The Gospel According to Matthew - The Upside-Down Kingdom [April 19, 2026]

read the scripture again this is Matthew 5 verses

Matthew 5:1–12

1 through 12 and I'll be reading the NRS VUE

version if you have the digital app when Jesus

saw the crowds he went up the mountain and after

he sat down his disciples came to him and he

began to speak and taught them saying blessed

are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom

of heaven blessed are those who mourn for they

will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for

they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those

who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for

they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful,

for they will receive 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

for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is

the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people

revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds

of evil against you falsely on my account Rejoice

and be glad for your reward isn't is great in

heaven for in the same way They persecuted the

prophets who were before you through 12 from

a little different perspective than perhaps we're

used to. Today we're exploring Jesus's words

and the Beatitudes through the eyes of Bible

translation, particularly Bible translators working

to bring scripture to some of the most marginalized

people, groups, and language communities around

the world. So let's talk a little bit about what

these people, about these people and the task

of Bible translation. so that we can think about

this passage of scripture through their eyes.

Minority language Bible translators have to think

about the meaning of the text. And in simple

terms, this involves developing a sufficient

degree of comprehension of the source text, biblical

Greek. The text is a collection of pairings of

forms and meanings in the language with particular

structures. And translators need to understand

how these meanings relate to the structures of

the language. After this comes a deliberative

process where the translators consider the numerous

ways that meaning might be expressed in a receptor

language, the minority language that they're

working in. And then they must choose those appropriate

structures and forms in their minority language

that they're working with for communicating that

meaning. That's a very simple overview of the

process of Bible translation. Translation requires

many decisions. Different words can shift in

meaning depending on context. Think about how

we understand the meaning of these following

sentences with the verb steal and how you describe

those differences in meaning to someone who doesn't

know these words. Jack stole second base. Mary

stole John's heart. Chloe stole the show last

night with her singing. Fred stole $10 ,000 from

the bank. Each of these sentences, the act of

stealing is a distinct kind with a variety of

unique connotations. Or think of the word fire.

If you say fire in a movie theater, it has a

very different meaning than if you say fire in

a board meeting where trustees are placing votes.

on whether or not to oust the CEO. This is still

different from shouting fire in a prison with

a condemned prisoner blindfolded. When the same

words are used in different contexts, we interpret

them differently. In light of this, we must be

careful how we interpret the words of the sermon

on the mount. If we alter the context we have

in mind, we change the way that we read the words

and how we see the text. Familiar texts like

the Sermon on the Mount tend to be read through

a 21st century American lens. We interpret the

words in our context, naturally. But Jesus' audience

wasn't 21st century Americans, his audience was

first century Jews. under the occupation of the

Roman Empire. The audience in front of Jesus

wasn't one guaranteed the rights, responsibilities,

and privileges of citizenship in the Roman state.

Instead, Jesus' audience was made up of Jewish

people from Galilee, from Judea, and surrounding

regions. They were physically occupied by colonizers,

physically poor. physically marginalized, living

without the rights insured to those with citizenship

and economic status. When Jesus opens his mouth,

he makes a series of statements that are diametrically

opposed to the lived experience of the audience

in front of him. Jesus says that the poor, those

who mourn, the meek, the hungry. Those who are

merciful, the pure ones, the peacemakers, the

persecuted, they are blessed and even fortunate.

These blessed groups almost certainly overlap

with each other, but in choosing them, Jesus

is able to frame different relationships between

the people and the authorities and rulers of

the empire around them. It's often emphasized

in discussions of these blessed statements that

Jesus speaks spiritually. If you are spiritually

poor, if you are spiritually hungry, then yours

is the kingdom of heaven where you'll find spiritual

satisfaction in God's future realm. But Jesus'

audience in this passage is filled with people

who are poor in spirit because they are poor

and oppressed physically. The gospel of Jesus

Christ is, as Jesus himself said, good news to

the poor. Bringing hope to those in need. Think

of Jesus' reference to Isaiah 61, one and two

as he declares the gospel to be good news to

the poor. When you are physically in need and

physically marginalized, you are broken in spirit

is a result. In Jesus' thinking, those who are

poor, meek, and hungry are most likely those

whose outward circumstances force them to look

to God for help, but who also receive from God

the gift of the Spirit to look to him for everything.

