Being Blessed

Luke 6:17–26 NRSV

He came down with them and stood 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. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. 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.

Let’s pray.

There is so much in this text for us to explore. But first, I want to say: As I’ve sat with this text all week, pondered and mulled it over, I’ve found myself wondering if this isn’t just another list of how we fall short of the standard God sets for us. Do we hear this passage and bristle at it’s denunciation of the rich, the full, the laughing? Do we feel discomfort when we hear Jesus promising that our hunger or weeping will somehow, someday, be relieved? We say, it just doesn’t work like that.

This is the nature of God’s Kingdom. It is an upside down, everything flipped over, remade community of love where all our differences and pains are leveled and eased. We are made one. To announce the Kingdom of God is to proclaim the year of Jubilee, as we heard Jesus do, to set a new standard for a world where all people have enough, all are able to experience peace, joy, hope.

As well, I’ve found myself looking at our world and all the upheaval we face and wondering where this Kingdom of God language even connects. A major focus of Jesus’ ministry is to address social inequality and provide for the least of these. And if we look at the markers of a healthy, thriving society — we have to look at how we prioritize the care of the least of these. Put another way, we should notice our apprehension when there are promises of things being made great, while we ignore the impact of greatness upon the poor, the sick, the widowed, and the orphaned.

Lord, have mercy.

Finally, I want to ask — where do you see yourself in this text? How does this speak to you?

We’ve talked about this idea of “insider” and “outsider” and how the way of Jesus prioritizes the calling of outsiders into belonging.

Another way that we can think about this that is commonly referenced throughout Luke’s Gospel is this idea of the upside-down kingdom. These blessings and woes are showing us how the world is turned upside down for those who know and follow Christ.

We musn’t look at the woes around wealth or satiety or mirth as blanket repudiations of these states of being. Rather, they are neutral categories. Wealth is neutral, food is neutral, laughter — neutral. Even what is said about us — neutral, in the sense that our actions are merely actions, but their intention and therefore their consequences, those are what divide into good and evil. All of these are neutral in that they can be used for good or evil, blessing or woe.

What Jesus is really doing is unmasking the powers that the world says equate to success and, instead, showing the blessings of struggle, which are only found in this upside-down way.

That’s what it is, isn’t it. These blessings and woes feel reversed, and that’s the point. I want to go through each of them in a moment, but again, let me reiterate this about the upside-down nature of God’s loving kingdom.

You see, these statements are antithetical, mirrors of each other. There is poor/rich, hungry/full, mourning/laughing, hated/adored.

And obviously, when taken at face value, these statements seem ridiculous, at least by how we’re told things are supposed to work. We don’t like to weep, we want to laugh all the time. We don’t like hunger, we think fullness is better.

But as we’ll see, the truth is that grief and tears are such a gift, in that they make way for healing. And hunger, while no one should be subjected to it chronically or without any hope of relief, hunger can be an excellent part of how we cleanse and purify our bodies. We know that we need both of these things.

The crowd has surrounded Jesus and knows his way has power, his words have power. The ones who listen, the ones who considered themselves disciples, they have gathered in to be taught. We’re still in the early phases of Jesus’ ministry career, but he’s shown enough of his cards to have garnered a following.

I wonder how the listeners received this teaching in its first go around. Pause and imagine yourself there.

Scholars call this section Luke’s sermon on the Plain. I might liken it to us gathering at the side of Lake Padden. Surrounded by hills, but out on that wide open field on the Southeast end.

What would have drawn you to go listen to Jesus that day? Perhaps you were just out for a stroll. Perhaps, if you’re one of the Galilean followers, you’ve been catching fish and now you’re off to follow where this guy leads.

But again, what would have drawn you there? Whatever it is, it’s important. You’re tuned in.

And then you hear Jesus offering blessings and curses. If you’ve wondered what this guy is on about, this seems like a pretty good opportunity to learn. What we bless, what we curse — it says a lot about our priorities, doesn’t it.

So here we go.

The structure of Luke’s reading is important. Whenever we see these kind of mirroring statements, it is a key to pay attention to how they flow between and with one another. This text, in particular, could be called a chiasm — a bracketed or V-shaped argument, where couplets of blessing and woe interrelate with each other to form a whole picture of the teaching.

I want to couple them as we go through, for focus, but also to make sure we really hear the side-by-side. Let’s assume our place as omniscient readers, able to pull apart the text as we have it.

First,

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

BUT

Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.

Ok, the world here is turned upside, right. To be poor is to possess the kingdom of God? Well, yes, because the kingdom of God is beyond any semblence of wealth or standing, it is ineffable, indescribable, the wholeness that no riches can supply, only the water of life we find there. This is not to say being poor is easy, rather, it is saying that there is no wealth that compare to the fullness of life, the wholeness of being, that we discover when we find our purpose in Christ.

And, conversely, any of us who know any measure of wealth or riches, also know the weight, burden, curse, etc. that they can be. Again, there are immense benefits of wealth that we all are aware of. But we also know that the richest man in the world can be the poorest in soul, the one most longing for the approval or success that can never be achieved. So yes, woe to those who are rich, because if it is the wealth we worship, we will never be satiated.

Which is a perfect segue to Jesus’ second Blessing/Woe combo:

Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.

BUT

Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.

