He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. 19 And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.
Then he looked up at his disciples and said:
“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 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.
“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.
Read the sermon below or listen to it here.
Let us pray. God of impossible things, be with us in this place as we imagine something new, as we imagine something better. As we imagine your kingdom. Amen.
An exercise or spiritual practice I like to do with my college students and on retreats is to encourage Gospel imagination.
It is a pretty broad spiritual practice and can be used in many different ways, but the main idea is that we suspend what we know about the world today and we imagine a different way. We imagine what the world might look like according to the Gospel, when the Kingdom of God is fully present.
It’s not always an easy spiritual practice. Oftentimes we are so bogged down in what is happening in the world, the suffering, the pain, the anger— that it is difficult to imagine a different way. But if we are able to sit in our imagination long enough, we might find reason to hope.
That is a spiritual practice I am going to encourage in us this morning. Because this story is a difficult one to understand without gospel imagination.
By the time Jesus comes down the mountain to the great group of people and begins teaching them, he has already had quite the adventure in Luke’s gospel. He has preached in his home, was run out of town; he had begun healing people and word got around that he might even be able to fix your business. Just last week we heard that he commanded some fishermen to put out their nets on the other side of their boat and they caught so many fish that their nets had started breaking.
Apparently word was getting around about Jesus, because after he prayed on the mountaintop for some time, he comes down to the plain to be surrounded by people from all over the place— from Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon.
People had come to hear what he had to say— maybe he could teach them something important— and so that he might heal them of their diseases or cast out the unclean spirits that have been troubling them. And he did. It says that all in the crowd were trying to touch him, and instead of hiring a couple of bodyguards to keep people from pressing in on him, he allowed the power to come out from him and he healed all of them.
That feels important. Jesus didn’t select a couple of people to be examples of healing like it seems he does in other stories. No, this time he heals everyone. Everyone in the crowd had something that needed healing and Jesus healed all of them.
And then he began to teach.
Most of us have heard the beatitudes enough that they don’t feel as shocking anymore. And perhaps where we heard and understood ourselves within these beatitudes is different today than it would have been last week or last year or ten years ago. Perhaps we are feeling more like the rich these days. Or maybe because of a recent diagnosis, we join the crowd pressing in on Jesus, asking for healing, weeping and waiting for laughter.
Or perhaps we have always kind of felt situated in the “woe” category. After all, most of us were able to have breakfast this morning, we have probably laughed sometime this week, and by most measurements compares to the rest of the world— we would be called rich. So maybe hearing Jesus’ teaching gives us a tinge of guilt, like some of his other teachings always seem to.
Or maybe we ignore this passage— we put it in the same file with all of the other stuff Jesus says about rich and poor and hungry and full people. You know, all that good Christian advice that no one we know personally has ever followed.
A dear pastor Barbara Brown Taylor points out, though, that none of this is advice. When Jesus is giving commands, it is pretty hard to mistake it for anything else. “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you”— that is advice. Those are commands.
That is not what Jesus is saying here. There is no advice, there are no commands in Jesus’ teaching here.
What Jesus is doing as he stands on the flat ground among all of these people he has just healed, is using his gospel imagination. He stands among healed and whole people and proclaims that the Kingdom of God will be different than what they have experienced in this world.
The beatitudes don’t tell us what to do. They tell us who we are, and more importantly, they tell us who Jesus is.
Jesus is the one who will bring about these reversals of expectation as the Kingdom of God breaks into all of creation. Can we imagine that?
Jesus is the one who will finally bring all people to a level plain— where none will be too rich at the expense of those who are poor. Where none will be clothed at the expense of those who are naked. Where none will be in power at the expense of those imprisoned. Can we imagine that?
Can we imagine a world in which we shut down our food pantry because there are no more hungry people? Where we stop our grief-share programs because there is no more sorrow? A world where Rethreaded has to change their mission because human trafficking is a thing of the past? Can we imagine a world where there is no more wage gap? No more food deserts? No more homelessness?
Perhaps all of this feels impossible to imagine. Maybe our gospel imagination can’t stretch that far just yet.
But Paul reminds us that we proclaim an impossible thing every single day. We worship a God who came to earth as a baby from a virgin mother, walked among us for 30 years and healed, fed, and clothed people from all over the land. We worship a God who was crucified by the authorities who couldn’t comprehend the amount of love he was bringing into the world.
And after three days, he was raised from the dead. And if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead— an impossible thing— can we imagine more impossible things? If we truly believe that Christ has been raised from the dead and lives among us as the Holy Spirit in and around each one of us— can we believe more impossible things? Can we imagine a different way? Can our imagination then influence our actions as we participate in and hope for the Kingdom of God?
Amen.
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