Rev. Stephen Milton
Lawrence Park Community Church
February 16th, 2025.
Luke 6:17-26.
Today’s gospel reading comes from the Gospel of Luke. It is the start of what is called the sermon on the plain. Jesus tells us that the poor are blessed for they will inherit the kingdom of God. That those who weep now will laugh. Those who are hungry will be satisfied. That sounds lovely, who wouldn’t want that? But then Jesus flips all these sayings upside down. He says that those who are rich will become poor. Those who are laughing and well fed now will weep and become hungry. It’s a clever turn of phrase, but is it true? Are the rich destined to become poor? And will those who are living the high life, laughing in their wealth, will they be brought down low?
This passage has posed problems from the beginning since it seems so obviously untrue. There are many wealthy people who are born rich, grow up rich, and die rich. They live long lives, they can go anywhere they want. They can fulfill their desires, and laugh as much as they like. Real life experience shows that the rich are not brought down low generation after generation. Some are, but most are not.
And what about the poor? Are they always lifted up? Do those who weep always end up laughing? Do those who are hungry always get fed? There’s 2000 years of history that show this is simply not true. Many people are born poor and hungry, and die that way.
So, what do we do with this text? It is poetic. It sounds prophetic. It is from Jesus, and yet it sounds utterly unrealistic. For many centuries, churches have solved this conundrum by seizing on a term in the first sentence of the blessings. Jesus tells the poor they will inherit the kingdom of God. For a long time, churches have told congregants that the Kingdom of God is what we will encounter when we die. It is later, after we die, and at the end of time. Those who are devout and poor may suffer in this life, but they will be rewarded after they die. If this is what Jesus is talking about, it makes sense of what he says about the rich, too. They may be enjoying themselves now, laughing and feasting, but if they disobey God, they will face the consequences when they die. They will be locked out of heaven. They will experience many woes.
This interpretation led to a whole system of morality which still exists among many Christians. Jesus loves the poor, and will help them in heaven when this terrible hard life is over. If the rich want to get into heaven, then they should wake up and help the poor, giving money to the church and charity.
For people who are living in poverty, this interpretation of Jesus’ words provided hope, but also a grim view of reality. If the good life is really only found in the next life, then there isn’t much point in expecting this life to be kind or fair. Rich and poor alike could hear Jesus’ words and conclude that our time on Earth is a time of trial and tribulation, where people will treat each other harshly. That’s just the way life is. But, to get into heaven and enjoy your reward, poor people need to be moral and obedient in this life. It was this approach to faith that led Karl Marx to call religion the opium of the masses[1]. Religion keeps people down, with low expectations in this life, promising a better one later. It’s a perfect recipe for exploitation.
Among the poor people who heard this message from the pulpit were enslaved African Americans and Canadians. Black people were told that slavery was part of God’s will for them. Many white preachers told them that it was God’s will to bring them over from Africa to North America and the Caribbean so they could hear the good news of Jesus Christ. This was all part of God’s plan to save them so they could get into heaven by hearing the good news. Heaven waits for those who are obedient, they were told[2].
But a funny thing happened in North America. Some enslaved people were taught to read, and they were able to read the Bible for themselves. And in its pages, they read of a God who worked miracles so that an enslaved people could be freed from the Egyptians. They read that God’s son came down and said that the poor were blessed. They read about Jesus healing the sick and the injured. A Messiah who spent as little time as possible among the rich men who would kill him.
And so, a different way of understanding the Gospels took root among enslaved Black people. They became convinced that it was God’s will to free them[3]. They wrote songs about it, referring to heaven and the Promised Land, when in fact they were talking about the northern free states, and Canada. These slaves wanted heaven now, not just later.[4]
The first Blacks who could be considered educated theologians did not appear until the 20th century.
Young Howard Thurman
Howard Thurman is considered one of the first. He was born in 1899 in Florida to poor parents. His grandmother had been enslaved, and told him about what it was like[5]. Young Thurman was smart and ambitious, working hard to get multiple degrees.
He served as a Dean[6] at Howard University, one of the first historically Black universities in the U.S..
In the 1930s, he travelled to India where he had a fateful encounter. He met a Hindu priest, who know Thurman was a Christian. The priest asked Thurman, how can you believe in Christianity, the white man’s religion, when it made the slave trade possible?[7]
Jesus and the Disinherited.
