As you may know, I’m one of the co-pastors of Mercy Community Church of Little Rock, a worshiping community that welcomes all people, but especially those who are living on the streets. At Mercy Church, we try hard to create a sense of community and solidarity among all of us, despite the fact that some of us are housed and others homeless, some of us living in excess and some of us just making it from day-to-day or even meal-to-meal.

Yet from time to time a biblical passage comes along that puts the differences among us in stark relief. This week’s Gospel passage from Luke 6:17-27 is one of those passages. Here we find Jesus blessing the poor and pronouncing woes upon the wealthy. For most of the members of my community, it is a hopeful text. For me, it is a call to repentance.

Blessed are the Poor

In my experience, Luke’s version of the Beatitudes tends to be overlooked among people like me. Perhaps we think we’re already familiar with the Beatitudes from Matthew’s more famous telling in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:1-12). Or perhaps, as someone on my Facebook feed observed earlier this week, Luke’s version is just to painful for us to read. But in my estimation, it is the urgent business of the church to spread the message of the Lukan Beatitudes.

Here, Jesus says,

Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of heaven
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 who when people hate you,
and when they exclude you and revile you,
and defame you on account of the Son of Man.
Rejoice in that day and leap for joy,
for surely your reward is great in heaven,
for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. (Luke 6:20-21)

In Matthew Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” (Matthew 5:3), and “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matthew 5:6). In Matthew Jesus doesn’t seem to be talking material poverty but about spiritual poverty. Matthew lets us wax eloquent about the need for a spiritual renewal in the world. But Luke makes us look at our bank accounts.

“Blessed are you who are poor,” Jesus says. “Blessed are you who are hungry now.” Luke’s Jesus is talking explicitly about economic practices. His Gospel is material as much as it’s spiritual. He’s pointing us toward systemic inequities that render some of us wealthy while others struggle in poverty.

Jesus pronounces blessing upon those who are impoverished and disenfranchised by the system. Yet, importantly, he’s not saying that poverty is a blessing. Nor is he offering a pity blessing (“Well bless their hearts”). He’s blessing those who come into Mercy Church from the streets. The poor will be blessed. The hungry will be filled. Those in pain will be filled with joy. Theirs is the kingdom.

Rather, Jesus is pronouncing an eschatological blessing upon those the current system has failed. This system is temporary, he reminds us. It will falter and be replaced by a new system, instituted by God, in which those who suffer now will be uplifted and those who are poor now will be filled. This is the nature of the kingdom of heaven.

Woe to you Who are Rich

Yet the part of this passage that makes me squirm isn’t Jesus’s blessing of the poor, for which I’m actually rather grateful. The system does need to change. Those who are poor and marginalized and disenfranchised do need to be lifted up and given the opportunity to thrive rather than merely survive. These blessings are good news for my friends at Mercy.

But Luke’s Jesus is aware that upending the current world order isn’t a one way street. If the world is flipped upside down, those on the bottom will be lifted up. But so, too, will those on the top be brought crashing down.

So it is that Jesus continues with a list of woes for the rich. He says,

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 your 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 (Luke 6:24-26)

Formally, these woes are a reversal of the blessings that immediately precede. They proceed in the same order, employing the same imagery, but with opposite consequences. While the poor will receive the kingdom, the rich will receive nothing. We’ve already gotten ours in this present order. While the hungry will be filled, the full will be left hungry. We’ve had plenty to eat. While the weeping will laugh, the laughing will weep. We’ve already had enough joy. While the reviled will be recognized as prophets, those respected now will be revealed as false prophets.

If we’ve already received this system’s hegemonic pats on the head, Jesus says, there will be nothing left for us when the kingdom comes.

Mary Already Knew

This passage should remind us of the song Mary sings after Gabriel tells her of the impending birth of Christ. In that passage, known as the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55), Mary praises God saying,

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1:52-53).

The woes Jesus pronounces for the rich aren’t some minor point of Luke’s Gospel to be ignored or explained away. Rather, they are fundamental to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The kingdom of heaven is thoroughly economic and material. It does not merely float above the ground in some abstract spiritual realm. It reverses unjust systems of power. It disrupts the status quo. It upends the world.

Upending an Unjust Order

If we take seriously the Gospel claim that the present status quo is unjust and needs to upended—and we should take that claim seriously—then those Christians like me who benefit from the present order must acknowledge that we can’t have it both ways. We must choose. We can continue to benefit from the present order, profiting ourselves at the expense of others, and stand in opposition to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Or we can work to upend that order, acting against our own self-interests in order to secure justice for those impoverished, exploited, and oppressed by the system.

It’s not a comfortable message. It’s not meant to be a comfortable message. It might be easier just to read Matthew’s Beatitudes and let this passage just slide on by. But if we wish to live in accord with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we must be about dismantling systems of power and privilege—even (and especially) when it means losing our own status in those systems.

This, it seems to me, is the very essence of the Gospel.

Discussion Questions

• When you read Jesus’s blessings for the poor and his woes for the rich, which group do you see yourself in? Why?
• Do you think it’s true that the Gospel is fundamentally economic and material? Do you think it has implications for our economic commitments as well as our spiritual ones?
• Do you agree that following Christ means working to upend unjust social systems—even ones that we benefit from? Why or why not?