Lectionary 6(C)
Texts: Jeremiah 17:5-10; Psalm 1; Luke 6:17-26
Beatitudes, Gospel Differences
 |
| Poverty and Wealth, William Powell Frith, 1888 |
Matthew has Jesus going up a mountain and immediately begins
speaking. For Matthew, Jesus is the new Moses and the new lawgiver, who ascends
a new Sinai to proclaim a new set of laws that the new community that is being
inaugurated are to follow.
Luke, on the other hand, has Jesus coming down from a
mountain, to level ground. He is surrounded by people from all around the
region. He met their healing needs first.[1]
And then, not even standing up, he looks up to his disciples and begins to
speak to them.
For Luke, Jesus is one with humanity. He is the one who came
down from God’s presence, giving up all its privileges and power, and became
human. Jesus is not just human, but he is one who places himself as a servant
and a slave to everyone else. He is one who identifies with the lowest of the
low, the most outcast and reviled, the poorest of the poor, the most abused and
desperate. Ninety-percent of the people in the Roman empire lived in poverty.
Two-thirds were barely surviving or worse.[2]
Luke’s gospel reveals a God whose preference is for these kinds of people.[3]
The Gospel is Uncomfortable
Luke’s version of the beatitudes is very uncomfortable to
read, especially for many modern Christians who do not experiencing the
privations, possible persecution, and powerlessness that many first century
Christians experienced. We prefer Matthew’s version that omits the woes and
spiritualizes references to the poor and to the hungry. We prefer a more
comfortable, domesticated, and defanged gospel.[4]
But Luke challenges us to sit with the discomfort.
One commentary suggests a scenario in which Luke’s gospel might
have been read.
Luke’s churches listened to this
sermon read aloud as the wealthy believers reclined in the dining room
(triclinium) of a Roman house and the poor sat out in the peristyle garden
(Osiek and Balch: chs. 1 and 8), the setting in which Luke places Jesus’ last
supper (22:14, 24–30). The sermon is specifically addressed to “disciples”
(6:20) divided by economic class.[5]
This demands that we ask of ourselves: Does this scenario in
any way have resonance with our own present-day circumstances? Do we sit in
comfortable spaces with plenty to eat while many others remain outside and
hungry?
Poor Doesn’t Just Mean Poor
We also need to better understand what the term poor
meant to Jesus and to Luke. What layers of meaning are encoded in this word?
Here I quote from Dr. Jennifer Garcia Bashaw’s book Scapegoats:
The Gospel Through the Eyes of Victims.
Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures,
the law and prophets defend “the poor” and show them to be of special concern
to God. The poor are not only economically disadvantaged but also victims of
the unjust structures of society… The concept involves the forces that act upon
people to further marginalize them. The poor are the powerless, the vulnerable,
the insignificant, the exploited, and the oppressed…
The law, the prophets, and the
Psalms make the claim the Yahweh takes the side of the poor and oppressed and
vindicates their rights against their rich and powerful oppressors. When Jesus
states that the Spirit anointed him to bring good news to the poor, we must
take his meaning in its context. The good news to the poor must at the very
least be about fighting the powers and systems that keep people poor.[6]
This is all in mind when Luke has Jesus saying, “Blessed are
the poor, the hungry, and the weeping.” In a world where the rich and powerful control
everything and they continue to amass more and more, there is nothing left for
the ninety-percent. For many, there is not even a crumb.
For Luke, the community of Jesus-followers is supposed to be
bringing the blessings declared by Jesus to the poor. We see this in Luke’s
second volume, known to us as the Acts of the Apostles, where he
describes the very first Christ-followers working together. Those with means
donated money and food so that the poor would experience the blessings that
Jesus taught.
Woes of Wealth
However, as the record of Acts reveals and with what
we read about in the Corinthian church, the cultural tradition and human nature
associated with wealth and privilege corrupted the equitable treatment of
people in the church. And that is perhaps one reason why unlike Matthew, Luke
is explicit and includes woes to pair with the blessings.
