New Law, new Law-giver

In the Torah, in the book we call Exodus, Moses climbs the sacred mountain alone. The journey has been hard, and the people have been tested along the way. After a long wait, Moses receives from God’s own hand the basic law of conduct that we call the Ten Commandments. As Moses ascends, he knows by God’s own words that the people waiting have already been unfaithful, and the coming of the Commandments among them as they hold festival will cause pain and division and even death.

In Matthew’s tale of the New Law (3: 1-12), Jesus the new Moses also ascends a mountain. But the differences reveal the newness of the reality he brings.

It is the “crowds”, the poor, the outcasts, those living on the fringe, who gather around Jesus, and not the wilderness-proven children of Israel. The place that Jesus chooses to speak is just a place, some nameless hill in the wilderness, a place like many others, ordinary. Jesus is not heroically alone like Moses—his disciples “gather around.” Jesus does not seek a stone on which to carve his words—his lips themselves, and the ears of those who hear, are the “living stones” of the new revelation. Unlike God on Sinai, Jesus does not claim reverence for himself. It is the broken people gathered before him that are the focus of his words. And the word that begins each “saying” is “blessed.” The Greek word may also be translated “happy.”

And who are happy? The new Law turns upside-down our assumptions of who is happy, who is blessed. The poor in spirit, the meek, those who mourn—they are happy. Those who long for healing and justice and a new earth—the peacemakers, the merciful—they are blessed in their longing. And those who are not only blessed, but who will rejoice and be glad, are those who are hammered and hunted and beaten down by the powerful, by the Herods and the High Priests and the Caesars of that and every world. Those who are so oppressed are the kinsfolk of the prophets, of the ancient saints.

Where are these people today? How do we stand in relation to them? Where are their cries, their sorrows, their longings heard? What “wild hope” within ourselves lies hidden, covered over by discouragement and by the dreary sameness of life-as-it-is. What is kindled to hope within us by this outrageous game-plan of the Kingdom of Heaven and its unlikely King?