“Blessed are the poor in spirit”

Jesus

I had a good discussion this week about what it means to be “poor in spirit”. Why are the poor in spirit blessed? I found some help from one of my favorite authors. Philip Yancey has a gift when it comes to articulating the gospel. When reading through the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, Yancey reached the following conclusions:

“The Beatitudes express quite plainly that God views the world through a different set of lenses. The poor are blessed because with nowhere to else to turn, the desperate just may turn to Jesus, the only One who can offer the deliverance they long for. Jesus really believed that a person who is poor in spirit, or mourning, or persecuted, or hungry and thirsty for righteousness has a peculiar advantage over the rest. Maybe, the desperate person will cry out to God for help. If so, that person is truly blessed” (Yancey in The Jesus I Never Knew)

Yancey goes on to point out that the poor in spirit recognize not only their dependence on God, but also their interdependence on others. This points us toward a deeper understanding of the “blessedness” of the poor in spirit. In His sermon, Jesus attaches the blessedness of the poor in spirit with a particular reward. Their reward is “the kingdom of heaven”. It strikes me that the kingdom of heaven is not a lonely kingdom of independence and isolation from God and others. It is an eternal-relational kingdom. Poverty in spirit can yield an openness and longing for that kind of kingdom and the blessings enjoyed by those who belong there.