Progressive reflections on the lectionary #53

Monday 10th February 2025

Luke 6: 17-22 Blessings and woes

This week’s gospel lectionary passage is the opening section, in Luke, of Jesus’ most famous sermon. Even taken as a whole, the sermon is not all that long, although substantially longer than the nine-word sermon Jesus gave in Nazareth.

Our given selection is a series of four couplets, effectively. A series of opposite statements about who will be blessed, and who is in for some trouble.

“Blessed are you who are poor... woe to you who are rich…”

“Blessed are you who are hungry… woe to you who are full…”

“Blessed are you who weep… woe to you who are laughing…”

“Blessed are you when people hate/exclude/revile/defame you on account of the Son of Man… woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.”

There are all kinds of interesting things to say about this passage, the use of the enigmatic ‘Son of Man’ for instance, either a piece of Messianic imagery, an alternative pronoun, or a ‘leveller’ - a way of aligning with the struggles of common people, perhaps.

Alternatively we might want to ask: ‘to whom, in fact, is the sermon addressed?’ The text says “Then he looked up at his disciples and said…” but who among them are rich/full, laughing etc? So are the blessings addressed to the disciples and the woes to those gathered around them?

Key, though, to understanding or exegeting the passage, I think, is the very clear recurring theme that arises from Isaiah 61. This may be a longer sermon than the Nazareth one which was also about this passage, but it’s basically the same content: ‘the kingdom of God is manifested in the reversal of fortunes.’

One of the enduring and intriguing questions that bedevils this passage is that of the comparison between Luke 6:20 and Matthew 5:3 (“Blessed are the poor…”/ “Blessed are the poor in spirit…”) Why do the evangelists take a different approach here? Does one saying represent an earlier tradition than the other? Is one redacted, or the other added to?

I think that one of the key things to say about these two sermons (mount/plain), is that while they represent the core of the Jesus’ tradition for each of the evangelists, neither is unique. Anti semitic tendencies within the church have tended to distance Jesus from his context, and this seems like a categorical mistake to me.

Going back to the obvious Isaiah link above - in Luke’s version of this sermon Jesus as the rabbi is really just developing on the themes of the prophet. Matthew, arguably, leans more towards the same sort of material in Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) where there is a list of blessings for those who ‘follow the law’. Matthew’s sermon on the mount is a none too subtle re-do of Moses’ mountainside law giving, after all.

A similar list is found in 4Q525, one of the Dead Sea Scroll discoveries which echoes the Sirach-type wisdom seeking tradition:

“Blessed is the one who speaks truth with a pure heart, and does not walk about secretly upon his tongue."

"Blessed are those who take hold of her inscribed laws, and do not take hold on paths of injustice."

"Blessed are those who rejoice in her, and do not burst forth in ways of folly."

"Blessed are those who seek her with pure hands, and do not pursue her with a treacherous heart."

"Blessed is the man who has attained Wisdom, and walks in the Law of the Most High."

Arguably the key difference between the prophetic tradition, and the wisdom tradition, both of which come from Hebrew antiquity is the emphasis on practical application. The Lukan Jesus tradition, apocalyptic as it is, is not simply concerned with other worldly ‘good thoughts’ but in practical ‘next steps’. In that sense it’s much closer to Isaiah’s messianism (the actual poor), than Sirach’s concern with wisdom (poor in spirit).

This highlights, perhaps, the tensions of the time - between different factions within Judaism and within early Christianity. These tensions are helpful to recognise and acknowledge.

They help us to understand the tendency within aspects of later Christian traditions to focus on the ‘hereafter’ instead of the ‘here’. Luke’s Jesus pulls focus to issues of the real world. He calls, again, for the time of Messianic reversal of fortunes - for the year of Jubilee. This is a practical response to the injustices of the world.

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Image: Photo by Shail Sharma on Unsplash