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Welcome to the Nonviolent Jesus Podcast. I'm John, Father John Dear, and this is the first

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podcast, a project of the BeatitudesCenter.org, where you can find other podcasts and Zoom

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programs on the nonviolence of Jesus and practicing nonviolence and working for a more just,

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more nonviolent world. I thought we could begin our series with a little reflection on the

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Beatitudes, and I'd like to begin each episode with a little prayer. So I invite us to just take a

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moment and take a deep breath and relax. Maybe notice how you're feeling and enter into the

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presence of the God of peace who loves you personally, unconditionally, infinitely.

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And let's welcome the nonviolent Jesus here with us, and ask for the grace to follow him ever more

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faithfully and do God's will. God of peace, thank you for all the blessings of life and love and

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peace that you give us. Be with us now as we reflect on the nonviolent Jesus and his Beatitudes, that we

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might take his words to heart and put them into nonviolent action and follow him ever more

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faithfully and do our part to help end war, poverty, violence, racism, executions, nuclear weapons,

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and environmental destruction, and to welcome your reign of universal love, universal compassion,

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and universal peace to become people of gospel nonviolence, gospel peacemakers,

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Beatitude people. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. So the Beatitudes, the beginning of the Sermon on

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the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, and 7, Gandhi thought these were the greatest teachings on nonviolence

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in history. And so, did you know, he read from the Sermon on the Mount every day for the last 45 years

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of his life. It's still shocking to me as I read this. He considered the Sermon on the Mount a

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handbook on how to be nonviolent, how to be a human being. So I invite us, dear friends,

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to use the Sermon on the Mount as Gandhi did, as our own personal handbook, our textbook,

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a set of directions that we return to over and over again. Much of what I will reflect and share

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with you here is from my books, The Beatitudes of Peace, and my most recent book, The Gospel of

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Peace, a commentary on Matthew, Mark, and Luke from the perspective of nonviolence.

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So let me read the Beatitudes first, and then I'll walk through them with you. And as I talk about

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the Beatitudes and as you hear them, I invite you to let the words sink in and to take them to heart

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and to ponder them all over again and to choose, like Gandhi, to become a Beatitude, a Sermon on

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the Mount person, to make them your daily guideposts and path and direction. So you might

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ask yourself, how can we more fully live out the Beatitudes this year?

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As I'm reading them, which ones touch you, inspire you, and challenge you? What is God saying to you

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through the Beatitudes? So here goes. This is from Matthew chapter 5, verse 1.

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When he saw the crowds, Jesus went up the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples

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came to him, and he began to teach them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit,

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for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

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Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and

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thirst for righteousness, for justice, they will be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they

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will be shown mercy. Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the

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peacemakers, for they will be called the sons and daughters of God. And blessed are those who are

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persecuted for the sake of justice, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they

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insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me.

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Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. Thus they persecuted the prophets who

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were before you.

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Recently, scholars have translated that opening phrase, blessed are, which begins each line

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of each Beatitude, from the original Greek, which it was written in, back to Jesus,

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original language, which no longer exists, the Aramaic. So they're now saying each Beatitude

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could really begin with the phrase, this would be the authentic translation,

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arise, get up, get moving, start walking, and walk forth. Doesn't that sound like the nonviolent

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Jesus? So imagine 2000 years ago, he's speaking to poor oppressed people,

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in Galilee, in the outback of the horrible, brutal Roman Empire, and he's empowering them

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to get up, get moving, and join his grassroots movement, his campaign of nonviolence,

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they're going to march to Jerusalem, like Gandhi or Dr. King. So I want to invite us to hear them

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that way too, and let Jesus encourage us to rise and walk forward.

