Year C
February 17, 2019
Luke 6:20-27
I have a feeling that most of us are more familiar with the Gospel of Matthew’s beatitudes as part of the Sermon on the Mount. At least for me, that’s the version that I learned in Sunday School. It’s also the version that tends to make its way into popular culture, in TV and movies. In Matthew, Jesus walks up the mountain, sits down, and begins his long Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitudes - with nine different blessings. Today, however, we get the four blessings and four woes of Luke’s sermon on the plain. Jesus comes down from the mountain (where he had been in prayer), stands on a level place - with a “great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon.”I’ll admit; as much as I love the Gospel of Luke, this remembrance of Jesus’ sermon is much harder to preach on. Matthew’s remembrance of the sermon leaves room for a more spiritual interpretation - “blessed are those who are poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” instead of Luke’s “blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God.” It is easier to place ourselves in the “blessed” category in Matthew’s telling of the text - who hasn’t found themselves poor in spirit or found themselves hungering for righteousness?
Luke’s remembrance of this sermon is much more physical - it deals with real hunger and real poverty. While poverty and hunger are real (and things people in our communities face), even though money may get tight periodically, those of us who have food in our fridges, a roof over our heads, and several changes of clothes are richer than 75% of the world’s population. It is harder to see myself - a woman, with a good job, a masters degree, an apartment with plenty of food for me and my dog - in the “blessed” category of Luke’s gospel. I don’t know what hunger - true hunger - is like. Maybe you do, but I’ve never experienced it myself. Thus, if I look honestly at myself, I hear the “woes” much more prominently - “woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.” It sounds ominous.
As I struggled with this text this week, I began to think about the word “blessed.” We tend to throw that word around a bit. “I’m blessed to have a good job.” “I’m blessed to have a loving family.” “I’m blessed to have been cured from my illnesses.” “It is a gorgeous sunny day. #blessed.” The so called “prosperity gospel” preachers claim that if you believe the right things and pray the right way, God will bless you with material wealth and with good health - and anything else you may desire.
I don’t think that’s how Jesus is talking about being blessed today. Being blessed, for Jesus - at least in the Gospel of Luke - is about being enfolded into the Kingdom of God. Jesus came for those on the margins - those whom society marginalizes, despises, or forgets about. It doesn’t mean an absence of struggle or opposition. But the Kingdom of God has broken into the world to lift up the marginalized, the despised, the forgotten and to put them back to their rightful place in the world and in the community. In other words, the blessings point us to where the Kingdom of God is headed. The blessings point us to the real world-turning effects of the Kingdom of God - which has real consequences for people - especially for those on the margins. These are powerful, radical words that go against everything that the world as it is stands for. Jesus’ blessings this morning are not about a future “things will be made right in heaven” but rather about the real world effects of the Kingdom of God that breaks into this world here and now. The Kingdom brings down the those that society tends to value more than others, and the Kingdom lifts up those that society actively harms or wants to forget about.
The Gospel of Luke is filled with these role reversals. And it isn’t comfortable. It disrupts us from our comfort. One preaching professor often told us that the biblical text (and thus sermons coming from the texts) often afflict the comfortable while comforting the afflicted. And I think that’s what Jesus is doing in his sermon today. Today, those of us who are relatively comfortable - are confronted with the “law.” The ways in which we fall short of what God desires from us. Or, in this case, the ways in which our comfort keeps us trapped within the status quo and keeps us from seeing and participating in the Kingdom as it breaks in all around us. Even more, the systems that benefit me are often the same systems that keep my neighbor under the bonds of oppression. That privilege that I enjoy makes it harder to participate in the Kingdom - because I have to actively work to put my self-interest aside. The “woes” for today are a difficult reminder that Kingdom of God is not about me (as an individual) but about the community and the wholeness of the entire body of Christ. In other words, it pushes me out of being concerned primarily about me and pushes me to look toward my neighbor - especially those who are vulnerable. To them is where the Kingdom of God is pointing.
On Wednesday, in our Service of the Word, we struggled and wrestled with the effects of racism. (If you weren’t able to join us - my reflection is available on my blog). I painfully admitted that, while I was searching my bookshelves for a reflection written by a person of color in order to lift up and amplify their voices, I realized just how few resources I had that were written by a person of color. I have well over two hundred books on my shelves, and less than ten were written by people of color. The people already with power have their voices heard and their work recognized. To change that, I sometimes need to actively put aside my own self interest in order to create space and lift up voices of those who have less power (in our society and our world) than I do. In other words, the call to participate in the Kingdom of God, sometimes calls me to give up some of my power and my place to those who have traditionally had less power in (our society and our world) than I do. And that’s hard. It goes against everything society tells us we should do. We should grab power as we work our way to the top. And it is complicated - because there are spaces in which I have less power and privilege as a woman (and as a woman in a male dominated field) and I need people (usually men) to give up their power for me to be on the same level.
The good news is that, because of the work of Jesus, we are already justified to God and we are already enfolded into the Kingdom. We know from the rest of the Gospel that people from all walks of life are enfolded into the Kingdom. So the woes can’t be about eternal condemnation. If the blessings point us to the vision of the Kingdom of God - a vision that lifts up those that society harms, disregards, forgets), the woes, then, serve not as a condemnation but as an invitation. The woes shake us out of our comfort and serve as an invitation to see the vision of the Kingdom of God (and to whom the Kingdom of God points us) and to participate in it. The woes become invitation to follow God’s call to bring about the Kingdom of God in this world. It is a call to set aside our power and our privilege (or to use that power and privilege for the sake of the neighbor and the stranger), to set aside the values of this world, and to lift up those whom society would rather forget - so that we all are on the same level place. One of my colleagues, Pastor Jess Harren, in a Facebook post puts it this way, this text calls us to see that "people we've harmed need good news, and we're being invited to know their pain, to give up some of our earthy wealth, to cry with them, and to make it better."
Whether today, you, like me, hear the woes louder than the blessings or whether you hear the blessings louder than the woes, we are invited envision what the Kingdom of God could be like. We are invited into participating in the Gospel that turns this world upside down. The question then becomes: Are we living our lives as if we have been enfolded into that kingdom?
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