Sermon February 23 2025 Luke 6:17-26 Plain Speaking          Rev. Betsy Hogan

So, I don't know about you – but I've spent pretty much this whole week feeling a bit kneedeep in ramped-up rhetoric.

Just unnuanced, no shades of grey, clearly provocative on purpose, and obviously NOT about anything constructive or helpful like 'seeking common ground' or 'building bridges of understanding' –

Just ramped-up rhetoric. Uncompromising and deliberate and in many ways kind of shocking.

I'm speaking, of course, about the gospel reading that we just heard, from Luke's gospel. Which the lectionary cycle of Sunday readings that most mainline churches follow has made me have to spend this whole past week thinking about.

In all its uncompromising and “divisive” rhetorical glory.

Jesus and the disciples had gone up into a mountainous area overnight to pray and rest and ready themselves for the next day, and then down they come to a level place below so that he can teach and heal the enormous crowds of people that have come from all over the place to see him –

And then he quiets the crowd on this level place... and he pretty much lets it rip.

Not just "blessed are you who are poor" and "blessed are you who are hungry for you will be filled", but also "WOE to you who are rich" and "WOE to you who are full now" and "WOE to you who are all doing great" because WHOA – what’s valued by this world is really not valuable.

And he means it. These are not the softened spiritualized “blessings” of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, as it appears in the Gospel of Matthew. This isn’t “blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness”. 

This is blessed are the POOR. This is blessed are those who are HUNGRY. This is, in Luke’s gospel, not a Sermon on a Mount but a Sermon on a Plain. On a level place. And it is VERY much a leveling sermon. Not spiritualized in the least, but fully ‘of the earth, earthy’. Entirely grounded in his listeners’ WIDELY varied experience of life, in the social and economic and political system in which they live. And by which they’re bound.

And it's tempting, because it's more restful, to sort of frame these deeply “divisive” words in how we try to process them as words that are meant to be provocative and challenging, of course, but in a way that's encouraging.

And not without reason! We have in the various gospels the stories of Nicodemus, for example, and Zacchaeus, and even Matthew the Tax Collector who becomes a disciple – Who all three of them, because of hearing rhetoric like this, teachings like this, from Jesus have responded by feeling called out and challenged by them. But also encouraged. To change.

To CHANGE where they put their trust, to CHANGE from hoarding their wealth or getting it by exploiting others. All three of them – they've heard "woe to you who are rich" and "woe to you if you've more than enough" but HOW they've heard it is as an invitation into a corrective. Into a repentance and onto a new path. 

Think of Zacchaeus, who says to Jesus, "All my ill-gotten gains I've given back, all the wealth I've hoarded I've offered back fourfold, and look -- half of what I have I've given to the poor". And Nicodemus, Matthew, Joseph of Arimathea, the gospels are FULL of stories of those who are affluent, who have more than enough, who've responded to "woe to you who are rich" as a calling out, yes, but as an invitation. An encouragement.

An urgent but loving and helpful reminder to SHARE when we have more than enough, and to repent from and turn away from any hoarding or exploitative ways we've had in the past. To change.

And so it's tempting, because it's restful, to sort of frame these words as we try to process them in this same way. Like they're not meant as a condemnation but instead as a deliberately provocative invitation and encouragement to change.

The only problem is, that they ARE meant as a condemnation. 

Not some kind of permanent unredeemable personal condemnation – of COURSE they're also a challenge and an encouragement to change, and Nicodemus and Zacchaeus and all the rest of them are proof positive of that –

But when Jesus is standing on this plain and declaring in a loud voice what the Kindom of God looks like... it looks like WOE to anyone who's rich now and whose belly is full, because WHOA, the poverty and brokenness and exploitation in this world is all the kinds of wrongness God abhors and condemns. And enough.

Jesus condemns it too. Full stop. Straightforwardly and firmly in absolutely unequivocal language. Which, if you're poor and hungry, listening to him in that crowd that day? It's probably the best thing you've ever heard.

But if you're affluent and fed and it's all going great? I don't think it should surprise us if some listeners that day went away upset or hurt or even angry. Because they're not corrupt or bad people – they've worked hard for what they have. So I don't think it should surprise us if some of them went away disillusioned that Jesus was being so judgmental and uncompromising and so divisive.

Deliberately sowing seeds of discontent, preaching politics instead of spirituality, deliberately setting up an us-and-them, deliberately provoking, insulting, condemning, those who happen to be more affluent instead of trying to engage them in civil discourse, or encouraging both sides to find common ground, or helping to build bridges of understanding between them. 

