The Beatitudes

Luke 6: 17-26

February 11, 2007

When I was in Sunday School, memory work was an important teaching tool in our classes. Long before Confirmation, I received a little prize for memorizing the Beatitudes. Memory work has not stuck with me and today I can no more rattle off the Beatitudes than I can remember what the prize was – maybe a pencil with the church’s name on it, a certificate long since lost and never hung on any wall, or a little ribbon on a draping down my front side. Remember those – I had all the bars, the pin and the crown – but it really wasn’t fair – my father was the minister and I had to have perfect attendance – and furthermore, all the kids in Sunday School who did not have the ladder of attendance to pin on their chests knew that. Believe me, I seldom wore mine. Anyhow let us visit again the Beatitudes.

{Put on Screen the Beatitudes from Matthew 5: 3-16 and have congregation read in unison.}

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

‘Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

You may have noticed that what we just read is not what Cheryl read earlier. We just read Matthew’s version and the Scripture Lesson for today is Luke’s. When we revisit the Lucan version, it is quite obvious why Matthew is the one we memorized as children. Let us look at it again. The Beatitudes are sometimes referred to as the Magna Charta of the Christian faith. They are well worth a little extra examination this morning.

Luke 6: 20-26

‘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 on 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.

There is quite a difference between these two versions. Matthew’s Beatitudes have nine statements of blessing. Luke has four. Luke includes a series of woe statements not found at all in Matthew. When we read Luke we can see why we don’t have children memorize Luke. Matthew is the Sears version, the softer side - Christians like to be nice – don’t offend anybody, don’t challenge anybody. It goes along with the soft call we thought about last week - you should join this or that committee, you won’t have to do anything! Then we turn around, scratch our heads and wonder why nothing gets done.

Luke omits Matthew’s verses about the blessedness of meekness - there isn’t any place for meekness in the whole Gospel of Luke/Acts. Luke/Acts are all about being bold in the witness of faith. Luke also omits Matthew’s blessings on the merciful, pure in heart, and the peace makers. Luke also omits Matthews blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake. Luke here is being a much more careful writer than Matthew, by eliminating the redundancy of Matthew’s last two blessings and combining them into one in Luke’s version.

The differences between the two versions are manifold and I will mention only a couple more or them. The setting for these readings is different in both Gospels.

In Matthew, the Beatitudes are included in what is called the Sermon the on the Mount. In the Luke, the same material is placed in what is known as the Sermon on the Plain. Matthew is looking over his shoulder at the Torah and Jewish tradition with the writing of every single word in his Gospel. For him it is important to show how the whole of Jewish history, tradition and prophecy have their fruition in Jesus.

The Beatitudes are the Magna Charta of Jesus’ teaching. Well, what is the Magna Charta of the Old Testament? The 10 Commandments. And where were the 10Commandments received? On a mountain. Jesus’ Magna Charta has to come on a mountain, because to Matthew Jesus is the new Moses, the new Adam, the new Isaiah, the new David, and new everyone else. Matthew is always trying to tie Jesus to the Old Testament story because of who his audience was. Matthew witnessed to early followers of Jesus, who came out of the Jewish tradition. When he wrote his Gospel, he wasn’t looking much beyond that group. It was important for him to establish how Jesus was the promised Messiah, for whom his audience was looking and waiting.

Luke had a different audience. His field of vision was much wider if you will. He had traveled around the Mediterranean world with Paul. He had witnessed not to the Jews for Jesus crowd of his day, alone, but also to a lot of Gentile folk. Romans, Greeks, Samaritans. The very titles of the two sermons symbolize the difference between Matthew and Luke. Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount is up in the air. He has spiritualized the beatitudes and made them an inner thing Meekness, purity of heart and so forth. Now Matthew is no dummy and he is well aware of a little thing called hypocrisy. He knows and teaches elsewhere that purity of heart isn’t really pure without purity of behavior and action. But his Beatitudes focus on the Spiritual.

Luke’s Sermon on the Plain is much more down to earth. Closer to where we are at in our day to day lives. Luke’s Beatitudes are an ethical version. And furthermore, Luke doesn’t pull any punches when he says what is ethical and right.