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To rise and walk forth, that's what the scholar said. If you need a short phrase

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instead of blessed are, it would be arise and walk forth. So to hear Jesus say to each one of us today,

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arise, get up, get moving, start walking, walk forth and do something. You who are poor,

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mournful, meek, gentle, nonviolent, you who hunger and thirst for justice, and are merciful,

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clean of heart, peacemaking and persecuted, and join my global grassroots campaign of nonviolence

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for justice, disarmament, and peace. So he begins, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the

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kingdom of heaven. So the first sentence of the Sermon on the Mount is all about the poor

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and the economics of God's reign. Luke's version comes out bluntly and says, blessed are the poor,

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woe to the rich. But in either case, Jesus insists that the poor, the powerless, those who have

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nothing, who are empty of spirit, have one thing the rich do not have, the kingdom of God, the reign

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of God. So with these opening words, Jesus takes sides. He sides with the poor, the powerless,

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those at the bottom of the society and over the world. And he empowers them to live in God's reign

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in total trust and to go forth. In doing so, he's calling all of us to let go, I think to let go of

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everything, power, prestige, privilege, possessions, money, to share our hearts and lives with those in

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need to practice downward mobility, not upward mobility, downward mobility and total surrender

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to God. So he's saying the poor already have the reign of God. So stand with the poor, side with

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the poor, become one with the poor in spirit. As you live in solidarity with the poor and let go

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of everything and focus solely on God from now on, like the poorest of the world, we enter a new

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peace and nonviolence, not of this world. We move out of the culture of violence and greed and

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domination and empire and into God's reign of peace. Let me put it this way. I find this helpful.

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If we're rich or rich in spirit, we don't need God. We've got our money and our possessions.

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We're all set. If we've got guns, if we've got weapons and armies, if we have nuclear weapons,

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we don't need God. We've completely rejected God and placed our trust and security in these idols.

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So we're first class citizens of the kingdoms of this world, the culture of violence and justice

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and war. On the other hand, if we're poor and poor in spirit, we need God. We don't have anything

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else. We got no money, no guns, no weapons, no armies to protect us. All we've got is God.

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So we place all our chips, all our hope and security and trust in God and rely totally on

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God from now on. That's what Jesus is calling for here in the first sentence. I think total

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dependence and reliance upon God, not on wealth or power or weapons or anything else. So for me,

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this comes down to the daily practice of surrender. And that's how I invite folks to consider it.

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I surrender today, my will, my life, everything to God. You see this in the Gospels, first in

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Mary of Nazareth, who says to the angel, behold, hey, I'm the servant of the God of peace. God's

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will be done. That's what you do if you're poor in spirit. Then I see Jesus doing this over and

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over again, and finally praying this in the Garden of Gethsemane, not my will, your will be done.

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And that's the one main prayer he'll go on and teach in the Sermon on the Mount, your kingdom

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come, your will be done. So the first step of the Beatitudes, one way to look at it, is total

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surrender to God over and over, every hour, every day for the rest of our lives. We're on a journey

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of downward mobility toward poverty of spirit. We let go of everything, including in the end,

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our willpower and our lives. And we say, do with me what you will, God, your will be done. I'm

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yours. And that's what Jesus does until his last breath on the cross in total poverty of spirit.

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Poverty of spirit, when he surrenders to God saying, into your hands, I commend my spirit.

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That's the Beatitude life. Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.

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Billions of sisters and brothers around the world spend their lives mourning because their

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loved ones have been killed by war, starvation, releivable illness, or systemic injustice.

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But here in the rich world, we're encouraged not to mourn or grieve. If anything, if you look

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carefully, the media and their war machine, this is what my take, is saying, be angry, be afraid,

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be depressed, be despairing because you're powerless. There's nothing you can do.

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In this second teaching, Jesus instructs us about the emotional life of nonviolence.

