In a certain town, a man walked into a bookstore to return a purchase. “It’s a Bible,” he said, handing to the clerk at the cash register.
“Was it a gift?” asked the clerk.
“No, I bought it for myself,” he said, “and I made a mistake.”
“Didn’t you like the translation? Or the format?”
“Oh no,” the man said, “the format was clear and the translation was fine. I made a mistake.”
The clerk said, “Well, I need to write down a reason for the return.”
“In that case,” said the man, “write down that there is a lot in that book which is tough to swallow.”
There are some passages in the Bible that are tough to swallow. This is one of them. The burden on us is not to believe some astonishing miracle. There are events described in the Bible which stretch our credulity, moments which provoke us to scratch our heads in curiosity; but this text does not speak about any of them.
The burden on us is not to accept some rigorous demand. In many other places in Scripture, Jesus frequently demands that we do some actions that are difficult to do. Immediately after this passage, for instance, Jesus says, “Love your enemy.” Elsewhere he challenges somebody to unload all of his possessions. Here he makes no such demand.
No, today’s text is downright difficult to comprehend. The Lord describes the world in ways quite different from the ways we are accustomed to seeing it.
“Blessed are the poor, woe to the rich. Blessed are the hungry, woe to those who stuff their stomachs. Blessed are those who weep, woe to those who laugh. Blessed are those who are hated, woe to those with a good reputation.”
What a strange way to look at reality! The ones whom the world ignores are the ones who receive God’s blessing. The ones whom the world honors are the ones who are cursed. It is a complete reversal of the way we usually see things.
Passages like this can be found throughout the Bible. When they appear, a lot of people, myself included, will do whatever they can to soften them a bit and make them more applicable to the world as we know it. As far as this passage goes, there have been attempts to remove these words from the realities of every-day life, perhaps even to lift them to a more exalted realm.
“Blessed are the poor,” Jesus announces in the Gospel of Luke. If you flip over to the Gospel of Matthew, you hear that pronouncement turned into a spiritual virtue. “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” says Matthew, revealing a different agenda at work. According to Luke, there’s nothing spiritual at stake; the blessed ones are merely poor. Likewise, in the Sermon on the Mount, God blesses those who are hungry for righteousness. Here God blesses those who are hungry. We cannot spiritualize the circumstances or glamorize the condition. Jesus means what he says: poor is poor, hungry means hungry. And he announces both as “blessed.”
As someone observes:
Jesus is making the official proclamation of the way life is inside and outside the reign of God. These are not suggestions about how to be happy or warnings lest one become miserable; blessings and woes as words of Jesus are to be heard with the assurance that they are God’s word to us and that God’s word is not empty.1
Blessed are the poor. Blessed are those who are cursed for Christ’s sake. How are we going to cope with these words?
One suggestion might be to turn them into a strategy. It’s not hard to do. You can put yourself under the blessing and change your circumstances so it applies to you. I have known people who are so hungry for the love of God that they will do almost anything to earn the blessing.
In college, I met a man named Stephen who claimed to be a “recovering Jew.” He had been raised to keep his distance from Christians. Now, due to the meddling of God, he had become a Christian. And he was so much more zealous than I was. He walked into my dormitory room one time and said, “I don’t know how a brother in the Lord can own any jazz records. It’s the Devil’s music. We’re having a bonfire this weekend. You’re invited to bring those records ...”
I didn’t like him. I tried to ignore him.
One day we were talking about the disciplines of the spiritual life. Stephen announced he had decided to fast. He intended to give up food and water for forty days and forty nights, just like Jesus. On day seven, he said, “I guess grapes might be okay.” We watched him wither for another week.
Someone asked, “Why are you doing this?
Stephen replied, “The Bible says, ‘Blessed are the hungry, for they will be filled.’ So I’m making myself hungry so that God can fill me up.”
It seems foolish, but some people would reduce these words to a strategy. We hear God bless the poor and say, “Now they are going to be rich. God will lift them up.”
The problem with the scenario is that nobody ever gets ahead. God will lift up the lowly; the next day they will be exulted and acclaimed, so God will have to knock them down to size. It doesn’t make any sense. If you are hungry, the day is coming when you shall sit and eat your fill. Later on, when you’re full, God will knock you back down to size. That seems to be the logic of the passage, and it doesn’t make sense. Obviously we are not supposed to hear these words as a scientific formula. We cannot earn God’s blessing. At best we can only hear it. It’s for you or it’s not for you.
And when I look at my bank account, meager as I think it is, and compare it to the income of the people in third world countries, and I hear Jesus say, “Woe to the rich,” I realize he’s pointing the finger at me.
If these blessings and woes present a strategy, it is God’s strategy, not ours. That is why all of this is so tough to swallow. God refuses to leave the world in the same way we found it. God makes decisions and choices. God establishes a set of values. When you hear it, you have to decide, “Is God on my side, or is God on somebody else’s side?” That’s troubling.