Many write off Luke’s ethics as an ethic that is impossible to meet. The young man asks what he must do to enter the Kingdom. Jesus looks into his heart and knows what is there and replies, give all that you have to the poor, then come, and follow me. Jesus’ ethics have a cost, and the price cannot be accounted for completely as a spiritual matter, a matter of the heart, something inside. So let us get down to the nitty, gritty question Luke throws before us. Can we ever be blessed without becoming poor?

I can only answer that question by witnessing to my own faith and my relationship with Jesus. So I will add here my witness to Matthew’s and Luke witnessing to their faith through these writings.

If I imagine myself sitting on a beach before a fire with Jesus, having a talk with him and bringing up this question of blessing, I hear Jesus saying something very clear to me. I hear him saying very clearly, “Kendall, if you are worried about how blessed you are and how many blessings you can receive, you have come to the wrong person. And when you leave me, you will leave me just like that young man who came to me and I told him he had to give it all away. You, like him, if you are looking for a blessing, will go away disappointed.”

“Yes,” I hear Jesus saying to me, “Luke was preaching my Gospel when he wrote Blessed are the poor. But I don’t want you to hear the wrong thing in that. I don’t want you, and neither does Luke, to start running around seeing how poor you can get in spirit or in material wealth just so you can be blessed.” That is not what it is all about. You can’t earn a blessing. It is a gift from God. Blessings are acts of grace and grace cannot be earned.

When people get all wrapped up in responding to the Beatitudes by worrying about getting and trying to acquire the blessing, they have missed the point completely. The ethical imperative in Luke’s beatitude does not call anyone to go out and look for a blessing. The beatitude challenges every Christian to look at those who are poor and realize that the poor are God’s children, just like you. The beatitude calls not for insight (some new truth about me inside myself) but for outlook, looking outside and seeing the other. There are poor people in all of our lives. And the poorest people in your life are those people you do not remember are God’s children too. And by not remembering that someone else is God’s child too, you are contributing to that child’s impoverishment. This is an ethical imperative of the highest order. For those of you who image the afterlife in terms of heaven and hell, remembering the poor might make all the difference as to your final destination. We are talking about the Magna Charta of the Christian Faith. This is not something to mess around with.

Remembering the poor is more than random acts of charity. Liberation Theology has offered an answer to how to remember the poor and meet the ethical imperative found in the Beatitudes. The language of Liberation Theology offers an important word and insight here. The word is solidarity.

A couple weeks ago, I heard John Thomas describe solidarity as he talked about a new vision of evangelism for us in the church today. In Christiandom, evangelism plays a role. The role is to take the Gospel to others who live outside Christiandom, and bring them into Christiandom. In this way of thinking Jesus is a commodity that we have, (and by the way, are blessed because of this possession) and evangelism is a matter taking what we have – Jesus – and sharing him with others. When they have Jesus, then they can be with us as citizens of Christiandom. In a nutshell that is what mission has been for a long time to a lot of people. And because of that a lot of people in churches like ours don’t want to have a thing to do with it. The problem is that we know what we don’t like and don’t want, but we don’t have a replacement for that which we hare rejected. We have not articulated a new vision of mission and evangelism. So let us work on that.

Returning to John Thomas, he said, as one of his ten points for churches to understand today, that churches must learn that evangelism is walking with Jesus where Jesus walks, and being with Jesus where Jesus is.

Those poor out there. Christiandom forgot that Jesus is already there with them. Jesus isn’t someone that we have and the poor don’t have and that we must take to them and give to them. Jesus doesn’t forget the poor. God never forgot the poor.

This is the resounding message of the Gospel over and over, especially Luke – remember Mary’s Song when she found out that she was to be Jesus’ mother – God will bring down those on high, and lift up the lowly. God never forgot the poor. Jesus never forgot the poor. The ethical imperative of the Beatitudes is that we be with God and Jesus by being with the poor. Solidarity. Not that we be like the poor, but that we be sister or brother to the poor and a blessed sister or brother at that, then we will be blessed.

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