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He'll go on later and say very specifically, do not cultivate anger or fear or worry

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or anxiety. But here he's advising us to cultivate two emotions, mourn, grief for your brothers and

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sisters, and later at the end, he'll call us to joy. So nonviolence begins with the basic truth

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that we're all equal, all children of God, all sisters and brothers, all one with all eight

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billion people around the world, and all one with the creatures in Mother Earth. And what does that

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mean? It means we're grieving because so many sisters and brothers are suffering and dying

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unjustly from violence, injustice, and war. So we have to mourn for them and for the creatures

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and Mother Earth and let this grief be our new spiritual practice. And let our hearts break

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and then open up to compassion and lead us to nonviolent action so that we're going to work to

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stop the violence and injustice. So nonviolence begins with grief. If we mourn Jesus' promises,

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we will be comforted. I wonder if the opposite is also true. If we don't mourn, we will not be

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comforted. If we do not grieve or mourn, we lose ourselves to the culture of violence and injustice

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and refuse to enter God's realm of comfort and compassion. So I encourage everyone to take time

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regularly from now on to grieve and mourn for suffering humanity and creation.

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Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Well, we now know that meekness

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is the biblical word for active creative nonviolence. It's not like we've all thought

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as if Jesus' blessing be passive and do nothing. He's talking about Martin Luther King Jr.

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and Dorothy Day, those who practice active creative daring nonviolence. But what's so weird is,

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notice that Jesus connects the life of active creative nonviolence with oneness with creation.

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They'll inherit the earth. He says, if we're actively nonviolent, we will be one with all

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of creation. Well, I got to think, and that means the flip side is also true. If we're actively

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violent and war making and support the culture of violence, greed, and war, we will not be one

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with creation. And because we have so thoroughly rejected Jesus' way of nonviolence, we have

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disconnected with creation and created a culture of permanent warfare, including war on Mother Earth.

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And now we have catastrophic climate change. A measure of our nonviolence, according to the

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nonviolent Jesus, is our oneness with creation. The more we side with all of humanity, especially

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the suffering and dying, but as well with all the creatures in Mother Earth, the more nonviolent,

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loving, and compassionate we will become like Gandhi, Dr. King, and Dorothy Day.

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So what's happened over the past century? We've dug up fossil fuels, filled the atmosphere with

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carbon, which has raised the earth's temperature, caused the ice caps to melt, and raised the sea

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level. And now we have the hottest years on record and hurricanes, droughts, blizzards, tornadoes,

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fires, and floods. And over the next century, everyone says, the scientists, there'll be

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hundreds of millions who have to flee coastal areas and many more wars over land and water.

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So the solution is to stop removing fossil fuels from the ground and create renewable energy

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through solar and wind power, as well as to end warfare. So I wrote a whole book on just this one

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sentence, this beatitude, it's called, They Will Inherit the Earth, where I suggest the only way

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that this can happen, I think, is not from the top down doing it, but a bottom up, through a global

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grassroots bottom up people power movement of active nonviolence, the likes of which the world

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has never seen, to help end environmental destruction and permanent warfare and start the healing

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of humanity and Mother Earth. Notice we're only three sentences into the sermon on the mount,

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and he's already pointing to a very specific path. Oh, I love this. I think this is wonderful.

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The life of nonviolence leads to oneness with creation. And we can reflect on, as we want to

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deepen into nonviolence, we want to deepen into our unity with all of creation. And that means,

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according to Jesus, apparently, we have to take up the nonviolent struggle for justice.

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And so we get the next one. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice,

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for they will be satisfied. So justice is a much better translation than the Hebrew word,

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which is usually used, righteousness. So here he's speaking, actually, as I understand it,

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from studying this for decades, he's calling this to social and economic justice. And he's empowering

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and encouraging these poor oppressed people to be passionate for social and economic justice,

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work for justice, work for social, racial, economic, and even environmental justice,

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hunger and thirst for justice. That means work to end systemic institutionalized injustice

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and bring justice to the poor, the oppressed, the creatures, and Mother Earth.

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But what, again, is so mysterious and interesting, Jesus says, if you do these things,

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you will be satisfied. I've thought about this my whole life. I decided, I think,

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he means you will find meaning and purpose in your life. In the Viktor Frankl sense of his great book

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Man's Search for Meaning, you may remember he was the Holocaust survivor who said, that's the key.

