A MESSAGE FOR THE SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY
(a link to a worship service including this message on the YouTube channel is found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6OJEEL2oyM)
Prayer of the Day:
Living God, in Christ you make all things new. Transform the poverty of our nature by the riches of your grace, and in the renewal of our lives make known your glory, through Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Lord. Amen.
Luke 6:17-26
17He 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. 18They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. 19And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.
20Then he looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 21“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. 22“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. 23Rejoice 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. 24“But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. 25“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. 26“Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.
The passage before us is one of those that reminds us that each of the gospel writers is quite unique in their approach; what they included and what they omitted, how they told the story and with what detail. Each covered things that Jesus said and did, some central events, but otherwise there was a lot of latitude. Some of them told us how and why they wrote what they did. Luke was one of those. He stated in his introduction that he set out to write an orderly account of the life of Christ.
We have before us what in Luke was called the Sermon on the Plain, the level place. In Matthew we have the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus went up and taught the people who were down. In Luke Jesus came down to the level place and taught up in kind of an amphitheater style.
Where he was is likely secondary, but it is interesting that in Luke’s Gospel, where Jesus had a couple of times sat and taught because that was the posture of teaching in the synagogue, here we have a kind of visual similarity. The people were up and Jesus was down to teach.
We are told he had come down with them but “them” being the twelve. So, what we have here was three layers of people around Jesus. There was Jesus. With Jesus were the twelve with whom he had come down. We are then told there was a great crowd of his disciples.
Apostles were chosen by Jesus. He had gone to the twelve and called them. We heard about the call of the first four: Peter and Andrew, James and John. They were called following the miraculous catch of fish. Just before our passage today we had the call of Levi the tax collector. The other seven are called and will be named but right now we know we have the 12. The group was complete.
Then we have disciples. Disciples were not called. They attached themselves to a teacher. It was common in Jesus day. There were a lot of rabbis. There were a lot of teachers. And people would follow the teacher that they liked, that challenged them, that taught them in a way that appealed to them. And people would kind of come and go, be with the teacher for a while and then leave or attach themselves to another teacher. We are told a number of times that Jesus said something so challenging to some of his disciples that it was too much, and they leave. Disciples come and disciples go. The apostles were there from the beginning and were there through the resurrection and ascension and into the Book of Acts, except for Judas, of course.
There was then this third layer: a great multitude of people from all Judea Jerusalem and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. Judea was the southern part of the kingdom, the area around Jerusalem. Jerusalem was, of course, the holy city, the city of David. Then we have the coast of Tyre and Sidon. This was Gentile country. So, we already had a mixed group: men and women, likely, as well as Jews and Gentiles among the people and possibly among the disciples, those who sought to put themselves under his teaching. Why there were so many people is partly explained as Luke goes on. They had come to hear him teach and to be healed of their diseases, and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured.
So, some came for the teaching, but some came for their own release from illness or evil spirits or the release or healing of those they cared about. We have examples of both of those in the gospels. There is the example of the friends whose friend was paralyzed and was on a kind of a platform and they actually took the roof apart over where Jesus was seated and lowered their friend down in front of Jesus. We have people who sought healing and release for those they loved and those who sought it for themselves. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them. We heard this in the healing of the woman with the hemorrhage. She simply touched the hem of his garment, and she was healed. Jesus noted that the power went out of him, but it went out of him seemingly without his will. Simply touching him,
touching his clothing, was enough to be healed.
So, there was a lot going on. There were the apostles who were traveling with Jesus all the time. There were the disciples who were listening for his teaching and to see the miracles. And there were those who sought healing and release, and possibly just simply to watch Jesus. He had caused quite a stir and it may have been that there were some people who were simply audience to what Jesus was doing.
And, at some point, the teaching began. We are told how this happened. How does the crowd get quiet? Maybe it was like camp. A person raised their hand and that was a sign that everybody should be quiet and when you were quiet you raised your hand. Eventually all hands were raised, and everybody was quiet. I am not sure I see Jesus or the apostles shushing people. And it may have been that not everybody was quiet, and Jesus just simply started.
Then he looked up. Remember, this was the Sermon on the Plain, the people were on the hillside, and he looked up at them. He looked up at his disciples. The target audience for this teaching was the twelve and those who sought his teaching.
We now have a series of four blesseds and four woes. In Matthew we had nine beatitudes and they were worded a bit differently. Luke said “Blessed are you who are poor”. Matthew said “Blessed are the poor in
Spirit”. This is the uniqueness of Luke as compared to the uniqueness of Matthew.
