Luke’s Joys and Woes
Sixth Sunday Scripture Readings
The Beatitudes have gone out of favor these days if you haven’t heard. Pastors report that congregants are criticizing their sermons on the Beatitudes for being “weak” and “too liberal.” They would be even more upset were they to be aware that Luke’s version that we read today is even harsher than the more familiar version from Matthew [5:3-11], even though he only quotes half of Matthew’s list. Still, even though we’ve seen the evangelists playing hard and fast with the details of Jesus’s life and teachings, these Beatitudes come almost as close as we can get to Jesus’s actual thoughts, if not his very words. In short, if you’re a follower of Jesus, the Christ, it would serve you well to pay close attention to the Beatitudes.
Although, in this gospel passage, Jesus is addressing the Twelve and his disciples, and the people in the crowd are merely bystanders, Luke’s focus is definitely on Jesus’s followers in our time as well as his. It’s likely that Luke was watching as the Christian Church of his day began to devolve from a close-knit family of believers—a band of sisters and brothers in the faith—to an organization. The changes Luke made to Matthew’s list of Beatitudes make Jesus’s message more pointed and the consequences of ignoring them more dire.
And, almost unnoticed, Luke changes the focus of the Beatitudes. Matthew’s version starts out each Beatitude with “Blessed are those….” That sounds rather impersonal and even theoretical. Luke makes it personal and practical, almost a certainty: “Blessed are you….” It snaps us back from saying “I wonder whom he’s talking about,” to “Oh, my God…he’s talking about me.”
Luke lists four “Beatitudes.” They get their name from the term “blessed” (beatus in Latin) which is the translation of the Greek word, μακαριος (makarios). This is not the same word the Greek Scriptures use to translate the condition of being blessed by God. Rather, it means “happy” in the sense of fortunate or joyful. Someone who is μακαριος (makarios) has things going well for them. It refers to one’s condition in the here and now, as well as into the hereafter. Ironically, Jesus calls you who are poor hungry, sorrowful, and despised μακαριος (makarios). Those he mentions may be struggling, but are, in an existential sense, free. Think of the song, “Me and Bobby McGee,” where “freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.” In that sense, they’re carefree.
Now, for each Beatitude—for each recognition of how fortunate you are—Luke lists a corresponding but opposite condition for those in the other set: you who are rich, you who are full, you who have everything, and you who are admired. To each of them, he imputes a woe or misfortune. For the rich, Luke uses a very specific Greek word that is particularly meaningful. He says to them, “…you have had your παρακλησις (paraklēsis). This refers to the obligation one is left with when someone has responded to their cry for help. In effect, it’s a moral or spiritual debt. It’s what they mean when they say, “Now, there’s the piper to pay.” Jesus reminds the rich and the others that their bounty has put them into debt and the bill is now coming due.
These are the two sides of Luke’s Beatitudes coin. On the one side, though when we’re struggling, we tend to focus on what’s lacking, yet, regardless of our condition, we’re never absolutely devoid of life and goodness. “Where there’s life, there’s hope,” they say. In fact our dissatisfaction is driven by envy and greed. Regardless of who we are, we can always find someone who has something we want and desire. No human alive is without wants and needs. Still, Jesus says to us that we are happy, even though we may not be aware of it. God’s kingdom, God’s reign, God’s power is ours. If we look, we’ll see that we have everything we need, though not necessarily everything we want. Though we feel loss, we’ll come to understand that we’ve lost nothing that sustains us. When people ridicule us because we’re living in these “weak” and “overly-liberal” Beatitudes, we can rejoice because we recognize we have a connection to God that others lack.
Furthermore, says Luke, we shouldn’t envy those who have the wealth, the power, the prestige, and the glamor that we don’t. That’s the other side of the Beatitudes coin. Remember that they’ve gone deeply into debt to get the things they flaunt. They’ve mortgaged what really matters to obtain what’s superficial and transitory. They pay constantly the interest on that mortgage, and, someday, sooner or later, the principal will come due. And here’s the kicker: despite their having whatever it is we think we need to make us happy but lack, they’re even less satisfied than we. Jesus reminds us that we’re already happy. When all is said and done, we’re free with the freedom of the children of God.
They, on the other hand, so long as they look to their wealth, power, and prestige to sustain them, will never be free. Unless they have a metanoia—that change of mind and heart—they will continue to be debtors, owing God and humankind for their poor stewardship of the resources they’ve amassed at the expense of others. Perhaps then they’ll see that they owe a debt of gratitude because they failed to recognize that everything they are and everything they have are gifts. They perhaps will understand that they owe a debt of restitution for how they abused and took advantage of those gifts and to the God and the people who gave them. They perhaps will one day come to see the uselessness and valuelessness of the things they treasured and will come to hunger and thirst for the things they lacked—the very things that the poor, the hungry, the sorrowful, and the despised have in abundance—the things that really matter.
So, don’t think that the Beatitudes and the woes are all relegated to heaven in the great bye-and-bye. God doesn’t deal with “before” and “after,” “now” and “later.” For God, as for us, the Beatitudes are for now. Oh…and by the way…so are the woes.
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