This morning (Sunday 16th February 2025) I preached at Sherbourne Community Church in Coventry. I was very pleased to be asked to do so. Below is the text of my sermon.
To be clear: this is the text I wrote beforehand but in practice I deviated from the wording at times and added in a couple of extra comments. But the substance is the same.
The sermon followed two Bible readings, and focused particularly on the first one:
“Blessed are you who are poor… woe to you who are rich”. These are striking words from Jesus in the passage we’ve just heard. I’m sure many of us have heard this passage before. Some of you, however, may be more familiar with a similar passage in Matthew Chapter 5, at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus blesses “the poor in spirit”. Luke’s version is sometimes known as the Sermon on the Plain. In Luke, we get blessings for the poor, the hungry, the suffering, the persecuted – followed by woes for their opposites.
But what does Jesus mean by poor and rich? Are you rich or are you poor? I am going to resist the temptation to ask for a show of hands. Now I don’t know anything about the financial circumstances of anyone here. I don’t want to make assumptions. I suspect that many of us would not necessarily describe ourselves as rich or poor. Some of us might say that we are not poor compared to many people in certain other parts of the world. It may be that many of us would say we’re not poor compared to many other people here in Britain. I suspect that most of us are not millionaires or billionaires either. We are not the people who run the world. So it can be difficult to fit ourselves into these categories.
But we cannot get away from the fact that we live in a deeply divided and unequal world. According to Oxfam, the richest four individuals in the UK own as much as the poorest 20 million people in the UK. That’s nearly a third of the population, owning as much as four people. You don’t need me to tell you that internationally, the inequality is even greater.
I suspect it’s likely that most of Jesus’ original listeners would have recognised themselves as poor, perhaps as hungry. It is widely noted by historians that this was a society in which many people were struggling to make ends meet. Roman rule hadn’t made things any easier.
Jesus lived in the Roman Empire, in which the emperor’s wealth and power were seen as an indication of his divine status. And in many other cultures also, it has been assumed that the rich and powerful are blessed by God. Despite Jesus’ teaching, Christians are not immune from this attitude. Following Donald Trump’s election victory, there were Christians in the US saying that Trump had survived the recent assassination attempt because God had chosen him to lead America. Some of them are giving thanks for the role played by Elon Musk, the richest person in the world. Meanwhile, Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, says that God has blessed the rule of Vladimir Putin.
To declare that God has blessed the rich and powerful is the opposite of what we see Jesus teaching here!
You’re not alone if you find yourself struggling with this passage, or finding it uncomfortable. Jesus is proclaiming good news, while appearing to side with some people against others.
So let’s have a look at precisely what he says.
Firstly, what does Jesus mean by “blessed”?
The Greek word translated “blessed” – Μακάριοι – is sometimes translated as “happy” or “fortunate”. At least one translation uses the word “congratulations”: “Congratulations to you who are poor!… Congratulations to you who are hungry!”.
But how would that have sounded to someone who had just turned up to hear Jesus? If you’re poor or hungry or weeping, do you want to hear someone congratulating you for it? It sounds absurd. It’s bordering on being insulting. But I don’t think Jesus is saying that it’s a good thing to be poor, or hungry, or suffering, or persecuted. Jesus’ comments make sense when we realise he’s talking about something that is going to change. “Blessed are you who are hungry, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” You are blessed because things are going to change! This is good news!
Well, it’s good news for the poor and hungry people who turned up to hear Jesus. But what about the woes? Is Jesus proclaiming bad news to the rich?
A woe is not a curse. Jesus did not curse the rich. “Woe” is a warning or an exclamation of alarm. It’s like saying “Oh, no!” or “How terrible!”. I came across a commentator from the US who suggested translating it as “Yikes”: “Yikes for the rich!”.
Jesus is saying “Congratulations to the poor… But how horrible thing are for the rich!”. On some level, it makes no sense at all. Who congratulates people who are suffering and commiserates with the successful? Again, I don’t think that Jesus is saying that poverty, hunger and suffering are good things. Rather, he is lifting the lid on the reality of the world. It is the poor who will succeed in the end, while the apparently successful will discover the poverty of their notion of success.
Jesus is siding with the poor, the hungry, the suffering and the persecuted. He doesn’t say “Blessed are you who weep, as long as you believe in all the same things as me”. He doesn’t say “Blessed are you who are poor, as long as you have tried to help yourselves and are not feckless”.
Jesus is on the side of people who are suffering because they are suffering. He says that those who are poor and suffering are blessed – because things are going to change.
Reading Jesus’ words in the gospels, we find that Jesus talked about wealth and poverty more than about any other topic. Throughout Christian history some people have found this uncomfortable. We all face the danger of picking out the interpretation that we like the most, or that challenge us the least. People who are comfortable with the status quo have found reasons to downplay Jesus’ comments and predictions about wealth and poverty.
Some argue that when Jesus talked about such things, he was referring to spiritual poverty and spiritual riches. Now of course Jesus frequently used metaphors. And many of his teachings are relevant to spiritual poverty and spiritual riches. But Jesus contrasted spiritual riches with earthly riches: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth,” says Jesus in Matthew 6. “But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven… For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
Given that Jesus spoke about wealth and poverty more than about any other topic, I find it hard to believe that all his comments on the subject were intended metaphorically. Surely the hungry people who turned up to hear Jesus in first-century Palestine would have taken him to mean material hunger.
