A-list, B-list…

Preaching at The Good Shepherd on Luke’s Blessings and Woes – Luke 6.17-26; Psalm 1

There’s a Christmas song that is banned in our house: Santa Claus is coming to town… He’s making a list, he’s checking it twice, gonna find out who’s naughty and nice… so be good for goodness’ sake!

We’re not about to start classifying children into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ children, ‘naughty’ and ‘nice’ children, and we’re certainly not going to hold a threat of withdrawal of Christmas presents as some sort of discipline measure, one that we’d probably never follow through with anyway!

But we love to classify people, don’t we, making lists of people who are like this or that, people who we approve or disapprove of, people we agree or disagree with – Conservative or Labour, Republican or Democrat, tolerant or intolerant (as we define those terms), real Christians or not Christians, beautiful or not, successful or not. We could go on, making lists and classifying other people – maybe we could even make a list of the sort of lists we consider to be acceptable.

And in our readings this morning we seem to have good lists and naughty lists: Blessed are these people, but woe to those people.

A few weeks ago I asked the question of where you/I might see ourselves in a Bible passage. Maybe we can ask that here too: Where would you put yourself on Jesus’ lists?!

Somehow, I suspect we always formulate the list-settings to put ourselves on the A-list, not the B-list! But let’s have a look to see if we can understand a bit better what’s going on here.

Of course, as I’m always saying, this passage in Luke comes with a context. And you might have noticed that that the passage started with the words “He went down with them…” Who is ‘them’? Just before this, Jesus has chosen his particular team of twelve from among his followers or disciples, and called them ‘apostles’. So, the apostles are the ‘them’ that Jesus came down with to this level place, where there was also a great crowd of his disciples, and a great multitude of people from all over the place. And Luke tells us that Jesus looked up at his disciples and said…

One way we could think about this might be immediately to start making lists – we’ve got a list of the twelve apostles; that’s a subset of the disciples, so we could list the rest of the disciples; and everyone else is outside that group in the great multitude.

But I don’t think that’s what we’re meant to read here. Luke is painting a picture of the mix of people around Jesus. There are some who have, at this point, been chosen for a purpose (although Luke hasn’t told us what that is yet). There’s a wider group of people who are seeking to follow the way of Jesus – his disciples. And there are others who have heard that there is something exciting going on. Maybe there’s not a clear distinction between these groups (at least the last two) even in the minds of the people themselves. But that’s the kind of people who are there.

And are we to think that, when Jesus begins to speak, only his disciples can hear? No, that doesn’t make sense. Some of his disciples heard better than others, and the ‘multitude’ heard as well, even though Luke does not spell that out.

Maybe that’s like our gathering here this morning. Perhaps there are some who have specific responsibilities, either in general here at The Good Shepherd or for this morning in particular. Some of us are actively seeking to be followers of Jesus – sometimes that’s harder than others but that’s what we’re trying to do. Some are here with questions, or because your family is here, or because… well you’re not quite sure why.

I don’t say this to classify us, to put us onto different lists, but to describe the mix of people who are here – and we’re all welcome, and we’re all welcome to hear what Jesus was saying then and is saying now.

So, what was Jesus saying then, and what might any of us hear him saying now?

Jesus gives us two lists – four “Blessed are you…” and four “Woe to you…”, and they clearly run in parallel: poor / rich, hungry / well-fed, weeping / laughing, hated & excluded / well-spoken of.

Jesus looked at his disciples and said, ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God’. The kingdom of God – the places where what God wants to happen is actually happening – is what Jesus repeatedly refers to in the gospel stories. He speaks of bringing the Kingdom, of welcoming people into the Kingdom, and (as here) of his followers having the Kingdom of God.

Is being poor here referring to actual physical poverty? Or is a reference to some kind of spiritual poverty? Being poor and being pious were often linked in the Bible’s way of thinking. Maybe it’s a bit of both – Jesus is directly addressing his disciples here, and if you look back to the previous chapter there are multiple mentions of people “leaving everything” to follow Jesus. So, they had made a ‘spiritual’ decision to follow Jesus which had significant practical consequences, and they were ‘poor’.

