Wondering with the Word: downside up
Jesus is not speaking about people who are poor in spirit. These are people who have nothing and long for some relief
Luke 6:17-26
17 He went down with them and stood on a level place. A large crowd of his disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coastal region around Tyre and Sidon, 18 who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by impure spirits were cured, 19 and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all.
20 Looking at his disciples, he said:
‘Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
21 Blessed are you who hunger now,
for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
22 Blessed are you when people hate you,
when they exclude you and insult you
and reject your name as evil,
because of the Son of Man.
23 ‘Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.
24 ‘But woe to you who are rich,
for you have already received your comfort.
25 Woe to you who are well fed now,
for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will mourn and weep.
26 Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,
for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.
An incident I sometimes recall is now more than 50 years in my past. A group of us were going by coach from our village chapel to the annual Bank Holiday rally at Cliff College in Derbyshire, England.
Clearly, I had no idea then that this would be the place I came to love later for its teaching as I worked towards a Masters in Evangelism Studies. It was, frankly, a nice day out with friends and there’d be some hymn-singing and preaching as part of it.
We hadn’t been travelling long when we stopped to pick up a group from a Pentecostal church who were travelling with us. One teenager - about my age - got on the bus and focused on me. We had never met and his opening question was: ‘are you saved?’
It was an unexpected question and I have no ideas what I said back. It has, however, stayed with me as one of the least effective ways I have encountered to evangelise well. Indeed, I think it has informed my approach to missionary studies … in that I have always avoided asking others a similar question!
Maybe I didn’t understand the question at that point. Maybe I came to my own critical decision later. Maybe I realised that there had been no crisis of faith; just a steadily growing formation in faith from loving parents and grandparents.
Maybe I think of it too much, even now, but I do wonder what was in that other teenager’s mind when he asked. What was his expectation of me? What did he mean by ‘saved’ - not what did the word mean but what did he understand by it? An instant ‘down on my knees’ surrender; a decision out of deep Bible study and prayer; a response to a powerful message that demanded personal commitment.
The moment came back to me this week as I reflected from afar on the circus that Presidential politics and governance have become in the United States.
It’s often hard to watch the news but the daily trashing of a representative democracy by those elected to lead is painful in the extreme.
What I find most offensive is how the Kingdom of God is brought into this by church leaders who want nothing more than a seat with the powerful. I am appalled when I see uber-wealthy religious leaders laying hands in prayer on President Trump and assuming his actions are endorsed by God.
I am even more offended when some of those close to the White House corrupt the faith I hold dear simply to justify their ego-raddled hold on power.
The words of Abraham Lincoln came back to me this week: ‘Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.’
Incoming US Vice President, JD Vance, said during a Fox News interview on January 29: ‘There is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbour, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritise the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that.’
Now I own that my politics is far to the left of Trump and Vance, but my anger at this is how it perverts Scripture … and how certain Christians have jumped in to support it.
This week’s Gospel passage could hardly come at a better time. Jesus, in what’s sometimes called his Sermon on the Plain (as opposed to the Sermon on the Mount) speaks about blessings and woes. It includes this:
‘But woe to you who are rich,
for you have already received your comfort.
Woe to you who are well fed now,
for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will mourn and weep.
Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,
for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets. (Luke 6: 24-26)
The Amplified Bible says it this way:
But woe (judgment is coming) to you who are rich [and place your faith in possessions while remaining spiritually impoverished], for you are [already] receiving your comfort in full [and there is nothing left to be awarded to you]. Woe to you who are well-fed (gorged, satiated) now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now [enjoying a life of self-indulgence], for you will mourn and weep [and deeply long for God]. Woe to you when all the people speak well of you and praise you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way.
Now it’s quite possible to argue almost every political standpoint from somewhere in Scripture. We know, don’t we, that the Church managed to justify slavery and - in some places - support for totalitarian regimes by cut and paste biblical quotes.
As US Catholic writer Kat Armas shared in an online article, ‘the problem with this [Vance’s] hierarchy is that it feeds the myth that some people are more deserving of our care than others. It's a framework that makes sense in a world governed by scarcity and fear, where protection comes at the expense of others. But Jesus never speaks of love as something to be rationed. He speaks of love as abundance — a table where there is enough for everyone.’
Jesus was preaching to the communities he walked through, and from where he had come. His audience were people who struggled to feed their families every day and, as Luke writes, knew poverty.
There is no suggestion that preachers should spiritualise this message. Jesus is not speaking about people who are poor in spirit, as Matthew puts it. He is talking about people who have nothing and long for some relief.
Earlier in the Gospel passage Jesus says:
‘Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who hunger now,
for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
Blessed are you when people hate you,
when they exclude you and insult you
and reject your name as evil,
because of the Son of Man. (Luke 6: 20-22)
There is an immediacy in his words.
Those who are poor now inherit the Kingdom now.
Those who are hungry will be satisfied.
Those who weep now will laugh
Their true experience is seen by God and their vindication is coming as the Kingdom of God gains ground. It is in stark contrast to the rich and well-fed who cling to their position and privilege. They have no future beyond mourning and weeping.
Those who put their trust in today’s status and the power of patronage are heading for a fall.
As I write this, I’m conscious of simply venting my anger and saying nothing. That’s very tempting and may be cathartic for a short while, but how do we counter the rhetoric and find ways to live out a belief in the God who identifies with the poor and asks the Church to act to combat poverty and stand for justice.
I was privileged for a while to be a part of the staff at Truro Methodist Circuit (now Mid Cornwall) in the South West of the UK. My colleague and friend Mark Dunn-Wilson has been such a gift to the city and, with his leading, Truro Methodist Church, in the centre of the city, has a gospel table.
Mark says: “We took the story of the banquet where Jesus says there's always room for more. We have this vision that God gave us a gospel table where we were always trying to welcome people,”
It meant literally building a giant picnic table in the car park on which every Sunday morning food that would be thrown away by supermarkets is laid down for people to take home.
This is one example of how Methodists in Britain are finding their voice and taking practical action. You can read a lot more about challenging poverty here.
What can we do - what can I do? It seems to me we need to own the times we seek privilege for our own comfort and recognise that we cannot expect to hold on to that which satisfies us while ignoring the needs of others.
The truth is that Jesus, in the way Luke tells it, declares the work of the Kingdom of God to be to turn people’s experience upside down … or right side up.