In the sermon on the plain, Jesus offers a teaching that feels opposite to our expectations – to see what we’re missing.
For Sunday
The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany
Collect
O God, the strength of all who put their trust in you: Mercifully accept our prayers; and because in our weakness we can do nothing good without you, give us the help of your grace, that in keeping your commandments we may please you both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
Reading
From Luke 6:17-26
“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.”
Reflection
Blessed are you who are poor. Or hungry. Or weeping. Blessed are you when you are hated.
These don’t seem like blessings. I’m just going to come right out and say that.
And woe to you who are rich, full, laughing, or spoken well of.
These are not the words we expect or want from Jesus.
At the heart of it is that we expect Jesus to be generous and caring. And I don’t feel cared for when someone hates me. In fact, I feel the opposite. And I also suspect that Jesus know this, too.
And yet, at the same time, too many Christians have bought into a backwards logic that justifies hate because Jesus is calling it a blessing. So they can “bless” someone with hate. Which is only true if Jesus only ever said stuff like this.
This is why it is shocking and unsettling. Not only because we want Jesus to say different things, but because this doesn’t fit neatly with what we do know and what else he has said. But this assessment is only true if we see this as a set of rules to follow rather than a description of a society that has its priorities scrambled.
In a world in which greedy billionaires looking to colonize Mars are celebrated and generous working-class people are despised, having people speak well of you isn’t such a good thing to Jesus.
I suspect that many of us turn to Jesus for answers to our questions. And much like the people who ask him questions in scripture, we get new questions in response.
So as much as I might want to ask about the love in a passage like this, I find that I get something else. I get Jesus asking why I’d be looking to receive love rather than give it? Or why would I expect love to come in the form of flattery?
Jesus confronts our assumptions. First, assumptions about blessing. Then about suffering. About divine action and human action. And ultimately, about what it means to be loved in relationship with how we love.