Jesus points out that the lowly among the kingdoms

of the earth, the poor, the meek, the hungry

for justice, those who make peace instead of

war and declare that the poor and declares that

the poor in spirit, the kingdom belongs to them.

This phrase, the poor in spirit, is a term that

was used by the lower classes to distinguish

themselves from the arrogant upper classes. who

lorded over them and oppressed them. By Jesus'

day, it had become a moniker for the faithful

people who were humbly dependent on God's protection

in the face of oppression, accepting the difficult

way of life that he had marked out for them.

So when Jesus says, blessed are the poor in spirit,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, the distinction

here is not a statement about where you go when

you die. It's a statement about the kind of kingdom

that God establishes as distinct from the kinds

of kingdoms established by men on earth. And

we are mighty familiar with earthly kingdoms.

Empires and kingdoms have been present with us

throughout church history. Empires have consistently

tried to influence the church toward exclusion.

exclusion of those who are considered other and

unwanted. Think of the Third Reich in Germany,

influencing the German church to exclude its

Jewish disabled and Romani brothers and sisters.

Or the Spanish and British empires as they co

-opted the Catholic and Anglican churches to

marginalize those they enslaved and colonized.

The Russian Empire uses the Orthodox Church to

legitimize its agenda of conquest and control

of surrounding countries it feels it should possess

by right. The American Empire tries to galvanize

the American Church to fear refugees and immigrant

neighbors. And Jesus declares to these, you poor

ones, You ones who are broken you who are broken

in spirit you You belong somewhere You have a

place Yours is the kingdom of God Minority language

communities today who still need scripture in

their mother tongue have a similar experience

as Jesus's first century audience This is because

of their low status in relationship to the larger

societies in which they live. Minority languages

are typically those seen as smaller people groups,

with usually less than two million speakers.

Minority language speakers often do not have

official status in their country. They may not

be recognized at all by their government. Many

struggle to get access to education, health care,

in their language. And sometimes these languages

are oral and not written down at all. Or they

are deaf signers who live among the larger hearing

population. As a result, minority language communities

often feel unvalued. As among the poor, among

the forgotten, their present realities are shaped

by the long -lasting effects of colonization

around the world. If you travel to countries

of francophone Africa, including Chad, the Central

African Republic or Cameroon, you will encounter

people who use French as their language of wider

communication, aside from their own indigenous

languages as a result of colonization by the

French. Bible translators who translate the words

of Jesus for their own people live in these realities.

Their inheritance as a people isn't one of wealth.

is in power, status, or empire, and they cannot

spend billions of dollars acquiring land, resources,

or people. Instead, their inheritance is a humble

one because they are in need. Indeed, such communities

are some of the most vulnerable peoples on earth

because of the realities of destruction that

empire has brought to their communities. Language

loss. cultural attrition, resource extraction,

labor, exploitation, climate change. And these

are some of the reasons why the work in Bible

translation forces us to pay attention in order,

pay attention to the order of these blessings

that Jesus describes in the Beatitudes. This

is not a random list of well wishes. It is an

integrated path for living in the kingdom of

God. All of these groups he identifies might

be vulnerable or downtrodden, but as we progress

through each one, from poor, to those who mourn,

to meek, and then to hunger for justice, merciful,

pure in heart, peacemaker, and persecuted for

justice, we find a transition from the passive

victim to the active agent seeking God's change.

and God's sense of justice and righteousness

in the world. To that end, Jesus' Beatitudes

are not merely blessings, but also a call and

a challenge to those who would follow him. The

Christ -followers of the Global South, especially

those members of minoritized communities in the

Global South, know poverty and marginalization.

They know the mourning that comes from bereavement.

or the effects of sin, and not merely personal

sin, but in culture and in society. Zambian theologian,

Joe Kapoyo, in his contribution to the African

Bible commentary, check it out if you're interested,

writes, there is a sin in our lives, in our cultures,

in our economic structures, indeed in everything

that we put our hands to. Global warming has

tragic consequences for human survival. Personal

choices and actions demonstrate a catalog of

human activities that must make us weep with

deep grief. Isaiah shuddered with grief when

he saw the purity of the Lord. We will shudder

with the same grief when we look at the purity

of Jesus and the challenge of his cross. The

Lord sees such grief and responds with comfort.