Now, part of the trick here is understanding blessed and woe. I appreciate that after over 30 years of ordained ministry I am still learning stuff. I think that is a good thing. I enjoy that. And I heard a perspective on this during this week that was really helpful because the problem with blessed and woe is the comparison is often happy and cursed and the cursed part is seen as permanent. Woe to these people because this is their situation, period. Game over. And it seems odd that Jesus would begin this huge teaching very early in his ministry by saying the sides are already squared away. The blessed are blessed the woe are cursed and so that is it. So, then the rest of the ministry is kind of going through the motions. Because if we read it as happy and cursed then where is the hope? There is none. Life is just determined and a kind of script that we all just simply act out.
What I heard this week was a different perspective and I will talk about it a bit and let you ruminate on it and see what you think.
What we are talking about in blessed and woe is not so much happy and cursed. We are talking about encouragement and warning. Because the reality is, what is being blessed and what is being woed are situations of life that will change. Blessed are you who are poor for yours is the kingdom of God. Now, tense here is important. That is the present tense. If you are poor, the kingdom is yours now. But poverty is something that can end. The poor can become, well, maybe not rich, but not poor anymore. In the woes, the
rich can become poor. The other way can occur as well. Blessed are you who are hungry now for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now for you will laugh. We know those things to be true. Sometimes we are hungry and sometimes we are filled. Sometimes we weep and sometimes we 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. Well, we know that this came true and the people who had heard this (and they would have been hearing this concurrently with the Book of Acts as the church began to grow) were experiencing this hatred and being reviled and being hated and defamed. It was happening already. So, this blessed would have fallen on welcome ears.
Rejoice in that day and leap for joy. Really? Being hated and reviled? For surely your reward is great in heaven for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. If standing up for Jesus, if representing Jesus, if living out the kingdom of God through Jesus met with this kind of opposition, well, there was precedent for this in their own scriptures. In the Hebrew scriptures the prophets received awful treatment. We read from Jeremiah earlier and Jeremiah had a terrible time. He begged God repeatedly to please take this away from him. He did not want to do it anymore. Friends of his had been killed. He had been thrown in a cistern. It had been awful. But Jeremiah would also say that this fire burned within him, and Jeremiah could no more stop prophesying as he could stop breathing.
There was precedent for this. The persecution of Jesus’ followers would not be the first time the faithful had been persecuted. So, these came as encouragements. If this is your situation now, hang on. Yours is the kingdom of God. It will get better. It will resolve.
Then, we have the woes. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. If you're rich now, that is it. Sobering. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. The hungry will be filled and the filled will become hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Blessed are those who weep because they will laugh. Blessed are those who are laughing because they will weep. We know this to be true. Our life ebbs and flows. We are not always laughing. We are not always weeping. Life seems to run a bit like a pendulum, from one extreme to the other. And we live kind of in the middle of the swings, back and forth.
Woe to you and all speak well of you for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets. Now remember, these “you’s” and “yours” are all plural. He was not talking to singular people. He was talking to his disciples
and the blessed and the woes come to his disciples, both to those who are following Jesus. If things are really fine and they are meeting with no opposition at all, well, they might want to question that. Jesus met with opposition. What Jesus had said was opposed by the Romans, by the religious authorities, by many around him.
So, if we preach the word of Jesus, if we represent the kingdom, there should be a bit of pushback. And if there isn't, that might be cause for reflection. See, either way, encouragement or warning, is a part of the life of discipleship, the ebb and flow of following Jesus. Sometimes it is amazingly easy. Sometimes it just seems, well, impossible. Ebb and flow. Sometimes it is difficult and then it gets better. Sometimes it is great and then sometimes it gets challenging. And not one of those moments defines us. It is the journey of discipleship as we travel, as the apostles did, as we travel with Jesus, as we hear what Jesus had to say, as we see what Jesus did, the picture of him grows and grows. The picture of the kingdom grows and grows.
And so, the picture of us as children of the kingdom grow as it grows as well. There we are on this path of discipleship, sometimes hearing encouragement and sometimes hearing warning, both are part of the discipleship that we have in Jesus Christ.
And so, let us have hope. Life is not set in stone because God is God and God's compassion and God's love will be with us always. Amen.
Be safe. Be well. God bless you all.
Pastor Greg
