Luke 6: 20-31 (New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition)

Luke’s version of Matthew’s “Sermon on the Mount” is a condensed version called the “Sermon on the Plains,” because Jesus preached on level ground. It was Jesus’ bold declaration of life and community that expressed the value and commitment of God’s Kingdom. Now a large crowd of people came together seeking both healing of sickness and the opportunity to listen to a great teacher.

Jesus begins his sermon first with his disciples and speaks more broadly to choose in the crowd. This part of his message ends with the golden rule on how to treat others as they would to themselves.

The conversation continues with a balanced set of rules called the beatitudes which means supreme happiness or blessings. The declaration of blessings was for the people who follow God. This is what Jesus' message does. It is the purpose of Lukes’ narration that salvation or deliverance in its various forms, healing, welcoming, forgiveness and the release from oppression. The full reality of God’s reign lies in the future. But the community of God’s are called to live even now by the blue-print given to us by Jesus.

Unlike Matthews’ third-person beatitudes the entire set of blessings and the woes in Lukes’ s gospel is in the second-person plural “you.” The disciples are addressed directly. What we hear is a counter-cultural vision of the life of those who follow Jesus where everything is reversed.

Those who use greed will have their money taken away and given to the poor. The poor will never be hungry and homeless again.

Mary,the mother of Jesus, sings a wonderful song, the Magnificat, near the beginning of Luke’s gospel. She announced the dramatic role reversal in the Kingdom of God. And you can read this in Luke chapter one, verses 52-56. And I have a picture of Mary in the office with Mary and she is raising her fist against the rich and status quo. Mary was not the meek and mild person as many believe.

The parable of Jesus in Luke 16: 19-31, shows the reversal of roles for Lazarus and the rich man, serves as an example of those who are wealthy and ignore the poor. In our own society we see how the poor are treated. Their health-care is being taken away because they don’t have the money. Instead the millionaires are given tax-cuts while the poor suffer. Why do many Christians in America ignore that fact? It seems many secular people are doing God' s work while some Christians are brainwashed by the false "Prosperity Gospel” that Jesus never preached.

This should not be how the world operates. We seem to be into self-preservation worrying about our own self and the things we have. In the meantime, the poor suffer. 

How should we apply Jesus’ words addressed to individuals, on the question of how nations should respond to the oppression of their own citizens and violence to them? In 1994 a terrible genocide happened to the African nation of Rwanda but nations ignored it. Loving one’s enemy does not mean succumbing to them or imitating their evil. 

We may be able to work to house the homeless and restore their dignity to people who have lost everything they have. In such ways the saints of God, those who know God’s blessing become agents of his blessing in the midst of a messy and selfish world.

It is perhaps remembering those saints across the centuries who have given their life to make the world as the beginning of the Kingdom of God. AMEN.