PROPERS: 6 EPIPHANY, YEAR C
TEXT: LUKE 6:17-26
PREACHED AT ST. PAUL’S CHAPEL, MAGNOLIA SPRINGS, ON SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2022.
ONE SENTENCE: The four blessings and four woes of the Sermon on the Plain are assurances of God’s presence and a call to more fortunate people to respond out of faith.
In today’s gospel reading, we might hear some good and bad news. For sure, we are hearing truth. Some of it may make us squirm.
The lesson is a portion of what is called The Sermon on the Plain. It has some parallels to Matthew, Chapters 5, 6, and 7, The Sermon on the Mount, the much more familiar passage which includes the Beatitudes.
But there is a difference – a significant difference. The Beatitudes in Matthew contain eight “blessed are” statements – what some television preachers have called the “Be Happy Attitudes.” They are words of comfort to all people facing adverse circumstances in life. People like to cloak themselves in them, much like a cloak of denial.
Luke’s Sermon on the Plain is different. It contains four “blessed are” statements, but then follows immediately with four “woe to” statements.
The “blessed are” proclamations are very familiar – blessed are the poor, the hungry, those who weep, and those who are reviled, cursed, or excluded because of the Son of Man. That’s true, isn’t it – at least for other people. We don’t want any part of those blessings, do we?
Not be satisfied with proclaiming hope to the unfortunate, Jesus goes on to speak four “woes.” Woe to the rich, the full, the laughing, and those who are spoken well of. In the great scheme of things – and from a global perspective – I suspect all of us here – including myself – qualify amply for these woes. By world standards, and by the standards of Jesus’ day, I am rich, I am full, I am laughing, and on a good day, people speak well of me.
In all of these – the blessings as well as the woes – we recognize that they sound nice and appropriate, when they are applied to other people.
There is a tendency to see the unfortunate… those who have faced the bitter hand of fate… in an idealized way. We may see them as some group of others with whom we rarely come in contact. The Beatitudes and the four blessings are used to minimize the need for us to respond. Early Christianity would have no part of that approach.
The Sunday School class led by Sharon Vest and Jack Purser is studying the Letter of James. Especially the second chapter, the writer speaks to that point very precisely. The author of that letter says this:
15 If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?
And, similarly, we evade those woes, seeing those as applied to others and not being reflective of the state of our souls.
The truth is that all of these are true – both in the here-and-now, and in the theological eternity in which we live. Jesus is telling us that, yes, blessed are those who are poor, those who are hungry, those who weep, and those who are reviled. God sees them as his own, and his presence is with them in their distress.
But he assures them that their poverty, their hunger, their grief, and their being reviled will not be eternal. Once again, in the great scheme of things, they have hope in the Kingdom that is without end.
And those same points are true for all of us, for each of us will know poverty, hunger, grief, or hatred at some point in our lives. We need to remember: We are not alone – we are blessed.
As to the woes, we need not see ourselves as hopelessly stuck in that state. We can hear the words of the gospel and act out of faith and make ourselves part of the solution to the problems Jesus named – poverty, hunger, grief, and rejection.
We should all remember: Christianity, as preached by Jesus, and as practiced by the early church with letters such as James, was a movement from the lower rungs of society and religious institutions, to bring about a more sacred and just society.
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