Taking Hold of Life that is Really Life (Luke 6:17-26; 1 Tim. 6:17-19)

  Last week’s Lectionary text from the Gospel of Luke was the call of the first disciples in 5:1-11. From 5:12 through 6:16 Luke gathers together several controversy and call stories. The story that immediately precedes the Lectionary text of Luke 6:17-27 (Sixth Sunday after Epiphany) is the story of Jesus designating twelve of his disciples as apostles. Beginning at 6:20 and extending through 6:49 is a section of teaching that is somewhat parallel to Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. Luke omits several teachings that are in Matthew, though some of these teachings show up in Luke in different settings in abbreviated form. Luke inserts some unique material and in a few places the material appears in a different sequence than Matthew’s version.

Luke 6:17-19 sets the context for the teaching that follows. In Matthew Jesus delivers this teaching on a mountain; in Luke Jesus teaches on a level place. The audience according to Luke includes the twelve apostles, a large crowd of disciples, and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coast of Tyre and Sidon. A good number of these folks sought out Jesus to heal them of their diseases and free them from their bondage to evil spirits. All of these folks who came together to hear the teaching of Jesus reflect various levels of interest and commitment. Luke says in v. 20, “Then Jesus looked up at his disciples.” This teaching is meant for everyone, but it is particularly intended for his disciples.

 “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 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.

 “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 what their ancestors did to the false prophets” (Luke 6:22-26).

As in Matthew, Jesus does not begin with admonitions or exhortations, but blessings. The first three blessings are not based on the merit of the recipient nor given as a reward for living a particular kind of life. The last blessing, which actually uses the word “reward” infers a life of faithful service for God’s kingdom lived in the midst of vitriol and persecution unleashed on the faithful servant. This last blessing is the only one based on faithfulness to Jesus and the kingdom he embodied and proclaimed (“on account of the Son of Man”); the other three are simply pronouncements on the poor, the hungry, and the sorrowful. They are not rewards for good deeds. The blessings simply pronounce or declare what is. The first blessing is described in the present tense, the next three are set in a future context. 

Unlike Matthew, Luke has four corresponding woes upon the rich, the well-fed, those who laugh (perhaps the intent here is those who laugh at the poor and defeated), and those who are well-spoken-of. In each case, the woe consists in the reversal of their condition or state of existence: The rich have already received their consolation, the well-fed will one day know hunger, those who laugh will one day weep, and to be spoken well of has no merit because this is what the people did to the false prophets. 

So what does this mean? What are the implications of this teaching? Let me start by suggesting what it doesn’t mean. I don’t think Jesus is saying that we all have to divest ourselves of all our material goods to know God and be faithful to God. We could do that and still be anxious, fearful, resentful, vengeful, bitter persons. We can give away everything, and if we are bitter about it, we end up being worse off spiritually after we do it than before. 

Also a person who is materially poor is not immune to the temptations and distractions a person of wealth struggles with. If one is so poor that one has to spend all one’s time trying to “survive” one doesn’t have much of an occasion or perhaps interest in developing a spiritual life. If you have hungry children, your only concern is getting them food. Though, such a situation could drive one to trust completely in God, since God is all one has. Still, one might be bitter at God rather than dependent upon God. 

But having said that, let’s be clear. Luke does not spiritualize these blessings the way Matthew does. Matthew turns the “poor” into “poor in spirit,” and the “hungry” in Luke become in Matthew those who “hunger and thirst after righteousness.” Luke is talking about definite socioeconomic conditions. The “poor” in Luke are the materially impoverished. Here in Luke Jesus is not idealizing or glorifying poverty, but let’s make no mistake, Jesus has a partisan commitment to the poor. God favors the poor. Is Jesus showing partiality toward the poor? Indeed, he is. Poverty is the result of inequity and injustice in the world, and God always takes the side of the oppressed. Jesus, himself, has a special concern and compassion for the poor in Palestine. Jesus’ primary mission and ministry was to the poor. Jesus did not minister in a major city. The two largest cities of Galilee were Sepphoris and Tiberias, and as far as we know Jesus never set foot in either. He went to small villages, towns, and the rural countryside ministering among the peasant class. 

In his woes upon the rich Jesus is not saying that a rich person cannot be rich in God. While Jesus did indeed instruct a few people to divest themselves of their material goods and follow him, Jesus didn’t tell everyone to do that. Luke points out that some women disciples whose families had wealth supported Jesus and his mission “out of their resources” (see Luke 8:1-3). The writer of First Timothy has some interesting advice for the rich. The writer is instructing church leaders, “As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.” (6:17-19). 

One can be rich in material goods and rich toward God; however, it is not easy to do. Jesus warns in other places in this Gospel that to be wealthy brings temptations, attachments, and struggles that make it difficult to live in the kingdom of God and lay hold of life that is truly life. After a certain ruler rich in material goods walked away from Jesus’ invitation to give all he had away and follow him, Jesus said to his disciples, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (18:24-25). Now, it’s not impossible. When the disciples expressed their exasperation, Jesus went on to say, “What seems impossible for mortals, is possible with God.” But, make no mistake, it’s hard. Why? Because the more we have the more we are attached to, which makes it all the more difficult to do what Jesus asks us to do, “Seek first the kingdom of God, and God’s righteousness or justice (Matt 6:33a).” It’s the world’s kind of justice that creates poverty. It’s God’s kind of justice that eliminates it.

