NO, THAT’S NOT a new spy series or Marvel Studios franchise. It’s one way I like to describe our calling as disciples of Jesus, based on the Beatitudes. We’ve already seen how both the Sermon on the Mount as a whole and the Beatitudes more specifically have the kingdom of heaven as their theme. Indeed, as theologian Stanley Hauerwas once put it, the Beatitudes are the “interpretive key” to the Sermon.

And again, the first half of the Beatitudes echo the Old Testament assertion that God is the champion of the poor and needy, the downtrodden and oppressed. From there, the fourth beatitude describes a person who sees this brokenness and injustice and, as a consequence, hungers for God to make things right.

But it’s one thing to long and pray for God to act; it’s another to get in on the action, to want to be part of the solution rather than the problem. The second half of the Beatitudes thus turns outward, describing the person who participates in God’s ongoing work of moving the kingdom toward its fullness. Here are those beatitudes again:

Blessed are the merciful,
    for they will be shown 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 because of righteousness,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matt 5:7-10, NIV)

As we’ve seen, that last beatitude suggests that people who truly long for justice will also live justly and, in this broken world, are sometimes persecuted for it. But theirs is the kingdom of heaven — and the other beatitudes likewise say something about what it looks like to be an active participant in that kingdom. Here, I want to give a brief overview of the gist of what I believe Jesus to be saying, and then I’ll return to each of these beatitudes for a closer look in upcoming posts.

“Blessed are the merciful,” Jesus says for example, “for they will be shown mercy.” It’s possible to hear Jesus as saying, “Don’t expect God to be merciful to you unless you get good at being merciful to others first.” But that reading would contradict the divine grace inherent in the first four beatitudes, not to mention the entire witness of the Old Testament to the abundant, long-suffering mercy of God. It is that testimony, I believe, that Jesus is echoing here.

Read that way, Jesus is saying, “Blessed are those who extend mercy to others, because in so doing, they show that they truly understand the depth of God’s mercy, and want to be the same way in relation to others. They’re grateful for the mercy they’ve already received, and they’re blessed because one day, when the kingdom is complete, they will receive the fullness of that mercy.” In the next post, to understand more clearly what Jesus means, we’ll look at his parable of the Unmerciful Servant in Matthew 18.

“Blessed are the pure in heart,” Jesus adds, “for they will see God.” This too echoes the teaching of the Old Testament, as we’ll see shortly. And we’ll see Jesus bring it up in a different way in the Sermon later, when he says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt 6:21). For now, we can take Jesus to be blessing those whose devotion is pure and wholehearted. As the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once put it, “Purity of heart is to will one thing.” And for Jesus, that one thing is the kingdom of God.

Finally, I take the beatitude about peacemaking to be the end to which the others point: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” The word “peace” may mean different things to different people. To some, it may signify the presence of something good, like a quiet state of calm. To others, it means the absence of everything bad, like conflict and war. Those aren’t mutually exclusive, of course, but a matter of emphasis, and both fit with the biblical notion of peace.

But what the Bible means by “peace” is more than that. It’s the rich and multilayered Hebrew notion of shalom, which can be translated as peace, wholeness, or even prosperity. As Cornelius Plantinga has suggested, we can think of shalom as “the way things should be,” the way they were created to be by a good, righteous, loving, and gracious God.

But of course, as the beatitudes about poverty, mourning, and meekness teach, things are not as they should be. The world is not at peace and neither are we. So what do the people of God do? How should we live? Those who hunger for justice will live justly. And those who long for shalom will not just wish or hope for peace, but will set about making peace.

God is working to restore all that is broken to a state of wholeness. That work is grounded in the cross. But it continues in the peacemaking work of God’s people, the people who understand themselves to be agents of God’s shalom in this world.

Every interaction, every relationship is another opportunity to be a person of peace. We won’t always know what would best make for peace, and realistically, even when we do know, we won’t always do it. But it begins with knowing who we are called to be: active agents of the shalom of God, people who seek the wholeness of a broken world.

Because as Jesus says, when we make peace, we show that we are truly God’s children.