Jesus (26 page)

The Beatitudes are a vision not only for the end times, or for society, but for us. We become who Jesus hopes us to be, as a people and as individuals. So we are blessed.

M
AYBE MORE THAN BLESSED
. During my time in East Africa, I once attended a weekend retreat that took as its theme the Beatitudes. Held in a small parish center near Mt. Kenya, the retreat was led by Anthony Bellagamba, IMC, an Italian priest who had spent many years in Africa.

One day, as black-and-white colobus monkeys skittered across the roof, Father Bellagamba invited us to think about how the Beatitudes influenced our work with the poor. In my retreat notes I wrote down the questions that made a special impression on me: “Do you show superiority when dealing with them? Do you affirm them? Do you help them obtain their identity?” The Beatitudes, he said, can also relate to the way we look at ourselves: “Do you show mercy to yourself by being patient with yourself?”

At one point he explained that the word “beatitude” comes from the Latin
beatus
, meaning “blessed.”

“No kidding,” I said cynically to the Jesuit sitting beside me.

“But do you know what else it can mean?” asked Father Bellagamba.

“Happy!” he said with a big smile.

When we translate the original Greek, Father Bellagamba said, we can use either “blessed” or “happy.” The Greek
makarioi
carries both meanings, while the English “blessed” conveys only a sense of being approved by God—fortunate, welcomed, holy.
²¹
But Jesus offers something else to the downtrodden, oppressed, and forgotten. He promises them, and all who follow him, happiness. Incidentally, my friend Luke is a pretty happy guy.

Imagine how different Christian spirituality would be if the Beatitudes were translated with the word “happy.” Imagine that when we heard those readings we heard a long list of happiness. “Happy are the merciful.” “Happy are the pure in heart.” “Happy are the peacemakers.” But that's what Jesus was saying that day in Galilee, and to us today.

Does that sound odd? Remember that Jesus promises that those who mourn will laugh. And remember what, at the end of both versions of the Beatitudes, Jesus says to those who are persecuted. According to Matthew, “Rejoice and be glad.” Luke is even zestier: “Rejoice on that day and leap for joy.” Another translation is “Rejoice on that day and dance!” Jesus ushers us into a space of happiness, now.

So it's conceivable that the main reaction of the original hearers of the Sermon on the Mount is something we tend to overlook in the Christian life: happiness. On that day, wherever the mountain was, I'll bet that the poor were delighted to hear themselves included in Jesus's vision. I'll bet that the forgotten were happy that Jesus was promising them a place at the table. I'll bet that the oppressed were joyful to be elevated, finally.

And I'll bet Jesus was smiling when he said it. For happy was he.

T
HE
B
EATITUDES

Matthew 5:1–12

(See also Luke 6:20–23)

When Jesus saw the crowds, 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, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

C
HAPTER
11

Capernaum

“They removed the roof above him.”

D
ID
J
ESUS HAVE A
house? That's something I wondered about during our stay in Galilee. With so many stories about Jesus walking from town to town and his comment that the “Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,” until recently I imagined that the itinerant carpenter either slept by the side of the road with his disciples or simply bunked at the houses of friends—like with Martha and Mary in Bethany or with Peter by the Sea of Galilee.
¹
But one passage about Jesus's time in Capernaum, his base for ministry, includes a tantalizing phrase.

Mark paints the early days of Jesus's ministry as a flurry of activity in Capernaum and the surrounding towns. And prominent in Mark's second chapter is the dramatic story of the healing of a paralyzed man. When recounting that same story, the Gospel of Matthew notes that it takes place in “his own town.” Luke, on the other hand, leaves the location vague; he places Jesus simply in Galilee. But Mark says that people had heard that Jesus was
en oikō
, in the house or in a house. But some translations use “at home.”
²
People had heard that he was at home. Did this mean Jesus owned a home?

Some scholars say that this Greek phrase could refer to the house of Peter and his brother Andrew, the ruins of which you can see in present-day Capernaum.
³
About this first-century structure Jerome Murphy-O'Connor notes: “[T]he hint that the room was put to some type of public use is confirmed by the great number of graffiti scratched in the plaster walls. Some of them mention Jesus as Lord and Christ.”
⁴
Crossan and Reed note that the graffiti in this simple first-century “courtyard” house was scrawled in Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Syriac. “The very fact that the room was plastered and graffitied,” they write, “makes it totally unlike any other in Capernaum, or elsewhere in Galilee, and demonstrates that this one-time room in a private residence was held in special regard by many people only a century after Jesus's activities in Galilee.”
⁵

The site was venerated by early Christians, who built a small church there, a structure mentioned by at least one fourth-century pilgrim. Today, over the ruins of the modest, octagonal, basalt-stone church, roughly fifteen feet in diameter and standing some three feet high, hovers an enormous modernist church perched on metal pylons: the Church of St. Peter's House. It looks like a gray spaceship has landed atop the original structure. On the floor of the steel-and-glass church is a window through which pilgrims peer directly into the ruins of the much older church and the original dwelling below.

Is this the site of Peter's house? Murphy-O'Connor concludes that, although it is impossible to know for certain, evidence of veneration from before the time of Constantine argues for its authenticity: “The most reasonable assumption is the one attested by the Byzantine pilgrims: namely, that it was the house of Peter in which Jesus lodged (Mt 8:14).”
⁶

In that case, was Jesus's house a few feet away from Peter's in Capernaum? It would have made sense for Jesus to have a permanent dwelling. Then again, perhaps it makes more sense for the man who asked his followers to give up all they had to own nothing of his own.
⁷
Either way, Jesus made his “home” among the houses of Capernaum. And by tradition the door was open to all guests.

