Epiphany 6 – 2025
Luke 6:17-26
Marian Free
In the name of God who promises joy to the grieving, hope to the despairing and life to the dying. Amen.
The last thing we need when we are feeling low or when everything seems to be going against us is glib, pious words. When you are grieving: “He/she is in a better place.” (What was wrong with where they were?) “God wanted another angel.” (Couldn’t God get another angel without taking my child.) “She died doing what she loved.” “There’s another star in heaven.” “It’s all part of God’s plan.” Or when you’ve lost your home to flood or fire: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” “Every cloud has a silver lining.”
Such trite, albeit well- meaning comments only exacerbate a person’s pain and leave them feeling unsupported and misunderstood. What many people want when they are overwhelmed with grief or struggling with their life circumstances is for someone to sit with them through the pain, to acknowledge that life can be unfair, and that tragedy is random and usually undeserved.
All of which makes me wonder about the blessings pronounced by Jesus in this morning’s gospel. Are they just superficial platitudes to help his followers (mostly the poor), to more fully embrace their situation? Is Jesus just patting the poor and hungry on the shoulder and saying that it is OK to be poor and hungry because they are blessed? Is he encouraging the sorrowful to swallow their grief and move on? Surely not.
Those of us who have lived through straightened times know that there is nothing blessed about being poor. It is hard to find a blessing in worrying about how to feed your children or in sending them off to school without the proper uniform or books. There is nothing blessed about relying on charity to pay your bills or worrying about where to live or knowing that you will never get ahead – that life will be one long struggle. Likewise, it is difficult to find a positive side to hunger or sorrow and, unless one has a martyr complex, it is hard to imagine that it is blessed to be hated, excluded reviled and defamed. “Rejoice and jump for joy!” who would have the energy to dance and if you did. wouldn’t such a reaction only inflame the negativity already directed at you?
Perhaps for the poor, the hungry and the grieving, there is more comfort to be found in the “woes” – that is if one takes comfort in the suffering or punishment of others, or if one delights in other people being “brought down to size.”
We are most familiar with the Beatitudes as they occur in Matthew 5. Matthew has eight blessings compared to Luke’s four and Matthew has spiritualised Jesus’ words thus removing them from the realm of everyday experience, and in some way diminishing the pain of real poverty, sorrow and hunger and the accountability of the rich, the fed and the grieving.
It is of course impossible at this distance to determine Jesus’ actual words, but Luke’s record is consistent with Luke’s agenda, in particular his attitude to the the rich and the comfortable and his emphasis on God’s preference for the poor, the marginalised and the excluded[1].
Luke’s version of the beatitudes is firmly grounded in earthly reality. His beatitudes could be said to be a timely message for our times. Times in which the gap between rich and poor is increasing and in which the rich use their wealth to influence the decisions of our policymakers and the reporting by our media. Times in which wealthier nations continue with life as usual while poorer nations are paying the price of a changing climate with famines, natural disasters and rising sea levels. Those for whom this present life offers little will find comfort in Jesus’ words that they will be blessed – not now, but when the kingdom comes. Those who are comfortable in this life, and more especially those whose comfort, security and wealth are a consequence of exploitation, self-centredness and an insatiable need for more would do well to heed Jesus’ warning that there will be consequences for their actions.
It is easy to believe that we, Jesus’ disciples are off the hook. After all I don’t imagine that there are any among us who could count ourselves among the very rich and that none of us has tried to enrich themselves at the expense of others. I imagine that we all try to be generous in our support of organisations that feed, clothe and house the poor. All of us will have had reason to grieve and many of us will have tried to make a stand for what is right (though probably not to the extent of being excluded defamed or reviled).
We cannot dismiss the fact that the woes might be addressed to us. After all, we. who are. comfortable are in some way complicit in the current state of the world. Whether it is our need for security, comfort and safety that has caused to put ourselves first (without realizing how that impacts on others). At the same time, many of our choices directly contribute to inequities in our own nation and in nations beyond our borders. (Do we know who makes our clothes, how our coffee is sourced, whether our suppliers are adequately compensated for the time, cost and effort it costs to. put food on our. supermarket shelves?)
In pronouncing the blessings and woes Jesus is inverting the usual norms of our society. Worse, he is upending the social structure. Blessing the marginalised and overlooked and, condemning those who create and sustain inequities between people, who preside over unjust structures who enrich themselves at the expense of others and who turn a blind eye to the suffering that is everywhere.
Blessed are those who see the world as it is and who try to address the inequities such that all are blessed.
[1] All of which is particularly interesting if, as we think, the person to whom he is writing is a person of means.
Swallowsrest 