By Ched Myers, a reflection on Luke 6:17-26, re-posted from Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries. We are eagerly awaiting the release of Ched’s newest book on Luke’s Gospel Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy (above) in early April. Pre-Order it here.

In the gospel text for the Sixth Sunday in Epiphany, Luke brings Matthew’s Sermon on the  Mount down to “level ground.” Its rhetorical fire “raises up” the poor and “brings down” the rich, just as the Magnificat promised.  

David King’s 2022 Reclaiming the Radical Economic Message of Luke is one of the few other contemporary studies of Luke’s radical economics out there. He points out that Jesus’ opening lines to the Sermon on the Plain contains curses which parallel the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Plain. “Damn you rich! You already have your consolation. Damn you who are well-fed now! You will know hunger”… It is part of the standard theme of reversal, but it is also an acknowledgement of God’s disdain for wealth.

As such, it is truly a text of terror for contemporary middle class readers. (For a recent sermon that faces squarely the “discomfort” this text brings to middle class ears, see here).

Luke’s three opening Beatitudes—the Latin beatus and Greek makarios mean “happy”—are in the second person (in contrast, Matthew’s first eight are in the third person). The latter’s “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Mt 5:3) is typically preferred by affluent readers, who take it as a metaphorizing of poverty. “Blessed are you poor,” on the other hand, leaves little wiggle room (Lk 6:20b). Luke uses ptōchos (from ptōsso, “to cower”) as both noun and adjective, and twice as frequently as the other synoptics combined. At no point does it connote anything other than economic destitution.

The phrase “for the Great Economy is yours” (6:20c) in present tense gives a sense of immediacy. From this point onward in Luke’s narrative, “poor” is often a specific counterpoint to “rich,” as here (see 16:20, 22; 18:22; 19:8; 21:23). This functions rhetorically to focus attention on the injustice of disparity. Jesus’s good news is for the poor (4:18; 7:22); conversely, he later makes it clear that the Great Economy is not hospitable to those with wealth (18:24–25).  Similar difference in tone is reflected between Matthew’s “hunger and thirst for righteousness” (Mt 5:6) and Luke’s second Beatitude (“you that hunger now,” Lk 6:21a). Luke’s third Beatitude, meanwhile, is unique (6:21b), introducing the poignant theme of “weeping.”

Luke’s “short list” of Beatitudes thus centers those who suffer existentially from poverty and  trauma. For them, the Great Economy can be realized here and now—if they are joined by the

non-poor in the struggle to end the pangs and the pain. Those who do live in solidarity, however, will inevitably share the exclusion and suffering of the marginalized—which is the vocation of the prophets (6:22-23).

These Beatitude reversals are then reversed again in a correlated list of “Woes” (6:24-26). This Lukan addition to the Q Sermon tradition further underlines tensions arising from disparity. The exclamatory particle (Hebrew hoy, transliterated in Greek as ouai) is ubiquitous in both Testaments. Originally associated with lament at funerals (e.g. 1 Kgs 13:30; Jer 22:18; 34:5), in the prophets it often takes on a “damning” tone (as in King’s paraphrase above). Isaiah directs it toward a whole complex of pathologies characterizing the rich: latifundial monopolization of land (Is 5:9); addictions (Is 5:11, 22); justice subverted in the courts (Is 5:23; 29:15); political oppression of the poor (Is 10:1-2); and militarism (Is 31:1).

Luke specifically echoes here the vocabulary of Mary’s Magnificat:

The Woes conclude with a jab at religious leaders who “talk prophetic talk” but do not walk its Way so they can flourish in the status quo; these are implicated as “pseudo prophets” (6:22-23).

To the comfortable, Jesus seems here polarizing, stirring up class enmities. But he is simply naming the existing architecture of social division in a world ruled by the rich. Luke’s discursive strategy holds up a mirror to both sides: the exploited are assured that mercy and liberation can be realized, while exploiters are put on notice that justice and reckoning will come. This is a pedagogical technique similar to apocalyptic literature’s rhetoric of “unmasking,” which in Luke will reach a zenith in the warning tale of Lazarus and Dives (16:19-31).

Hear more about the significance of the “level ground” setting of this text in another excerpt from the www.worshipdesignstudio.com conversation between Ched, Dr. Marcia McFee, Rev. Ben David Hensley and HARP cover artist Ted Lyddon Hatten (8½ min here).