Psalm 1; Jeremiah 17:5-10; Luke 6:17-26
Feb 16, 2025
Epiphany 6C
You have probably all heard of the Sermon on the Mount, where in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus preaches his sermon on the mountaintop.
In Luke’s telling that we heard just now, Jesus has been up the mountain, chooses the inner circle of disciples from the many disciples, and comes down to the level ground – we could call a plain. The sermon on the plain! The twelve are gathered around, surrounded by a much larger cohort of disciples who are flanked by a ‘multitude’ who also get to listen in.
While Matthew wanted to emphasise the parallels with Moses (escaping infanticide, divine revelation on a mountaintop) Luke wants to emphasise Jesus’ (and therefore God’s) heart for the most vulnerable people. Luke recalls that Jesus went down from the mountaintop to be where the people were.
Take a moment to recall when you were most vulnerable.
Can you remember how you opened yourself to God’s compassion?
and what happened next? Was there a gift or blessing from the Eternal One?
For me, my most vulnerable time was when me small family relocated from country Victoria to Melbourne. We had a toddler and I was pregnant with a second child. My parents had gone overseas to teach and my friends were mostly still at work. It was a lonely and vulnerable time. And then a minister came and invited me to worship with them. I didn’t go, but she came around a second time and reiterated her invitation. And by this time I had two young children and we were embraced into the church family. At St Columba’s I experienced a caring community and the people identified gifts in me I never knew I had. In accepting my need, I opened myself to God’s compassion and my new life unfolded!
For each of us, the Divine Mystery has sent us messengers or angels to provide God’s hospitality, to provide welcome, to offer comfort, possibly forgiveness or companionship in our loneliness. When people are vulnerable, that’s where we find God stepping in to assure us of our own worth.
In the sermon on the plain, Jesus knows his audience. The people are largely poor, as most people were. Hunger was known to many. Grief for a diversity of losses most likely – infant mortality was far greater then than it is now, lives of Galilean peasants were insignificant to the Roman occupying forces, much had been lost in being occupied by a foreign rule. A state of mourning was endemic.
Luke then slips in the present day vulnerability of his own community who were being persecuted on account of their allegiance to Jesus, Son of Man – as opposed to their non-allegiance to the Emperor, similarly subtitled Son of God.
“Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
21 “Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.
“Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
22 “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you[d] on account of the Son of Man.
Each of these descriptions are descriptions of vulnerable people. The good news that Jesus brings is to tell them they will be blessed. The hungry will be filled!
The good news speaks of a present and future blessing. Such is the kingdom of God, it looks to the present and the future.
Luke, in biblical fashion counters the four promises of blessing with four corresponding curses. Matthew doesn’t do this – but Luke – Woe to you who are rich – being rich in Jesus’ day in all likelihood meant that they had profited from the oppression/enslavement/cheating of vulnerable people. Being full (not hungry) was sign of being rich, present laughing was to be in oblivion to all the suffering before them, and to be revered or have people speak well of you, you had to be a somebody.
But Jesus wasn’t there for the somebodies – he was there for the nobodies, the poor and vulnerable who knew their need.
The good news that Luke recalls Jesus preaching shares a vision of God – who has pledged to act on behalf of people who are poor and marginalised (vulnerable) rather than the rich and well off.
The beatitudes are provocative both for poor and for wealthy: poor and vulnerable people can only benefit from the action of God, self-assured and wealthy can only lose.
The ones to whom Jesus preaches are vulnerable and poor – and blessed in the knowledge of their dependence upon God.
The tree imagery we spoke of earlier (Psalm 1 and Jeremiah 17) underscored our dependence on God’s good mercies and provisions, as individuals and as a community.
As a community of faith in a season of rapid change, we will be vulnerable to external forces beyond our control. However, we can be assured that God favours vulnerable people and vulnerable communities. We can also be encouraged in our participation in the building up of God’s kingdom. Our God is a God of hospitality according to Luke’s Gospel. We will be vulnerable, and we will be blessed. We will discover other vulnerable people and be a blessing to them. God will act for us and in and through us in our present time and into the future.
Brendan Byrne (Melbourne Jesuit biblical scholar) is of the opinion that being vulnerable gives scope to God’s power – “It is the vulnerable who make the world safe for humanity.”
Jesus demonstrated the utmost vulnerability in being stripped and flogged and likely raped, then humiliated in a shameful death on a cross, to die, be buried and risen – to show the world that the powers of sin and death will never have the last say.
Whatever evils assail our world today, know that the power of God’s preference for the vulnerable will ultimately triumph over corruption and ill-gotten power. In the meantime we can share in God’s heart for people who are poor and hungry, for people who are reviled and for any who mourn.
Jesus came down from the mountain to be with the vulnerable people, and Jesus continues to hang around in our midst, showing us the way to Divine love and justice.
May God’s compassion and hospitality be evident in our living and loving, Amen.
Karen Eller