one day. More likely it is a compendium of Jesus's teachings. The Beatitudes might have been easy for a large crowd to hear, but as William Barclay notes of the entire sermon, “Anyone who heard it in its present form would have been exhausted long before the end.”
⁵

Luke's version is more compact. Jesus blesses the poor (instead of the poor in spirit), the hungry, those who weep, and those who are persecuted because they follow Jesus. In both Gospels all will receive a reward. Consider the passage in Luke:

These groups, variously forgotten, marginalized, downtrodden, persecuted, or simply hopeless, are to be rewarded. But when? Now or later? Once again, we are faced with a question about the “timing” of the reign of God. On the one hand, the kingdom of God
belongs to
the poor. So, already. On the other, mourners
will
be comforted, and the ones who are persecuted will receive their reward
in heaven
. So, not yet.

Many scholars speak of the Beatitudes as an eschatological promise; that is, these groups will be showered with blessings by God in the future.
⁶
Another interpretation is that Jesus reveals these people as
already
blessed—he praises and welcomes them specifically into the reign of God. They are blessed now because Jesus blesses them. In his book
Jesus of Nazareth
, Gerhard Lohfink underscores this radical immediacy. Jesus, he believes, is not saying that mourning or being hungry is a blessing—nor is he in this discourse promising those groups blessings merely in the afterlife (though these would surely come). The turning point is already here: “God's intervention is about to take place and . . . it is especially the hopeless who will experience God's hope and salvation in a measure beyond all telling. . . . He promises the poor and beaten down in particular that they will participate in the reign of God.”
⁷

Here, then, are Jesus's favored ones. In his comfort of and care for them, Jesus is drawing on many of the Hebrew Scriptures that point to the poor and oppressed as those deserving special attention.
⁸
But Jesus goes beyond that, elevating them in his reign and offering them as models of discipleship. They provide a partial sketch of character traits, attitudes, and virtues befitting disciples.
⁹
Thus, the Beatitudes work on multiple levels and in multiple times: as a template for discipleship in the present (be humble now); as an indication of those who are favored (God loves the humble); and as a promise of future reward (God will reward the humble).

For all these reasons the Beatitudes are often called the Gospel within the Gospel.

W
HAT WAS IT LIKE
for the original listeners to hear the Beatitudes? Since we are not Aramaic-speaking Galileans in the first century who intuitively understand the milieu in which Jesus was preaching, the best answer may be: Who knows? However, we know something about what it meant to be poor, hungry, and persecuted at the time, so we can posit a few reactions.
¹⁰

First: surprise. Those on the bottom are promised a place on top. Jesus's upside-down vision represented a complete transformation of society as his listeners knew it. Those who had suffered much must have been consoled.

Another reaction, among the wealthy or powerful, might have been shock. If the reign of God was to be given into the hands of the poor, for example, what did that mean for those with money and power? Certainly they had heard of this before, in the Hebrew Scriptures, but the urgency of Jesus's words may have sparked fear. How could such a radical social transformation happen without violence? Although Jesus intends that everyone (the multitudes) participate in the reign of God, there must have been some who found threatening what we normally consider comforting words. Even today, with so many lines from the Beatitudes embedded in our literature and culture, Jesus's list of favorites retains its power to shock.