It’s hard for those who have wealth to realize that wealth puts them at a disadvantage when it comes to the kingdom of God. It’s hard for all of us to see, because the world operates on a different principle. Money talks. Money gains advantages. Money makes possible the best education, the best health care, the best comforts. You see, it’s not just the money, it’s what having money brings – more comforts yes, but also more power, more control, more clout, more prestige, and with all these attachments, the more difficult it is to lay hold of life that is really life. This is why Paul said to the Corinthians who were getting their priorities all turned around, “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters, not many of you were wise by human standards, not many of you were powerful, not many of you were of nobility (1 Cor 1:26).” Now, he didn’t say, “Not any of you.” It’s not impossible, but he did say, “Not many of you.” The more we have, the more difficult it is to live in the kingdom of God. So when it comes to living in the kingdom of God, the poor definitely have an advantage. 

There was a man who feared his own footprints. So, instead of walking, he took to running, which only increased the number of footprints he made. What he needed to do, of course, was stop. Continuing to do more of that which creates fear and , anxiety is self-defeating. When Jesus says things like, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God,” and “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation,” he is trying to get his hearers to stop and reflect on the possibility that the values and norms they were conditioned to accept and conform to could be doing them more harm than good. 

Many of the teachings of Jesus are hard for us hear because they are the direct opposite of what is considered normal in the world. You see, the kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed turns the values, priorities, and conventional wisdom of the world on its head. Jesus takes what is common and normal and flips it upside down. 

When it comes to the poor and those beaten down by life in general or the powers that be in particular Jesus wants them know that the world’s judgment and disregard is not God’s judgment and assessment of their lives. Jesus in essence is saying, “You are not disparaged or forgotten by God; quite the contrary, you are blessed. To you belongs the kingdom of God.” 

The poor don’t know how blessed by God they are and the rich don’t know how spiritually poor they are, because the world has it upside down. So while it seems like Jesus is turning the world upside down, what he is really doing is turning it right side up. Jesus wants to lift the poor out of their feelings of worthlessness, and he wants to knock the rich off their perch of feeling privileged. 

I heard about a woman who liked to tell the story about a talk she gave to a group of women. She drew stick figures on the board that represented various styles of relationship. One pair of figures was grossly mismatched. The first one towered above the second and glared down at it. Although it was a simple drawing, it expressed the whole world that many people knew too well. After the talk a woman who did not speak English came and pounded on the board, hitting the lower figure with her fist and shouting, “Me! Me! Me!” 

One day she was in a small group where she told that story. One of the members of the group said, “Well and good. But what if she gets out of the relationship? Where will she go? What will she do?” This lady who told the story at first tensed up as if she was going to attack the one who asked the question, but then she paused, slid back in her chair, and waited a few moments before she spoke. She said, “Wherever there is unjust suffering, you stop it. Sure, you might not know what is next. So what. You know what shouldn’t be and what won’t last in the long run. It doesn’t make any difference whether you are on the bottom or top of the relationship. It is oppressive and it is wrong. There is a better life. Reach for it. And don’t count the cost.” (Adapted from John Shea, “The Relentless Widow,” pp 45-46). This woman, like Jesus, was committed to exposing false forms, counterfeit expressions and impersonations of life that is really life. This is what Jesus is doing here. 

We are programmed to be biased and to see things a certain way, and we come to these biases quite naturally. The biases of our parents, our religious teachers, our peers, our social groups, etc., all condition us to view life a particular way. The problem, however, is that more often than naught our way of seeing is pervaded by counterfeit impersonations of what true life really is. Jesus wanted to knock people off their false foundations. Every view point is a view from a point – the point where we stand. Jesus wanted to give people a new place to stand in order that they might see God and the world, and their place in it in a different way. In order to lay hold of life that is really life we have to know what true life is. Therefore, the false impersonations and counterfeit expressions of life must be exposed. Deconstruction always precedes reconstruction. As Richard Rohr likes to say, “the movement is from order to disorder to reorder.”   

Jesus is trying to get people to see that what they think is life may not be life at all. Jesus is saying, “You think the wealthy and well-fed and those who laugh at the defeated and those who have position and clout are blessed. You are wrong. It’s the poor and hungry and sorrowful and grieved and hated and rejected who are blessed.” 

In the kingdom of God we learn best through failure not success, we learn far more through suffering than through pleasure. Robert Browning Hamilton says it well, “I walked a mile with Pleasure; / She chatted all the way; But left me none the wiser / for all she had to say. // I walked  a mile with Sorrow, / And ne’er a word said she; / But oh! The things I learned from her, / When sorrow walked with me.” We may need to see just how “poor,” how destitute of life we are before we will ever reach out for and lay hold of the life that is really life. 

So what Jesus is doing in these “blessings” and “woes” is unmasking the counterfeits. Jesus is exposing the false impersonations of what is truly life, so that we might reach out and lay hold of true life. Jesus announces and teaches the kingdom of God, which is really a way of life. A way of life that is very different than the way of life normalized in the kingdoms of the world. The disciples, like all of us, had a hard time getting it. They are caught by Jesus more than once arguing over who should wield the most power and occupy the highest place in the kingdom of God. Jesus tries to tell them, just as the Christ keeps trying to tell us, whispering to us in our true deepest self, our true self that true life is not about ruling and controlling and possessing money and power. Jesus told the disciples that the Son of Man did not come to be served, to rule, to wield power, but rather to serve, to give his life for God’s cause, for God’s will and purpose, and for the redemption, the healing and liberation of many. The Son of Man is a model for us all. Jesus embodied the life that is really life. As the writer of First Timothy says, “it’s about doing good, being rich in good works (serving others), being generous, and always ready to share.” Such are the expressions and manifestations of life that is really life.