Christ the Teacher

17 He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. 18 They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. 19 And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.

Blessings and Woes

(Mt 5:1–12)

20 Then he looked up at his disciples and said:

“Blessed are you who are poor,

for yours is the kingdom of God.

21 “Blessed are you who are hungry now,

for you will be filled.

“Blessed are you who weep now,

for you will laugh.

22 “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. 23 Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.

24 “But woe to you who are rich,

for you have received your consolation.

25 “Woe to you who are full now,

for you will be hungry.

“Woe to you who are laughing now,

for you will mourn and weep.

26 “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.

We are aware of Jesus’ power as a healer. We are aware of Jesus’ power as a prophet. We are aware of Jesus’ power as a pastor, a caretaker, a leader. And, we are again reminded here of Jesus’ power as a teacher.

“The Taught Ones” - Isaiah prefiguring Jesus and his disciples (and us).

Note on source material — Matthew and Luke’s sermons are remarkably similar which leads scholars to agree that they come from a common source. Mark’s gospel was written first and it contains teachings that we would connect to the Sermons on the Plain (Luke) and the most familiar, Sermon on the Mount (Matthew), but does not have a collection of stated teachings that are laid out in an orderly fashion like we find here in Luke.

Scholars agree that Luke and Matthew draw from the gospel of Mark, but also from another source that helps bring all of these teachings into a cohesive collection that provides a distillation of Jesus’ teaching. Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount is about 4 times as long as Luke’s Sermon on the Plain, but they both share some additional teachings beyond Mark that point to another source. Scholars call this source Q, a text behind these texts that informs their structure and narrative.

Why is this important? Well as we approach Jesus’ teachings, especially challenging ones like we have today from Luke, we want to have a bit more understanding for why they vary from Gospel to Gospel. It can be tempting to dismiss or throw up our hands at how these texts don’t always align. But at the heart of Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Plain and the Sermon on the Mount, there is a clear overlap and congruence in their teaching about Christian ethics and the way of being that Christ calls us to.

We also have to remember that the authors of the Gospels each have different ways they want to direct their reader’s focus. Luke (and its companion text, Acts) is a book that directs its hearers to understanding the practical ways the early church discerned what it meant to be the community of Jesus after his ascension and with the spread of the good news throughout the Greco-Roman world. Matthew, on the other hand, emphasizes more of the Jewish background of the Jesus story. In some ways, it seems to make sense that we resonate differently with each gospel. For those of us familiar with Greek philosophers like Plato or Aristotle, we can find a text like Luke and Acts (as well as the writings of Paul) to be in line with Platonic thought, a familiar form that we can often take for granted as we read.

So, let’s approach this text, with this and our own contexts in mind.

I want to look at this text today by restructuring its order to show how the four couplets (binary teachings, opposites or complimentary lessons) inform each other and the overall meaning.

If you look at the text again, you’ll see that it begins with Jesus healing people’s illnesses and curing maladies such as the presence of evil spirits in their bodies. We hear that a multitude has come out to see Jesus. We are beyond the singular healings of Simon’s mother-in-law or the small group wonders of filling nets to overflowing. Jesus’ power and teaching is now on full display. Jesus has taught in the synagogues, taught at the seaside, and now, we get a distilled, focused teaching out on the “level place,” our prototypical view of Jesus teaching many people at once.

And this teaching connects with us all. No one is left out in these four blessings and four woes.

I’m going to go into each of the couplets, but before that, I want us to understand the nature of blessing and woe in the larger context of Scripture.

The greek word for blessed, here, is makarios. It is also translated as happy or fortunate. I find, at times, that the language of “blessed” can be problematic, like it sets up some sort of elite pedestal for those who receive the blessings to stand upon. In our culture, we have watered down the word, reducing it to a word we put on wooden signs over our doorway or used as a deflection from the realities of sorrow or struggle we feel. It is so much more than a hashtag we use on social media, and yet, in our vernacular, it can often find itself used in this simplistic way.

Instead, I feel drawn to the word “fortunate.” As I understand fortunate, it has a feeling gratitude even amidst struggle. I’m so fortunate to have a healthy family, for instance. In this, my understanding of the fortune I know is also in contrast to the struggle for health and stability that my family and your family and all of us face.

Do you hear this, as well, as we hear the blessings in this text? Blessed or fortunate are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. It has a sense of “even still, I praise the Lord.” This is why we hear the Apostle Paul teach about being thankful for suffering — it is a blessing because it makes us vulnerable and therefore all the more grateful for the relief we find in the healer, Jesus.