The wealthy would like everyone else to believe that the
availability of wealth is infinite, and therefore anyone could become wealthy
with enough hard work or luck. But this is a lie. Throughout history, the
wealthy became wealthy through exploitation of others.
For Luke who pairs the blessings and woes, he intends to
make his audience understand that,
As soon as the rich no longer
exploit the poor, the poor will experience comfort. The two fates are
interrelated; Jesus is calling out and convicting the oppressor so that the
suffering of the oppressed might end.[7]
For those who claim to follow the way of Jesus Christ, this
must be doubly true, otherwise we are not following Christ.
Hated for Being Generous Like Christ
But what about the last pair of blessings and woe? This is the
one where the blessing reads, “Happy are you when people hate you, reject you,
insult you, and condemn your name as evil because of the Human One?” And the corresponding
woe, “How terrible for you when all speak well of you?”
It is suggested that at least some of Luke’s audience did
take Jesus’ message to heart. Referring back to a commentary read earlier,
Patrons in the Lukan house churches
[invited] their poor brothers and sisters to dinner (14:12–14), which generated
ostracism from their wealthy, disapproving peers. This relates the fourth
beatitude directly to the first, since the disciples were acting and eating
according to Jesus’ teaching.[8]
Larycia Hawkins, a biblical scholar said in a podcast
interview I listened to,
… What does it mean to have a
perspective of the oppressed? And this is what I believe Jesus did. I believe
Jesus saw people—Jesus saw people created in God’s image. Jesus dared to be
touched and moved by them. He saw that they were harassed and helpless like
sheep without a shepherd…
How do you heal lepers if lepers
live in leper colonies? You go where the lepers are. So I think the impulse to
be at the center, centers of power as opposed to clamoring to be last, not
first, is anathema to embodied solidarity. So I think there’s something about
proximity to suffering that we need to relearn and reclaim. I think the desert
is, and the wilderness is, where a lot of us need to be to be rejuvenated, to
have our faith challenged. And we could also talk about that as the margins,
right? And so where are these marginal places?
And when we are in places of power,
are we willing to do risky things?[9]
A Challenge to Live Out the Gospel of Liberation
And I think that is the question we need to wrestle with at
this time in history. When so much of what passes for Christianity seems
enamored with power, privilege, and comfort, are we willing to risk our
reputations and our livelihoods to stand up for the true gospel of liberation
that Christ announced and lived out? Are we prepared to do more than just see
the poor and oppressed as subjects of theology and our charity? Are we ready to
speak out against the systems, institutions, policies, and governance that
create and perpetuate poverty? Are we willing to risk our own comfort and
security to actively work to dismantle systems of injustice and oppression,
wherever they occur?
A few chapters later in Luke, Jesus says to all who seek to
follow him, “All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up
their cross daily, and follow me. All who want to save their lives will lose
them. But all who lose their lives because of me will save them.” (Luke 9:23-24
CEB)
This week, I invite you to meditate on the discomfort of the
gospel of liberation and the cruciform life demanded by it.
In the name of God who lifts the poor,
In the name of God who comforts the oppressed,
And in the name of God who calls us to join with our
suffering siblings, Amen.
Works Cited
Bartlett, D. L., & Taylor, B. B. (2009). Feasting
on the Word: Year C, Volume 1 (Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary).
Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.
Dunn, J. D., & Rogerson, J. W. (2003). Eerdmans
Commentary on the Bible. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans
Publishing Co.
Garcia Bashaw, J. (2022). Scapegoats: The Gospel
Through the Eyes of Victims. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.
Jarvis, C. A., & Johnson, E. E. (2014). Feasting
on the Gospels: Luke, Volume 1, Chapter 1-11. Louisville, KY: Westminster
John Knox Press.
The Bible for Normal People. (2025, February 10). Episode
52: Larycia Hawkins – Embodied Solidarity. Retrieved from The Bible for
Normal People:
https://thebiblefornormalpeople.com/episode-52-larycia-hawkins-embodied-solidarity/
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
No comments:
Post a Comment