Luke 6:17-26
Almost everyone I know prefers the gospel of Luke to the gospel of Matthew. I teach Matthew, and I love it, but even I recognize that Matthew ruins some good stories, like when he tells everyone that the synagogue ruler's daughter is dead before Jesus even starts off to see her (Mt. 9:18-26; cf. Luke 8:40-56), or when he omits all the great details about the demoniac among the tombs (Mt. 8:28-9:1; cf. Mark 4:35-41).
People who love Luke tell me that this is the gospel of the little people (not least of all Zacchaeus), the gospel with all those great lyrics: Zechariah's Benedictus, Mary's Magnificat, Simeon's Nunc Dimittis, the gospel that most explicitly lifts up the ministry of women and most eloquently records Jesus' care for the poor.
Yet if I were preaching this week, here on Thursday afternoon I would be missing Matthew and his version of the Beatitudes. Even though Matthew's version, like Luke's, can function to accuse rather than just comfort, it is easy to get lost in Matthew's poetry. In Matthew, Jesus talks about the meek, the pure in heart, the poor in spirit. It is possible (even though probably wrong) to see these all as emotional states, and so to miss the way they bear upon relationships with and responsibilities to other people.
If you have a synopsis of the four gospels, dig it out and do a side-by-side comparison of Matthew and Luke here. (You can make your own synopsis online at a site called The Five Gospel Parallels. Find the text you want to compare in one gospel. Then click the little Bible above the pericope's title, and the texts that have a parallel to the one you clicked magically move to that parallel!)
Look at Matthew's list of blessings next to Luke's.
Blessed are... |
Matthew | Luke |
| the poor in spirit | you poor | |
| those who mourn | you who weep now | |
| the meek | -- | |
| those who hunger and thirst for righteousness | you who hunger now | |
| those who are merciful | -- | |
| the pure in heart | -- | |
| the peacemakers | -- | |
| those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake | -- | |
| you when others revile you... | when others hate you... | |
Woe to you... |
-- | that are rich |
| -- | that are full now | |
| -- | that laugh now | |
| -- | when all speak well of you... |
You can find woes in Matthew (cf. chapter 23), but not mixed in the list of beatitudes. And you can find concern about the poor in Matthew (cf. 25:31-46), but "poor in spirit" and "hunger and thirst for righteousness" do not as easily lead in that direction as Luke's version.
So how to preach Luke's version? Some thoughts:
The folly of the "We're so rich" cliche.
It does no good and can do harm
for North American ministers to tell their congregations, "Just by virtue of
being here today, you are among the very richest people in the world." Why
don't I like this?
- It's not news. Those of us that this comment accurately describes know this about ourselves. Your saying it just inspires a weird kind of dead-end guilt. Can we help it that we are in North America? Are you asking us to go live somewhere else? Or are we just supposed to feel guilty so you can feel important and needed by announcing forgiveness to us? Or do you want us to do something about being "among the richest people in the world" and if so, what?
- Someone in your congregation is probably really hungry, perhaps really poor. They will feel "invisible as usual" as you speak. You have projected your middle class status on everyone there and are blind to people like the elder who really does choose between buying food or medicine, or the child in a home so dysfunctional or poor that supper is routinely a bowl of Fruit Loops. Not everyone has your problems.
Reversal of fortune
The point of the text is not that Jesus loves to hate rich people. The point of this text is that,
"The times, they are a changin'." The mighty will be cast down and the lowly
lifted up. (Hmm... we've heard that somewhere before.) So a way into preaching
this text might be to consider what are those things that change about our
lives as a result of life in the Rule of God. The values here are upside
down: "woe to you when all speak well of you..." and so on. Are there real,
upside down stories or experiences you see close to home?
For those of us who have (like Mrs. Turpin and Claud in Flannery O'Connor's short story, "Revelation") "a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right," and want things to stay that way, Jesus does not give us much comfort. Things are changing. Yet I wouldn't be a preacher of the gospel unless I believed that what the Rule of God offers—this reversal of fortune that Jesus announces and over which he presides—is better than anything any of us will lose as a result of a change of administration. In Acts, we hear that the apostles, for a while at least, offer evidence of their trust in this conviction by living it out in the way that scares Americans the most: they hold their goods in common and share as one another have need. I wonder, what did they know about the riches of Rule of God that we do not know?
I was all set to preach a we're-the-rich sermon, hadn't yet figured out how to avoid guilt. Thanks for the wake-up call, "it's not news." Or worse, it may well be inaccurate. Peace!
Posted by: Julie | February 14, 2004 at 08:33 PM
There is gospel good news in this text as well. Along with the news to the poor and to the rich, we begin with Jesus healing, caring, loving ALL, whether rich or poor. It is in the midst of this beautiful loving touch of God that Jesus begins to teach (his disciples, no less) about how everything will be thrown into chaos in the kingdom breaking in. Maybe he is readying them for a wilderness experience in which God can come to them in their woes too!?!
Posted by: Mike Werner | February 15, 2004 at 05:32 PM
Ah, the lectionary. Three years later, we're talking about Luke's beattitudes again. I appreciate your reminder that preaching guilt will do no good. But I also want to appreciate the simplicity of Jesus' message: Blessed are the poor, woe to you who are rich. It's supposed to be disturbing to those of us who are rich. It's supposed to be disturbing. There are a thousand ways my two little congregations are full of poor (in spirit?) people. There are a thousand ways they need the life abundant Jesus brings. But perhaps the comfort they need lies in the disturbance they try to avoid. Jesus' message is supposed to disturb us. If we wordsmith our way out of being disturbed, then woe to us.
Posted by: Meredith | February 10, 2007 at 03:51 PM