If Jesus’ disciples were poor, can we imagine him raising his eyes to the wider crowd when he said, “But woe to you who are rich”? …although, as we’ve said, the distinction between the two groups might not have been absolutely clear.

Maybe the crowd was listening with bated breath to hear whether their group – their ‘kind of people’ – would make it to Jesus’ A-list or B-list (or maybe it’s worse than a B-list).

‘Blessed are you who are poor, who hunger, who weep, when people hate you… you will be filled, and laugh, and be like the prophets of old’ – ‘Your reward is in heaven’ – not ‘will be in heaven’ but is – heaven is not a future place we might hope to get to when we die. Heaven is God’s domain now. And wherever Jesus goes, bringing in the Kingdom, heaven is breaking in on earth – as we so often pray in church as part of The Lord’s Prayer: “May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven”.

This turning of the tables for those who are poor, hungry and mourning is consistent with what Jesus has declared in the synagogue at Nazareth a couple of chapters ago – good news for the poor, release for the captives, the time of the Lord’s favour.

And Jesus is not using a new form of speech here either. We heard in Psalm 1 the writer saying, ‘Blessed is the one who follows the way of the Lord… Not so the wicked!’. And many of the psalms that follow also compare in a similar way. The book of Proverbs repeatedly sets up contrasting pairs, as do the prophets of the Old Testament.

And so Jesus comes to his other list: ‘Woe to you who are rich, well fed, laughing, and get lots of positive social media reviews”.

“And what’s wrong with that?” we might ask. Jesus relied on rich people to support his ministry, he fed people and enjoyed being in good company. He wanted people to hear his words and follow him.

There are lots of ways of understanding Jesus’ words here, but I think we can at least say this: Where is your trust? What do you rely on?

Woe to you who are rich – not because you are rich, but because you have taken your comfort from being rich. Blessed are you who are poor – not because you are poor, but because it’s a sign that you’ve left everything (metaphorically if not literally) and followed me.

It’s hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven, Jesus said elsewhere, because of the temptation to trust your riches, which is ultimately trusting in yourself instead of trusting God, acknowledging God as the source of everything you possess and putting it at God’s disposal.

Even as I say that I have to be careful to be addressing myself, not anyone else. The only person qualified to say ‘Blessed are you…”, “Woe to you…” is Jesus, and my role here is simply to listen to Jesus myself and to encourage you to do the same.

It’s all too easy, isn’t it, to look at other people and put them on one list or another, in the secret places of our hearts – “You’re blessed, but woe to you!”

Jesus continues his teaching through Luke 7 by turning our expectations upside down – love your enemies, and pray for them… do not judge others… take the plank out of your own eye before you worry about the speck in someone else’s.

We don’t get to play God – to decide who is blessed or woeful. I’m grateful to Scot McKnight’s comments on Luke 7 here – he points to words of a quote from a book by Anne Lamott, “You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

Jesus doesn’t call us to chase after poverty, but to follow him. This is the life of the Kingdom:

• Love God, and love others as you love yourself
• Care for the imprisoned and suffering
• Do as Jesus did – take good news to the poor, release captives, give sight to the blind, set the oppressed free, announce the economic justice of God’s kingdom!

Scot McKnight suggests turning that quote around: “You can safely assume that God is recreating you in his image when you love all the ones God loves.”

We don’t get to decide who is on which list – nor does Santa Claus. God knows – listen again to Jesus’ lists (re-arranged, to make us think) – what is God saying to you?

Woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.
Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry.
Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.

Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.
Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.
Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man, for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.

Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven.

As Jesus’ ministry shows, it’s not that God is unconcerned with our circumstances, whether we are poor, hungry, or weeping, but Jesus’s call is to trust and follow him. As we’re so often charged at the end of our services: Go in peace to love and serve the Lord – Amen!