Becoming Mwimi

Matthew 5:3
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

What do you want out of life? Let’s be honest. I’d like to receive a graduate degree from a well-known seminary. I’d like to have a few kids. I’d like to stay in moderately good health along with my wife so that people will look at us and say, “They’re looking good these days.” I’d like to build a house someday. I think it would be pretty awesome to own a fam van for toting my straight-A kids to their extracurricular activities. I want a bumper-sticker that says “Baby On Board.” I want to walk into my suburban home and smell pot roast cooking in the oven while I sit down in my recliner, take off my shoes, and rest for a few moments while my wife asks me how my long day was and…

Looking over the things I’ve written, some of which are slightly exaggerated, it’s like I’m detailing some ideal Caucasian, suburban lifestyle. It’s the life that most people like me long for at some capacity. I don’t think it’s a life that most people actually live. The more I think about it, the more it seems like some modern-day Cleaver household with an i-Book laptop, wireless internet, and FOX news delivering headlines on the kitchen plasma TV. And all of a sudden, Jesus’ slogan sideswipes me as I coast along in my Honda Odyssey: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Oh yeah… that. The kingdom of heaven. I forgot already.

So I change my mind one more time, close my eyes, and feel the power of Christ’s royal reign in my life. Then, in some faint voice, Jesus begins to teach me a new, radical way: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The poor in spirit, huh? What’s that all about? I mean, do I actually have to be poor to be poor in spirit? I whisper in my head, “Please, God, no… not that… anything but poverty! I like my stuff! I’m an American!”

I think it would be beneficial for me to review for just a minute what that one line signifies… that the ones who attain the kingdom of heaven are the poor in spirit. I think it’s important to take a deeper look at the language that Jesus is using and try and get a good feel of what’s implied in the words themselves.
I want to contemplate the word “poor.”

Poor.

Destitute.

Lacking.

When I think of the word “poor,” I think about the Compassion International child that my fiancée and I are supporting- Daniel Jackson Mwimi. I’ll never forget seeing his face for the first time after a chapel service at King College. When I looked down at his picture, I saw destitution in his eyes. There were holes in his shirt and he had no shoes. Dust covered his legs and his hands were dirty. In my heart I felt sick for standing there in my clean clothes… in air conditioning… with shoes on my feet.

With all my education, could I be taught to be poor in spirit? With all my savings, could I buy even a small percentage of what Mwimi had already attained of the kingdom of heaven? Sadly, no. In fact, my education and my money deter me from the kingdom.

The word “poor” in the Greek is ptochos; it’s a really rich word with a lot of meaning. Ptochos goes beyond lacking wealth to lacking honor, position, and influence. It means to be “helpless to accomplish an end.” Jesus is saying, “Happier are the people who are helpless to get anything done and lack the means to get things done, for they’re the ones who can submit to the reign of heaven.”

So then do I actually have to be economically impoverished to grasp the kingdom of heaven? Well, if you take the passage for what it says: yes… and no. What a gloriously ambiguous answer. The word ptochos or “poor” implies lacking the means to “accomplish an end” which would include financial means; however, the exact phrasing is “poor in spirit.” Ah! The sun is breaking through the clouds. It looks like I might not have to sell my i-Pod after all!
Don’t rush to conclusions.

While Jesus is calling for a destitution of the heart, I believe there is a very real connection between the poorness of spirit and the poorness of circumstances.
A need for the true King is difficult to ascertain when our own kingdoms have safeguarded us from pain. When the wealth the world can provide detaches us from a reliance upon God for sustenance, it is close to impossible to distinguish his reign in our lives. This is why the lame and the sick of the gospels were the first to trust the ragamuffin Jesus. There was no honor, no status that they had attained that would be put in jeopardy if they were to abandon themselves to nothing but Jesus Christ. What a beautiful thing! There is nothing that stops the poor from abandoning their lives to Jesus! Is it so difficult, then, to see why Jesus says that they are blessed? Is it hard to understand why the kingdom of heaven is theirs?

As I sit here and think once more about what I want from life, I have a changed mind. Maybe I don’t blindly want to be Mr. Cleaver living in my cushy white neighborhood in my cushy white house, with my white kids and my white wife. I want to be poor in spirit. I want to allow the Lord to put me and my family through painful situations just so that we can realize that we have no ability to accomplish anything apart from the rule of Jesus Christ in our lives. I want to pour out the wealth that is given to me like a sin offering so that I can become like the poor, like Mwimi. I want to understand in every moment of my life that I lack the means to accomplish anything apart from Jesus.

Do whatever it takes to become poor in spirit. As I seek first the kingdom of God, I begin to understand that I’m naked and unequipped without Jesus. The hard part is remembering that fact in every step of my journey. Of course, if I forget how poor I am… I can always remember Jesus’ slogan, and change my mind... again.

Jesus’ Slogan

Matthew 4:17
“From that time on Jesus began to preach, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’”

The landscape of today’s Christian scene is an interesting one to say the least. I recently walked into a Christian bookstore and saw Christian chocolate bars. I’ve seen sandals with icthus fishes on them, marked up at least ten dollars more than the regular retail equivalent. I’ve seen Christian board games that teach people how to acquire the health and wealth that Jesus has planned for them. I’ve seen books that condemn people who think or act differently than “mainstream” Christians. More than anything, I’ve seen the promotion of a white, middle-class, conservative (or should I say republican) Christianity. Of course there’s always the token black author, so we can say, “I’m not racist, I read this book by a black pastor and loved it! It gave me a little ‘soul,’ if you know what I mean. ” As if by reading one book or having one black friend makes a person culturally aware. I’m not writing this to promote some sort of opposite liberal, multicultural Christianity that disregards precept and tradition in order to be more “liberating.“ Nor do I suggest that congregations should meet on Saturday nights with a guitar, a djembe, and some candles in order to be po-mo or mod or hyper-mod or some other trendy term. I simply want to remind myself and other folks of the simplicity of Christ’s message as indicated in the synoptic gospels, specifically Matthew.

