People came seeking healing and Jesus promised that someday they would be satisified, someday they would laugh but today the kingdom of god is yours. When our weeping and laughter, riches and poverty, hungers and plenty, woes and blessings come together in community, what does it mean to hear, to be healed and why –when it is most needed– does it always look so crazy?

Jesus is now on the Stadium Tour

We’re at the point in Jesus’ ministry that there is a great multitude of people… from as far away as what we call Lebanon. They may be Jewish but they are not just from his hometown or his homeland.

And the School is big enough to field a football team

Luke wants us to understand this, but they are not the ones meant to hear what Jesus is about to say. So he turns to his disciples, those who have gone beyond checking out what he has to say to becoming students to learn and live the way. The number is so larger that Luke calls the disciples a great crowd. These are ones who can hear this teaching.

A Hard Teaching

It’s important to keep this in mind because Jesus’ message is a hard teaching. Who wants to be poor to get blessed? The last few years, there are pastors that preach these words and have people say these words are woke or they don’t work. They’re words that leave people confused and puzzled. For some, the answer is to rush over to the sermon on the mount. Blessed are the poor in spirit sounds easier to swallow than Blessed are the poor.

Blessed are the Poor [full stop]

Unfortunately, if you want to do that, there’s a problem with choosing one over the other. Luke and Matthew really are not different on this point. Both translated Jesus’ Aramaic words into Greek. There’s a good possibility that Poor and Poor and Spirit reflect the same words from Jesus’ mouth. What Jesus said includes both thoughts. Running from this passage over to the Sermon on the Mount isn’t an escape.

Prophets and the Rich

You don’t have to read very far in the prophets to find less than kind words about the rich when they grow rich off the poor.

Being poor and hungry was common. The great crowd learning from Jesus would have included not just people from different lands but people who were well off and the poor. It’s easy to imagine Jesus focusing on those who were hungry as he said blessed are you who are poor, who are hungry, who are sad…. and then turning to the people, some who were paying the bills, to echo the prophets… woe to you who are rich, who have plenty, who are happy.

A few weeks back… they couldn’t hear because of their anger

Jesus’ school is booming. Why would he risk his success. What did those words have to do with the healing people came to seek?

Early in this series, were read how Jesus returned home and is asked to read in the synogogue. He reads from Isaiah and, as he interprets the passage, it becomes clear he has a very different understanding of the passage than they do. They were looking for a messiah with a sword to fight to free their country. And Jesus was declaring the year of Jubilee. In Jesus eyes’ Jerusalem did not need liberation from foreign occupation, Jerusalem’s people need to be freed from their chains and their poverty. There was a blessing hiding in these words but they were so angry, they refused to hear. It is only when you are willing to hear the message that you can receive the blessing. And here what they are seeking is healing.

Not hearing

Had Jesus being teaching love your neighbor to his students, love your enemies, they will know you by your love and not seeing his students even practice it with his other students? If this is the year of Jubilee, when the time came to pass the baskets, would they be the miracle that feeds the crowd? John Wesley preached that, in community, some have less than they need… and some have far more than they need… and in that surplus we have enough together. When Jesus looked out, did he see a crowd of followers that, together, had enough that all could be satisfied and happy?

Healing begins with hearing

In part the message to the rich is that finding comfort and security in wealth can blind you to all the ways you still have needs. If you’re afraid of the what might happen, the danger lurking in the crowd, it’s easy to say those words don’t work. If you arn’t willing to hear the message, how can you go on to the blessing?

But, there’s a message for the poor to hear, too. Happy are you who are poor, because God’s kingdom is yours.

Not  happy some day, not kingdom some day, not vague hand waving promises but the reality of the kingdom of god, the love of the good, the truth that you are beloved of the Creator, Spirit and Child of all who that is divine and transcendent in this very very moment.

Lines at soup kitchens are an interesting place to be. Some appreciate what they are about to receive, what they are receiving. When a guy in a collar gives thanks for the bounty we are about to receive they get it. If they got to see the He Gets Us ad from last week’s superbowl, they understand what it means to show one person kneeling with another. And I’ve been in those lines with people who could not stop complaining about the quality of the food… and how long the line was… and the wait. Their complaints were often true. The food was not always great and no one likes lines.

Often our complaints are true. But, in our low simmering anger and frustration, we miss the gratitude, we miss hearing what is being said, we even risk drowning out what others could be hearing. Even as we don’t deny that poverty, hunger, and tears exist, and all the tragedy and horror and brokeness around us, if we are willing to also willing to know that the kingdom of god, however imperfect, however not yet fully on earth as it is in heaven, is also real right now right here and it is ours if we are only willing to hear it blowing around us and through our lives.