I was going to begin this sermon with a reflection on how these words of blessing and woe, providence and warning, hit us all differently depending on where we sit or stand when we hear them.
I was going to begin this sermon talking about the many different sorts of people from different places, socioeconomic backgrounds, who were in those crowds that flocked to Jesus to hear a word of good news and feel his healing power flow through them.
I was going to begin this sermon by inviting all of us to ponder how these words of blessing and woe strike us as good news or the worst kind of twisted joke.
I was going to begin my sermon this way – but then a gaping hole opened up in my yard.
The other evening I was backing my truck into my side-yard to unload some gravel to make a path to help deal with the run-off that I knew the upcoming rains would bring. All was going well until the rear wheel of the truck sank down and spun and I was stuck. It’s familiar feeling in two-wheel drive truck.
So I began to unload the gravel and examined where the truck had sunk into a marshy spot in my yard. I was frustrated and annoyed with myself but thought I could get it out easily with a jack and some digging. But by the time it became dark and supper-time had come and gone, the truck was still stuck and going nowhere, so I went inside. Then I heard a knock on the door. My next door neighbor there, asking, “Are you stuck? Let me get you my tow strap and I’ll come pull you out.”
With his strap and vehicle and a few more boards, we were able to pull my truck out of the mire. When we went back to look with our flashlights – it wasn’t just a wet low spot there – but a hole had opened up – revealing several feet of water below and the caved-in edges of an abandoned septic tank.
Unfortunately now – this hole has been all-consuming for me.
Who do we call to get this thing filled in? Should I do it myself? What else lurks beneath the soil unbeknownst to us?
I had planned to begin my sermon with some generalizations about the poor and rich and Christ’s words of Truth to us all…but then a gaping hole opened up in my yard….and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that dang hole.
I wonder what gaping holes lurked in the lives of that great crowd and the great multitude of people that gathered around Jesus in that flat piece of land?
What troubling, perplexing, mysterious, or humiliating problems occupied their waking minds and haunted their dreams? What concerns and responsibilities and nagging pains did they carry with them to that level-place where Jesus stood?
Everyone wanted some of his healing and saving power to flow through them.
The text tells us that “all in the crowd were trying to touch him…” But we don’t receive a pathology report on the diseases people had. We aren’t told what sorts of unclean spirits troubled them.
We just are told that Jesus healed all of them. And then Jesus began to teach.
I imagine that he wouldn’t have been able to see the throngs of folks very well on that flat field. I wonder how well everybody could actually hear what he had to say. Surely some of his closest disciples were packed in tight, but the line between the curious crowd-member and committed disciple is blurry.
Jesus begins by speaking words of blessing. And not a blessing in the abstract but a concrete, here and now, look you in the eyes kind of blessing.
Here it’s not the familiar words of Matthew, “blessed are the poor in spirit,” but instead, “blessed are you all who are poor. Blessed are you all who are hungry now.” Blessed are you who walked here with your stomach growling and no food back at home because you don’t have a home to go back to. Blessed are you all who get by on the generosity of others and the grace of God.
Blessed are you who weep now, you whose cheeks are still wet with tears. Blessed are you when people hate you. Blessed are you when your reputation is tarnished and trashed. Blessed are you when no one will put in a good word for you. Blessed are you who are derided and lampooned because you left all you had to follow Jesus the itinerant preacher and healer.
This litany of blessings for you all who are poor, hurting and excluded is Jesus’ creative re-echoing of the long refrain of the Hebrew prophets that righteousness before God looks like justice to the poor, stranger, and marginalized. God’s kingdom, God’s heart, and God’s love moves first to provide for the poor, bind up the brokenhearted, and comfort the afflicted. Blessed are you who are poor.
God has always been about this sort of Great Reversal. Jesus lives out the Upside Down Kingdom, rejecting violence and greed and embracing generosity, hospitality, and healing… and please, ask some of our youth who’ve been studying Luke if you need dance moves to accompany this kind of Upside-Down Kingdom theology.
For each of Jesus’ blessings – there is a corresponding promise: for the poor, it is the kingdom of God itself, for the hungry, sustenance, for those who weep, the promise they will laugh, for the hated and reviled on account of Jesus – rejoicing and a reward in heaven with the prophets.
