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Luke 6:17-26 · Blessings and Woes
Plain Talk
Luke 6:17-26
Sermon
by Mark Trotter
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Some months ago when Dan Burton and I were planning the order of worship for this Sunday, he suggested that he write an anthem on the Beatitudes for this service, since the gospel lesson for this morning, as you heard, is from the Gospel of Luke, and Luke's version of the Beatitudes.

The only problem is that Luke's version of the Beatitudes is not the one that we are familiar with. The much more popular version of the Beatitudes is to be found in the Gospel of Matthew. In Matthew, the Beatitudes serve as the preface to the Sermon on the Mount. There are nine Beatitudes in the Gospel of Matthew. In Luke, the Beatitudes are the preface to what is called the Sermon on the Plain. There are only four Beatitudes in the Gospel of Luke.

In Luke it is called the Sermon on the Plain because in the older translations it says "he came down from the mountain and stood on the plain." The newer translations, like the one read for us this morning, says "he came down from the mountain and stood at a level place." Why they chose to translate the Greek as "a level place" rather than as a plain is beyond me. The Sermon on the Level Place just seems to lack something, especially when you contrast it with the Sermon on the Mount. And that is what I want to do this morning.

Not only does Luke have less than half the Beatitudes that Matthew has, Luke's Beatitudes are much more demanding. Matthew says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." Luke says, "Blessed are the poor." Matthew says, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness." Luke says, "Blessed are those who are hungry now."

There is a big difference. But there is more. Matthew lists the Beatitudes, then he stops, goes on to something else. Luke lists the four Beatitudes, then he continues with four "Woes," or curses. "Woe to you who are rich." "Woe to you who are full now." "Woe to you who laugh now."

So I explained all this to Dan, the two versions of the Beatitudes, one in Matthew and one in Luke, and that they are very different. Matthew is really quite lovely, and Luke is quite hard. Dan said, "Well I've got an idea. I will write an anthem on Matthew's version, and you preach a sermon on Luke's version." So that is what we have done.

Let me create the setting for Luke's version of the Beatitudes. It is here in the sixth chapter that Jesus begins to teach. He outlines what it means to be a Christian, what it means to live as a Christian in this kind of a world. Up to this point, through the first five chapters, he really hasn't taught anything. In fact, up to now, he has hardly said anything. It has all been action, very little dialogue. He has healed the sick and he has sparred verbally with the Pharisees. He has called the disciples, and he has attracted crowds that are getting larger every time he performs a miracle. They are now following him around from place to place. Crowds will always gravitate toward the sensational.

Now we are at the sixth chapter. He goes up onto a mountain with his newly recruited disciples. Then he comes down from the mountain. That's the difference between Matthew and Luke. In Matthew he goes up to the mountain and he takes the disciples with him. He instructs them on the mountain. In Luke he brings them down to the plain, to the crowds, to where the people are.

The text says "there were people there who had diseases," and "he healed them all." Jesus has been doing that from the very beginning of his ministry. That is why the crowds are there. That is why they follow him around. He comes down to where the people are and he heals the crowd.

I have mentioned this before. In the New Testament there are two kinds of people. There is the crowd, and there are the disciples. The crowd he heals. He doesn't ask anything of them. Out of compassion he sees their sicknesses and he heals them. Then they go away. We never hear of those people again. They have no names. They are the suffering in this world. He touches them, and heals them.

But disciples he doesn't heal. Nor does he particularly express any compassion toward them. Nor are the comfortable words uttered to them. There is nothing in the gospels about the disciples becoming a support group. Jesus heals the crowds, and he challenges the disciples into service.

The text says when he finished healing the crowds, he turned to his disciples, and said, "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God." He is talking to his disciples. "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 exclude you, and defame you, on account of the Son of man [on account of me]." He is addressing his disciples. He is not talking to the crowd now.

Do you see what he is doing? He comes down to the plain, where the people are, and demonstrates what God's will for the whole world is. What he is doing is giving us a foretaste of the Kingdom of God. In the Kingdom of God there will be no more disease, no more pain, no more sorrow. Life will be whole. Life will be the way God created it to be. Later he will raise Jairus' daughter from the dead, and the Centurion's slave from the dead, to show that it is even God's will that we should not experience death, that we will overcome death. That is the point that Paul is making in the epistle lesson to the Corinthians, that death is not supposed to be a part of life, and that at that time in the future we will participate in Christ's resurrection.

Someday life will be the way it is supposed to be. What you have just seen, he tells the disciples, is the way it will be when the Kingdom comes. So pray, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." Pray that one day it will comes to pass. Pray that it will come in the right time, in God's time.

But in the meantime, it is not that way. In the meantime I have come to identify with the poor, the hungry, and with those who weep, to be with them, and to stand with them, and to let them know that they are God's children.

