Matthew 5vv1-12 handout

 For those who like this sort of thing:

Matthew 5vv1-12 (p968)

The Blessings of the Kingdom for Jesus’ Righteous People

 

v1 – Jesus teaching his disciples on a mountain (cf. Moses giving the Law)

 

“Blessed / Happy / Fortunate / Favoured”

 

The Beatitudes seem to fall in to two halves:

 

Part 1: vv3-6 – The first 4 Beatitudes (36 words) – all beginning with “p”!

v3 – present tense – “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”

v6 – “righteousness”

 

Part 2: vv7-10 – The second 4 Beatitudes (36 words)

 v10 – “righteousness”

v10 – present tense – “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”

 

Jesus’ people know their need

and live lives shaped by the Kingdom of God

 

(1) First half: Beatitudes 1-4:

Depending on grace, Jesus’ people long for his Kingdom (vv1-6)

 

(2) Second half: Beatitudes 5-8:

Transformed by grace, Jesus’ people live for his Kingdom (vv7-10)

 

The blessings of the Kingdom, now and not yet

 

Jesus The Blessed One

 

So…

 

when we fail… when we struggle… when life is good… 

Parish Magazine Item for November 2026

 

From The Rectory – for November 2026

 

Over the last few weeks in church we’ve continued to think about the teaching of Jesus from Matthew’s Gospel. The set readings from the Church of England Lectionary put two parables in subsequent weeks: The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant (Matthew chapter 18 verses 21- 35) and The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16). You might like to take a moment to read them. As ever, you can find the sermons on the Warbleton Church website or You Tube channel.

 

As you’ll know, and as I’m often telling the children of Dallington Primary School, a parable is a (made up) story, with a meaning. Or as is sometimes said, ‘an earthly story, with a heavenly meaning’. The word ‘parable’ literally means to throw alongside. It suggests a parallel. Think of this in terms of that.

 

These two parables has some similarities. Jesus says that both of them are about what “the kingdom of heaven is like”. “Kingdom of heaven” probably means the same as “the Kingdom of God”. Devout Jews, like Matthew, would have been careful about using God’s name so as not to take it in vain (the third of the Ten Commandments – Exodus 20). Saying “heaven” as a way of meaning “God” could be safety precaution. In both parables there is someone in charge, a king or a landowner, who we can surmise stands for God the King. These stories tell us something about how God exercises his reign. And both are to do with money – which features very frequently in the teaching of Jesus – here in the form of debts and then in the form or wages.

 

We sometimes sing a song in church which neatly captures something of these two parables. The verses go like this:

 

Mercy is when God does not give us [the bad things, the judgement or penalties, we might say] which we deserve.   

 

And:

 

          Grace is when God gives us [the good things] we don’t deserve.

 

So what do these parables teach?

 

The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant. Mercy! We are all sinners. We all owe God a massive debt we can’t repay. Everything we have comes from him. We owe him our very lives. And morally speaking we are all deeply in the red. We fall short our own standards, let along God’s. None of our thoughts or actions is perfect, as they ought to be, so we should give up on any idea of repaying God or earning his love. That’s not the game! God is merciful. He forgives those who ask him. He is very kind and generous – amazingly so. And so we ought to be ready to forgive and show mercy to others.  

 

The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard. Grace! God is generous. He gives us far more than we deserve. We ought to depend on his grace – his undeserved love – not demand our supposed rights. It is a mistake, in a way, to ask God for justice because (see the parable above) we all in fact deserve judgement. We may think we’re better than Jones or Smith. But what if our circumstances were different? Only God really knows the heart and can look at the whole. It’s not for us to judge one another. God gives his good gifts generously. And we ought to be thankful for that. We depend on that. It’s stupid to compare and be resentful. We are sinners who need grace.

 

Mercy and grace. They are wonderful complimentary truths. Trusting Jesus and his death for us, we can confidently look to God’s kindness. And we can pray that he would help us more and more to live out his grace and mercy to others.

The Revd Canon Marc Lloyd

More on The Four Senses

Following on from https://marclloyd.blogspot.com/2026/09/just-beginning-to-dip-into-patrick.html

 

Some further jottings from chapters one and two of Patrick Schreiner, The Four Sense of Scripture: Learning from Ancient Ways of Reading the Bible (Baker Academic, 2026):

 

Not a wooden or formulaic application of a method as if every text must be put through a procedure. “The four senses are more like parameters than a process, more of a mood than a method.” (p20) “a posture more than a program” (p22)

 

“Many texts can be read according to the four senses; sometimes a tree points back to the tree of life and forward to the cross. But sometimes a tree is just a tree…. the literal sense is always present, and sometimes the other senses are present too.” (p20)

 

“methods flow from metaphysics” (p20)

 

 The fourfold sense cohere with the nature of Scripture, of creation and history, and of language.

