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. Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice and leap for joy on that day! Behold, your reward will be great in heaven. For their ancestors treated the prophets in the same way. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will grieve and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for their ancestors treated the false prophets in this way.” (Luke 6.20-26)
Most churchgoers have heard of the Sermon on the Mount and some may even know that it is found in the Gospel of Matthew. But few have heard of the Sermon on the Plain, a similar story that appears in the Gospel of Luke. It is difficult to determine just why the Sermon on the Mount is the more popular or well-known of the two versions of the same story.
Granted, there are differences, beginning with the placement of the sermon. Matthew has Jesus standing on an elevated slope or mount when he gives the sermon, while Luke, on the other hand, has Jesus seated on a flat plain, preaching to the crowds that have swarmed around him.
As we know by now, differences generally point to particular emphases that each evangelist wants to highlight, tweaked to fit into the frame that the writer wants to construct for his telling of the story. It is almost always difficult to decide whose account is more historically accurate, especially since none of the evangelists puts historicity at the forefront. They are presenting theology, not history.
So an eye to the details allows us a roadmap to the thinking of each evangelist. On the simple matter of where the sermon occurred–since it probably occurred neither on a mount nor on a plain, the sermon more likely a collection of sayings of Jesus given in various settings that were stitched together by the evangelists–Matthew always wants to show Jesus as the new Moses who like the old prophet stood before the people with the stone tablets freshly inscribed from his visit atop Mount Horeb while Luke, for his part, wants to present Jesus as one with the people, particularly the poor and the deprived, the outcast and the outsider. Hence, Jesus sits among the common folk on a stretch of level ground.
We might look briefly at another obvious difference before moving into the meat and potatoes of the Lucan text so as to gain a better understanding of precisely what Luke is doing here. Matthew’s version is longer, at least in the sense of beatitudes or blessings. Matthew has eight and Luke has four. However, unlike Matthew, Luke provides four woes that follow the four beatitudes, in this way presenting a contrast between those blessed and those cursed.
Because Luke places the sermon later in his text than Matthew who has it follow upon the heels of the temptation in the desert, we gain some understanding of Luke’s interplay of blessings and woes. At this point in his gospel, Jesus has already experienced a number of conflicts. He has been rejected in his hometown synagogue, so much so that the townspeople wanted to throw him over a cliff. He has cleansed a leper and healed a paralytic, both of which stir up the disapproval of the religious leaders. He has called a tax-collector to be one of his followers, an action that was unheard of and severely frowned upon. And were that not enough he has gone head-to-head with the same leaders over his disciples’ failure to fast and over his healing on a sabbath.
All of these so-called conflict stories serve as a catalyst or circumstantial evidence to explain his sermon in which he puts front and center a contrast by way of the blessings and woes. So, collapsing them into closer proximity, we can read the text as “Blessed are you who are poor, but woe to you who are rich. Blessed are you who are now hungry, but woe to you who are filled now. Blessed are you who are now weeping, but woe to you who laugh now. Blessed are you when people hate you, but woe to you when all speak well of you.”
In the same way that he has experienced opposition, his sermon presents opposites, in this way drawing a contrast between his followers and those who do not choose to follow his way. Or, put another way, he is turning everything upside down, blessing the poor, the hungry, the sad, and the disdained; and then cursing the rich, the well-fed, the jubilant, and the highly praised.
In flipping everything on its head, Jesus is offering a new way, stating in a forthright manner that the old way of living in the world needs to be replaced if it is to meet the approval of the Most High God. Leaning heavily into the teachings of the prophets, Jesus uses his sermon to remind the crowd that God’s concern is for the oppressed, the brokenhearted, the captives, and the prisoners, as Jesus made clear already in his choosing this particular passage from Isaiah the prophet when he taught in the synagogue in Nazareth.
In the same way that the prophets castigated the rich, the powerful, and the well-fed, Jesus points out that overlooking the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner is completely contrary to the ways of God whose compassion is for these little ones. So, if the world is to be in line with the ways of God, then things are going to have to be flipped inside out and upside down, which his blessings and woes do an excellent job of expressing.