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In other words, the most meaningful thing we can do with the gift of life

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is to enter the struggle for justice. I love that. I hear this beatitude as a call to join

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all local, national, and global groups working for justice. In other words, to pitch in,

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do our part, even take to the streets in a nonviolent demand for justice. And to see this

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as part of the spiritual life. This is what life with God looks like. This is what it looks like

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if you want to do God's will in an unjust world. But then the next beatitude,

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blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. So, on the one hand, we're struggling for

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justice, and on the other, Jesus says, we offer mercy, especially toward those who have heard us

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and seek our forgiveness. Even better yet, toward those whom the culture says do not deserve mercy.

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Jesus says, as the scriptures teach, that mercy is the very heart of God. And later in the sermon

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on the mat, he'll call us to be as compassionate, as merciful as God. In other words, universal

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mercy, universal compassion. Well, I looked it up in the dictionary, and there mercy is defined as,

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refraining from harming or punishing offenders, enemies, or persons in one power.

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Also, kindness exceeding what may be expected. That's beautiful. Or demanded by fairness.

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Or forbearance and compassion. Or imprisonment rather than the death penalty imposed on those

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found guilty of capital crimes. A disposition to forgive, pity, or be kind. The power to forgive,

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or be kind. Clemency. So, mercy is all of that. It means feeling empathy for others,

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showing compassion to them, practicing unconditional love for those who are unloved,

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poor, or marginalized, disenfranchised. In other words, like mercy means letting people off the

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hook, granting clemency to those who are deemed unforgivable, being kind to forgive, and being

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kind to those who are taught don't deserve our forgiveness. It means we don't retaliate

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or seek revenge ever again. Here's the catch. It's right there in the Sermon on the Mount,

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over and over again. We forgive everyone who ever hurt us from now on. We offer compassion to

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everyone. We grant everyone a second chance. So, we show mercy and compassion as Jesus did to those

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who don't receive it from society. Who are they? The poor, the sick, the weak, the elderly, the

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immigrant, the marginalized, the disenfranchised. Of course, the enemy who we try to kill. And

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further, we pursue the politics of mercy. We pursue the

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politics of mercy. We want to institutionalize mercy. That's where Dr. King was going,

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and create a new culture of mercy, a culture of nonviolence. So, we work under this beatitude to

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abolish the death penalty and racism, poverty, and war, and for restorative justice and a culture of

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reconciliation. And here's the promise. As we show mercy, we sow seeds of mercy, and mercy will be

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shown to us. You know, if we want God to show mercy to us, we have to show mercy to everybody

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else too. It's not brain surgery. Maybe it's harder. And along the way, of course, you begin

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to notice just how God shows infinite tender mercy to each one of us when we don't deserve it.

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Blessed are the clean of heart, Jesus says, for they will see God. So, this is about Jesus'

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public stand against the cleanliness laws, which he violated and broke over and over again. Jesus

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committed nonviolent civil disobedience every single day and was being punished or should have

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been punished for it. He's breaking the law. He challenged the hypocrisy of institutional religion,

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which sets up rituals, rules, and traditions from which the religious authorities, the religious

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elite profit, and which they collaborate with the empire and all the systems of injustice.

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And Jesus comes along and said, hey, instead of cleansing their dishes and washing your hands for

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God as the first law of God, clean your hearts. Give your hearts to God. So, I prefer the

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translation Gandhi used, blessed are the pure of heart. When Jesus calls us to purity of heart,

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he's calling us to the inner journey of nonviolence, to have a nonviolent heart,

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to the ongoing daily journey of prayer, where we come before God, give God all our inner violence

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and let God disarm our hearts and give us new nonviolent hearts that work and grow in compassion

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and universal love, as wide as the world. So, I hear this beatitude, which Gandhi thought was the

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most difficult and the most important. Isn't that interesting? I hear Jesus inviting us to the daily

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practice of disarming the violence within us, cultivating inner nonviolence, being nonviolent

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to ourselves. Go ahead, let God break open our hard violent hearts and develop new soft nonviolent

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hearts that we might become what? Tenderhearted people who struggle for justice for the poor