 

“Fourfold reading affirms that signs participate in the realities they point to. It entails a theology of history that understands everything as summed up in the mystery of Christ and progressing toward the future of Christ filling all things through his body, the church. Some modern forms of hermeneutics have been divorced from the ontology of the Scriptures and have uncritically swallowed the historical-critical pill. We have separated history from metaphysics, nature from grace, theology from Scripture, and Scripture from real life…. We must return to an enchanted, Christ-saturated way of viewing the world and the Scriptures.” (p21)

 

Four – completeness – more manageable than 7 or 12

 

Irenaeus on the 4 gospels (p21)

 

4 zones of the world, 4 winds, 4 horses, 4 cherubim – 4s in the Bible (p21 and footnote)

 

Augustine on The Good Samaritan – the inn keeper the Apostle (Paul) – see p25

 

The origin of the term “grammatical-historical exegesis” – first used by Karl Augustus Theophilos Keil in 1811  - and meaning – cf. historical critical method (p26) – Pontifical Biblical Commission definition

 

Origen and Aquinas also read the Good Samaritan in ways similar to Augustine (p27)

 

Vanhoozer: “Modern incomprehension of pre-modern reading cultures has less to do with reasoning than with contrasting interpretative intuitions” (p27, quoting Mere Xian Hermeneutics, p79)

 

John Cassian (d. 435) the first to name the four senses in Conference 14.8 NPNF2 11:438

 

“Most of the Reformers employed some form of them [the 4 senses] in their interpretations. However, they also responded to the excesses of the medieval period and tended to argue that all the senses should be brought under the literal sense.” (p30)

 

See p30 for Bible references to distinguishing literal and spirituals senses and allehorical, tropological and anagogical interpretation used in the Bible

 

The 4 sense are essentially 2 senses – literal and spiritual (p31)

 

Literal – littera – historical

Allegorical – allegoria – symbolic

Tropological – tropologia – moral

Anagogical – anagogia – futuristic (p31)

 

The allegorical has sometimes been known as typological, mystical, sacramental, spiritual, thewria (contemplation), hypnoia (deeper sense) (p31)

 

The quadria compared to a house (p33f)

 

Bonaventure – the spiritual senses compared to the theological virtues – The Soul’s Journey to God p91

Faith – allegory

Love – tropological

Hope – anagogical

 

The literal sense pointing back in time

The spiritual pointing forward

The tropological to our inward life

The anagogical to heaven (p35 - fn)

 

The senses and the offices of Christ:

King – speaking of what is true

Prophet – deeper meaning

Priest / Sage – how we are to act

Judge – what is to come (p35 - fn)

 

The four senses of Scripture and the human senses

Origen compared the senses to the senses of the body

Froehlich – literal sense & touch; allegory & seeing; tropology & hearing; anagogy & tasting

Allegory – the heart; tropology – the hands; anagogy – the head (p35 - fn)

 

Alexander of Hales, On Signification p41, sees the spiritual senses as rooted in the Trinity

Allegory pointing to Christ; Tropology – the Spirit’s work in the church; anagogy – the Father in the beatific vision (p35, fn)

 

“The revelation of Christ reveals the truth of the quadriga. Because God has acted in history by sending his Son, we have the literal sense. Because all history is united and glorified in Christ, we have the allegorical sense. Because Christ’s story is ours, we have tropology. Because Christ’s future is ours, we have anagogy.” (p37)

 

“The argument of this book is that fourfold interpretation is a faithful, helpful, historic, and holistic way of reading the Scriptures. This way of reading respects the historical context, views the Bible as a whole, connects to our lives, and points us to the future. It is a hermeneutical house we can live in.” (p40) – the grammatico historical method only provides a foundation (p44)

 

“God… is the primary author, subject matter, context, and aim of the Scriptures.” (p41)

 

Lectio divina and the four senses (p42f)

Reading (lectio) – the literal sense

Reflect (meditation) – the allegorical sense

Respond with speech in the form of prayer (oratio) – the tropological sense

Rest (contemplation) – the anagogical sense

 

“The four senses and lectio divina respect the ontology and telos of the Scriptures [that is, what it is and it’s goal]. Because Scripture is a divine-human product, we attend to both human and divine elements. And because the goal of reading is communion with God, we approach Scripture in a certain posture. The true way to read is to engage with love and wonder. We seek not only to know but also to be known, not only to hear, but also to be heard. It is the way of participation. Like Abraham with the mysterious visitors, we are to show hospitality to God as he graciously comes to us in the pages of the Bible.” (p44)