Bonhoeffer on the Beatitudes

The second major section of Bonhoeffer’s “The Cost of Discipleship” explores the Sermon on the Mount and what we can learn of discipleship by considering the three chapters of Matthew, 5, 6 and 7, that contain this ‘sermon’.  Bonhoeffer emphasises the need for disciples to be counter-cultural.  Disciples see things in a different way and challenge the standard world perspective.  So, for example, Bonhoeffer says this of the beatitude which recognises the blessedness of those who mourn:

“By ‘mourning’ Jesus, of course, means doing without what the world calls peace and prosperity: He means refusing to be in tune with the world or to accommodate oneself to its standards. Such men [sic] mourn for the world, for its guilt, its fate and its fortune. While the world keeps holiday they stand aside, and while the world sings, ‘Gather ye rose-buds while ye may’, they mourn. They see that for all the jollity on board, the ship is beginning to sink. The world dreams of progress, of power and of the future, but the disciples meditate on the end, the last judgement, and the coming of the kingdom. To such heights the world cannot rise. And so the disciples are strangers in the world, unwelcome guests and disturbers of the peace. No wonder the world rejects them!”

Disciples are to do what Jesus did – and there are two particular points that stand out for me here.  One is about suffering and what Bonhoeffer calls being part of ‘the fellowship of the crucified’.  The other is about visibility.  Properly executed, discipleship needs to be seen.  So, Bonhoeffer writes:

“The fellowship of the beatitudes is the fellowship of the Crucified. With him it has lost all, and with him it has found all. From the cross there comes the call ‘blessed, blessed’. The last beatitude is addressed directly to the disciples, for only they can understand it, ‘Blessed are ye when men shall reproach you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.’ ‘For my sake’ the disciples are reproached, but because it is for his sake, the reproach falls on him. It is he who bears the guilt.

The followers are a visible community; their discipleship visible in action which lifts them out of the world – otherwise it would not be discipleship. And of course the following is as visible to the world as a light in the darkness or a mountain rising from a plain. Flight into the invisible is a denial of the call.”