You know what the most significant part of this text is? It says he came down from the mountain to be with the people, and took his disciples with him. He is instructing his disciples now. He says, this is where Christianity is to work. This is where you are supposed to be, where people are. Not on a mountain top.

We are not a mountain top religion. It is always tempting to make Christianity that way, to picture Jesus as a "guru," a wise man, and his teachings as inspirational thoughts, and Christianity as just another one of the philosophies about life, giving us inspiring ideals.

Jesus did not say that. Jesus would go off by himself to pray, but according to Luke, when he instructed the disciples, he came down from the mountain to be in the real world. That is where he said, "Blessed are you who are poor, and who are hungry, and whose lives are filled with pain and with sorrow." He is saying, someday those things are going to change. But there are some things he can't change now. Someday they will change. Someday the world is going to be the way it is supposed to be. Someday.

The whole Bible looks forward to "someday." The Bible is future oriented. The Bible is filled with promises from the prophets of what it will be like someday. Jesus' teaching is no exception. That is why he taught us to pray, "Thy kingdom come...on earth..." Someday. That is why he told all those parables about the future, like the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, which is so appropriate as a companion text for the Beatitudes and Woes in Luke.

The parable of Lazarus is only in the Gospel of Luke. Lazarus, a poor man, is hungry. He lives on the doorstep of the rich man. The rich man steps over Lazarus everyday as he enters his house. He does nothing for this poor man. He doesn't even see him. He just steps over him. Then he dines "sumptuously." That is the adverb used in the parable. He dines "sumptuously" in his house and thinks nothing about the poor man at his doorstep who is hungry. The rich man dies and goes to hell. The poor man dies and goes to heaven, and lies in the bosom of Abraham. That is the source of the Negro spiritual, "Rock-a My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham." The rich man see Lazarus, the poor man, in heaven. He asks God, "Why didn't you warn me that it is going to be this way?" God said, "I sent you the prophets, and you did not listen."

It is called "reversal." The Bible talks about it over and over again. The situations of injustice in this life will be reversed in the next life, which is exactly what we are seeing in Luke's Beatitudes. That is why he adds the Woes, so there will be a dramatic contrast between those who are blessed now, and those who will be blessed later. Someday it will come. In God's time.

In the meantime, Christians are to identify with the poor. You can't be a Christian and store up wealth for the future, and ignore those people who have nothing in the present. You can't dine sumptuously everyday, and not be concerned about those who are hungry. You can't laugh and have a good time, and not care that there are people in this world, especially children, who have never smiled. Someday that is going to be different.

In the meantime, we as Christians are somehow tied to the poor. We can't escape that. And I have wrestled with what that means. It has been interpreted three ways. There is no doubt what it meant for the twelve disciples. They left everything and followed him. And Jesus, when he instructed them before they went out on their first missionary journey, said to them, "Take nothing with you on your journey. No staff, no bag, no bread, no money, nor two tunics."

So the first response to Jesus' teaching is to adopt poverty as a way of life. Which is fine, but it is ambivalent in its application. The disciples took nothing with them on their journey. It meant they had to stay with people who had those things.

In the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, also written by Luke, he says that the earliest church, which was, according to Luke, the church in its purest form, had no possessions. They sold all their possessions. But that model, too, is compromised. Luke wrote that they sold their houses and put all the money in a common treasury so there would be nobody without. But he also says that they met in each other's houses. Now you can't do both of those things. You can't sell your house and meet in it, too.

Later Luke will record that there were not a few wealthy people, people of substance and status in this life, especially women, who were among the faithful. He always mentions them and he always mentions them by name. First of all in the gospel, he says they were part of those who followed Jesus around and provided the support for the band of disciples. In the Acts of the Apostles, he said, they were the ones who supplied the houses to meet in and provided the financing for the movement.

Paul, in his letters, announces proudly that he is financially independent. He is not dependent on anyone. He earns his own way. Later Paul will take up an offering among the Gentiles for the poor in Jerusalem. Now you can't take up an offering among the poor. You have to take it from people with substance.

So there is evidence that some lived according to the literal teaching of Jesus to have no possessions. Then, later, poverty was adopted as a spiritual discipline. That is the model of the monastic movement. There is a certain attractiveness to that. George Bernard Shaw carried on a long correspondence with a cloistered nun. She had no contact with the outside world. He wrote to her over a long period of time. In one letter he wrote, "Next time I am in your neighborhood I will look longingly through the bars to the freedom on the other side." There is a spiritual wealth that comes through voluntary poverty.