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and peace for the human race. I think Jesus could teach this because he did it. He had a pure heart,

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a clean heart, a nonviolent heart, which the church calls a sacred heart. At one point in Matthew

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chapter 12, I think, he confides to his friends that he is doing the right thing. He says,

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he confides to his friends that he is gentle and humble of heart. Wow, whoever says that? What a

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thing to aspire to. Jesus didn't have a drop of violence in him. Jesus was saying that all violence

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comes from within, so he wants us to have sacred disarmed hearts too, so that we can join his peace

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movement, but come from a deep authentic place of interior peace. And that's going to require daily

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meditation. So when we go and sit with God, what we want to do is try to give God all our inner

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violence, which means all our anger, hatred, resentment, bitterness, fears, worry, anxieties,

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all of it. Let it all go and let God disarm our hearts into nonviolent hearts that we might have

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pure, clean, peaceful hearts. But what's so weird, notice how Jesus connects our hearts with our eyes.

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So he's saying, as only he could, that as we cultivate inner nonviolence and allow God to

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purify and disarm us deep down within, we're going to begin to see God everywhere. Isn't that

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beautiful? Inner nonviolence helps us to see with the eyes of universal love, compassion, and peace,

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to get beyond our narrow nationalism and recognize every human being as our sister and brother,

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and see God in everyone. In other words, to have a universal vision. And this leads to the climax

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of the Beatitudes. Blessed are the peacemakers. They will be called the sons and daughters of the

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God of peace. I think this is the core of the gospel, the great mission of discipleship to the

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nonviolent Jesus. We are all called to become peacemakers. It's a beautiful way to look at

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our lives. We can ask ourselves, how have I been a peacemaker during my life? What does it mean to

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be a peacemaker? How can I consciously live from now on as a peacemaker? Wouldn't that be a beautiful

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way to see the rest of our lives? Well, I think that means, first of all, that we can no longer

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be war makers. I mean, it's kind of obvious to me. We cannot support war or participate in war

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or pay for war or promote war or bless war or send our kids off to war. Peacemakers work to end war

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and create peace. So, I think with this Beatitude, every follower of Jesus, every Christian in the

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world is banned from participating in warfare ever again and called to spend our lives in peace,

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welcoming God's reign of peace, making peace, and working for peace. So, peacemakers are people of

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nonviolence. We are peaceful toward ourselves, peaceful toward all people everywhere, all creatures,

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and all creation, and we do our part actively publicly to create a more peaceful world.

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We make peace by loving and reconciling with everyone, especially those who are divided

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and at war with each other. We teach peace and nonviolence. We support the grassroots movements

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of peace and disarmament. We promote nonviolent alternatives and global nonviolent conflict

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resolution and work to abolish war itself. And that means weapons of mass destruction and nuclear

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weapons and the causes of war. And we do that through various movements and campaigns. So,

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we try to stop the building of weapons and the funding for war preparations and spend those

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billions of dollars instead on providing food and clean water and housing and healthcare,

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education, employment, and dignity toward every human being on the planet. That's the vision.

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We work to educate every human being at every age, in every class, in every school on the planet,

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in the methodology of nonviolent conflict resolution so that nonviolence can someday

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become the new normal. So, everyone is trained to be a peacemaker and live in peace. All of this is

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achievable. The United Nations says all of this is doable. This is not idealism. This is not

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impractical. This is not a dream. In fact, this is the only practical solution. It just needs our

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total spiritual and political will together to work toward it. But what's so shocking here

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is what Jesus says. He announces that God is a peacemaker. What? Jesus describes the nature of

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God as nonviolent and peaceful. And with that, he throws out thousands of years of belief in a

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violent God, a God of war. And he does away with any spiritual justification for warfare and the

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great lie that God might bless our wars or our armies or the troops or our weapons. He says,

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the living God is the God of peace, and you are the children of the God of peace.

