"Blessed" Sermon by The Rev. Cindy Carter February 16, 2025  I don’t know about you, but as a priest with many seminary classmates and other preachers on my social media I tend to see a lot of religious memes. I have to admit that I do enjoy these, and there are some that make me smile or even chuckle every time they come up (and as you know most memes do tend to come up over and over again on social media). One of my favorites of these religious memes came to mind more than once as I was working on this sermon. I’m guessing many of you have probably seen it. It shows Jesus, sitting in his best first century rabbi pose, teaching his followers and saying, “Now listen up, I don’t want four different versions of this going around.” (As a preaching nerd, I find that meme hilarious. It makes me laugh every time I see it.) Of course, it came to mind because our Gospel reading for today, is a portion of what is usually called the “Sermon on the Plain,” and it resembles the familiar Beatitudes which we read in Matthew’s more famous “Sermon on the Mount.” But, there are differences. Both Luke and Matthew seem to have exercised considerable freedom in compiling their collections of Jesus’ teachings to meet their own literary and theological purposes. Neither can be shown to be a verbatim record of an actual preaching or teaching event in Jesus’ ministry. You see each of the Gospels presents the story of Jesus in a different way, and much of their richness is lost if we try to make them fit together in one consistent account. The Gospels all proclaim the Good News of God’s salvation in and through Jesus of Nazareth. But, they are concerned less with the biographical details of Jesus’ life than they are with what that life means for us and for the world. For example, the Jesus of Matthew’s Gospel (where we find the Sermon on the Mount) is a new Moses who fulfills the scripture and establishes the authority of his words. Perhaps that is why Matthew placed Jesus on a Mountain when he delivered his Sermon on the Mount – an allusion to Moses receiving God’s word on a mountain, something those who heard Matthew’s Gospel would have easily recognized. The Jesus of Luke’s Gospel is compassionate, a friend to outcasts. Jesus is the savior who came to seek and save the lost. Just before Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Plain, he prayed on a mountain before calling his inner circle, his apostles. And, then he came “down… and stood in a level place” to be near all those who had come to hear him and to be healed. (Pause) As we read the series of blessings and woes in today’s reading we hear echoes of other readings we have heard recently from Luke’s Gospel. We hear echoes of Mary’s Song, the Magnificat, from Luke, Chapter 1, that we heard in the season of Advent. He has shown the strength of his arm, he has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. And, we hear echoes of the scripture from the prophet Isaiah on which Jesus based his sermon in Nazareth, a reading we heard a few weeks ago from Luke, Chapter 4. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Blessed are you who are poor…who are hungry now…who weep now. Woe to you who are rich…who are full now…who are laughing now. It’s a sermon about who’s in and who’s out in God’s kingdom. And, frankly, it’s a little bit, maybe more than a little bit, unsettling. A few words about this unsettling picture. First, the blessing of the poor, the hungry, and consequently those who weep is not intended to idealize or glorify poverty. Rather, this blessing declares, what a commentator has called, God’s “prejudicial commitment to the poor.” One theologian has written - “God has a preferential love for the poor not because they are necessarily better than others, morally or religiously, but simply because they are poor and living in an inhuman situation that is contrary to God’s will. The ultimate basis for the privileged position of the poor is not the poor themselves but in God, in the gratuitous and universality of God’s…love.” Jesus was the human expression of how God loves; and in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is a compassionate friend to outcasts. And, that kind of love is scandalous, shocking, outrageous. Especially to those of us who are not poor or hungry. Rachel Held Evans, in her book Searching for Sunday , wrote “what makes the gospel offensive isn't who it keeps out but who it lets in.” The poor, the hungry, the weeping, the oppressed. Now, what Jesus was preaching here is what we call “eschatological.” It’s about how everything will be when God makes it all right. The coming of the kingdom will turn everything upside down and inside out. Every one of the conventional expectations that this world holds will be shattered when God’s kingdom comes in its fulness. Here and now the rich, the full, the laughing are on top; the poor, the hungry, the weeping are on the bottom. Not so in God’s kingdom. Now, I don’t know about you, but if that’s where we could end things with Jesus’ sermon this morning, well, God’s prejudicial commitment to the poor might sound just fine to me. Because I could know that God’s going to take care of it. Everything is going to be fine. But, you see, in this “sermon on the plain,” Jesus told us what God is like, who God is, and what God is up to. It is the same God we have heard in the words of the Old Testament prophets and all through scripture. And, once we know that, I believe that we must realize there are implications for the behavior of those of us here and now who are loved by God and love God back. There are implications for the behavior of those of us who have heard Jesus say, as he did in that sermon in Nazareth, that he was the very fulfillment of that scripture from Isaiah that talked about bringing good news to the poor and letting the oppressed go free. There are implications for our lives here and now if we dare to take the name of Jesus, if we dare to receive God’s love, if we love God back. My friends, there are implications for those of us who pray they kingdom, thy will be done. There are implications. AMEN.