Early in his ministry, according to Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus preached a very public sermon. This sermon, unlike any other, has not only been a great treasure of literature, but also stands as the foundation of Jesus’s teaching ministry. The introductory illustration of this famous sermon given on a mountainside is a collection of sayings by Jesus about who is blessed in the kingdom of God. They are called the “Beatitudes.”

These beatitudes spoken by Jesus have been widely admired across religious, political, and social realms. Persons as diverse as Jimmy Carter, Gandhi, and the rock musician, Sting, have all quoted these sayings of Jesus. Indeed, Dallas Willard notes, “[A]long with the Ten Commandments, the twenty-third psalm, and the Lord’s prayer…[the Beatitudes] are acknowledged by almost everyone to be among the highest expressions of religious insight and moral inspiration.”(1)

The exact nature of this religious insight and moral inspiration has been the subject of numerous biblical commentaries and writings. Biblical commentator, Craig Keener notes that there are more than 36 discrete views about the sermon’s message.(2) Perhaps the difficulties in interpretation lie with the implications of the Beatitudes themselves. As one author notes, the Beatitudes are “a statement of the world turned upside down, where those who mourn are comforted rather than abandoned or merely pitied, where those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are satisfied, not ignored or shouted down, where the meek inherit the earth rather than being ground into dust.”(3) In other words, much is at stake.  A world “turned upside down” serves as inspiration to some and bad news for others. Indeed, Luke’s account of the sermon adds a series of four-fold “woes” for those who have contributed to mourning, humiliation, and injustice (Luke 6:17-26).

The first beatitude of Jesus is on the “poor in spirit.” I’ve often wondered what it means to be poor in spirit and certainly wondered if being a follower of Jesus included depression or a perpetual frown. The poor in spirit, according to various commentators, include the dispossessed and abandoned ones. In Jesus’s society, these were the persons without hope in this world, the forgotten ones who were left behind. In every way, these were the ones who recognized that they had nothing to offer God in terms of the spiritual requirements of their religious traditions. They were the spiritually destitute. In the ancient world, poverty was often viewed as a spiritual curse whereas riches and prosperity were seen as divine blessing. Poverty and calamity were understood as the results of wrong behavior, as we see in the story of Job. Job’s friends assumed he had done something wrong to bring on his suffering.

And that is why this declaration by Jesus that the poor are blessed and the kingdom of God belongs to them would have shocked its first hearers.

And yet, extending the reach of the kingdom of God to the poor in spirit was part of the messianic mission as foretold by the prophets. Jesus himself understood this, and during a visit to his home synagogue in Nazareth, he read from the scroll of Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor… to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Indeed, Matthew’s gospel gives us a concrete picture of this mission of Jesus in his healing of those who were poor in spirit because of various illnesses. Just before Jesus gave his public sermon, he proclaimed the gospel of the kingdom in word and deed by healing “every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people” (Matthew 4:23). These were the crowds who followed him up the mountain where he began to teach. Looking around at those who just received a tangible expression of the kingdom of God coming among them, Jesus proclaimed that these ones—these spiritually destitute ones—were blessed.

The power of the blessings of Jesus is that they are given at the beginning of his sermon, and they are given to those who have done nothing to deserve them. As Fred Craddock notes, “If the blessings were only for the deserving, very likely they would be stated at the end of the sermon, probably prefaced with the conditional clause, ‘If you have done all these things.’”(4) On the contrary, God blesses because God’s grace knows no bounds. For by grace we are saved through faith and not of ourselves…it is the gift of God. There is no one beyond God’s reach, no one who is beyond hope. In the kingdom of God, even the spiritually destitute can come and find their place.

Margaret Manning Shull is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Bellingham, Washington.

(1) Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1998), 98.

(2) Craig S. Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1999), 160.

(3) Mary Hinkle Shore, “It’s the Indicatives, Stupid!” in Pilgrim Preaching: Readings for Preachers and Others, November 1, 2003, http://www.pilgrimpreaching.org.

(4) Fred Craddock, “Hearing God’s Blessing,” The Christian Century, January 24, 1990, 74.

In an interview with Mars Hill Review producer Ken Myers, historian John Lukacs spoke of what surprised him most when he first arrived in America to teach at the university. He noticed in the students he taught a total lack of curiosity—and he claims it has only grown worse in passing years. Anything we learn, says Lukacs, is compelled by the curiosity which first caused us to pursue it, to follow a topic where it leads, and in so doing, find out how very little we know.(1) This principle is highlighted in the French 16th century term for an intellectual historian. Such a scholar was called a “curieux,” notes Lukacs. That is, one who is curious.

Sometimes I wonder if curiosity has been replaced by a fascination with the current scandal, gossip, or mystery plastered about the media. Television ratings remind us that there is always something fantastic about a new revelation, a long-lost document, or some controversial new evidence. We are quickly pulled in by the promise of a scandal. We are easily taken with a good mystery. And we are compelled to be up on the latest public frenzy. But I’m afraid such fascination shows not an attitude of curiosity towards knowledge, but an attitude of passivity that eagerly waits to consume the next new thing.

It is not surprising then to watch whatever latest media revelation become a public fascination. Such was the case with James Cameron’s documentary called “The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” as he claimed there was new evidence that a tomb in Jerusalem held the remains of Jesus, his wife, and their son. “It doesn’t get bigger than this,” Cameron said at the press release. “We’ve done our homework; we’ve made the case; and now it’s time for the debate to begin.”(2) The foundations of Christianity were hardly devastated, as some of the headlines promised. But the heads of the masses were indeed turned, if only for a moment. Before the premiere of the documentary, the film’s companion book jumped to the top five best selling books online. The coming and going of May 21, 2011 and Harold Camping’s failed prediction of the end of the world presently held a similar attention. Searches related to his false predictions were top trends on both Google and Twitter for weeks. Not surprising, many used the story as further reason to laugh off religion in general.(3)

When it comes to faith, the novelty of “evidence” that promises to hold our curiosity seems to capture the minds of many. But it is almost always a fleeting fascination based on fantastic speculation, intellectual biases, and poor scholarship. In this sense, neither Cameron nor Camping have produced anything new at all. The end of the world has had no shortage of predictors, despite the fact that even Jesus himself claimed not to know the hour. And of new evidence against belief, there is always a new story. New Testament professor Ben Witherington articulates the state of our culture as it pertains to the latest “findings” that promise to undermine Christianity: “We are a Jesus-haunted culture that is so historically illiterate that anything can now pass for knowledge of Jesus.”(4) And as such, we are easily excited.

But curiosity is bigger than the latest scandal. The claims of Christ will continue to be buried in new doubt and evidence, and Christ will continue to rise above the tombs that claim to hold him. Whether or not you believe this, it is admirable to want an honest investigation, a curious pursuit of history, knowledge, and truth.

The shadows of mystery and suspense are indeed captivating, and the latest findings and failings offer a ready labyrinth to explore. But here we are not meant to reside. The mysteries of Christ and the decisive events of history are best explored not with a love of the newest speculation but with a mind and heart for true mystery. Christ has come into the world; we need not look to the latest scandal to find ourselves standing in awe.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Mars Hill Audio Journal, Issue 75.

(2) “Jesus Tomb Found, says Film-maker,” BBC News, February 26, 2007.

(3) Darrell Dawsey, “The Atheist Perspective: Laughing off the ‘Rapture’ when we should be laughing off religion,” MLive.com, May 23, 2011.

(4) Ben Witherington, “Tomb of the (Still) Unknown Ancients,” Opinion Journal, March 2, 2007.