"Blessing or Woe:

On Which Side of the Beatitudes Do We Stand?"

Sermon for Sixth Sunday of the Year, cycle C, Feb 14-15, 1998

by Most Rev. Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Presiding Bishop, United Catholic Church

Jeremiah 17: 5-8

Psalm 1: 1-6

1 Corinthians 15: 12, 16-20

Luke 6: 17, 20-26

The church calendar and the lectionary are set up so that every three years, the readings cover the entire Bible (at least the important stuff). We’re in the third year of this cycle (Year C) used by all the major liturgical denominations. Since we’re not in Advent or Lent or the Easter Season, we’re in what used to be called Ordinary Time. Now it’s just called the Season of the Year. Today’s readings are for the Sixth Sunday of the Year. Since this season began (with the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord), the second readings have been going through First Corinthians, and the Gospel readings have been working their way through Luke. The other synoptic gospels (Matthew and Mark) are covered in Years A and B. John gets sprinkled around wherever it’s appropriate.

This week we have reached that part of Luke where Jesus gives the Beatitudes. They’re a little different in Luke than in Matthew, where they begin the Sermon on the Mount. In all probability, Jesus preached the Beatitudes on a number of occasions to different crowds.

In Matthew’s more famous version, there are nine Beatitudes, all of them strictly from a positive perspective. But here in Luke, there are only four Beatitudes, and they are followed immediately by four negative counterparts, the "Woe to You"s, which do not occur in Matthew.

Though the Beatitudes in the two gospels say essentially the same thing, this difference in format leads to varying interpretations and applications.

Matthew’s all-positive Beatitudes seem to say, "Don’t worry if life seems like hell. You will be compensated in the afterlife, so just hang in their and bear it." And it would be easy to take Luke’s the same way, especially when paired with the other readings for today.

The Old Testament lesson from Jeremiah says not to trust in human beings, but in the Lord. God is our only hope — a thought echoed by the Psalm.

The Epistle reading has us looking forward to resurrection with Christ. "If our hopes in Christ are limited to this life only, we are the most pitiable of men."

So it is easy to see how all this can give the impression that Christianity is a completely other-worldly religion. The "opiate of the masses" Marx called it. What the architect of Communism meant by that was that by holding out the carrot of happiness in the afterlife, Christianity pacified the poor, the downtrodden, the mistreated ... and made them docile. This, of course, was in the interest of the rich and powerful who could continue exploiting the poor and hogging the riches of the earth for themselves. (Marx’s attitude toward religion was colored by the fact that the hierarchy of the church not only defended the rich and powerful, both with their sermons and with their resources, but were themselves part of the rich and powerful. Marx saw the church using scriptures like the Beatitudes to keep the poor and downtrodden masses from demanding a better life. And let’s face it, Marx wasn’t entirely wrong.)

But Luke’s version of the Beatitudes makes it more difficult to apply the gospel in that way.

If we rearrange Luke a little, putting each "Woe to You" immediately after its Beatitude, the contrast becomes more obvious.

"Blest are you poor; the reign of God is yours. But woe to you rich, for your consolation is now."

"Blest are you who hunger; filled you shall be. But woe to you who are full; you shall go hungry."

"Blest are you who are weeping; you shall laugh. But woe to you who laugh now; you shall weep in your grief."

"Blest shall you be when men hate you, when they ostracize you and insult you ... rejoice and exult, for your reward shall be great in heaven. Thus it was that their fathers treated the prophets. But woe to you when all speak well of you. Their fathers treated the false prophets in just this way."

When read in that way, the Beatitudes are not so palatable to the rich and powerful. Such contrasts between the "Blest are you"s and the "Woe to you"s have led recent theologians to formulate what we call "God’s preferential option for the poor." It says that God is on the side of the poor and downtrodden, and woe to those who make them that way or keep them that way.

This goes beyond telling the poor, "Don’t worry about it; God will make it up to you in the next life." Instead, it seems to say, "God doesn’t like it that people are poor, and he’s not only going to make it up to them, he’s going to punish the hell out of those responsible if they don’t change their ways."

When taken together with other things Jesus says, like the "eye of the needle," this seems to be a very reasonable interpretation of the Beatitudes.

Today, "God’s preferential option for the poor" is accepted by the Roman Catholic Church and many mainline Protestant churches as not only acceptable theology, but standard doctrine.

The next step in theological development is a natural one. It has the poor and downtrodden reading the gospel and saying, "Yes, God loves us. But he hates the fact that we’re poor and powerless. He’s so ticked off by it that he’s going to send people to hell for it. Maybe we shouldn’t stay poor and powerless. If God doesn’t like us to be poor and downtrodden, then he didn’t intend for us to be this way. Those who have been telling us that we are poor because God planned it that way have been lying to us. God doesn’t want us to be poor. He wants us to do something about it!"

This natural development also has members of the clergy looking at the gospels and seeing the same thing and saying to themselves, "If God doesn’t want these people to be poor, then it’s our job to stand with them against the rich and powerful. It’s our job to teach them that the gospel proclaims their right to a fair share of God’s creation. And it’s our job to help them get it."

And thus is born liberation theology. The Beatitudes, thanks largely to Luke’s version of them, have thus come full circle. From being used by the aristocracy to pacify the peasants, it is now being used by the peasants to scare the bejeebers out of the aristocracy, particularly in Latin America.

Religion has gone from being the opiate of the masses to being the engine of revolution. The clergy have gone from being the sworn enemy of Marxism to being among the leadership of Marxist governments in places like Chile and Nicaragua.

This development of liberation theology is still controversial. Some of its adherents took it perhaps too far, advocating armed revolution. The finest practitioners of liberation theology, however, also practiced nonviolence. Many have become martyrs. Archbishop Oscar Romero comes to mind. Several bishops and hundreds of priests and nuns have been killed by death squads upholding the old order of rule by the rich and powerful.

I see this as one of the most hopeful things that has happened to the church in seventeen hundred years. When the church was in its infancy, it was a church of the poor and downtrodden. The Galileans who listened to Jesus preach the Beatitudes in the hills by the Sea of Galilee were the dregs of society. (The rich Jews were in Jerusalem.) Nearly all the apostles were martyred. So were the early popes.

Then along came Constantine, and the church became respectable, upper class, even wealthy. Saints started coming from the ranks of warriors, princes, and kings.

But now it is changing again. Once again we have saints and martyrs who were killed by the rich and powerful for standing with the poor and downtrodden (instead of the other way around).

The early church thrived and grew, persecuted by the ruling establishment and watered by the blood of martyrs. But then the church became the ruling establishment and the persecutor, and the only blood flowing was that of its victims. The vibrant spirit-filled church of the catacombs had become the frozen chosen of the halls of power.

Thank God that is changing. And when we read this gospel of Luke: "Blest are you poor; the reign of God is yours. But woe to you rich, for your consolation is now," we won’t be embarrassed to be asked "Which side are you on?"

As Christians, we hope in the resurrection, and look forward eagerly to the life to come. But we must accept that God has work for us to do right here and now, in this life. We are comforted by the Beatitudes, for at least one of the promised blessings applies to us. But we are also challenged, and we forget at our peril God’s preferential option for the poor. Let us always know on whose side we stand. God has made his choice. We can only stand with him if we stand with those he has chosen. May we always choose to stand with God. Amen.

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