Small is beautiful

I'm not quite sure how to approach the beatitudes. They are so counter-intuitive. Are they a promise for the future or a statement of fact? Is Jesus saying that they are ideals or reality? It is easy to see them as being a nice piece of speaker's rhetoric; a poetic statement of contradictions which sounds profound but contains no real substance. Yet somehow I think they are more than that.

Take the third one for example. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. On the surface it seems all wrong. We know it is the rich, the powerful, the ruthless who run things. And yet do they truly inherit the earth? Is anything they create built to last? History is packed with empires which crumble when their founder dies. This is true in the business world too.

In the book Good to Great Jim Collins comes to the surprising conclusion that what sets apart the most successful leaders is "a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will." Humility at the heart of success? Maybe Jesus knew what he was talking about after all.

The more I think about it, the more convinced I become that the establishment of the kingdom is not something which can be franchised. The most successful examples of kingdom life spring from small groups of people engaging with their communities in projects that they are passionate about. As such projects grow there is the temptation to become more professional. To move away from the model of Christ and to take on business principles. The danger of this is that the workers become employees not disciples. It doesn't always happen, of course. There are some excellent Christian charities with dedicated staff. I believe, however, that these are the exception, not the norm. The kingdom is about the insignificant rubbing shoulders with the disenfranchised and both being transformed in the process...