Commentary on Luke 6:17-26

The Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6:20–49 closes the section of this gospel that began with Jesus’ sermon in his hometown synagogue. The two speeches form an inclusio around the opening scenes of Jesus’ ministry, scenes that feature wondrous healing, intense conflict, and the gathering around Jesus of both a chosen few disciples and crowds. Here, Jesus is available to the crowds, literally on their level, and many of them who have come for healing are cured. The itinerant preacher embodies the power of healing and shares it freely.

In this context, Jesus speaks blessing. To the poor belongs God’s own realm. The hungry will not be hungry for long. Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning (see also Psalm 30:5), and that joy extends to embrace those who are excluded, reviled, or defamed by virtue of their connection to Jesus. These rejected ones, whom others have tried to cut off, have a belonging that is deeper than anything that the people around them could withhold. They are in the company of the prophets who, throughout Israel’s history, have spoken for God. 

Notice the hope offered by the blessings Jesus offers. 

1. They are bound up with real life. Politicians sometimes speak of kitchen table issues, by which they mean the sorts of things family members talk about at the table, maybe after the kids are asleep. “Which bills do we have to pay now? What can wait? How do we get to the next paycheck?” Jesus speaks to the poor and the hungry, with the news that their material needs will be supplied.
2. The promises make a theological claim that Jesus’ audience would know from the Psalms: “The earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein” (Psalm 24:1, King James Version). Rich, poor, in between: the earth and its inhabitants belong to God. Other would-be owners, extractors, lords, and kings need not apply.
3. The promise of laughter rather than weeping is a time-honored way to announce God’s coming action to change how the reality of death shapes our experience of life. Here is a vision of the future breaking into the present. “And the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces,” Isaiah declares (25:8; see also Revelation 7:17; 21:4). 
4. The good name and position in community of those bearing witness to Jesus’ connection to God are sound, even elevated, precisely when the worst exclusion and defamation are undertaken by others, because of their bond with Jesus. How? The true source of respect, like all other necessities of life, is the God who provides the healing and other blessings Jesus offers.

In short, when the evidence suggests that you have been forgotten or forsaken, you are not. The God whose power the crowds witness coming forth from Jesus will continue as God cares for God’s own. 

The difficulty in preaching this text in a 21st-century American, mainline Christian context is that most of us who will hear this word are not inclined to trust it. When are the poor and hungry anything but a cause for sadness (except when they inspire an odd sort of gratitude, as in, “There but for the grace of God go I”)? And who can endure character assassination, which we know as canceling or bullying, even for the sake of our faith? We aim to be rich, full, laughing, and respected. Hearing the beatitudes from Jesus, we may be tempted to think, “I’ll take my chances with the status quo.”

This reaction may be why Jesus adds woes here after his blessings. No matter how hopeful his words are, some in the crowd have placed their trust elsewhere, and the choices they have made are working for them. For these, the woes are not curses, but warnings. It is as if Jesus said, “Certain things are worthy of your trust, and other things are sure to betray it.” When those objects of misplaced loyalty do betray your trust—Lord, have mercy.

Later in Luke, Jesus will say much the same thing just before he tells the parable of the barns. When a man comes to Jesus asking for help receiving what he considers to be his share of an inheritance, Jesus replies to everyone within earshot, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:15). 

Life consists in the provision of God, a provision evident in Jesus’ presence, healing, and teaching among the people. With the beatitudes, Jesus announces that the provision of God is trustworthy when the world is offering poverty, hunger, grief, and rejection. With the woes, Jesus announces that the provision of God is even more trustworthy than acting in what we imagine is self-interest. The Messiah embodies a whole way of being in the world that is better and more basic to life than either eking out an existence or building barns and filling them. To be on the Way with this One is to know the character and extent of God’s realm and God’s mercy.