What was that all about?
That did not sound like the beatitudes that I remember. And where did all those woe’s come from?
We read and hear the blessings and the woes in Luke and we try to make them like the beatitudes in Matthew that we hear all the time.
We struggle for awhile and are eventually moved to silence when we realize that they are very different and that the picture in Luke is deeply disturbing, troubling, scary.
Suddenly we realize why Matthew gets all the attention, while Luke simply moves us to silence.
Matthew talks about ethical behavior and inner attitudes that mark those who belong to God, things like hungering for righteousness, or being poor in spirit, or merciful and meek, being pure in heart and peacemakers.
I like those because they are things I can strive for, things I can do something about.
Matthew has nine of these beatitudes blessing certain actions and dispositions.
But Luke has only four beatitudes, and four woes that are the opposite of the blessings.
And there is nothing we can do or strive for.
They show us a blue print of God’s project, of what God’s kingdom will bring about.
It is a vignette of what God is up to.
It is a picture of the world being turned over, surprised, willy-nilly, higgildy-piggeldy, and it is blessed to some and woeful to others.
And the color he paints it with is in the second person, it is direct and personal, addressed to those who hear and read these words. He doesn’t talk about people in abstract, third person or distant terms, like “those people” or “these people”. That is what Matthew does in his beatitudes.
Luke is not like that. He simply points at us and says “you, yes you.”
Here is the outline of the picture, the vision of what to expect.
You poor will receive God’s kingdom, but you rich won’t because you already had your turn, your consolation.
You who are hungry will be filled, but you who are now full will be hungry.
You who weep now will be laughing then, but you who now laugh will then be weeping.
You who are hated, persecuted, left out because of Jesus will have a great reward because you are just like one of God’s prophets of old.
But woe to you who are liked and praised by everyone, because you are just like those old false prophets, telling folks what they want, not the truth.
It is a disturbing picture because there is nothing we can do about it.
It simply shows what God is up to, a glimpse of God’s heart and intention, a world, a kingdom of unexpected reversals, the opposite of what we now know.
It scares me because I fit right there in the middle of the woes and not in the blessings.
I am having my turn. It will eventually be someone else’s turn.
So Luke moves us to ominous silence. No wonder we give all our attention to Matthew’s beatitudes!
It is important to let this vision disturb us and to not try to turn it into something comprehensible or comforting or something we can do something about.
There is plenty of time to pay attention to the ethics and inner dispositions of those who belong to God, but rarely do we stand dumbfounded by how odd and different God is.
We are reminded that the world as we know it isn’t the whole story, it is only a small part, and if we invest ourselves too deeply into the current régime, the current state of affairs, we are being very short sighted.
Things are going to change, and they are going to change in a big way, turned upside down.
So part of what it means to belong to Jesus is that we walk through life with double vision, seeing two worlds at once, one is right side up, the other upside down. And we live with the hopes and fears of both.
Life is deep, and fruitful, and mysterious, and terrifying, and unexpected because God is deep, and fruitful, and mysterious, and terrifying, and unexpected.
Life and God can never be fully domesticated or controlled.
So today we give pause to dwell before the blinding and confusing splendor of God and we are reminded that there is much, much more to this life than meets the eye.