The promises here are shockingly active and present. They almost feel to me to be inappropriate pastoral responses to the suffering and struggles that Jesus names.
Every week in our own prayer time together – we hear requests from each other – that are familiar Jesus’ words. People have lost jobs and are seeking work. People are sick and dying or have died, and we pray for their healing and grieve their absence. People are weeping at the injustices we see unfolding each week. We bring our needs and the needs of the world around us when we come to church – and prayer time is one place where we offer these aches to God.
And “Blessed are you” is a strange response to say when someone has opened up about the depth of their own difficulty or loss. But “blessed” is the shockingly true word that Jesus speaks over everyone who has endured pain or injustice.
Blessed are you. God’s favor is yours. God’s promise rests first with you. And if Jesus’ pronouncement of blessing feels jarring and disruptive – then the sharpness of his “woes” cut even deeper.
Even though I’ve heard this passage a bunch of times in my life – I had to do some digging on what exactly “Woe” means. It’s not one I hear used regularly. “Woe” is a rendering into English of an “exclamatory particle” – found in Greek and Hebrew. More than a word with a particular meaning, it’s a sound that lends intensity to what follows:
Oy! Woah! Or in a Spanish Bible translation – “¡Ay!” It’s a cry of mourning and lament but also warning. It’s a condemnation akin to the word “Damn!” – that says – hey, I’m serious, pay attention, you don’t want to go there.
It’s the sound you might make when someone is about to back their truck into a hole and you can see the disaster coming. “Aayaay!” And its the word that Jesus uses to harshly warn us that the disparities of wealth bring disaster.
The suffering of the poor is caused by the pride and selfishness of the rich. The excruciating discomfort of the hungry is brought about by those who delight in the excess they have. An unjust world is undergirded by those who prioritize their own self-image and popularity and power over the wellbeing of others.
“Hey! Pay attention, you all! Damn it!” Jesus says.
If all you’ve prioritized in life is your own bank accounts and careers and homes and food and fun times and self-importance – you’ve gotten all you will ever get – and your dream will eventually become a nightmare. Woe to you – for you have already received your comfort and blessing.
We don’t know how the people received Jesus’ message of blessings and woes. Surely, in that crowd there were people who were desperately poor and others who were embarrassingly rich. But we’re told by Luke that every person there – all – were trying to touch Jesus. We’re told that Jesus healed “all” of them.
And we need to hear words of woe and warning, because we too are reaching out to touch the power of living Son of God, we too desperately need to be healed.
Words of warning – are invitations to meet Jesus on level ground. Because that’s where money and possessions and connections and influence can be laid down for the good of all. Jesus is preaching on a flat and spacious prairie place – because there are people he had to lift up from all the way down the rung of the social ladder for them to even be there.
Jesus is preaching on level ground – because there are people who had to sheepishly climb down from the terrifying lonely and shoddily-constructed castles of self-importance they’d built – to finally see the face of God in their economically poor and struggling siblings.
Jesus healed all the people who came to him that day. He healed some of their diseases, saved others from the clutches of spirits that had troubled them, and spoke a saving Truth to every person gathered on that plain. The good news of God welcomes us in our affliction and warns us in our pride, and saves us by bringing us to level ground where we can meet Jesus and experience the healing that God provides.
I had planned to end this sermon with some examples of what this world-upending, status-quo smashing, invitation to Blessing and Truth-telling looks like. But instead I’m still thinking about that big hole in my backyard.
And Jesus’ message to me – is “Ay! Don’t back into that hole. Pay attention! Stop!”
Because – the danger for myself isn’t that I’ve got an old septic tank to fill in – but that I’ll be consumed by my own sense of responsibility and self-entitlement for this land and house that a piece of paper tells me I “own.” There will always be a next project, something else to buy or fix or improve. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your improvement, your comfort. You’ve already completed the project you always wanted.
The truth of our world is that it’s built on this kind of entitlement. Jesus exposes the lies of this world. But Jesus also welcomes all of us into the Kingdom that he is still building – which is a leveling, earth-moving, project of the Spirit, that lifts up the lowly and tears tyrants from their thrones, and shares the abundance of God’s creation with those who need it most.
Blessed are you who are poor. Woe to you who are rich.
May all of us reach for Jesus and be healed.