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This is who you are. This is from now on our basic fundamental identity. We're not Americans

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or children of some other nation. We, from now on, claim our true identity as the beloved

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sons and daughters of the God of peace. And so, it's just natural we rise and walk forth

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into the culture of war and make peace. That's just our normal. But of course,

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if you stand up publicly for peace in a world of permanent warfare, you're going to get in trouble,

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and so we reach the last beatitude. Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of justice.

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Theirs is the kingdom of heaven. So, in a world of total violence, war, and injustice,

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if you stand up for justice and disarmament and peace and try to change things nonviolently,

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people are not going to like it. They're not going to thank you or honor you. They're going

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to get mad at you and tell you to stop rocking the boat. But that's when we get to practice

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nonviolence. That's when you get to see really how nonviolent you are, how seriously you're

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following the nonviolent Jesus. If we keep at this public work for justice and peace,

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we're going to get in trouble, good trouble, as my friend John Lewis said, and we're going to be

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persecuted and maybe even arrested and jailed, as I've discovered. The nonviolent Jesus spoke out

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every single day for justice and peace. And so, he nonviolently resisted the Roman Empire

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every single day and proclaimed the coming of God's reign of nonviolence. And so, he was

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constantly harassed and threatened and persecuted and eventually arrested and killed. This is the

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job description. This is the path of active, creative, daring, prophetic, revolutionary

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nonviolence, the path of the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount that Gandhi and Dr. King and

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Dorothy Day and Archbishop Romero and all the saints walked. And it's the greatest blessing of

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all because it means the reign of God is already ours. As we said at the beginning, we let go of

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everything and we're already living right now in God's reign of universal love and peace.

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So, I think Jesus wants us to rock the boat and disrupt the culture of violence and war

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and to be nonviolent troublemakers who work for an end to all injustice, poverty, war, racism,

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executions, nuclear weapons, and environmental destruction, to take nonviolent risks for justice,

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disarmament, and creation. And when we get in trouble, we maintain our nonviolence,

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and we forgive those who hurt us and trust in God, but we go forward and speak truth to power with

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all the love in our hearts. This is how positive social change works according to the Beatitudes

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and the Gospels, through our participation in bottom-up grassroots movements of active nonviolence

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for the sake of justice and peace. In other words, through nonviolent suffering love for the truth of

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justice and peace. In other words, through our sharing in the paschal mystery of the nonviolent

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Jesus and the cross and the resurrection. So, he adds a concluding point, and blessed are you when

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they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me.

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Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. Thus they persecuted

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the prophets who were before you. Isn't that fantastic? So, if you're in trouble and you're

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getting put down because you're speaking out for justice and peace, or you're getting arrested and

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dragged off and thrown in jail like my friends and I, rejoice and be glad. I hope everybody's

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rejoicing and glad. Now we get to share in the blessings of the prophets. Now we get to be like

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Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Dorothy Day and all the great saints. So, I'll conclude with a

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general invitation to take these Beatitudes to heart and to hear his call personally,

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right now, again, as he says to us personally, arise, get up, get moving, start walking and

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walk forth. All you poor in spirit, you who mourn, you who are meek and gentle and nonviolent and one

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with creation, you who are hunger and thirst for justice, you who are merciful, you are pure and

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nonviolent of heart, you holy peacemakers, you who are persecuted for justice and peace, rejoice and

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be glad. I think these are sentences to memorize and ponder and pursue for the rest of our lives.

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My hope and prayer is that we could rise to the occasion and fulfill our vocations to be Beatitude

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people, gospel peacemakers, and become who we already are, the beloved sons and daughters of

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the God of peace. Thank you, friends, for listening to the Nonviolent Jesus podcast. You can hear

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many more podcasts and find other upcoming Zoom programs at BeatitudesCenter.org, and you can also

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offer there any comments and feedback and make a donation to support this free work. Join me next

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week when my guest will be actor and activist Martin Sheen, talking with me about Jesus,

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Gandhi, the Barragans, nonviolence, and Apocalypse Now. May the God of peace bless everyone. Keep on

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following the Nonviolent Jesus. See you next time.