God forgives personal sin and wipes the slate

clean with the blood of his son Jesus, but God

also inspires and strengthens his mourners to

work to remove the offenses that too often lead

to personal and structural sin. And just this

past fall in the forward to the book, The Cross

and the Olive Tree, cultivating Palestinian theology

amid Gaza, Palestinian theologians, Palestinian

theologian Naim Stefan Atik writes this. The

contributors of this book have written their

chapters as they watch their families being bombed

and starved in Gaza. Every word of this book

is accompanied by the screams of children, images

of destruction, bodies torn by violence. torture,

and rape, stirring in us a profound sense of

guilt rooted in our despairs and in the inability

to stop the forces of evil under the weight of

the empire. In essence, this book is written

during crucifixion and in the expectation of

the hope of resurrection. As an aside, the Bible

Translation Project Into Palestinian Arab Arabic

to serve the Palestinian Christian community

in Gaza is still ongoing to this day Even in

the midst of the war we have colleagues working

God sees their grief and sees our grief when

we mourn as well and Jesus calls us all forward

beyond mourning To also hunger for justice to

show mercy to live with pure hearts and act as

makers of peace. In this way, we are able to

stand with the poor of the first blessing. So

pay attention to our word here. So many of our

English Bibles give a translation of righteousness

here. And that's because we Christians have an

expectation that the important words are translated

the right way. But usually the right way ends

up meaning, sorry, but oftentimes the right way

ends up meaning the usual way. In this case,

the word righteousness is a translation that

goes all the way back to our earliest English

translation from the Greek New Testament, 500

years ago this year by William Tyndale. And in

1526, the word righteousness meant justice. Over

the time, it has slowly changed to primarily

mean to act in accordance with divine or moral

law, free from the guilt or sin. And effectively,

all mainstream Bible translations today have

kept righteousness because it sounds right to

the audience. So much that changing it risks

rejection of the translation by the people who

would read it. And that doesn't mean that every

time you encounter the word righteousness that

we shouldn't think of moral uprightness. That

was part of the meaning in 1526. But minimum,

we must pause and ask ourselves, could this passage

be about justice? And we think it is here. Jesus

blesses those who hunger for justice. Then he

blesses people who show mercy. and practice compassion.

Our longing for justice can easily shrink into

self -righteousness that lacks that quality of

mercy. But true justice doesn't cancel out mercy.

If we forget mercy, we may be tempted to take

pleasure in other people's pain. But for Jesus,

hungering after justice is expansive. It includes

caring for the pain of people. even those we

might perceive as enemies. In the layman's view

of Bible translation, it's a simple process of

linguistic transfer. You just choose the right

words equivalent to the Greek and Hebrew words

of the Bible and you're done. But this is rarely

what translation looks like in practice as I

imagine you would imagine. Offering a word -for

-word translation can result in a mistranslation

for a people group. Consider the case of showing

mercy and receiving mercy in Matthew 5 -7. Ancient

Greek and modern English both express many abstract

concepts through single words. Have you noticed

that? Like grace and mercy and righteousness,

those are very abstract, big concepts, but we

only use one word. But there are languages around

the world that do not use abstract nouns. And

so they have to find an equivalent. Many minority

languages do not have a one -to -one equivalent

where they can just choose one word for another.

So they have to find a culturally appropriate

concept that fits into the target culture. For

instance, some cultures express the idea of mercy

through metaphors of the body. These are fun.

