Week 7 discussion notes and readings for next week

 ➡️Reading for Week 8:  August  2:  The Lord’s Prayer

The perfect prayer Our Lord taught us calls out the Kingdom of God.

Reading:  Matthew 6:9-13.  Luke 11:2-4 has the shorter version and especially appropriate if you read the entire Sermon on the Mount last week.

⬇️Attached:  discussion notes from Week 7, Sermon on the Mount.

The discussion started with a chorus of “I’ll Fly Away”.  (You had to be there.)

It discussion continued around a question brought from a off-site participant requesting we discuss:  Who are the Beatitudes addressed to?  The disciples, the crowd, apostles?  All of the above?  We talked about Jesus going on top of a mountain to address everybody.  We talked about what the word “disciple” includes—followers? apostles?  The final verse of the entire Sermon on the Mount (end of chapter 7) says that the crowd was astounded at his teaching.  Disciple means learner or follower.

It matters knowing who Jesus is speaking to:  it affects what He says and how.  There are three groups present:  (1) the crowds, meaning everybody who has come to hear Him talk, (2) all of His disciples who follow Him, the 12 apostles,

Some of us thought He would be speaking to the poor, the hungry, the ones who grieve.   And, others added, He would be speaking to those who are not poor, hungry, grieving, to tell them why the others matter.  He is talking to us, the poor of spirit.   Everyone has every problem, we all experience these at some time.  And if God shows up, there is the Kingdom of Heaven.   Could someone who is physically poor not be poor in spirit?  You don’t have to be all of these things to enter the Kingdom of God.  All those beatitudes seem to be virtues, and are contrasted to strength, force, and power that are rewarded on earth to winners.

Perhaps Jesus can safely assume many/most in the crowd are broken or suffering because they are seeking the teaching of a rabbi, and generalizes his message to them.  We discussed blessing, how we can lead others to the Kingdom by being a blessing to them, reminded of last week’s healing of the paralytic and being brought by his friends.

We talked about the persecuted, which is true for Christians in these times as well as for Jesus’ audience, who lived in severe persecution—and not only by the Romans but by their own Jewish puppet government and religious authorities.  These Beatitudes are consolations.  They are giving the listeners hope.  He is speaking to them as one of them.

We talked about difference in Kingdom of Heaven or Kingdom of God.  Matthew uses Kingdom of Heaven.  There is an audience that Jesus is speaking to and also the audience the gospel writer is writing to:  Matthew writes for Jews.  We have discussed the Kingdom and what it is and isn’t; the Beatitudes adds to our definitions of what it is and it isn’t.  

Each line of the Beatitudes outlines one characteristic of the Kingdom of God:  mercy, pureness,  poorness in spirit, holy sorrow, controlling anger, seeing God in His Kingdom, love set in motion, worshiping God with no compromise, sharing peace with all, upholding truth.  The opposite of these things is rewarded in our world.

We are never going to look at the kingdom again the same way before we started these discussions.  The words just roll over us — but they are huge, they are everything.  Coming together to discuss them means we’re not going to hear them the same way again.