The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany; February 16, 2025
Jeremiah 17: 5-10; Psalm 1; 1 Corinthians 15: 12-20; Luke 6: 17-26
Amy-Jill Levine, professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies, in her book Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi, writes about how religion is designed to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. She says, we should think of the teaching of Jesus as doing the afflicting. So, it may be less about what the teaching means and more about what it does: remind, provoke, confront, disturb. (1)
Unless we want to read just half of today’s gospel – the blessings – or rush quickly over the “woes,” then today Jesus is not giving us a choice. We are reminded, provoked, confronted and disturbed by this teaching. And maybe that is a good thing; afflicting us who are comfortable while the blessings apply more to those who are afflicted. Can we listen to the hard teaching in these beatitudes from Luke? While the ones from Matthew’s Gospel which are much more spiritual, I think these from Luke may be more applicable to our time.
So that we might hear this Gospel I am going to read it again but as a mash-up of various translations and renderings. I will use certain words here: Blessed are . . . or happy is . . . or congratulations to. Choices of words convey different levels of understanding. As do the words: woe to … doomed are … damn you. Yes, one translation of these beatitudes has Jesus saying the words: Damn you! (2)
Blessed are you who are poor yours is the kingdom of God
Woe to you who are rich you have all that you’re going to get
Congratulations, you hungry! you will have a feast.
Damn you who are well-fed now! you will know hunger.
Happy are you who weep you will laugh
Doomed are you who laugh now you will mourn and weep
Blessings to you when people hate you, rejoice in that day, jump for joy!
ostracize you and denounce you Your compensation will be great in heaven.
and call you evil
Damn you when everybody speaks Remember that your ancestors treated the
well of you! phony prophets that way.
The woes are a point-by-point antithesis to the previous statements of blessing. We hear them clearer when they are read in proximity to the blessings. The promise of a reversal in the divine ordained future is made plain. Now the crowd listening to Jesus is made up of the poor and marginalized and outcast, the least, the last and the lost. They are not the rich, not the ones feasting on fine food, not the ones laughing at how good their lives are, the ones receiving the accolades of the world. They are the ones without enough money for roof over their heads, or bellies swollen from hunger or crying with grief over their pain and suffering or that of those they love but are powerless to help. To truly hear these beatitudes this means consequences for those who contribute to the poverty of the poor or ignore the stranger or outsider.
This Gospel, this Good News, is the foundation of God’s kingdom in the words of rabbi Jesus. It is not that there is no place for the rich, the well-fed or those with an inside track to power and glory in the world. There is a place but they must turn toward the ones in need. This is Jesus’ definition of the neighbor. They must see in order to understand the grace of God which does include everyone.
Last month in a Fox News interview, Vice President J. D. Vance, who is Roman Catholic, articulated his version of a Catholic doctrine called ordo amoris. He put it this way: “You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country. And then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.”
As you might imagine, I have a lot of difficulty with his interpretation, though Vice President Vance is certainly free to view Catholic teaching in his own way. More importantly he had another person who disagreed – Pope Francis. On Tuesday the Pope published a letter attacking the current policy of mass deportations in a way that appeared to directly address Vance’s argument. The Pope wrote: “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is love that builds a community open to all, without exceptions.” (3) I would say that as Christians we don’t get to pick and choose who our neighbor is. Jesus identified our neighbor as the one in need, regardless that they may be a Samaritan or a starving child in the Sudan.
There is, outside the circles of the Episcopal Church and most of the mainline churches, several current efforts to “re-define” Christianity. You could call it reinterpretation except that it minimizes things that are important the Gospel. The Prosperity Gospel that came out of the last century still has many adherents who entice people with the idea that God’s blessing will enrich them personally as long as they enrich their church. This is such a re-definition. Now it isn’t that God does not bless those who love him and love their neighbors but they may not always get rich. And the rich are not always rich because they are following the teachings of Jesus. Drawing a straight line between those with riches and the blessings of God is an affront to what we heard in the beatitudes today. I think it is not a re-definition but another gospel entirely. And yet it is very popular.
Right now, in some parts of the wider Christian church there are voices speaking about toxic empathy or counterfeit compassion. They speak of Woke Christians (I think they mean me/us) who are trying to manipulate other Christians by pointing out people who are negatively harmed or who actually have died or will die because of the defunding of Christian organizations involved in helping the least, the last, and the lost or government programs that now have no money. The writer, David French, wonders when did food or medicine become “woke?” (3)
We need to be aware that this kind of re-definition is going on. I think it will be harder for us to ignore this as we rightly ignored the perversion that is called the Prosperity Gospel. In contrast, we can recognize in the words and actions of Jesus a Gospel that is both life-changing and world-changing. It clashes with mis-guided notions or self-protective philosophies. Jesus has the courage to speak the truth of God’s kingdom. We can still have the courage to listen, to be disturbed, to feel confronted, to struggle with the Gospel. We can let it change us rather than us change it. We always have the choice to work for God’s kingdom or settle for something less.
1) Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus, pp. 2-4
2) The Complete Gospels, Robert J. Miller, editor, p. 130-131
3) David French, “Behold the Strange Spectacle of Christians Against Empathy,” New York Times,Feb. 13, 2025
The Rev. Dr. George Glazier
Vicar, Trinity Church, London