Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
February 11, 2007

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

You’ve all heard of the Sermon on the Mount, right? And I imagine you know the Beatitudes, those sayings of Jesus that begin the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” Mt. 5:3, 5, and 9 NRSV And some others. They are among the most famous lines in all the New Testament. You probably know some other famous lines from the Sermon on the Mount too: “You are the salt of the earth.” “You are the light of the world.” “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer….Turn the other cheek….Go also the second mile…,” and so many others. All quotes NRSV The Sermon on the Mount we know about. In Israel there’s even a chapel on a hill somewhere called the Chapel of the Beatitudes, where Jesus supposedly gave the Sermon on the Mount. He didn’t, because the Sermon on the Mount is a collection of Jesus sayings that the author of Matthew has put together rather than a speech Jesus actually ever gave, but never mind.

You know about the Sermon on the Mount, but how many of you have ever heard of the Sermon on the Plain? You may not have heard of it, but you just heard part of it. Our passage from Luke this morning begins: “He came down with them and stood on a level place….” Luke 6:17 Luke says he came down with them, the Disciples that is, because he’s just been up on a mountain. Matthew has him give his “Sermon” on a mountain, but Luke makes a point of having him come down off a mountain onto a level place to do his teaching. Hence “The Sermon on the Plain.” Matthew wanted Jesus to be a great lawgiver like Moses, so he put him on a mountain. Luke wanted Jesus to be with the common people, so he put him on a plain. Even the settings of these passages make important theological points.

Be that as it may, you probably don’t know the Sermon on the Plain so well because it really isn’t as great a collection of sayings as Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, but it’s got some good stuff in it. It begins more or less the same way the Sermon on the Mount does, with a series of beatitudes. Luke doesn’t give as many of them as Matthew does, and they aren’t exactly the same as Matthew’s; but at least this “sermon” too starts out with beatitudes. The first one is: “Blessed are you who are poor.” Now if you’re paying attention you’ll notice that the Sermon on the Mount that I just quoted also begins with a blessing of the poor, but it’s different. Matthew has it: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Luke has it: “Blessed are you who are poor.” Not poor in spirit. Just poor. Luke is the Gospel to the poor, so it is appropriate that Luke’s Jesus says “poor” and not “poor in spirit.”

I suppose there’s a sermon in that difference, but that’s not what I want to focus on this morning. I want rather to focus on another difference between Luke’s Sermon on the Plain and Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. Both sermons begin with beatitudes, with blessings. Unlike Matthew’s version, however, Luke’s “sermon” contains a set of corresponding sayings called the “woes.” He has Jesus say “Blessed” several times, but for each one of them he also has Jesus say “But woe….” What’s up with the woes? Why woes? Why would Luke have Jesus uttering curses as well as blessings in this collection of teachings? Let’s take a closer look as see if we can figure it out.

Luke has carefully crafted this part of his Sermon with corresponding pairs of blessings and woes. There are four of them: “Blessed are you who are poor….but woe to you who are rich.” “Blessed are you who are hungry now….Woe to you who are full now.” “Blessed are you who weep now….Woe to you who are laughing now….” “Blessed are you when people hate you….Woe to you when all speak well of you….” NRSV The way Luke has set the thing up, it looks like Jesus is making sharp distinctions between different types or classes of people, that he is blessing some people and cursing others. He’s blessing the poor, the hungry, the bereaved, and the despised. He’s cursing the rich, the full, the happy, and the respected. At least, that’s sure what it looks like he’s doing.

And frankly, if that is what he’s doing, it’s not very good news for most of us. Let’s face it. Even those among us with the most modest incomes are rich by the world’s standards. I don’t think that anyone in this congregation is ever truly hungry in the sense of simply not having enough food to eat. The one about those who weep and those who laugh is a bit more complex, and I’ll return to it in a minute. But we are for the most part respected and respectable citizens, not the kind that people hate, exclude, revile, and defame because of our religious beliefs. So what are we to conclude? Is this section of the Sermon on the Plain bad news for the likes of us?

Well, not necessarily. It struck me as I studied this passage this past week that, while it looks at first like Jesus here is making sharp distinctions between different types of people, blessing some and cursing some, and that we tend to fall on the cursed side, that really isn’t what’s going on here. My first clue that this passage is more complex than it might appear came from that blessing of those who weep and woe to those who laugh. It seems to me that everyone weeps at times and everyone laughs at times. I know I’ve certainly done my share of both, and I know that most of you have too. Or if nothing in your life has yet caused you to weep and mourn, something some day certainly will. Those who weep and those who laugh aren’t classes of people, they are all people at one time or another. I wondered: Can this text possibly mean that when we pass from a time of mourning to a time of laughing we pass from God’s blessing to God’s curse? Certainly not. God seeks to comfort all who mourn and wants them to pass through their grief to new life, a new life that certainly can include laughing. Then I wondered the same thing about the juxtaposition of those who are hungry and those who are full. We believe we are called to feed the hungry. In Chapter 25 of Matthew Jesus tells us that we are called to feed the hungry. So can Luke possibly be saying that when we feed the hungry so that they are no longer hungry but have become full that we are removing them from God’s blessing and subjecting them to God’s curse? Certainly not. God doesn’t want any of God’s children to go hungry. So what’s really going on here. What is up with those woes?

I think that what’s going on here is that Luke has used a rhetorical device to make an important theological point. We aren’t to take the woes literally. God doesn’t curse everyone who is full and everyone who laughs. I think we can conclude by analogy that God doesn’t curse everyone who is rich or who is well regarded in society. That’s not the point. The point is that God is on the side of the poor, the hungry, the grieving, and the outcast. To use a phrase from the Catholic social teaching, God has a preferential option for them, the poor, hungry, grieving, and outcast. They are God’s special ones, God’s favorites.

And the point is that God calls us to be on their side too. Luke’s expression here of God’s preferential option for the poor tells us that God wants us to be on the side of the poor too. God wants us to alleviate their poverty, to help them move up out of poverty—and that certainly won’t remove them from God’s blessing. God wants us to be on the side of the hungry. God wants us to feed them, and that certainly won’t remove them from God’s blessing either. God wants us to welcome the outcast, and that certainly won’t remove them from God’s blessing. God wants us to comfort those who mourn—even if they are rich—for the rich mourn too. Great wealth never insulated anyone from grief over the death of a loved one. And that most certainly won’t remove them from God’s blessing.

Our doing those things for God’s favorites won’t remove them from God’s blessing, but more than that Luke’s rhetorical device here means that when we do those good things for God’s favorites we become God’s favorites too. We ourselves are blessed in the caring for those in need, whether physical need or emotional need. God’s blessing is for those in need and for those who seek to care for them. Blessed are those who are hungry, and blessed are we when we feed them.

And we do feed them. Yesterday we did one of our regular food drives at Fred Meyer, collecting food and raising money for the Sky Valley Food Bank. That work blessed those who will be fed and those who worked to provide the food. Tomorrow evening at 7:00 o’clock here in our sanctuary we will meet with folks from our ecumenical partner churches to work on a feeding program for the homeless and low income people of our area under the ecumenical grant from the Lutherans. That program will be a blessing to those who are fed. So far from removing them from God’s grace it will be a sign to them—and to us—of God’s grace.

So let’s get with the program. Let’s reach out even more than we do now to those in need. Let us lift up the poor, feed the hungry, comfort the mourners, and welcome the outcast. We can be instruments of God’s blessing to them. More surprisingly perhaps, they can be instruments of God’s blessing to us as together we do God’s work of mercy for all people. Amen.