There's that cross again

The Beatitudes teach us to look to Jesus not only as the one who thunders “Blessed!” before those who needed to hear it, but also as the one who embodied each beatitude in singular form. If the Story of the Bible teaches us anything, it teaches us to see the Story of Israel coming to completion and fulfillment in Jesus. The one who is blessed by God is Jesus, and those whom he blesses are those who take on his ways, his manners, and his love and extend it to others. Jesus was poor and humble; Jesus burned up his days pursuing righteousness and justice; and Jesus created God’s peace everywhere he went. But paradoxically his kind of love is so sacrificial it cost him his life, so that learning to read the Beatitudes in their Jewish context must give way to reading them in the context of the Crucified.— Sermon on the Mount, page 53

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Or, as Bonhoeffer famously said, "When Jesus calls someone, he bids them come and die." (I know, the more recent translation in DBW doesn't translate it that way...more's the pity!).
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