A Message of Liberation

In the Old Testament, the end of the exile that Israel longed for was often described in terms of the exodus. The exodus was God’s great act of liberation in Israel’s history, freeing the people from slavery and oppression in Egypt. Now they looked for a new exodus. And Matthew presents the liberation of Jesus as a new exodus. Jesus comes out of Egypt (2:13–15). Israel is first called God’s son when Moses goes to Pharaoh to demand that he let the people go free. Now the voice from heaven says of Jesus, “This is my beloved Son” (Matt. 3:17). Jesus is tempted in the wilderness for forty days just as Israel was tempted in the wilderness for forty years (4:1–2). Israel failed the test, but Jesus is the faithful one. The book of Deuteronomy was the word Moses spoke to the people on the verge of the Promised Land, and now Jesus counters Satan with words from Deuteronomy (4:3–11).

This theme continues into the Sermon on the Mount. This is the background to the so-called Beatitudes. The blessings promised in the Beatitudes arise because God’s people will once again live in the land of blessing, the land flowing with milk and honey. They will be restored to life under the reign of God (Matt. 5:3). They will receive the comfort promised to the exiles in Isaiah 40:1–3 (Matt. 5:4). Matthew 5:5 is a reference to Psalm 37:11, which says, “The meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace.” It is a promise of inheriting the land, so, in this context, of returning from exile, except that Jesus now has the whole earth in mind as the home of God’s people. To thirst for righteousness is to long for God’s saving intervention in history, and to be satis­fied is to enjoy the land of milk and honey again. “Sons of God” is what Israel was called when Moses demanded that Pharaoh set them free; the final plague falls on Egypt’s firstborn because Egypt would not liberate God’s “firstborn” (see Ex. 4:22–23). So to be called “sons of God” is to be the liberated ones. The Beatitudes are not spiritual aphorisms, nor guides to a happy life, nor moral pre­cepts; they are announcements of liberation. They are announcing a return to the land of blessing—except that the land has become the whole earth.

Who is it that will enjoy this liberation? Who will enjoy the blessings of the Promised Land? Not the politically powerful (the Sadducees and the Herodians), for blessed are the meek (Matt. 5:5). Not the violent revolutionaries (the Zealots), for blessed are the merciful and the peacemakers (vv. 7, 9; see also vv. 39, 41, 44). Not the religiously pure (the Pharisees), for “blessed are the poor in spirit and the pure in heart” (vv. 3, 8). Not those who separate themselves (the Essenes), for the blessed ones are a city on a hill and a light that cannot be hidden (vv. 14–15). No, the ones who enjoy liberation are the poor in spirit, the broken people. People sometimes say that to proclaim liberation ignores the fact that the poor are sinners too. But Jesus suggests an opposite problem. Bro­ken people know they are broken. What they struggle to grasp is that God welcomes people like them. The bigger problem is with the “sorted out” people; they are the ones who struggle to recog­nize the depth of their sin and the poverty of their spirit.

Reading the Sermon on the Mount in the light of its context highlights the radical power of the message of Jesus. It reveals its social and political cutting edge. But does it also make it remote to our concerns? People today do not long for a return from Baby­lonian exile. We are not under Roman occupation. What is the contemporary relevance of Jesus’s message of liberation?

The answer is that people today still long for liberation. They long for liberation from the knock of the loan shark, from depen­dency on drugs, from the bottle, from cycles of violence, from the threat of a poor harvest, from the fear of corrupt officials. We live in a society of broken people needing liberation and longing for home. This message of liberation speaks directly to our situation.