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Theirs Is The Kingdom

             Looking at his disciples, he said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. (Luke 6:20)

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

 

                Some people would say that these verses show that the Bible is contradictory or erroneous. Which is it? The poor, or the poor in spirit? Which is it? The kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven? Which is it? Yours or theirs? I’m going to suggest that it might be both – that there may well have been two mountainsides on which Jesus gave two similar sermons. It may also have been one mountainside and one sermon, but not quoted verbatim and in its entirety by either. Repetition of concepts using small variations would reinforce the point, so Jesus may well have elaborated on “poor” and “kingdom of God” with “poor in spirit” and “kingdom of heaven” and in the historical record, two authors summarized the same sermon in slightly different ways, quoting from different parts. There is also the fact that the quotes don’t contradict one another, and that the culture had different quoting standards than ours.

                But that’s the trivial look. What do these quotes tell us about the kingdom of God and/or the kingdom of heaven? Clearly, you can’t buy your way in. Being wealthy is often seen as being blessed by God, or by the gods. If you read Job, or listen to people today, there’s always the notion that the wealthy somehow have God’s favor, sometimes undeservedly. Either that or God doesn’t notice the evil that the rich do. The poor, it seems to be thought, are nobodies, good for nothing, and certainly unworthy of heaven.

                Jesus rejected that notion. The poor (in spirit) were blessed. The kingdom of God was theirs. The rich found getting into heaven impossible on their own. There are people who take this as their gospel. If you’re poor, you get to go to heaven no matter what else. If you’re rich, you can’t get into heaven, no matter what else. Jesus’ statement that He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father but through Him doesn’t seem to matter. At the very least, the poor get to take ten giant steps forward before the race for Heaven begins, while the rich are required to wear a backpack that weighs twice what they do.

                Of course, if that were true, all the people out there wanting to help the poor, pay them welfare, provide food stamps, etc. are doing the poor a huge disservice (potentially condemning them to Hell) by trying to help them out of poverty. At the same time, by taking money from the rich, they are helping the rich gain Heaven by impoverishing them. Not quite the outcome the folks doing the “helping” are probably seeking.

                So, what does the saying mean? It means what it says, but not in the cause and effect way that people want it to be. Poverty is not a ticket to heaven or that one is holy and sin-free, and wealth is not a ticket to Hell. But, the poor often have little choice but to trust in God, while the rich tend to not feel the need for Him. Poverty tends to remove at least some of the roadblocks that the rich must face.

                But here’s something else to keep in mind. If you have $1, someone with $100 is rich. Someone with $1,000,000 isn’t likely to think either of them is rich. So, Jesus – the same Jesus who is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and who owns the whole universe – tells us that the kingdom of God belongs to the poor. Which of the three is poor? I can tell you which one is poorest, and which is least poor, but not where the line is that separates poor from rich, especially from God’s perspective. They are all poor. So when Jesus says that the poor are blessed because theirs is the kingdom of God, He’s telling us you, I, the guy next to the train tracks, and Bill Gates all can have the kingdom.

                

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