In 1948, Thurman answered that question in a book entitled Jesus and the Disinherited. In it, he argues that the church had misunderstood Jesus’ message. He asks us to imagine who was listening to Jesus as he did his ministry. What kind of people were there on that day when he gave his sermon on the plain.. Jesus would have been surrounded by poor people. Jews, who were poor peasants, overtaxed and ruled by soldiers from the Roman Empire. The Jews could not see any way to defeat this empire. Stuck in poverty, and stuck politically. Like Black slaves later, they could not solve this problem quickly, or on their own.[8] Thurman argued that the people Jesus spoke to had much in common with the plight of enslaved Black people. Much more in common with them than with comfortable white people who read the Bible today. Or, in Thurman’s words:
“The basic fact is that Christianity as it was born in the mind of this Jewish teacher and thinker appears as a technique of survival for the oppressed.”[9]
Thurman argued that Jesus knew how difficult the Jews’ situation was, so when He spoke of the kingdom of God, he did not mean the afterlife. Instead, Thurman argued, Jesus offered them the kingdom of God inside themselves. Right now. Jesus taught them that in this impossible political situation, what they could hang onto was their dignity and self-respect. Jesus offered the Kingdom of God as a spiritual experience now, as a defense against the oppression they were facing from the Romans and their lackeys:
Jesus recognized with authentic realism that anyone who permits another to determine the quality of his inner life gives into the hands of the other the keys to his destiny. If a man knows precisely what he can do to you or what epithet he can hurl against you in order to make you lose your temper, your equilibrium, then he can always keep you under subjection. It is a man’s reaction to things that determines their ability to exercise power over him….
Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited,p.18.
Jesus offers the kingdom of God within us, now, not later. Self-respect must be now, not later after we die. Thurman argued that Jesus was offering them a life of spiritual depth. There is no need to wait for a revolution. God offers safe harbour in the kingdom of God right now to anyone who is open to it. And in knowing self respect for ourselves, we can see that others also deserve that same dignity.
But what does this mean for the rich? What does the kingdom of God mean to them?
Jesus says,
“But woe to you who are rich,
for you have already received your comfort.”
To our ears we hear these words as a curse, but that isn’t how it is meant. Woe in the Greek means the pain we feel when we grieve. Jesus is not condemning them, but saying “woe” as an expression of sympathy[10] for their misguided life. They trust in their riches, rather than God. Should anything go wrong in life, such as a reversal of fortune or fame, they will have nothing to fall back on, no inner self respect that comes with belonging to the kingdom of God. If a person’s self-worth is based on money and the admiration of others, one is leading a spiritually empty life. That kind of inner life leads to a constant hunger for more: more wealth; more approval. Woe to those who suffer that kind of hunger, for they fullness never lasts, they always become hungry again.
We are living at a time when it is obvious that great wealth is no guarantee of wisdom or compassion. The world’s richest men are tearing apart the American government in the name of efficiency and lower taxes. They are destroying programs that feed the hungry, help the sick and the poor around the world, and they will likely do the same to American citizens. It has never been more clear that great wealth does not make a person wiser or more compassionate than anyone else. There are wise and compassionate rich people who help others. But those are not the men who are in charge now.
Trump and Musk in Oval Office
And we should note that these oligarchs do not seem to be happy men. They seldom laugh. They exude no sense of spiritual calm or zen awareness. They mock compassion. Even with their fabulous wealth and fame, they are still hungry and dissatisfied.
Howard Thurman died in 1981. He would not be surprised by the spiritual emptiness of the billionaires in charge of society now. Nor would he be surprised that rich white men want to cut taxes and gut the government’s social programs. Rich rulers have been doing this forever, doing everything they can to stay in power and disempower others. Thurman argued that the gift of Christianity is that it gives the disinherited the spiritual strength to persevere even through the worst ages of cruelty. For what good is a faith that is only useful in the good times? What use is a faith that is only for the rich and powerful? What use is a faith that promises peace only in the next life?
The gift of Christianity is that when we feel powerless, we are given the strength to carry on. Not just to endure, but to live. Not just to weep, but to laugh. To be fed by God’s consolation even when are hungry. To sing even as the world burns around us. For we know that greed and hatred never build anything that lasts. The Pharoah’s empire is long gone, but the Jews who carried God’s word are still with us. The Roman empire is gone, today tourists visit its ruins. American slavery ended. The Nazis were defeated. Good does triumph over evil empires, but not right away. As we wait, God offers us the kingdom of God, now, where we find dignity, self respect and God’s love. Amen.
[1] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm
[2] James Cone, The Spirituals and the Blues, 23.
[3] James Cone, The Spirituals and the Blues, p. 35.
[4] James Cone, The Spirituals and the Blues, p. 14, 31.
[5] Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited (1948),p.20.
[6] https://www.bu.edu/thurman/about-us/who-is-howard-thurman/
[7] Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited (1948), p.5.
[8] Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited (1948),p.12
[9] Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited,p.18.
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