Capernaum is described at various times in the Gospels as a
polis
(“city”), though archaeologist Jonathan Reed points out that this may be simply a loose term for any town or village. Mark notes that Capernaum had a toll house, and other evangelists suggest the presence of a small garrison under the command of Herod Antipas, which argues for a town of some importance.
⁸
But archaeological finds indicate that the town, which probably held around a thousand people, was a “simple peasant and fisherman's village.”
⁹
Unlike wealthier towns in Herod's territories, Capernaum did not have an outdoor market, or
agora
. Nor were any of its streets paved. Indeed, no wider than six to ten feet, the crooked and disorganized passageways were more like alleys than streets.

In
Excavating Jesus
, Crossan and Reed invite us to imagine walking around Jesus's home base in Galilee: “You could easily manage your way around Capernaum by keeping to the spacious shoreline, or you could cut through the village in spaces left between clusters of courtyard houses. Passageways and streets ran in slightly crooked and curved lines with wider spots used to work on a boat, hang and mend fishing nets, or set up goat and sheep pens.”
¹⁰
Overall, they describe the village as “a step up from Nazareth, but many, many steps down from Sepphoris or Tiberias.”
¹¹

What did homes in Capernaum look like in Jesus's time? Akin to those in Nazareth, they were small, usually one or two rooms, built with the rough, dark, local basalt stone—still evident in the ruins today—and held together with mud or dung. Few of the houses had more than one story, and if they did, the poor construction techniques made the walls susceptible to collapse.

From the total lack of any remains of stone arches, vaults, or rafters and an absence of roof tiles in the excavations, archaeologists have concluded that the houses were topped off with a flat, thatched roof, made from sturdy wooden crossbeams, filled with brushwood, and packed together with clay. Grass often grew atop the roof.
¹²

That roof plays an important part in the marvelous story of the paralyzed man, told in all three of the Synoptic Gospels.

I
N
M
ARK
'
S TELLING
, J
ESUS
has returned to Capernaum and is either “in the house” or “at home,” where he is swamped with visitors, the crowd spilling into the courtyard. As I've mentioned, the places where Jesus did his miracles around the Sea of Galilee were very near one another. So reports that many in the area had heard of him are easy to understand.

Thus, as the Gospel of Mark tells us, in the house there was no room for the crowd, “not even in front of the door.” It's easy to imagine the crush of people straining to see and hear and even touch the wonder-worker. After all, in Mark's account Jesus has just healed a man with leprosy. Then and now, people are desperate for not only a physical healing but someone who preaches with authenticity. Word would have spread like wildfire within the confines of the small towns clustered along the shoreline.

In the midst of Jesus's preaching, four men arrive carrying a paralyzed man on a
krabattos
, a mat or pallet. A
krabattos
was used by the poor as a bed, but also could have been used by the paralyzed man for begging. (During my time in Nairobi, some of the refugees wove such straw mats and indeed some of these mats were used, as in Jesus's time, by beggars.
¹³
) The man's desperate condition is made clear by Mark, and he would have been doubly desperate: not only could he not walk (or conceivably even move), but his lameness might have been considered by some to be the result of sin.

The four men have a problem. They are unable to get near Jesus because of the crowd. This may simply reflect the crush of people. But, as we will see later with the story of Zacchaeus, a short man who must climb a tree to see Jesus “because of the crowd,” the phrase may serve to remind us that the “crowd” can prevent us from getting close to God in a variety of ways.

Not able to reach Jesus because of the crowd, the man's friends do something daring—and desperate. Clambering onto the roof, they hoist up their friend and begin tearing apart the roof. (The roof was a place to rest and relax, so there was usually a stairway leading up to it.) The Greek says, marvelously, that the four “unroofed the roof” (
apestegasan tēn stegēn
), ripping off the mud and thatch. In Luke's later version of the story he alters the wording for his readership. In his account the men remove “tiles,” which would have been more familiar to his cosmopolitan audience. But Mark's description is more accurate.
¹⁴

In her beautiful poem “Cure of the Paralytic,” Irene Zimmerman, OSF, tells the story in the voice of one of the friends, who remembers, “We lowered the litter / and swung ourselves down / in a rain of dust and straw.”
¹⁵

The men's love for their friend has always moved me. They care for their friend so much that they carry him on his
krabattos
, which must have taken a great deal of effort on their part. They love him so much that they are willing to make a spectacle of themselves. If any of your loved ones has ever had a serious illness, you know that you would do
anything
if it meant a possible cure. And they want him to meet Jesus so much that they risk angering Jesus (or Peter) by destroying an important part of the house. But no matter—these men want healing for their friend.

A few years ago in Lourdes, I met a woman whose middle-aged husband was crippled with a muscle-wasting illness. As we sat one afternoon beside the Gave River, I commented on how difficult it must have been to travel from the United States to France with someone with disabilities. “I didn't care what it took,” she said to me, “I was going to bring him here, come hell or high water.” It is this kind of love—a physical love, a love that
does
something—that the man's friends demonstrate.

Commotion must have ensued. In the middle of the crowd's straining to see and hear and touch Jesus—people probably were already on edge—the four friends climb onto the house, tear apart the roof, and lower their friend into the overwrought crowd. We can imagine people being shocked. “Stop!” “Jesus is speaking!” “What are you doing to his roof?” Some may have been infuriated by the rude intrusion into the house. But perhaps some, seeing the man's condition, sensed the generous motives of his friends. Did they stretch out their arms to help the man down? There was probably a good deal of arguing and directing: “No, this way!” “Hand him to me!” “Don't let him fall!”