Put simply, they are a shock to the system, telling us that everything we might consider normal and the way things are are dead wrong and wrongheaded. Like the proverbial bull in the china shop, Jesus is out to trash the status quo, stating in word and deed that the way things are is not the way that God wants them to be. Getting right with God then requires that we do the opposite of what others in the world are doing. And his blessings and woes are the assembly manual that we are to follow if we want to construct a new way of living in the world.
After reading the sermon on the plain, we should be clear-sighted about what Jesus is saying. He leaves no doubt that the kingdoms of this world and the kingdom of God are polar opposites, as diametrically opposed as are his blessings and woes. What works in the kingdoms of the world where the powerful inflict harm on the powerless, where the rich lord it over the poor, and where the well-fed deny food to the hungry will not work in the kingdom of God, a place where the powerless are lifted up, where the poor are praised, and where the hungry are filled.
As we can see, Jesus makes the blessings and woes personal. Unlike Matthew who uses a third person address in his beatitudes, for example, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” Luke uses a second person address, for example, “Blessed are you who are poor.” For Luke, it is a direct address to the people sitting alongside Jesus on the level ground.
We should understand this direct address to mean that Jesus is encouraging his followers who suffer from poverty, from hunger, and from persecution, offering assurance to them that they are blessed by the Father even if they are despised by the world. God sees things differently. These little ones are near to his heart because they know their livelihood comes from him, not from worldly resources.
At the same time, Jesus is strongly discouraging his followers from being pulled into the pettiness and practices of the world, a place where the poor, the powerless, and the put upon are pushed out of sight and persecuted in the public square. You will reap what you sow, Jesus tells those who ignore the warnings found in the woes he promises to those whose hearts are far from God.
I tend to think that the writer and preacher Barbara Brown Taylor had it exactly right when she explained the beatitudes as heaven coming to earth. In other words, if we want to know how things work above where God reigns, then look at the beatitudes. It really is as simple as that. Which, of course, leads us to some serious soul-searching and some hard questions.
As we look around, do we find this upside down world that Jesus said was the world that God wants here below, or do we see instead a world where nothing has changed, where the rich scorn the poor, where the hungry are denied access to food, and where the excluded are kicked to the edges or across the border? One look at the headlines in our newspapers and we know which world we are living in, a world that seems hellbent on getting as far from the heart of God as it can with each passing day.
Brown also made the point in her comments about the beatitudes that “earth is where heaven starts, for all who are willing to live it right now.” That is perhaps the most important insight she offers us, telling us that heaven begins here, not in the hereafter. Put another way, if we want to be close to God in the hereafter, then we better get close to God in the here and now.
Imagine for a moment that we plan to visit a foreign country. The smart person prepares, studying the ways of the country to be visited, becoming familiar with its practices, boning up on its dos and don’ts. Also, it’s always helpful to learn something of the language so that you can converse. In this way, the foreign country becomes less strange and more like home. So it is if we want to find ourselves one day in the kingdom of God. The work begins now. If we fail to become familiar with it here, we’re never going to fit in with it there.
And that closeness to God is measured in the precise terms laid out in the beatitudes, not in platitudes and pious prattling that bring no relief to the poor, no food for the hungry, and no defense for the defenseless. Our rank in the eyes of God, it would seem, is measured more by the actions of our hands than by the movement of our lips. Patting ourselves on the back because we pray for the poor on Sunday morning isn’t putting food into their stomachs or clothes on their back on Monday morning.
Again, it all comes down to whether we want to see bits and pieces of heaven on earth, or do we continue down that well-trod and worn-out road where nothing in the world ever changes. Be assured Jesus did not enter this world to bless the status quo or to urge us to keep doing things the way we’ve always done them. If the Most High God thought we were doing a fine job of things here below, he would not have sent his Son to us with a scoreboard that resoundingly said we’re on the losing side.
So, as Luke presents us with the Sermon on the Plain today, we may want to pause so as to give it the serious consideration it deserves instead of breezing past it in our haste to get to coffee and donuts. And while reflecting on the blessings is a good thing, directing us to the heart of God, we assuredly want to take a closer look at the woes that Luke offers us. If we find ourselves in any of those categories, then we may want to switch lanes because we’re going in the wrong direction.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 