When the people heard Jesus preach his Sermon on the Plain, today’s Gospel from Luke 6:17-26, they probably were familiar with the form his sermon took but the words he spoke were radical. Jesus took all the secular standards of his day and turned them upside down. The people who are well to do, well fed, well thought of and happy Jesus calls miserable. And the people most of us consider to be miserable, people who are poor, hungry, grieving and hated Jesus calls blessed.
These Beatitudes are the core of Jesus’ teaching and they are diametrically opposed to the worldly values of success and money and material possessions that are all around us. They are just as challenging to us today as they were thousands of years ago when Jesus first spoke them. Blessedness does not come from anything our world offers or values. Blessedness comes from our recognition that God is the center of our universe. Fame and fortune can be gone in an instant but God’s love for us is constant and abiding. As Jeremiah reminds us “Blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose hope is the LORD.”
God our Father,
you appeal to us today through your Son
to choose freely and responsibly
the kind of happiness that endures.
Let the gospel of your Son shock us
into recognizing the emptiness and poverty
of material riches and human power
and fill our poverty
with the riches and freedom
of your truth, your love and justice,
which you offer us through Jesus,
your risen Son and our Lord forever.
you appeal to us today through your Son
to choose freely and responsibly
the kind of happiness that endures.
Let the gospel of your Son shock us
into recognizing the emptiness and poverty
of material riches and human power
and fill our poverty
with the riches and freedom
of your truth, your love and justice,
which you offer us through Jesus,
your risen Son and our Lord forever.
Amen.
