Luke 6: 17-26

Six Epiphany / Year C

11 February 2007

The Church of the Good Shepherd

Wareham, Massachusetts

 

Preached by the Rev. David Fredrickson

 

And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them. Then he looked up at his disciples and said: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God."Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. "Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. "Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. "But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. "Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. "Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. "Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets. (Luke 6:19-26)

 

Blessings and woes! This is what we get from Jesus this morning, we get blessings and woes. With the first Sunday in Lent squarely in our sights, a mere two weeks away, perhaps our gospel lesson this morning is preparing us for what is to come, the season of dispossession. I will say more about this is a few minutes.

This gospel lesson from Luke is called the Sermon on the Plain as opposed to the Sermon on the Mount which we find in Matthew’s gospel chapters 5 through 7. That description may seem a bit odd to you, but Luke’s version gets its title from verse 17. Luke tells us that Jesus came down and stood on a “level place” or a plain to teach the great crowds that were following him. In Luke he comes down to be with the multitudes. In Matthew’s version of course, Jesus goes up the mountain in order to get away from these crowds. There he teaches only his disciples and not the multitude of people who were following him.

Luke’s version is also a little shorter. Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount has nine blessings and no woes. Luke’s version has four blessings and then he adds four woes that are not found in Matthew at all. There are other significant differences between these two sermons. I invite you to go home and compare these two sermons and see what you find.

I, however, want to center in on what Jesus is actually teaching this great crowd of his disciples, this great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. First of all, I would like you to notice what he doesn’t say. Notice that he doesn’t spiritualize the beatitudes. He doesn’t say blessed are the poor in spirit or blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, On the contrary, Luke records Jesus saying; “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh...”

Notice also that he is not exhorting these people to go and do things differently. He is not saying, go and become poor so that you will inherit the Kingdom of God. He is not saying go and be hungry so that you will be filled some day. He is not saying go and weep so that you will laugh later. The bottom line is that, these blessings and woes from Luke’s Sermon on the Plain are inherently theological, not moral. In the words of New Testament scholar Sharon Ringe, these blessings and woes she says, "announce a truth about the divine agenda rather than a mandate for human morality….”[i]

So what is that agenda, what is that divine agenda that professor Ringe is talking about? To help us answer this question, I would like to draw upon the great wisdom of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus; the Jesuits. Before his conversion, Ignatius was a military officer. In much of his written work he makes reference to military images to make his point. So it is with the example I want to use here.

Ignatius says that Christian people have a choice in how they orient their lives; to live either under the battle flag of Christ or to live under the battle flag of Satan. Now this may sound simplistic, but it really quite profound. To live under the battle flag of Christ is to live for poverty, contempt or rejection, and humility. To live under the battle flag of Satan is to live for riches, honor, and pride.

Now before you tune me out, it is important to realize that Ignatius is not simply dealing in material categories. To orient one’s life toward riches is not simply to crave material wealth. Rather, riches can be anything that we possess including our families, our addictions, our jealousies and fears, our anger and shame, our money and material possessions, our self-image, and even our very lives. They are the things that we clutch onto, things that mold us and make us who we are. Honor then is to define ourselves in terms of what we possess. And pride is that little world you and I create and protect, often with walls, to insure the survival of our possessions and our own self-image. // In the words of Jesus: “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”

Those who orient their lives to live under the battle flag of Christ are those who live for poverty, contempt or rejection, and humility. Now again, I urge you please not to tune me out yet. Poverty here is an orientation toward dispossession; it is a non-clutching posture toward the world, toward others and toward ourselves. In poverty or dispossession there is great freedom because in that orientation of our lives we soon realize that the life we make is not our own, it belongs to the one who made us, saved us and continues to sustain us, that is God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Those who are non-possessive can give freely of themselves, they can let go of anger, jealousy, fear and shame, and they can be freed from a self-image that is tied to among other things how others think of them because their outlook is secondary to the one that comes from God above. Those who live lives of poverty or dispossession are often met with contempt or rejection because their attitude toward life is so counter cultural. So those who live under the battle flag of Christ live with contempt and rejection as part of the cost of fidelity to Christ. Humility then comes from the other two. If pride is the creation of a little world in which our own possessiveness and self image can survive, then humility is the taking apart of that world. It is the act of taking down the walls so that we can be radically available to our neighbors, our world, and our Creator. Humility is not a closing in, but an opening out. // In the words of Jesus: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God."Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. "Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. "Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.”Those who live under the battle flag of Christ come face to face with the Pascal pattern. That pattern is found here in the blessings. It is also perhaps made most clear in Luke chapter 9; "If any want to become my followers, [Jesus says] let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.”

This is the divine agenda, the divine pattern for those who would follow after Jesus. This morning we are given blessings and woes and we are challenged to sort through our lives to see just which battle flag we truly live under.

In Jesus Name; Amen.