In Matthew 4:17, Jesus gives us a line that today we would call a purpose or mission statement - maybe motto - perhaps slogan. Yes, Jesus’ slogan. The slogan is simple enough, and very easy to remember: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Jesus spends the remainder of his ministry expounding on that one point. Throughout the gospels, Jesus spends his time uttering words like “The kingdom of heaven is like…” so that his disciples would be able to see and discern what is and what is not the kingdom. Shortly after announcing his slogan, Jesus launches into the biggest hunk of teaching in the gospels, the Beatitudes and the rest of the “sermon on the mount.” But before I take a deeper, in-depth look at those verses, I’d like to spend some time getting familiar with Jesus’ slogan so I’ll be more prepared to understand the rest of what Christ is teaching about himself and the kingdom in gospel of Matthew.

Even before I take a look at the actual slogan, I want to draw attention to the word “preach” in Matthew 4:17. If you’re like me, you have all sorts of images that come to mind when you see or hear the word preach. Personally, I get this image of Billy Sunday, the “Sawdust Trail Preacher.” For those of you who are not familiar with Billy Sunday, I should first let you know that he’s dead. Secondly, he was a famous evangelist, much like Billy Graham. He would preach the gospel and at the end of each service would allow people to come to the front and accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. In those days, Billy had the floors of his tent meetings covered in sawdust. Therefore, when people came to the front to “get saved” they would walk the “sawdust trail.” Billy loved the Lord and had a heart for lost people, but he was fiery and red-faced. Nevertheless, the word preach brings that image to mind: someone who’s yelling, red-faced, almost angry.

Allow me, then, to give you a new image for when you hear the word preach. The Greek verb for preach is kerusso which literally means “to herald.” Strong’s says that the word is used “always with the suggestion of formality, gravity and an authority which must be listened to and obeyed.” It’s like the guy in the funny hat coming out with the trumpet saying, “Hear ye! Hear ye!” The image is really fitting, considering that we are discussing the kingdom of heaven. So when it says that Christ preached the message, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near,” he’s acting as a herald, delivering a message that must “be listened to and obeyed.” The message is not optional. The slogan of Christ is really the edict of God the Father! So don’t glance over the word “preached” out of misguided images of angry men like I tend to do. Understand that when the gospels note that Christ is preaching something, he’s making a formal announcement straight from the King!

Now to the statement itself. I don’t want to spend much time talking about the word group “the kingdom of heaven” because to best evaluate the weight and meaning of those words, one must have heard all of what Jesus explains about the kingdom. Therefore, after I’ve gone through the book of Matthew and all the places where Jesus teaches about the kingdom, I want to spend some time evaluating the word group itself. However, it is worth noting that the word “kingdom” or in the Greek basileia is not the same word that is used for an actual kingdom. The word suggests royal power and authority, and indicates the royalty of Christ himself more than the actual kingdom. Therefore, when Jesus is describing the kingdom of heaven, he is more describing life under his reign than life within the eschatological (or the forthcoming) kingdom of heaven.

I would like to spend just a little time looking at a couple sections of Jesus’ slogan. The first is the word “repent.” If you’re like me and you’ve been raised in church, than you’ve heard dozens of sermons that mention the word “repent” and what it means. The word literally means “to change one’s mind” and to “look with abhorrence upon past sins.” I think that most folks know that they need to repent, but from what and to what? Repent from sins. Ok, what does that entail? If I do repent, won’t I sin again tomorrow? What good does repentance do if I continue to sin throughout my life?

To understand it better, one must analyze the tense of the word “repent” in the verse. I think it’s fairly easy to interpret even in English translations, but the Greek tense of the word “repent” is present, active, and imperative. Jesus is calling those who will listen to repent right now, and it demands our attention. This alters our churchy understanding of repentance a little. We know it means to change our minds, but we think it refers to how we changed our minds yesterday or last week or last year. Jesus, in his slogan, is calling people to have changed minds, and he implies that if we are slipping away from his word that we are to change our minds back to him-- now, actively, because its imperative. But why? Why is it so urgent to have our minds changed, our minds turned away from our sin? Jesus says that it’s because his reign and his royal power from heaven “has come near.”

The kingdom of heaven, according to the King James Version is “at hand!” Christ’s reign has drawn nigh. His power of heaven has come so close to us that we can almost feel it on our faces like the sun on a summer day. Jesus is saying, “Change your minds from your selfish ways because the rule of heaven is so terribly close!” People must have thought that he was awfully crazy since they were under the oppressive rule of the Romans and their cronies the Herodians. According to the Pharisees that believed that the Messiah would only come once they were fully obeying the Law had made it undeniably clear that the average man was far from that. Surely the rule of the Messiah wasn’t close! But Jesus’ slogan, his edict straight from God the Father, was that the power of heaven itself was already at hand, and he didn’t want them to miss a moment of it. Christ does not want us to miss it, either. He is asking us to change our minds so that he can change our hearts. He’s inviting us to experience the precious rule of the Messiah, the power of heaven. Thankfully, he spent his ministry explaining to us how to identify his rule, and how life under his rule functions.

Beginning the Beatitudes Jesus tells us, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Mt. 5:3). Already we can tell this rule of the Messiah is going to be radically different from anything we’ve experienced before or anything that comes naturally to us; that, my friends, is why we must repent-- why we must change our minds. That is why we must listen to and obey the slogan of Jesus.