Luke 6:12-26
12Now during those days he went out to the mountain to pray; and he spent the night in prayer to God. 13And when day came, he called his disciples and chose twelve of them, whom he also named apostles: 14Simon, whom he named Peter, and his brother Andrew, and James, and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew, 15and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Simon, who was called the Zealot, 16and Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.
17He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. 18They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. 19And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.
20Then he looked up at his disciples and said: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 21"Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. "Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. 22"Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. 23Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. 24"But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.25"Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. "Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. 26"Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.
2 comments:
The "blessed be" series in Luke tends to be a source of guilt for white afluent america. Not that I don't allow myself to go there but today I heard something different. We all at one time are both rich and poor. We have all cried and mourned and been hurt. And in that we are blessed with the riches of heaven. We have also all had enough, experienced god's riches and love and so what does that mean for us. Is this passage really implying that we are only one of these two extremes. Because I think at times everyone feels both. The trick is to think about how we want to use what we have to help others and how we react when we feel we have nothing..remembering what we will inherit in God's kingdom.
One of the things that I do for a richer and fuller understanding of texts (Biblical and otherwise) is to look up definitions of words, even common ones. It never ceases to amaze me the illumination that can come from such a simple exercise.
So, I looked up some words [all condensed from Webster's original 1828 dictionary]:
Blessed - happy; prosperous; enjoying spiritual happiness and the favor of God; enjoying heavenly felicity (great happiness; blessedness; blissfulness; the joys of heaven)
Happy - (partial def.) enjoying the presence and favor of God
Woe - grief; sorrow; misery; a heavy calamity
Grief - the pain of mind produced by loss, misfortune, injury, or evils of any kind; sorrow; regret
Misery - great unhappiness; extreme pain of body or mind
To me all of this signifies our connectedness - or lack thereof - to God. We are blessed - prosperous & happy - when we are connected to God in spite of our poverty, hunger, weeping, etc.
On the flip side, we experience woe - grief, pain & misery - when we are disconnected from God because we are relying on our material possessions (riches), ourselves ("full now", having no need of God), or we are mocking God(laughing).
I know all of that seems pretty basic and it certainly isn't revealing some profound new spiritual truth, but it helps me grasp the essence of the passage in a deeper way.
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