Others argue that when Jesus tells his audience that “you will be filled” and “you will laugh”, he is simply talking about what will happen to them beyond the grave. It’s a promise of pie in the sky when you die. But the gospel is good news in this world as well as in the next. In the second reading earlier, we heard Paul’s passionate words to the Corinthians, insisting that the dead are raised because Christ was raised. If Jesus was not raised, he says, then our faith is futile! The resurrection is a world-transforming reality. It changes our lives. The Roman Empire thought they could execute a troublemaking Jewish peasant. But God sides with the poor and oppressed, not with empire and oppression. So the troublemaking Jewish peasant rose from the dead and the powers of this world are put on notice that their days are numbered. Sin and death may look strong, but the resurrection reveals that love and life will ultimately triumph.
The change that comes with resurrection cannot simply be put off until we die! Resurrection means that the dead are raised and that the living can live differently – whether individually or collectively. It also allows us to look at the effects of our actions beyond the time of our own lives. Jesus’ resurrection makes the world’s transformation possible.
We could get very hung up on definitions, worrying about whether we as individuals are poor or rich, or how we fit into Jesus’ categories in this passage. But I don’t think that’s the best use of our energy. Jesus is not calling us to go hungry or make ourselves suffer for the sake of it, but to take the side of those who are.
If we take sides with somebody, does that mean we will have to take sides against somebody? Well, yes – but Jesus shows us a different way of doing so. If we read on beyond the passage we heard today, we will find that immediately after announcing the blessings and woes, Jesus says we should love our enemies! It is love of enemies that makes it possible for us to take sides while recognising that the Gospel is good news for all people.
I would like to share a personal experience with you. Just over 12 years ago, I stood and watched a man staring into space. His wife was nearby, crying. His children were nearby, also crying. But the man didn’t go to help them or comfort them. He just stood there, staring into space.
It wasn’t because he didn’t care about his wife and his children. It was because he was in a state of severe shock. His house had just been bulldozed down.
I was in the West Bank, in Palestine. Many Palestinians build houses without official permits, because it is almost impossible for them to gain a permit from the Israeli authorities. The house may be left standing for years. But at some apparently arbitrary moment, the authorities will turn up with a bulldozer, the residents will be given half an hour to remove all their possessions, and the house will be destroyed.
I stood there, alongside this family, the other journalists who were with me, the family’s neighbours and an Israeli human activist, an Orthodox Jew, who travelled to the sites of such demolitions to show solidarity with Palestinians who had lost their homes.
Many positions can be taken on who is to blame for the conflicts and atrocities in Israel and Palestine. But as I stood there, it struck me that not by any political argument, not by any distortion of religion or any analysis of history, could those two small children be held responsible for what had befallen them.
In all the discussions I had heard around Israel and Palestine, there had been a lot of talk of sides. On the Israeli side, on the Palestinian side, on this or that side. On that day, I realised whose side I was on – or whose side I wanted to be on. I wanted to be on the side of children who had nowhere to sleep tonight. I wanted to be on their side, not because of their nationality, not because of their religion, not because of how they fitted into this or that argument about the situation, but because of their needs. I wanted to be on the side of the victims and not the perpetrators of injustice.
Of course, distinguishing victims and perpetrators may not always be so easy. Political situations and international conflicts are complex and morally confusing, to say the least. But if we take Jesus’ words seriously, we must not use this complexity as an excuse to avoid getting involved. As Desmond Tutu said, if an elephant is standing on a mouse’s tail, and you say you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
I wanted to side with those children whose house had been destroyed – but I am not called to hate, or dehumanise, or harm, or kill, those who destroyed it or those who ordered them to do so. I am not better than them. Later in Luke’s Gospel we read of Zacchaeus, a wealthy and corrupt man who encountered Jesus. Zacchaeus gave away half his wealth to the poor and repaid four times over the people he had defrauded. Zacchaeus recognised that Jesus’ message was good news for him too – and his repentance brought him joy.
So when will the hungry be filled and when will the people who are weeping laugh? While the Kingdom of God can only reach it fulfilment with the return of Jesus, the New Testament makes clear that the Kingdom of God is constantly breaking into our world. When people are fed, when love appears, when injustice is challenged and kindness triumphs over cruelty, the Kingdom of God is breaking in. And while we differ from each other in some of our political views and understandings, I suggest that all Christians are called to take sides with people who are poor, people who are marginalised, people who are oppressed. Even when a cause seems hopeless, the reality of the resurrection gives us hope. It can be hard to believe it in the darkest times, but as Martin Luther King put it, the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice.
I know that many of you are already doing amazing things to show solidarity with people who are suffering, to alleviate suffering and to tackle the causes of suffering. We can be successful in such things only by trusting in the power of God, revealed in the resurrection of Christ, and not in any power of our own. As Christians we believe in life after death, and in life before death. And that is good news.
Symon Hill 