Taken as they are, the blessings and the woes are perfectly matched — poor or rich, hungry or full, weeping or laughing, defamed or honored. For every blessing, there is an equal and opposite woe. Most of us would like to choose whether we will be blessed or cursed, but it’s not our choice. It is God’s decision. Sorry, but there’s no sign-up sheet in the narthex.
It is hard to hear all of this, unless we hear it as an indication of God’s agenda for human life. It’s like one of those occasions in an African-American church when the sermon is long and the service even longer. Why are the people there?
They are there because if the preacher is on target, and the service is faithful to the gospel, they will break out in laughter. It is laughter over against the power of all the oppressors, and there’s nothing anybody can do to squelch it. It is difficult to hear the laughter if you’re standing in the wrong place.
The point seems to be that God will win over all the forces that take away a person’s humanity. That was the message of the sermon a few chapters before when Jesus preached in Nazareth. He read a section from the prophet Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free” (Luke 4:18). Jesus stood and said, “This is the day! God will win over poverty, captivity, blindness, and oppression.” So as he heals here in chapter 6, he repeats that sermon all over again.
Perhaps the geographical location matters: Jesus is on level ground. He does not say these words from a mountain like a new Moses who lays down a new law with all authority in heaven and earth. No, according to Luke, Jesus stands on the flat land, among people who are sick and troubled. After a long day of curing every single person (Luke 6:19), Jesus fleshes out his deeds with his words. Somehow, in his very person, the acts of healing are held together with the words he speaks. They cannot be split apart; both testify that a new and redemptive day is at hand, promised in the person of Jesus.
Today is the day. “The poor are blessed. The hungry are filled. Whoever is cursed in my name will be given my name over theirs.” That’s the clue to understanding these words and taking them in. Jesus is speaking to his own disciples, to anybody who hears these words and wishes to follow him. If you hear these words spoken to you, as an insider, you begin to see the world differently.
Here’s the gospel truth: If God has embraced you, the world can’t take that away. What people say about you doesn’t matter compared to what God says about you in Jesus Christ. The world’s neglect or mistreatment does not have to determine how you will live and act. When you are beaten up or put down, remember that in Christ there is a love that surrounds you and will not let you be snatched away. That is the good news for you and me. Thanks to Jesus, we belong to God. Nobody can cancel God’s prior claim on our lives.
Who are you? Rich or poor? You are a child of God.
Who are you? Hungry or full? You belong to the covenant of Jesus Christ.
Are you all that people say about you, whisper about you, murmur about you? No, you have been baptized into the name of the Trinity, and no one can take that away. Blessed are you.
If you can swallow these words, it develops a different view on reality. Sometime before she died, someone had the audacity to ask Mother Teresa, “Why do you spend so much energy on the poor, the hungry, and the weeping of those in Calcutta?”
She respond, “Don’t you believe the Bible? Jesus says the poor are the blessed ones. I take him at his word. I treat them as the royalty of God’s kingdom, because they are.” To grow into becoming a Christian is, in no small part, to be converted into seeing the world as God sees it. It is to be given new eyes to look upon people and events from an eternally loving perspective. When that begins to happen, you begin to see that God has an opinion about how life should be lived, what churches should be doing, and how people should act. You begin to see that the future belongs to those whom God blesses. They include the poor, the hungry, the hopeless, the damaged, and those whose only salvation is found in the God who comes to redeem.
Around the time of the 1994 elections in South Africa, a friend was doing some academic research in that country. As you may remember, it was a difficult time in that nation. The country of South Africa was struggling to create a free society for people of different races.
One Sunday night, my friend drove into Pretoria, the administrative capital of South Africa. He describes it as an impressive city of steel and glass, with imposing government centers and modern universities. As he drove into the downtown area, he was stunned to see a small congregation of black Christians worshiping inside the green circle of an expressway ramp. He said:
The contrast could not have been more stark. Here against the skyline of the great governmental city of Pretoria, strong symbol for many of the bitter years of apartheid, was a tiny group of those who had been denied standing in the society. Here, in the shadow of the capital of a nation built on gold and diamonds and ivory, was a poor band of Christians with no building, no pews, no paid clergy, no musical instruments save tambourines ... Pretoria stood majestically, the embodiment of the present power. The little flock danced and sang and praised the God of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.2
If the scene had been filmed on the evening news, the camera would have quickly passed over the worship service and panned the impressive skyline of the city. Anybody who knows anything about power would quickly affirm that the little congregation could easily be squashed by the imposing social order. Yet as my friend drove on, he found that his toes were tapping to the joyful songs of people who trusted in the God who makes all things right.
According to the regular order of things, those people are poor, hungry, defamed, and anonymous. But according to Jesus Christ, the future belongs to them.
1. Fred B. Craddock, Luke (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1990), p. 87.
2. Thomas G. Long, “Preaching God’s Future: The Eschatological Context of Christian Proclamation,” in Sharing Heaven’s Music: The Heart of Christian Preaching, Barry L. Callen, ed. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), p. 202.