[Jesus] came down with [the twelve] 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. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases, and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And everyone in the crowd was trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them. Then he looked up at his disciples and said:
“Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
“Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.
“Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
“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 on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.
“But woe to you who are rich,
for you have received your consolation.
“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.
“Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.”
Look, I have to admit I am having feelings about my first few weeks with you being all of these readings that are very social justice oriented, very give up what you have an follow me – but it’s the lectionary, it’s not me. We are building up to Lent and that’s really important to keep in mind. In the cycle of the liturgical year, we are walking towards a time of confronting the ways we separate ourselves from God, one another and creation and turning towards God. These readings, while difficult, are meant to assist us in this process of pre-Lenten examination and discernment. So, don’t blame me, but stick with me here.
Jesus words on the poor and oppressed have called and empowered those living on the margins since the day he spoke them. These words are so threatening that the powerful have long sought to ignore them, water them down, or twist them for their own gain. These words are so threatening to the order of things that those who have embraced them have found themselves on the other end of an assassins bullet.
During the Great Depression, voices of Christian leaders began to rise loudly advocating for the poor and outcast. Leaning on the call of the Prophets and Jesus Christ to care for the poor, these leaders began calling for government intervention to alleviate the poverty so many Americans had been thrown into. Many threw their support behind president Franklin Roosevelt and the programs of his New Deal. This deeply frightened the wealthy and powerful corporations in the United States. They were scrambling to figure out a way to stop the New Deal in its tracks. They knew they needed a Christian angle to their opposition, and they eventually found one through James Fifield.
A minister who took scripture loosely but was strict with the US Constitution, Fifield began an organization called Spiritual Mobilization to gather ministers to “defend freedom” (sound familiar?). With the support of wealthy industrialists from companies such as Republic Steel, General Motors, Sun Oil, and Firestone, along with prominent conservative thinkers and politicians, by 1947 Spiritual Mobilization had a budget of $170,000 ($2.4million in 2025). Jesus command to love the poor was so threatening to the wealthy, they spent millions upon millions of dollars to not only defeat policies that would harm corporate interests, but to change the very heart of Christian belief – that God calls us to care for the poor.
In the 1970’s and 80’s in Latin America, during a time of increasing government oppression and genocide, small communities, led by lay leaders in the Catholic church, began to gather to read scripture together. The people gathering were frequently rural and poor, living in areas and conditions that could not support a full time priest. These groups, called Base Ecclesial Communities, saw themselves in readings like the words re read from Luke today. They were able to see a Jesus that had similar experiences to them and hear of a God who cared for them. These ways of reading scripture not only gave the poor, oppressed and outcast reason to hope, they gave people reason to organize and to fight back against the forces of death that surrounded them.
This theology trickled upwards, to priests, nuns and theolgians, and held such power and influence they were written into Vatican 2. An entire branch of theology – liberation theology – was born. The way this theology, rooted in Jesus love for the poor, galvinized the poor and pooressed was such a threat to the regimes in El Salvado, Venezuela, Guatemala, Columbia and other places around Latin America, it led to the assasinatoin of dozens of leaders, including, Bishop Oscar Romero, Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford, Ursuline Dorothy Kazel, and lay missionary Jean Donovan, 14 priests in Guatemala, as well as massacres of entire towns. All to repress the fact that Jesus empowered the poor and the action that came out of the hope this idea nurtured.
This week’s gospel reading continues Luke’s theme of a great reversal. While these words are familiar – there is a similar section in Matthew we know as the Beatitudes – there is a marked difference here. There are reasons we are far more familiar with Matthew’s version of these sayings than we are with Luke. Where Matthew spiritualizes the blessings, “blessed are the poor in spirit,” Luke’s account of these sayings has Jesus speaking directly to the material reality of those around him. Matthew’s blessings allow for a universalizing of the blessings – we have all felt poor in spirit, we have all hungered for justice, etc. Luke’s writings are specific.
“Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
“Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.
“Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
“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 on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.
This version of the blessings are consistent with Luke’s theme of a great reversal - poverty into riches, hunger into fullness, sorrow into laughter, exclusion into inclusion. This is consistent with Jesus’ reading of Isaiah in the synagogue – free the imprisoned, give sight to the blind. Where these blessings diverge from Matthew is the woe’s. Here, in Luke, Jesus is giving hope to those who have been left out of the comfort and rewards of this world and giving warning to those who have received the riches. Matthew’s telling of these teachings of Jesus is far more comfortable because it is less specific, less material, because these words as recorded in Matthew are more broad and, well, inclusive. We can all see ourselves in them. On the other hand, the specificity of Luke’s blessings leaves out people – people who are *not* accustomed to being left out.
The woe’s -
"woe to you who are rich,
for you have received your consolation.
“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.
“Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.”
As with Jesus’ reading in the temple. These blessings are now and not yet – Jesus has declared he has come to make these things happen, that he has already begun the work. Later in Luke’s telling of this story, Jesus will say, “The kingdom of God is among you.” The kingdom of God is not a far off place – or at least not just a far off place – it is being with Jesus, in Jesus’ presence. Jesus is not promising the poor a place in heaven, he is saying he is with them, and all the peace and healing and hope that comes with that. His work to get communities to share their food and clothing and to care for one another will bring full bellies and laughter and also derision. Jesus came into the world to bring about a great reversal that began with his inbreaking into the world and continued, through the power of the holy spirit, through his disciples and those who follow him to this day.
This is revolutionary living.
This way of being in this world threatens the status quo.
It frightens the powers that be.
To follow Jesus is to want what Jesus wants, to live how Jesus asks us to live, to prioritize what Jesus asks us to prioritize. As we approach Lent, our time of fasting from those things that get in the way of our relationship with God, those things we prioritize over God, a time when we examine the ways in which we are sinning so that we might turn from them, we are being given the opportunity to begin to think about the ways in which these woes might be for us. Are we ready to be a revolution?