Protestants found the same thing. They formed these religious communities. We know about them because they immigrated to this country two hundred years ago, the Shakers and the Quakers, fleeing persecution in Europe. I have seen their descendants and other similar communities. They stand out from the rest of us in this secular society because of their dress. The women wear simple cotton dresses that cover them from the neck to down over the ankles. They wear bonnets to cover their hair. They dress modestly. The men wear simple coveralls, and beards, and wear black hats. The children are dressed the same way as the adults. They look like little adults. And they are happy. And they are well behaved. You can see the love that binds these families together. It is quite lovely. It is wistfully attractive. "Tis a gift to be simple, Tis a gift to be free, Tis a gift to come down to where we ought to be." The same song could be easily sung, "Tis a blessing to be poor," and mean the same thing. So Christians, some of them, have always taken on voluntary poverty in order to achieve a spiritual blessing.

But there is a third way Christians have responded to this Beatitude. They have become advocates for the poor. They use the wealth and power and influence that God has given them in this life to make sure that the poor are not forgotten. They see to it that the poor who are motivated to improve their lives, who want to be independent, not dependent, who want to become a part of the community, and not ostracized from it, can do so. As Jim Wallis said from this pulpit last week, the most onerous thing about being poor is the ostracism; being branded as a failure, as worthless, and treated that way.

This church has been engaged in a ministry to the poor over a long period of time. We have done it for years through the feeding program. You can participate in that. All of you can. There is always a need for people to do the number of tasks that are involved in carrying out that ministry. Gathering the food, packaging the food, serving the food in mid-city on Sunday night. There is a table in Linder Hall this morning where you can sign up for that.

At that same table you can sign up to participate in the homeless shelter which will begin here for two weeks next Sunday. In that program we host those people who have moved away from dependency on drugs,or alcohol, have found a job or are in the process of finding a job, and now need a place to stay while they get on their feet, get a new start in life. We need people to be hosts, representing this church, to spend a night here during those next two weeks.

We are nearly ready now to make the first assignment of mentors in a program that will link two or three people from this church with a family, a single mother with preschool children, who wants to move from poverty and welfare into employment and dignity. You can volunteer to be a part of that program in any number of ways as well.

I submit to you that this church is involved in trying to follow the teaching of Jesus, his instruction to his disciples, when he brought them down from the mountain to the plain where the people are, and said, "This is where you practice your faith." There he said, "Blessed are the poor." He was saying that the poor are always the ones who are forgotten in this world. Don't forget them, he said. Stand with them, as I stand with them. Be advocates for them.

I love that story of Marian Preminger. Born in a castle in Hungary in 1913. The castle had eighteen bedrooms. It had a dining hall with a table that could serve 84 people. She was raised in wealth among tutors, governesses, maids, chauffeurs, cooks, the whole retinue of people who serve the rich.

Her grandmother, who lived with the family, insisted that whenever they traveled on the train, or stayed in a hotel, that they take their own linen, because, she said, it was beneath the dignity of her family ever to sleep on linens that had been slept on by somebody else.

At eighteen she went to school in Vienna. She met a young, wealthy man, married him. They were divorced within a year. She stayed on in Vienna and became an actress. There she met a young German director named Otto Preminger. They fell in love, and were married. He was invited to come to America and make movies in Hollywood. While living there Marian began to live the rather sordid life that was typical of Hollywood, especially in those days. When Preminger found out about it, he divorced her.

She went back to Europe, to live in Paris as a wealthy socialite. One day she picked up the newspaper and saw that Albert Schweitzer was visiting Europe. He was on leave from his hospital in Africa, in Europe to play concerts, to raise money for his hospital. He was staying at a village called Gunsbach. She phoned and asked if she could see him. They said to come, that she could see him the next day.

She found him playing the organ in a little church. She sat down and listened to him play. He noticed her presence. She introduced herself. He asked, "Can you read music?" She said, "Yes." He said, "Will you turn the pages for me?"

He invited her to dinner that evening. She participated in one of those famous Schweitzer meals. The old man at the head of the table, surrounded by admirers. He would end the meal with a scripture reading and the Lord's Prayer. Marian knew by the end of the meal that she had found what she had always been looking for.

Schweitzer invited her to come back to Africa to work in the hospital at Lambarene, in French Equatorial Africa. She accepted. She began to work among the poor. This woman, who was raised in a castle, and was raised as a princess, to be served, now became a servant. She changed bandages, she washed bodies, she fed lepers who had no hands left with which to feed themselves. And she felt blessed.

When she died, the obituary in the New York Times quoted her. She said, "Albert Schweitzer used to say that there were two kinds of people in this world. There are the helpers and there are the non-helpers. I am a helper."

"Blessed are those who care, for theirs is the Kingdom of God."

ChristianGlobe Networks, Inc., Collected Sermons, by Mark Trotter