Some of Jesus’s words should come with caution statements: Read at your own risk. They’re so fragile and yet so powerful, that if we don’t handle them carefully, much harm can be done. We’ve seen what happens when verses are cherry-picked and used as weapons. We also know what happens when people take hard-edged sayings and turn them into sugary candy.
St. Luke’s version of the Beatitudes should come with a caution statement. Read at your own risk. Handle with care. Fragile material inside. Maybe this is why Jesus descends the mountain before opening his mouth to teach. His words are so precious that he must be close to the people when he delivers them. He can’t throw them down the mountain, for they will break. He must gently hand them off, with the eyes of the giver meeting the eyes of the receiver. Teaching up on the mountain might give the wrong impression, especially if he were speaking only to his chosen disciples. What about all the people on the ground?
And sure enough, when Jesus comes down from the mountain to that level place, the people arrive from the four corners of the earth. The sick come. Those who are troubled by unclean spirits come. The poor come. The sorrowful come. The hungry come. The persecuted come. But the rich come, too. Those who are well-sated also show up. The ones who are laughing end up on that plain, as do those who are popular in the world’s eyes. They come from both Jewish territory and Gentile territory. They come to get close enough to touch Jesus, because he has great power, and they know it.
Our Lord’s words are too delicate to be delivered on a remote mountain top. These words are meant to be voiced on the level ground to all who come and stand near Jesus. And as he speaks, he raises his eyes and stares intently at his disciples. It’s as if he’s saying, listen to these words at your own risk. Handle them with care. Exercise caution when applying these words to your own lives.
First, he speaks to the social outcasts. They have dragged themselves up from the valley of despair to be with him on the level ground, and he’s come down to meet them. They need a good word. Jesus directs his words to the materially poor, not just the spiritually poor. He makes eye contact with those who can’t afford to put food in their mouths and those who are on the verge of losing their homes. He speaks to those who simply can’t keep up with the ruthless pace of life and who are foreclosing on their houses or mired in debt and can’t find jobs. He comforts all those whom society is ignoring, both in his day and in ours. He offers balm to those who are so downcast that they can hardly get up in the morning and whose silent language is tears. He gives hope to those who are being pummeled to death by a world that hates them because Jesus’s name is the only thing that matters to them.
To all those who came to him on the level ground that day, and to all the ones who still come, day after day to ask for his healing—to them, he announces that the kingdom of God belongs to the forgotten ones. To them, he declares that they have a future, a future when their injustice will be righted.
But Jesus isn’t finished, because this isn’t a one-sided sermon. The good news isn’t only for the troubled. It’s for the comfortable ones, too, however much the good news might upend their world. Jesus speaks incisively to the materially rich, especially the ones who’ve placed their whole trust in the gods of this world rather than in the kingdom of God. Jesus doesn’t equate wealth with evil, but he does suggest that those who are rich must use their wealth rightly. He locks eyes with those who are well-fed at the expense of the hungry. He has convicting words for the ones who are laughing because they have drowned out the cares and sorrows of the weeping. He offers a strong warning to those who possess earthly fame and popularity, because such praise is of no value in the kingdom of God.
No one is unaffected by Jesus’s preaching. And now, we need to remember the cautions that come attached to his words. We must interpret his teaching at our own risk. If we’re not closing off our ears, Jesus’s words will indeed challenge us. They will disturb us. They will unsettle us. We must handle these words with care, because beneath the surface of this language, there’s a deeply fragile truth.
For those of us who long for justice and for the full realization of God’s kingdom—which I’m assuming is all of us here—then we may be tempted towards Schadenfreude. Do we celebrate because God’s judgment is coming for those who have amassed wealth at the exploitation of others? Do we secretly hope that God will give them their comeuppance? Do we feel self-righteous because those who are luxuriously content will soon be hungry? Do we long for those who are laughing at the expense of others to choke on their tears? If so, then we have carelessly handled Jesus’s precious words. We have failed to heed them at our own risk and honor their fragility.
Jesus’s woes are not offered to vindicate the resentments of those who cry for justice. God’s justice transcends the pettiness of human retribution and vengeance. Jesus’s woes are given as timeless words of warning to those who have failed to put the kingdom of God at the center of their lives. The balance and symmetry of this juxtaposition of blessings and woes—or perhaps we should say encouragements and cautions—are a visible literary representation of God’s justice. The blessings and woes are not a further division of an already deeply-divided world, because in the complexity of life, we can’t neatly divide humanity into one of two categories. Many of us live on both sides of the line.
We must handle Jesus’s words with care, for they carry a delicate message, and to heed them in a right spirit and to decipher our Lord’s good news, we must be on a level ground, standing with our feet firmly on the earth and our eyes fixed intently on Christ, who’s gazing upon us as well. But our eyes must also be fixed on those we might rather not look at. On the level ground, we can’t avoid the eyes of anyone. On the level ground, we must not exist as a self-righteous crowd that rejoices in the downfall of the unjust or tunes out the tribulations of our neighbors, but we must stand with those who desperately need to hear Jesus’s words as much as we do. We may find that all of us need to hear both the blessings and the woes.
Jesus is holding before us an eternal gift that’s so breakable that we must be close to him and to others when we dare to receive it. His gift is the kingdom of God. This kingdom operates beyond our human sphere of resentments and retribution. This kingdom functions in the eternal mind of God, where justice is not meted out with misshapen delight in the downfall of the unjust. God’s justice is like a scale precariously trying to find its balance. And for this kingdom to be realized in all its fullness, we must all stand together on the level ground.
In the kingdom of God, the poor and the rich both converge on the level ground. The hungry and the well-fed come. The weeping and the laughing come. The persecuted and the popular come. In the center of this crowd stands our Lord holding out his priceless gift, which we should only handle at our own risk, with caution, because the contents can shatter when we grasp them too tightly.
For the poor to thrive, the rich must learn to be poor. For the hungry to be fed, those who are well-satisfied must know what it’s like to hunger. For the weeping to rejoice, those who are laughing must weep with those who suffer. For the persecuted to find comfort, those who are well-praised must know the cost of following Jesus to the very end. It’s only on the level ground that shared suffering and shared joy find their meeting place in the gift of God’s kingdom.
And that level ground is the Church. We come here, those of us who struggle to pay the bills, and those of us with generous checking accounts. We come, those of us who live day to day in deep anxiety over our security and those of us who sleep easily at night. We come, those of us whose hearts are breaking and those of us who would prefer not to be bothered by the aching hearts of others.
And when we come to this level ground, the only thing that matters is our Lord’s beautiful gift, the gift of God’s kingdom. That kingdom belongs to the poor, to the hungry, to the weeping, and to the persecuted, but not only to them. With humility and reverence for Jesus’s words, that kingdom can also be received by the rich, the comfortable, the joyful, and those who are immune from trouble. It can be theirs, too, when they remember the downtrodden who also come to the feast with them, when they learn to be poor as our Lord was poor.
So, come to the feast on this level ground. Approach our Lord’s gift at your own risk. Handle his words with care. And above all, know that if we can empty ourselves to come down from the mountain and trust God enough to ascend from the valley below, on the level ground, we will find the eyes of our Lord, looking on each one of us in love.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany
February 16, 2025