Jesus came down with the Twelve and stood on a stretch of level ground with a great crowd of his disciples and a large number of the people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon. And raising his eyes toward his disciples he said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” (Luke 6.17, 20, 24)
For most people, the Sermon on the Mount is a familiar part of the scriptures, even if specifics are lost or forgotten. Found in the Gospel of Matthew, the Sermon on the Mount has caught the fancy of scholars because it is considered a condensed version of the gospel as a whole, all the central themes collected in a few memorable sentences.
Fewer people are familiar with the Sermon on the Plain found in the Gospel of Luke, similar and dissimilar to Matthew’s text, evidence that the two, while using similar material, mold a text that fits smoothly with each of their intentions or wants in presenting the message of the Jewish rabbi called Jesus of Nazareth.
The dissimilarity begins with the location, Matthew’s sermon taking place on a mountain, reminiscent of Moses the Great Teacher passing on the commandments atop Mount Sinai, while Luke locates his sermon on a plain, with Jesus on a level field. While Jesus sits in Matthew’s text, as would a respected teacher, he stands in Luke’s text, showing he stands alongside ordinary people. And while Matthew has the Teacher offer nine beatitudes or blessings, Luke has Jesus offer four.
Other differences stand out, particularly in Luke’s so-called woes that he affixes to the blessings, juxtaposing blessing and curses, reminiscent of the prophets of ancient Israel who were quick to predict calamity and curses upon those who did not adhere to the covenant with the Lord God. Matthew has no woes, content with challenging people through a promise of blessings to those who adhere to the ways of God.
Perhaps most telling is that Luke does not spiritualize the poor, but speaks of the physically poor, Matthew’s version stating, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” while Luke’s version states, “Blessed are you who are poor.” This is an important differentiation, becoming more significant as we continue our journey with Luke who will present the Galilean Rabbi as attentive especially to the needs of the poor.
Consistent with the Hebrew Scriptures that make clear the Most High God’s preferential love for the poor, called the anawim in Hebrew, sometimes translated as “little ones,” Luke’s gospel does the same, almost every page putting before us the face of the poor, beginning with shepherds in the fields that are the first to hear of the birth of the Messiah, to the aged Anna who never left the Temple and so sees the child Jesus at his presentation, thanking God for fulfilling his promise of redemption, to the end of the ministry of the Galilean Rabbi when he heaps praise upon the widow who throws her last two cents into the Temple coffers.
Perhaps the best example in the whole of Luke’s gospel is the story of Lazarus, the poor man who sits at the gate of the rich man. There, in exposition form, Luke offers the same great reversal that he anticipates already here in the Sermon on the Plain in capsulated form. Whereas in the sermon he uses only two sentences to demonstrate the great reversal, “Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours; Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation,” in the story of Lazarus he offers an elongated version of the same reversal, Lazarus, poor on earth, is brought to the kingdom of God when he dies; the unnamed man, rich on earth, receives no consolation in the netherworld, already having had it on earth.
Just as importantly, in that story Luke suggests that the unforgivable sin of the rich man is that he doesn’t even see Lazarus sitting at his gate, oblivious to the pain and privation of this poor man, instead wrapped up in his own world of banquets and luxuries. Blind to the needs of the poor man, the first sin, he also failed to show compassion to the man, the second sin. But the Most High God, who sees all, righted the wrongs done to Lazarus, bringing him to the banquet table of heaven, while the rich man, his position in the scheme of things reversed, is reduced to suffering away in Gehenna for eternity.
Only at that point is the rich man’s eyes opened, partially at least, demanding that Lazarus be sent to him with a bit of water, failing to see that Lazarus is no longer a slave or servant, but is his superior. When Father Abraham, speaking for the Most High, tells the rich man it is not possible, the man asks that Lazarus be sent to his brothers still alive, that they might be forewarned. Again, Abraham says it is not possible. Besides, Abraham points out, the brothers have the teachings of the prophets to direct them on the right path, which should be enough, if they would open their eyes, ears, and hearts.
In this way and many others, Luke urges us to open our eyes to the face of the poor, to see those who are physically poor, physically hungry, and physically desolate, those who have nothing left to lose because everything has been taken from them, those who put their trust in God because their trust in man has proven a fool’s errand. He won’t allow us to turn away from their destitution and desperation, insisting that we–in imitation of Rabbi Jesus–see the poor standing before us, hear their cries, and show them compassion.
