Blessings and Woes:
Today’s gospel reading begins after Jesus had come down from a night of prayer on the mountain, and after that, he called all his disciples together then chose twelve whom he named to also be his apostles, as Luke tells it. After they came down the mountain, he’s surrounded by crowds wanting to be healed. And then, interestingly, Jesus looked up from the crowds and started speaking directly to his disciples, among whom presumably were also the 12 apostles. . In time this particular teaching comes to be known as the ‘Sermon on the Plains’, and Jesus is speaking very plainly as well. We have today the first part of this sermon, we will read the rest over the next couple of weeks. These are Luke’s version of the beatitudes; four blessings and four woes, God’s blessings and humanity’s sorrows. They are very stark indeed, no nicely dressing them up in poetic phrases like Matthew did. Here they are, side by side, in a slightly different translation than what I read to you from the NRSV bible. This version I have up here is from the New Living Translation.
Blessings
God Blesses
- you who are poor, for the Kingdom of God is yours.
- you who are hungry now, for you will be satisfied.
- you who weep now for in due time you will
- What blessings await you when people hate you and exclude you and mock you and curse you as evil because you follow the Son of Man.
Woes or Sorrows
Sorrows Await
- you who are rich, for you have your happiness now.
- you who are fat and prosperous now, for a time of awful hunger awaits you.
- you who laugh now, for your laughing will turn to mourning and sorrow.
- you who are praised by the crowds for their ancestors also praised false prophets.
Woe: a word we don’t use much: it means things that cause sorrow or distress; troubles.[1]
What strikes you when you look at these, right off the mark?
It seems a bit of tit for tat, for every blessing is a woe or a sorrow.
Interestingly, my Oxford Dictionary says the focus of these are “on social and economic conditions”[2].
Jesus is speaking directly to his followers, and to his newly chosen apostles. Jesus is speaking to those who will become the Church. They have chosen what Jesus knows will be a challenging lifestyle, at times fraught with difficulty. It seems that at first glance it’s like Jesus is maybe reassuring them that they will be blessed by God, even in the challenge, and after the difficulties. And for his followers and indeed any others in the crowd who were listening and were poor, hungry, depressed, hated by others for their focus on Jesus for their lives will not forgotten by God. God remembers, indeed, is with them and blesses those who are forgotten or reviled by others who seem to have all the riches they don’t.
And it kind of seems like these blessings and woes are backwards, the opposite to what we think or expect they should be. The ones living what we would see as living woeful lives get God’s blessing and the ones living what we would sometimes say are living blessed lives, are actually in distress. When we generally think of blessings, of being blessed by God, we think of having good things, having sufficient to eat, being prosperous, being happy, being well thought of by others. I mean, isn’t that what everyone wants? But those things are all in the sorrows column! Jesus is saying that God’s blessings are upon those who don’t have these things, upon the poor, the hungry, the sad and lonely, the socially outcast. And if you have achieved a life of some measure of riches and social acceptance, well, woe to you!
Now, if you’re poor, hungry, lonely, ill, knowing that God is with you, and that you are blessed, well this is good news indeed. And it also occurred to me that those of us in middle class western society today live a lifestyle that in many other places in the world would be thought of as very rich indeed! Speaking as one of the fat and relatively prosperous ones, which is of course the lens through which I am reading this, it seems a bit harsh! And I think that this is the point!
So, what is this teaching, what are these beatitudes telling us? Does God really love the poor more than the rest of us? And where do those not exactly rich, but certainly not poor, where do we fit into this? Does that mean that having enough food, a good place to live, being happy, having friends are not good things? No, I’m pretty sure that’s not the message. I don’t think God wants everyone to be starving and suffering. Many of Jesus parables and teachings were focused on giving to help those who were poor and hungry. Nor do I think God blesses us or curses us based solely on what we have, or don’t have.
But these blessings and woes really are pretty harsh looking, pretty black and white. Jesus doesn’t provide any stories or parables to soften or embellish this teaching. Essentially, those with nothing are blessed by God, those with all the things our society tells us to strive for will be full of woe. At first glance, this is hard to understand, it doesn’t make sense. How can having decent living conditions give us woe, cause sorrow or distress?
I do also think this is some of Jesus’ classic hyperbole—exaggeration, it could be argued this time to the extreme, to make his point. So what’s the point?
Those who are poor, who really have with nothing, have nowhere else to turn to but God. Here’s a little hyperbole of my own as an example. You can have all the money in the world, and if you’re down and out, because of ill health—emotionally or physically, where do you turn? If you’re absolutely dirt poor and homeless—you have nothing or nowhere else to turn to, what to you do, where or to whom do you turn? You turn to God, you pray, because when it comes right down to it, God is really all there is, that is where to find the security of God’s love. And in turning to God, and being open to God, and receiving God, that’s where the true blessing is, where God’s kingdom is, what overcomes our sorrow and pain, our feelings of loneliness and insecurity. We are truly filled by God and filled with God. And that is the blessing, being at one with God.
But for those of us whose lives are filled with society’s riches, we go to these riches, we use these riches to fill us, to support us, to keep us happy. It’s where we look for love and comfort. Retail therapy anyone? These material comforts get in the way of needing God, of wanting God in our lives. If we have all these riches as the center of our lives, as the focus of our lives, do we even need God; is there any room left for God in our lives? As one commentator I read put it:
The poor and the hungry know the reality of their situation. They are totally dependent on God and therefore are disposed to entrust themselves to God’s care and mercy, which is the foundation of grace and a rightrelationship with God. The rich, on the other hand, are disposed to take comfort in themselves and their resources thereby finding it more difficult to trust themselves to the mercy and grace of God.[
What the world values and what God values are not the same, indeed often the opposite of each other. Jesus teachings were as counter-cultural then, as they still are now.
"God is always reminding us that we must empty ourselves, turn away from the ways of the world, and then –and only then by God’s grace—receive the fullness of blessings God offered to the utterly destitute, the marginalized, the expendable. ... To be blessed of God is to have nothing but God." [4]
[1]https://www.google.com/search?q=woe+meaning&oq=woe&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqCQgAEEUYOxiABDIJCAAQRRg7GIAEMg4IARBFGDkYRhj5ARiABDIPCAIQABgKGIMBGLEDGIAEMgcIAxAuGIAEMgcIBBAAGIAEMgcIBRAAGIAEMg0IBhAuGMcBGNEDGIAEMg8IBxAAGAoYgwEYsQMYgAQyDQgIEC4YrwEYxwEYgAQyBwgJEAAYjwLSAQkzMjU5ajBqMTWoAgiwAgE&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
[2] The Oxford Annotated Bible, Third Edition (Oxford University Press: Oxford New York) 2001 New Testament 107
[3] Howard K. Gregory in Pastoral Perspective for Luke 6: 17-26 in Feasting on the Word Yr C Vol 1 (WJK Press: Louisville, Ky) 2009 360
[4] David L. Ostendorf in Theological Perspective for Luke 6: 17-26 in Feasting on the Word Yr C Vol 1 (WJK Press: Louisville, Ky) 2009 360