And he lifted up his eyes on 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 shall be satisfied. "Blessed are you
who weep now, for you shall laugh. "Blessed are you
when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn
your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day,
and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so
their fathers did to the prophets. "But woe to you
who are rich, for you have received your consolation. "Woe to you who
are full now, for you shall be hungry. "Woe to you who
laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. "Woe to you, when
all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false
prophets.
At first glance these seem to be some of the craziest words Jesus ever
spoke, and when we're talking about Jesus that is a pretty extreme
thing to say, for Jesus said a lot of crazy stuff.
Think of some of the stories
Jesus told, ranging, as they did, from the mildly ridiculous to the
outstandingly incomprehensible, and to say that these words rank
amongst His craziest is a pretty strong claim, and yet how else do you
describe a series of pronouncements that begin with "Blessed are you poor",
for if there is one thing you can say about people who are poor it is
surely that they are persons who have not been blessed!
A rich guy says, "God has blessed me abundantly",
and perhaps that makes our flesh creep a little because we're not quite
sure whether he got rich because of God's blessing or because he
trampled upon the heads of his competitors, but we understand the basic
equation - that being successful and wealthy and secure and well-fed is
a state of blessedness, and, conversely, that having all those things
ripped away does not constitute a state of blessedness but sounds more
like the result of a curse!
"Blessed are you poor, blessed
are you hungry, blessed are you miserable and reviled!"
What does He mean? For surely there is nothing particularly
blessed about being poor or hungry or miserable or any of those things
… surely?
"Poverty is just a state of
mind" some people say, and of course the sort of people
who say that tend to be people who are not poor. It's a bit
like that wonderful woman Patsy on the TV show "Absolutely Fabulous".
Her daughter says to her
"you wouldn't know what to do if you ran out of money".
She says, "of course I
would darling. I'd go down to the bank and draw out some more!"
Poverty is not a state of mind. It is a state of vulnerability.
I've mentioned before my own
little eye-opening experience to the reality of poverty came many, many
years ago when I was involved in a poverty awareness project with TEAR
Australia. We built a little cardboard shack in the middle of Sydney
square and then slept in it for a week, in the middle of winter.
Somebody had said to me then, "poverty is a state of mind",
but that experience really brought home to me what poverty is all
about. I got a small taste of vulnerability to the elements
that night, trying to sleep in a cardboard shack on the pavement in the
middle of winter, and an even greater sense of what vulnerability was
about when a gang of young lads decided to kick the cardboard shack to
pieces at about 3am that morning (while me and the two girls were still
in it).
Poverty is a state of vulnerability. It's
not being able to adequately protect yourself or your family from the
cold of winter.
Poverty is going to court and
knowing that you're going to lose because you're black and because you
don't have a job and so you are dependant on the services of a
legal-aid lawyer who really doesn't care whether you go to gaol or not.
Poverty is losing your children
to DOCS because you just can't control your drinking or your using any
more because you just don't know how else to handle the stress because
you had to move away from all your friends and support persons because
you just couldn't afford the rent there any more.
Poverty is a state of
vulnerability - to the elements, to ill-health, to corrupt governmental
and legal systems, to people who want to hurt you. It's
vulnerability to our own addictions and weaknesses, and it is not a
blessed state of being.
So where does Jesus get off
telling us that the poor are blessed? Well … He says it, I
think, because alongside that statement that the poor are blessed is a
promise, that those who are poor are not going to be poor for much
longer!
Blessed are you who are poor, for the
kingdom of God is yours!
Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh
Things are about to change, says
Jesus, and the poor and the hungry aren't going to be poor and hungry
for much longer, and indeed He isn't just talking about change but is
taking the lead in initiating change!
You will remember last week that
we heard Jesus launch His ministry with a quote from Isaiah 61,
claiming that the "Spirit
of the Lord was upon him because he had anointed him to preach good
news to the poor", and concluded that quote with the
prophet's proclamation of the beginning of a Jubilee year.
The Jubilee Year was that bizarre
institution where the entire community went back to square one in terms
of financial equality and wealth distribution. The Jubilee trumpet
would sound and all of a sudden all debts would be forgiven, all those
imprisoned because they couldn't pay their debts would be released, and
all the land would be divided up equally again amongst the
families! It was Good
News for the Poor indeed, and this was how Jesus launched
His ministry - by blowing the Jubilee trumpet!
