You poor people!
Talking with an unseen God. Believing in fairy tales. Living by a bunch of outdated, restrictive rules. Missing out on the good life; fun, pleasure and wealth. Gullible, misguided, perhaps even brainwashed.
Perhaps you’ve heard others talk about Christians like that: ‘those poor people’—quite possibly using even stronger, unsavoury descriptors. In the eyes of the world, Christians are poor, destined to miss out on a fulfilled life.
There are Christians who are literally poor too. So poor they have virtually nothing, like our brothers and sisters in places like Africa, with simple shelters, basic clothes and inadequate food, or in Myanmar, where persecution is rife and the villages of Christians are razed to the ground, enduring a nomadic existence because their very life is in danger. There are Christians in the ‘underground’ church in China—those who gather to worship Jesus with a freedom they would not otherwise have in the open public.
Yet these Christians have received spiritual blessings lavished from heaven that the world can neither give nor take away. Jesus and his words of eternal life are all they have—but the poverty and present sufferings of this life pale into insignificance in comparison to the heavenly riches they have though faith in Christ, for all eternity. I think that’s getting close to what Jesus means when he says: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”
The people to whom Jesus proclaims this are introduced to us in the verses immediately before today’s text: a great number of people who had come to hear Jesus and be healed from their diseases and freed from the oppression of unclean spirits. Jesus says to them: “Blessed are you who are poor”. We would think that a person who is rich, well fed, and happy without a care in the world would have been blessed—not the poor. That’s the way the world thinks of and sees blessing.
But Jesus turns the way humans think of blessing on its head. He says that, instead, woes are coming to the rich, the well-fed and merry. This is so because they live with earthly things in mind, and cannot see beyond them, consumed by their focus upon building the ‘good life’, gathering for themselves treasures on earth instead of in heaven. What will happen to those people who want the things of this life more than God? They will get what they want. Woe to them! They have already received their comfort, but will have none in the life to come.
Today’s text isn’t about segregating the blessed from those who will have woes based on the bottom line of their bank balances. It is about those who value the things of this world, and those who value the word of God. Ultimately, it is only those who recognise their state of poverty and need before God who truly appreciate the blessing Jesus offers and gives. In contrast, the promise of mercy seems pointless to those who work at being self-sufficient, the thought of forgiveness laughable to those who do not see that they are sinners, grace seen as unnecessary by those who assert they do not need it. Not only this, but it is offensive to human pride, so much so that our natural reaction as humans is to not want to hear God’s offer of grace. So Jesus says:
“Blessed are you when people hate you,
when they exclude you and insult you
and reject your name as evil,
because of the Son of Man.”
How can hatred, exclusion and the insulting of God’s people mean they are blessed? Because how people receive Jesus’ followers is how they receive Jesus himself, who stands with them. So the persecution that Christians suffer for confessing and following Jesus is not a sign that God has abandoned them or withdrawn his blessing from them—but the very sign that he is truly with them, and they are his.
The key to this understanding is in the closing line of each section of blessings and woes—the reference to the prophets, who pointed to Jesus as the world’s Saviour:
“Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets” (verses 22-23).
By contrast, woes are pronounced to those who praise and affirm others simply to appease them and get them on side, rather than call out injustice and wrong-doing. Jesus says: “Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets”—the prophets who didn’t call for repentance and point people to the Saviour, but proclaimed peace from God where there was none.
Today we continue the ancient custom of commemorating the festival of All Saints. Originally All Saints’ was to remember and give thanks to God for those in the church who were martyred for their faith, but in modern practice All Saints’ Day commemorates all the people of God; the saints living and dead, who have first received God’s blessing to form the mystical body of Christ—the communion of saints of all times and places, even including us here at St Paul’s today.
And while they, and we, are among the worldly poor, the hungry, the weeping, and hated on account of the Son of Man, the Good News comes despite all this, from Jesus, the living Lord of his church:
“Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who hunger now,
for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
Blessed are you when people hate you,
when they exclude you and insult you
and reject your name as evil,
because of the Son of Man.
“Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven” (verses 20-23).
The Christian life is hard. Often it can seem as though those who reject Jesus and live outside of the church do better, are happier, more successful, and enjoy life more, than we who try to follow Jesus faithfully. But whatever our life situation, trials, tribulations and frailty are not a sign of divine rejection. Not even death itself can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus. The mark of the holy Cross on your forehead at your Baptism into Christ cannot be undone by the dissolving shape of a world in bondage to decay. That is what we are to look to for ourselves and our loved ones in the faith—that we too have died to the world and to ourselves, and have been made new with the life of Christ. We can join with the Apostle Paul in Romans 7: “Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (verses 24-25).
Today’s Gospel text concludes with instruction from Jesus for how his people are to treat those who are persecuted for their faith:
“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you” (v 27-31).
In this, we will show that we do not live by the world’s standards of retribution and payback, but with lives changed by Jesus and the Holy Spirit at work in our heart. But in this exhortation is also a glimmer of the gospel—Christ crucified for the forgiveness of sins. It was Jesus who loved his enemies, who treated him so shamefully on the Cross. It was Jesus whose cheek was slapped as he stood before the High Priest (John 18:22). It was Jesus who prayed for those who mistreated him: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” It was Jesus who had his clothes taken as the soldiers cast lots for them (Luke 23:34). It was Jesus who had taken from him what was his—his very life—and did not demand it back.
This is the good news and great hope for remembering the festival of All Saints. It is not in the good work of those we remember, but in the good work of Jesus who secured salvation for the world. Those who come to him in their natural state of spiritual poverty—as beggars with nothing we can give to make him look upon us favourably—receive the Kingdom of God from our Father in Heaven, just because of his grace, for Jesus’ sake.
And what is a kingdom, other than where a king rules over his people? The Kingdom of God is where Jesus rules in the hearts of his people with divine favour, blessing, grace, mercy and peace. That is the promise for all who come to hear Jesus, like the great crowd of disciples to whom he first spoke this text. Blessed are you who hope in him, for yours is the kingdom of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever. Amen.