Woe, on the other hand, has a sense of forlornness and anticipation of trials to come. When we find ourselves boasting in our blessedness, that we are full or that we have laughter or that people speak well of us — the anticipation is that it is not always going to be this way. And therefore, we cannot rely on this stability or this standing in society to last. Our hope, as we will sing of at the end of our service, must be built on nothing but Jesus’ blood and righteousness.

Blessings, it could be said, are a reminder — a reminder of God’s goodness, a reminder of all that we can say “thank you” for. And woes (or in other parts of the scripture, curses), are cautionary. They are the reality check for us when we get to full of pride or forget that all we have and are belongs to the loving Creator. Woe to those who forget.

With this in mind, let’s turn to these couplets.

Couplets:

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. // But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.

The first pair speaks of contentment with what we have. I see in each of these couplets that there is a middle ground, a place where fortune and woe meet. Maybe we can think of this as the “goldilocks” zone, the just right. To be poor has all kinds of struggle, so we know we don’t want that for people. And to be rich is fraught with all kinds of possibility for apathy — we don’t want that for people. No matter where we find ourselves on this poor/rich continuum, this passage serves as a reminder to be grateful for what we have and to not lean too fully on riches or poverty as the one right way. God calls us to let go of all we have, whether it be little or plenty. We release our possessions, our privilege, our standing into God’s hands. We release our longing and our destitution to God, learning how to trust and be satisfied.

Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. // Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.

As well, the second pair, hunger and fullness, speak to a middle way of being satisfied with the enough-ness of what God provides. Practically speaking, in our culture, we often forget what it means to feel hunger. We fill ourselves — with food, with books to read, ideas to chew on. We struggle to know what to do with hunger and so we hide from it. But there will come a point when we have to embrace hunger. Hunger makes us aware of our reliance upon God.

Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. // Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.

The third pair is more related to our emotions and our feelings. I’ll admit, I have a really hard time crying. Not that I don’t ever feel sad or pain, it’s just that I struggle to physically manifest that pain in tears. And as I hear this teaching about weeping turning into laughter, I also wonder at how much I am able to truly laugh and experience that deep joy. To weep is to be reminded of the pain of life, while also knowing that we are held by the loving Creator. And woe to those of us who only can laugh and can never feel the depth of heartache that comes with mourning and weeping. This couplet feels like an invitation to feel the full breadth and depth of emotion — to know that God is with us in our weeping and our laughter, and so to hold both as markers of what it means to know the joy and sorrow of our world.

I find the last couplet to be the most difficult and overall, the most distorted and problematic teaching we find in this passage.

Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets // Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.

We have distorted this teaching to mean that we are supposed to be martyrs and to celebrate when people pick on Christians. Think about the many examples of self-righteousness that fall into this category. Think of those who cry persecution when we talk about mask mandates or public health concerns. Think of the inkling we feel to hide our faith because it is easier to just let our convictions fly low under the radar and avoid saying or doing the hard thing.

This teaching isn’t about patting ourselves on the back for being outcasts. Instead, we unlock what’s going on here by how Jesus talks about the prophets and false prophets of old.

Speaking up and standing for your faith will make people uncomfortable and alienate us. But we do not do so just for the sake of being strange or alienated. No, sometimes the prophetic word of God’s liberating love is going to cause some of us to be outsiders, to challenge the status quo, to push against powers of injustice and evil. So blessed be those who are hated when they speak for good. And woe to those of us who get a pat on the back each week when we stand up to say our piece. It is as I mentioned a couple of weeks back — the word of God is meant to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comforted.

We’re going to be on both sides of the equation at times. And we mustn’t seek it out for the sake of martyrdom, but rather we must stand for justice and the way of love even when it costs us something.

Blessing and Woe

I know there are so many of us here today who are feeling incredibly overwhelmed by life. The road we are walking is not easy. Maybe the weight comes from the isolation you feel during this extended pandemic. Maybe it has to do with mourning relationships that have been lost or family we are estranged from. Maybe it has to do with our ability to see so many good opportunities to help and make others’ lives better, but also paired with our inability to make a drop in the bucket of systemic racism, poverty, war, or other crises.

This text invites us to see Jesus meeting us where we are and inviting us to remember. Remember God’s goodness for us. And also, remember the need for caution — we mustn’t let ourselves think we have it all together (or think we can never be good enough). Blessed are you, wherever you are, for it is right there that Christ meets us.

Christ is a good teacher. Christ is showing us that we are each invited in to his loving way, no matter our standing. Christ is liberating us from the need to have it all figured out or ignoring our pain or dismissing those who are weaker or poorer than we think we are.

We are the ones who are being taught. May we listen and welcome the teaching that leads us home to the loving God of all.