I’m sure we can see the similarity and connection here with wealth and poverty, now hunger and fullness. It’s fairly self explanatory, but I want to pull out a couple of the slight nuances in the meaning here.

Throughout the Scriptures, we hear that when God’s people are made whole, restored, redeemed, this metaphorical language of being fed or filled is used. So why would Jesus make it sound like being filled is the cursed thing here?

This second blessing and woe is tied to the first in that the pursuit of being filled is impossible, if that is the pursuit alone. Rather, the one who knows the way of Jesus knows the blessing of the longing of hunger, of restraint, of waiting, because this is a marker of faith. Faith in Christ allows us to refrain from something because we know the promise of restoration. The body fails. The stomach will hunger again. But in our hunger, we find faith, trust in the goodness of God that God has us under care. All will be well.

And woe should we find ourselves in the place that cannot trust in where this next meal comes from. You see, it’s double-edged in the curse. First, woe to us who have so much that it causes us to worry about our next fix. We hunger out of deeper struggles than simply supplying our bodies with food, don’t we?

And, woe to us who boast in our abundance and do not realize how quickly it fades. As with the rich, we know the fullness fades, we’ve received our consolation.

Ok, let’s keep going…

Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

BUT

Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.

I struggle with this one. I’m not a frequent cryer. I suffer from the myth that American men need to be hard or stoic or put together. This myth that we should not trust our emotions. This lie that to weep is to show weakness.

So I struggle with this one, because I’m not over here laughing it up because I want to be.

But again, there’s so much more to this. Thankfully, yes, thankfully, I do know what it is like to cry. I’ve had some heavy cries in my life. Just not that frequently. But I think I understand the blessing here to mean an acknowledgement that through grief, comes joy.

I know for a fact that grief groups can be some of the most laughter filled gatherings. When we make space for tears and true emotion, joy and mirth are not far off.

And woe to those who laugh, because, sadly, we also know the reality that grief and tears are always close. I wonder if this is why our bodies can laugh until they cry. These feelings are connected. We cannot have one with out the other.

And yet another myth we live inside is we can somehow avoid reality with laughter and happy happy and turning all the lights up and pretending that the sadness or darkness doesn’t exist. We need to weep and, when we know the love of Christ, we know that we weep for joy and weep for heartache. We cannot have the fullness of life if we avoid one or seek out the extreme of the other.

Alright, last one. Remember, these are the blessings and curses of Jesus. He’s teaching his followers, this is the lesson he wants to share with the world, this is his way.

This one’s longer, which is typical in this style of rhetoric. The first few set up the last, which if you haven’t gotten the tone of the teaching yet, this should solidify what Jesus is talking about for his listeners and for us.

Who is blessed, who is cursed?

Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, 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 when all speak well of you, for this is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.

OHHHHHHHH. Whew.

If at least some of us aren’t squirming in our pews and looking for the exits. We’re thinking — this is not what I signed up for!

Social club?

Let’s be clear about what’s being taught here: Blessing when you’re hated, excluded, reviled, defamed…specifically, Jesus specifically says we are blessed specifically when this happens on account of the Son of Man.

Nobody is blessed by others talking shit about them. This isn’t some kind of backdoor affirmation of gossip or that we should feel special when we’re attacked. Or even that our actions are somehow justified because we’re antagonistic to the status quo or because we’ve amassed “haters.” No, these are not markers of Jesus’ way, but rather ways we actually massage our own egos and make ourselves feel good. AND, back-biting and gossip and exclusion — these have NO place in the Church.

This is all about being hated because you are like Jesus!

I’m currently reading a book on preaching that discussed negative responses preachers may get for teaching things like “turn the other cheek.” Literally, preachers in our nation, today, receive criticism when preaching such a message because, while it might have been good in Jesus’ day, it’s too weak now. We can’t actually live like that.

We have to get clear — being like Jesus and following his way is not going to make us popular or successful, connected or cool. If it does, we need to examine what’s actually going on.

Remember, woe to you when all speak well of you.

We are instructed, called, directed, taught — be like Jesus. Follow in his way.

And woe when people speak well of you.

This means — be careful when you’re the most popular guy in the room. When your status is on the rise. Be aware — people will idolize you. You can choose it, soak it in, and it can feel oh so good. But woe.

I hear this to simply mean this: We are meant to live like Jesus. If everybody is talking us up and patting us on the back and we have not ruffled anyone’s feathers or provoked anyone towards growth or change or justice or healing…then we’re probably not doing it right.

But blessing when, in Jesus name, you are disagreed with, pushed down, or even hated.

Following Jesus leads us out of favor with polite society and into deep solidarity with a community of the poor, the outcast, the lowly, the meek, and the peacemaker. The poor and the widow.

Friends, these are the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Knowing Christ, being blessed, participating in God’s living kingdom, here and now — it looks like these things. Getting clear about healthy relationships with wealth, hunger, grief, and credibility. Acknowledging our shared blessings and shared curses.

It’s not all happy clappy, bright and sunny.

Living the way of Jesus is full, rich, messy, deep, strong, courageous. It is the work of our hearts, the way we are meant to be.

This is the Good News of the Gospel — that the poor are lifted up, that we share what we have, that our suffering lasts only for a moment, but the joy of the Lord sustains.

Blessed be the name of the Lord, most high, Jesus Christ. May we be like you. Amen.