Why is he insisting on being so divisive? 

The thing is, he's not actually “being divisive”. Because he's not creating a division. He's just identifying one. He's not creating a division, he doesn't HAVE to. The division's already there in that gaping wide gap between those who have more than enough and those who are barely scraping by.

What Jesus is doing here is choosing a side. And as disconcerting as it may be to us, he's not doing so particularly diplomatically or helpfully or even politely. 

He's choosing a side. The Greek word that in English is usually translated “blessed” or sometimes also “happy” is makarios. And a more fitting translation of makarios, that takes into consideration how it was usually used colloquially in that time, is really more like “favoured”. 

Makarios is like someone who always seems to land on their feet, born with a lucky penny, good fairies surrounding their cradle. No number of corporate bankrupcies or criminal corruption charges can ever bring them down because they’re makarios. Favoured. And their very success to them is proof positive of that. 

Zacchaeus, Matthew, Nicodemus – affluent, successful, played-up to, powerful – they’d have all said they were makarios, favoured by God. And everyone around them would agree.

But everyone around, Jesus says clearly in the Sermon on the Plain, would be wrong. Because who’s actually favoured by God, makarios, are the poor. And the hungry. And the thirsty. And the despised. And the rejected. And the erased.

This is Jesus choosing a side. It’s Jesus reiterating for the umpteenth time what the prophets Isaiah and Amos and Jeremiah and Micah said over and over and over again – that God has chosen a side. That in any particular situation, God’s particular concern, God’s priority, God’s default, is always going to be on the side of downtrodden and the powerless and the suffering.

Makarios, favoured, are the poor. Makarios are the hungry. The despised. The erased. For many in the crowd that day, for many since, and maybe for some of us too, it’s the best thing they’ve ever heard. We actually matter.

This is Jesus choosing a side. And if we were to say to him "but shouldn't you be trying to find common ground or build bridges of understanding" what he'd reply is "The common ground doesn't have to be "found". The bridges of understanding don't have to be "built". 

"They've existed from the first, they're embedded in our createdness as one human family, and do you want to know what they are," he'd ask?

"That All Lives Matter. It's as simple as that. That's the common ground. That all lives actually matter. Which if you need a bridge to help you get there, it means poor lives actually matter, and hungry lives actually matter, and trans lives actually matter, and refugee lives actually matter, and miserable desperate drug-addicted lives actually matter, and ignored and disposable and exploited lives actually matter, so THAT might take some adjustments,” he’s saying, “and adjust yourselves accordingly, but if you want common ground? That's the common ground. These lives matter. Period."

Jesus is choosing a side. He's not doing so diplomatically or helpfully or even particularly politely: he's doing so firmly. And it may be disconcerting but I think it's also really important. 

Because we can get wrapped up in the fact that he's choosing a side and isn't willing to compromise. We can flutter that it's "divisive" or “political” and shouldn't he be "reaching out" or trying to be "understanding and respectful of differences". 

But the side he's choosing so uncompromisedly, it CONTAINS common ground. It CONTAINS space for everyone. It CONTAINS the fundamental “love of neighbour” stance of absolute commitment to others’ well-being as much as our own. It INVITES all lives into all lives mattering. It's just absolutely uncompromising that they do.

And that's the key. As Christians we don’t get to act like they don’t. It’s an insult to God, who created and loves ALL of us, who favours the ones so easily chucked under the bus precisely because the world doesn’t. And who expects us to be better than that.

Expects us to want better than that, to embody better than that, to demand better than that. 

I think, God being our helper, that we do. That we really do try. That we do in fact recognize that this is essentially our calling as Christians, to reflect with intent a love of neighbour that IS attentive to who’s getting chucked under the bus at any given time.

But oh my word, there’s real urgency about it now. The busses under which people are being chucked are already very close at hand, and we know there’s a desire to do that same chucking here all around us already. 

It’s not “divisive” to identify a great gaping division, and choose a side. Not for Christians, not for people of faith. Not when that side is so fiercely and without compromise God’s side, and Jesus’ side, and the side of all lives matter. 

I think maybe Jesus delivered this sermon on level ground so all his listeners that day could pay attention. No danger of tipping over, rolling down the mountain, crashing into some other poor soul trying to stay upright – just listen. Feel that firmness beneath you. And go and do likewise. God being our helper. Amen.