Of course the promise of the
social upheaval that Jesus was going to bring about had been spoken
about even before his birth. You will remember Jesus mother
singing: "He has shown
strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of
their hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and has
lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the
rich he has sent away empty." (Luke 1:51-53)
The coming of Jesus was always
going to be a time of massive social change - the beginning of a
process where everything would be turned upside-down. The
poor will be lifted up and the rich brought down, the first will be
last and the last will be first, the hungry will be fed and the
over-fed will have to learn to be satisfied with less. Why?
Because the Kingdom of God is coming, and it's a new age of equality
and sharing, where the poor are not going to be poor any more, and the
sick will be made well and those who struggle and who labour and are
heavy-laden will find rest.
This is the Gospel.
This is the promise of Jesus. This is the Kingdom of God that we are
welcoming into our midst - a new age of equality and love which is good
news to the poor and the suffering and the vulnerable and the weak,
even if it is not great news for everybody.
Those who have grown rich on the
misery of others lose out in the Kingdom of God. Those who
remain well-fed and at peace while their sisters and brothers suffer
around them find that the protective wall that has shielded them from
the adversities of life is suddenly removed. Those who
carefully watch everything they have to say and make sure they act in a
way that is politically correct at all times so that they don't offend
anybody and so maintain their position of popularity and keep their
celebrity status in the glossy magazines find that their times of high
living have come to and end. "Woe
to you when all speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the
false prophets"
Of course this
mention of the false prophets reminds us that this division between the
rich and the poor, the hungry and the well-fed, the miserable and
happy, etc. is not a distinction made solely upon economic
grounds. There is a significant spiritual dimension on view
here too, and the poor that Jesus is focusing on here - the poor who
will one day be blessed - are most especially Jesus' own poor disciples!
I'm not suggesting that the only
poor people Jesus intends to bless are His disciples but I do think
that it is clear in the passage that all the disciples Jesus is
addressing are considered to be amongst the poor who are to be blessed.
Indeed, the passage begins, "And Jesus lifted up His eyes on
His disciples and said 'Blessed are you poor …'"
And so while the disciples might not have been the only poor people
there, all the disciples were poor people, and in fact they were poor
because they were disciples.
That is made plain in the verses
immediately preceding Jesus' speech here, as we're told that these
disciples had all just left their boats and hence their jobs to join
Jesus' Apostolic band! They were all therefore without jobs
and homes! They had chosen to be vulnerable and poor for the
sake of Jesus, rather than maintain their earthly securities, and the
implication of course is that this is the same choice that is laid
before all of us - to maintain our secure lifestyles or to follow Jesus
on the path of poverty and vulnerability.
"Blessed are you poor",
says Jesus, and that is a word of hope for those of us who have opted
to join Jesus on the road-less-travelled, and yet it is also a sobering
reminder of the fact that choosing to follow Jesus does mean choosing
poverty over wealth, vulnerability over security, pain over comfort,
and integrity over an immaculate reputation.
Martin Luther used to speak about
how the Cathedrals in his day were arrayed with statues and paintings
designed to educate the illiterate in the truths of the
Gospel. As you walked into the church, Luther said, you would
see wonderful statues of the saints at rest lining one side of the
church - expressions of peace and satisfaction on their faces. On the
other side of the church you would see paintings of sinners struggling
with devils and demons that were attempting to drag them off to
hell! Luther thought these images were terrific, except that
they were all the wrong way around. It's only the devil's
own, he believed, that are truly at peace in this world. The
rest of us are struggling and fighting and barely managing to hold
ourselves together!
I think Luther was right, and I
do think that this myth is still regularly perpetuated - that the mark
of the faithful believer is that he or she has been blessed with
wealth, a happy family, an abundance of possessions and a
better-than-average sex life - whereas the truth, I think, is more
regularly the opposite - that the faithful follower of Christ is never
truly at peace in this world, can never happily hoard his money while
so many of his sisters and brothers are starving, weeps over the
weaknesses he sees in himself, as he does over those he sees in his
sisters and brothers around the world that are the cause of so much
pain, violence and injustice.
It is not our vocation to be at
peace in this world - to be blithely happy, contented, without worry or
pain. Even so …
"Blessed are you poor, for yours
is the kingdom of God. "Blessed are you
who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. "Blessed are you
who weep now, for you shall laugh. "Blessed are you
when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn
your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man!