If we fail to see the poor, as the rich man did in the parable near the close of Luke’s gospel, then we also will find ourselves experiencing the same great reversal when we are brought to the hereafter, where the poor are given the kingdom of God and where the rich receive nothing, having already received earth’s bounty while neglecting the needs of those without food, clothing, or shelter.
Before Eleanor Roosevelt had married Franklin and before he had become President of the United States, she worked for a while at University Settlement in New York City, an organization that offered social services and basic education to immigrants and low-income families. One afternoon, Franklin arrived there to pick her up, intending for the two to go out for the evening. But Eleanor said she couldn’t leave because there was a sick child at the Settlement house that she was attending to and for whom she would have to find a way home.
Franklin told Eleanor that he would go with her to deliver the child to its home. Arriving there, they made their way up the stairs of the tenement house to the dingy and dirty apartment where the family of the sick child lived. Aghast at the conditions, this being the first time he had seen a slum, Franklin said to Eleanor when they had returned to his car, “My God, I didn’t know people lived like that!” It was a revelation for Franklin, one that he took with him as he began his presidency, his eyes now opened to and clearly seeing the plight of the poor in the nation as it suffered through the Great Depression. He refused to look away.
And that is the same response that Rabbi Jesus showed when confronted with the tattered and ragged poor that lined the sideroads of Galilee, who stood before him with empty stomachs, who begged for a little help and a small handout, anything to alleviate a bit of their suffering. He refused to look away. And, for those brave enough and big enough to follow him, he expects the same–that we refuse to look away from the poor, already ignored by too many and unseen by just as many.
A decade ago, there was a report about the poor in Sao Paulo, Brazil, a population that is harassed and subjected to horrific conditions, corralled into certain areas where they can be contained so that wealthier residents don’t have to see them. That wasn’t good enough for the super-wealthy who began to use private helicopters so they didn’t have to go through the poverty-stricken areas of the city.
According to the report, there were over 240 helicopter landing pads in the city, indicative of the high number of the rich who availed themselves of this means of transportation, its chief purpose being so that they weren’t bothered by the sight of the poor–a fascinating indictment of a city that bears the name Saint Paul, one of the staunchest and strongest followers of the Jewish rabbi called Jesus.
Decades before, when Helder Camara was an archbishop in Brazil, he made the observation that, “As long as I feed the poor, they call me a saint; but if I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist,” a damning critique of a country that closes its eyes to the poor on its streets, left to languish like Lazarus at the rich man’s gate.
Of course, we do not have to look to faraway Brazil to find avoidance techniques utilized to keep the poor out of sight. The same or other methods are utilized in our own country, a country where the disparity between the rich and the poor is higher than ever in our history, the divide so wide it is difficult to imagine it ever changing. The irony, as in Brazil, is in our continued belief that we are a Christian country, meaning we follow the way and teachings of the carpenter from Nazareth.
If we are among those who shut our eyes to the poor person who cry out to us for compassion, then we are in for a rough ride as we make our way through the Gospel of Luke in the months ahead, because the poor are front and center in his text, the Galilean Teacher’s eyes always moving to the rejected of society. He not only sees them, but he seeks out the castoffs condemned to squalor in a world fueled by selfishness and self-interest. His movements and his actions are a less than subtle reminder of the God who sees his little ones in their distress, who hears the cries of the poor, and who wants the same from us.
One writer, in considering the Sermon on the Plain, commented that most of us probably find ourselves “in the muddy middle ground” between those called blessed and those warned of woes awaiting them. We wouldn’t call ourselves poor, but we wouldn’t call ourselves rich. We feel for the poor, but our families have to come first. We don’t like injustice, but we have our own jobs to consider. We like the idea of the coming of the Kingdom of God, but we don’t want to help it get here. We’re stuck in the mud of the middle.
Listening to him, we realize that the muddy middle ground that we find ourselves in is not the place for the follower of the Galilean Rabbi, who made it abundantly clear that it is an either/or situation, with no slip and slide. As he says today, “Blessed are you who are poor; for the kingdom of God is yours. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.”
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 