The Beatitudes, Discipleship, and the Justice of God

What does Jesus call his disciples to do? To proclaim correct doctrines about Jesus? To avoid sinners and condemn sin? To impose their values and rules upon the wider society? To be supportive of the church? From the experience of almost three decades of work with the poor, the homeless, the crime victim, and the abused child as a lawyer and a United Methodist minister, Brooks Harrington hears Jesus in the Gospel according to Matthew teaching and showing that discipleship is the Way of Mercy. Disciples are called to endure in following Jesus and trusting the Father despite the challenges of discipleship, the growing misery and evil in the world, the belittling of the power of God's mercy by the world's opposing kingdoms, and the delay in the arrival of God's promised Kingdom of shalom. The Beatitudes are the twelve steps of discipleship to God's Kingdom of Mercy and blessings from God empowering disciples to persist in mercy in the midst of so much pain, injustice, and opposition. After each of the twelve steps Harrington tells a fictional story of four women struggling to be disciples in our day and time by protecting the poor and undocumented refugees.