Having good intestines in Marasay, a language

of Indonesia. Having a wounded interior in Baray,

a language of Papua New Guinea. Or his abdominal

weeps in Akateko, a language of Guatemala. Or

finally, doing a good belly to someone. Knowing

the person didn't deserve it, he deserved the

opposite. In Kara, a language of Chad. The same

challenge arises as translators deal with how

to express the phrase pure of heart in verse

eight. Translators in the world's languages might

approach this abstract expression with varying

strategies. Some translators find a comparable

body part metaphor, such as the Yakatan language

in the Philippines. Better off are the people

with straight livers, because they and God will

see each other. For Yakatan speakers, the liver

is the seat of emotion, not the heart. Likewise,

the metaphor of straight versus bent provides

an alternative conceptualization for understanding

purity versus impurity. Another approach that

translators use is to negate a term that is the

opposite of pure and holy. The translators for

the Otomi language in Mexico adopted this strategy

with their rendering, the good fortune will be

met by the people who do not let any evil settle

in their hearts, because these are the people

who will see God. In each case, the translators

work to consider the meaning of the original

forms and seek out effective ways to communicate

that meaning in their own tongues. And in both

cases, something is either straight or not. Something

is either pure or it is not. A pure heart, a

straight liver, cannot have mixed motives before

God. Those whose hearts are pure will see God

at work in the present and will see him with

their own eyes in the age to come. The purity

of our intentions motives in this life to find

our behavior and actions with regard to those

around us. And we will respond to those intentions

and motives first by pursuing God's peace in

the world around us. And who is more in need

of a peacemaker in our world today than the poor

and those who are disregarded? When violence

comes, who is the first to be harmed? But those

who the powerful of the world view as the unimportant

ones, the ones forgotten. Perhaps here today

we Americans can see and comprehend the burden

of being overlooked and disregarded by a national

government because maybe your language or your

ethnic community lacks legal standing. The raids

of ice against undocumented families across our

country are a bitter reminder of the kinds of

treatments certain communities experience around

the world, even in their own nations. Wealth

and capital forced the First Nations of the Americas

off their lands and the same is happening today

as the Tanzanian government displaces the Maasai

from their ancestral homes and Palestinian homes

are bulldozed in the West Bank for new settlements.

In what ways can we as the body of Christ together

resist the exclusion of earthly empires and proclaim

the kingdom of God that is inclusive of all of

our poor and marginalized neighbors. As you ponder

this question for yourself, also consider that

Jesus's blessings come with a cost. The kingdoms

of the earth will always and inevitably commit

injustices in the world. So this final blessing,

blessed are the persecuted for justice because

theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Showing mercy,

hungering, thirsting for justice, living as a

peacemaker. All of these actions will necessarily

put you, put us into conflict with the kingdoms

of the earth. The powerful do not want us to

care for the poor. and the marginalized. And

this Jesus emphasizes in his final blessings,

hungering for justice, showing mercy, acting

as peacemakers with pure motives will necessarily

bring us into conflict with the power centers

of the world, earthly nations, earthly kingdoms.

The American church has a history of imagining

itself persecuted. However, the realities of

persecution truly come when we stand with the

poor and stand against human authorities and

the power with God's justice in solidarity. The

reality of persecution truly comes when we stand

against human authorities and power with God's

justice in solidarity with the poor and the marginalized.

Jesus calls us into the kingdom of God not as

someone who speaks down to the poor Not as someone

who speaks down to the marginalized He comes

to the margins and lives with them Living as

a first century Jewish Palestinian victim of

violence unjustly accused and executed by the

Roman Empire So as we close Jesus knows what

it's like to be broken in spirit. He knows what

it's like to mourn. He knows what it's like to

take on humility, to hunger and thirst for justice

and for righteousness, to give mercy and to receive

mercy. He knows what it's like to long to see

God and maybe not see God. and what it's like

to be a peacemaker among people who do not seek

peace. He knows what it's like to be falsely

accused, but he says we who follow him are blessed

because he's with us, always. He has come down

once before, crucified and buried on Good Friday.

On Resurrection Sunday, which we most recently

celebrated, He makes things whole again. We live

in an era of a holy Saturday waiting in the dark,

but with hope. As we close today, let us pray

for ongoing Bible translation projects in progress

both around the world and in the United States.

Let's pray. Father, we lift up Bible translators

to you among the Bokoto people and the Gbaya

communities of Central African Republic. We lift

up to you the Ch'ol and the Zapoteco de las

Delicias of Mexico, and the Banyamulenge refugees

from the Democratic Republic of Congo now living

and working in the United States on a Bible translation

for their own people. May we all gain the blessings

that you have listed here, the blessings of the

kingdom, as we learn to be pure in heart, as

we learn to love justice, and as we learn how

to make peace in the world. Amen. Thank you for

allowing us to share with you today. We welcome

your questions about Bible translation, about

language, and we would love to talk with you

after the service. Come and talk with us, ask

us questions. We would love to share more. Just

to let you know, don't be a stranger.