In the blessings and woes, Jesus challenges us to see things in a different way: to write a different ending to the story.
Epiphany 6C | Luke 6:17-26
Power.
We certainly associate power with Jesus. Obviously he has to have some juice to be able to heal people.
At the beginning of chapter 6, Jesus is healing a man’s withered hand in a synagogue. He’s making miracles and healing all comers.
But what do you imagine is happening? How does this work in your head?
We often talk about Jesus in gentle terms. He is a healer after all. So we associate him with nurses with good bedside manner. Or to the parable of the Good Samaritan, where a stranger carries a mugging victim into town and pays for his care.
Jesus is a Savior after all. He heals and he saves.
This also brings to mind a different kind of saving. Not the humble heroic kind, but the super heroic kind. A saving Jesus that swoops down, battles the bad guys, and saves the day for us. It is an image as relevant and tempting as the other.
The power we see from Jesus here is not to battle it out with villains. But it is electric. And tangible. And just as miraculous.
People are crowding around him to be healed.
So they’re hounding him to get a jolt. To pop! back into normal.
This is what we do with healing, isn’t it? Our desire to be changed back into something we were? The ailment of the moment, whether it be a cold or COVID, arthritis or disability, cancer or dementia, we desire relief from this—because we’re human. Of course we do. But we center relief as return.
I’m certainly not saying this is bad. Just that our vision of healing is so narrow. Because becoming changed can often feel like something we need saving from. Rather than something we adapt to.
So when we read about the crowds wanting to get near to Jesus, we can readily sympathize. This could be me. Or someone I love. Who wouldn’t risk it? Like playing the lottery: you can’t win if you don’t play…
But looking at the scene, of reaching and grabbing and bodies transforming—this is straight out of a sci-fi flick. Or maybe some charismatic church where the pastor slaps people and karate chops the swarms as they come forward to be healed—like a faith-based martial arts movie.
It is gonzo and shocking. Both.
Then he preaches. And everything changes.
These disciples who have seen this whole spectacle (of the masses coming to Jesus for healing, grabbing hold of him, and being healed) are told what exactly?
“Blessed are you who are poor”. Hungry. Weeping now. Hated. Blessed are you in that. Because the people hated the prophets.
“But woe to you who are rich”. Full now. Laughing now. Or when people speak well of you. Because people loved the false prophets.
He’s saying this as countless people who were sick are now healed. And no doubt are rejoicing now.
“Woe to you who are laughing now,” he says.
What a strange commentary Jesus is making given the moment. The moment he is cultivating. Or, more precisely, that God is cultivating and he is the vehicle for it. But you get it.
Right when all these people are no longer weeping, he declares they are also no longer blessed? That’s a strange response.
Perhaps Jesus sees it differently.
I suspect this juxtaposition is not exactly the point. But it is certainly poignant.
It feels off when we make assumptions about the sick, the poor, the hungry, the sad, and the hated. When we see one another as problems that need to be fixed, it is hard not to rejoice in the “fixing”.
Or if we are so literal as to assume that Jesus wants us to be sad, we’re bound to get a very wrong impression of his words now.
So what if we see it all another way?
In a world in which billionaires take rockets into space and make plans to conquer Mars, while capitalizing on deadly pandemics and the people speak well of them…
And yet, in that same world, millions are without homes or healthcare, work or vocation, family or friends and they are hated…
And Jesus calls this wrong …
And we hate people when they point this out publicly…
We can begin to see that Jesus isn’t getting mad at the people for being healed. But he’s probably frustrated by how many need him because nobody else is on the job!
It reminds me of the story told a thousand times in a thousand different ways:
Imagine a group of employees gathered at Fairbanks Park for a work retreat. They’re walking along the banks of the Wabash and someone hears someone in the river shouting like they need help. It’s winter, the water’s freezing, but a couple people jump in and save the person from drowning. Some others run to their cars to get blankets from the trunk to dry them off and warm them up.
A few minutes later, they hear someone else shouting from the river. So they go back in and fish them out and try to warm them up. Then another. And another.
At what point do you send the search party up the river to figure out who is throwing people in the river?
Jesus doesn’t just heal the people in our story from Luke. He’s sending his disciples up the river. Because there are people who are feeling really good right now because their livelihood amounts to throwing people in a freezing river.
This is a Both/And kind of story.
All these people come to Jesus to be healed because he’s been healing people. So clearly he doesn’t hate them. Or condemn them. But he has also just moments ago named twelve of his disciples apostles. He has given them work to do in the world. And after healing all these people in a display of incredible power, he preaches.
This.
Blessed are you, for God’s kin-dom is yours.
And let shame befall the owners of this kingdom of greed.
And we are inheritors of both kingdoms.
Our ancestors gave us the kin-dom of blessing, with love for the poor, the hungry, the sad, and the hated.
And they gave us the kingdom of woe with love for the rich, well-fed, the happy, and the popular.
They have left us powerful treasures and incredible poverty. And we are likely to do the same for the next generation. But we aren’t destined to!
We are named disciples, apostles, and saints. To serve a God of blessing as a blessing to bless this community. Not with poverty, but in its poverty. And in our poverty.
Because the power Jesus wields isn’t power to control or torment or accumulate or manipulate. It is power to heal and empower others. And this is the power Jesus shares with us.
So where there is poverty, we can ensure the kin-dom is present.
Where there are hungry, we can fill them.
Where there is weeping, we can bring laughter.
And when people hate us for intervening, for breaking the systems of exploitation because Jesus wants us to…we know we’re on the right track. Because the powers that be in the Kingdom of Woe hate it when we name what Jesus wants.
Because they’re scared. They don’t want us to help Jesus heal the world. And this could be the generation that finally does it.