I like order in my life. Like many people of my era and background I was brought up in a very small two up and down terrace. With two small children and space at a premium it must have been very difficult to keep a tidy house. Perhaps that’s why I am by instinct a tidy and ordered type of person, though I can cope with the unpredictable and unexpected. Order is important in our society, that’s why we have laws and rules; without order there is anarchy. A downside to this a risk where everyone knows their place and are expected to stay there, the rich man in his castle and the poor man at his gate.

In every age civilisations have their rules, structures and hierarchies. This was as true for Jesus as it is for us. At the time of Jesus the top of the civic pile were Roman citizens who were relatively few in number (though interestingly St Paul was one) who, among other things, had legal rights, could not be crucified and could insist on being tried by the chief magistrate of the Roman state – the Emperor. At the bottom were slaves who had no rights and were at the total mercy and whim of their owners. In between were those who were neither slaves nor Roman citizens, such as the Jewish people. Jewish society was governed by Mosaic law which was in some ways progressive, with what we would call a social conscience, but with its own strict pecking order, still a pyramid with most of the people firmly and immovably at the bottom.

In Sunday's gospel we hear one of the most famous passages and oft quoted passages of the New Testament, which we know as the beatitudes. Another shorter version of them is found in St Luke’s gospel. What are they about?

Like much of Jesus’ teaching, their beauty is that they are subtle, layered, and stir the imagination. Many people, not only Christians, like them because they somehow feel instinctively right. The beatitudes are statements that find a resonance with us and with others at an emotional level; they set out things that we feel that we can ascent to and in some way are part of. However this was not their only purpose.

In the beatitudes Jesus uses a formula of “blessed” or “happy”, found in the poetical books of the Old Testament, which would have been familiar to many of his listeners. Jesus presents to us the spiritual qualities we all need to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The attitudes of a follower of Jesus is one who accepts these demands as being part of God’s kingdom not as its slave but as a free, honoured and beloved citizen. The requirements of this citizenship is directly associated with the beauty and reward that these commitments bring – comfort in exchange for sorrow, experiencing a kingdom of true justice; a place to find and experience mercy; a place where we experience fellowship with God, where we inherit a new earth; a place where we live in the kingdom of heaven forever. A place where there is no pecking order, everyone has an equal status as a son or daughter of God and a brother or sister to Jesus.

The beatitudes are fundamentally challenging to us individually and our world. They are a map. A map of how through our behaviours we can deepen our relationship with God but also to make the kingdom a reality in our town, our country, and in the world. A place where we move from hate to love; from vengeance and retribution to mercy; from sorrow to joy; where we move from war to peace.

By humanity’s standards this is deeply disruptive, even threatening. The world of God is one where by our norms and standards things are upside down, where first place is given to the least likely people, to those who are foolish by the reckoning of others, to those seen as being nothing at all, to those seen as being common and contemptable, the choosing of the week over the strong.

I don’t normally like disruption but this sounds good to me.

God bless and keep you all.

Fr Chris