“Unexpected Blessings”
Original sermon given on February 16, 2025, written and delivered by Pastor Jeff Leininger at First Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church.
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“Unexpected Blessings”
Luke 6.17-26
Luke 6.17-26
In the name of the Living God and the Christ who has appeared to us. Amen.
A good preacher will say the same thing, in a new and engaging way. A bad preacher will say a whole lot of different things, but they all come out the same. A mediocre preacher will say the same things in the same way all the time.
I ask you not to judge your preacher this morning (and I shan’t judge my hearers), but rather ask us all to be judged by the great preacher, our Lord Jesus.
We are familiar with these words and often call them “the beatitudes” after their first word in Latin: “Beati/ Blessed.” Our Lord appears here as a great preacher because he’s said similar things elsewhere on the “Sermon on the Mount” (Matt. 5), but here Luke records them for us in a slightly different setting, in new and engaging ways in the “Sermon on the Plain.”
This “is a sermon from of a man who has stayed up all night praying.”[1] (Not me, Jesus.) He had a lot to pray about because he had to select his Twelve Apostles: a smaller leadership group distinguished from his growing group of many disciples, and distinguished again from the enormous, pressing crowds seeking to seize him for power and healing and eventually even revolution.
Up all night praying, up all day ministering, in this moment he lifts up his eyes and looks specifically at his followers. We might imagine him lifting up his eyes to look at us. Then he preaches the Beatitudes, the “blesseds,” which if you hadn’t heard them before and become almost too familiar with them, you might consider them the strangest, most upside-down, topsy-turvy blessing you had ever received. Who blesses like this? Blessed are the poor and lowly; the hungry and empty; the weeping and crying; the hated, excluded and defamed. (With blessings like this, who needs curses, right?) But then the curses, the “woes,” are equally upside-down. Alas for the rich, the full, the laughing, the well-spoken-of.
It's hard to imagine a more surprising sermon, more upside-down blessings, or reversed woes. They run counter to our Lord’s world at the time and to our world. What Jesus is doing here is looking right at his disciples, all his followers, all that would wear his name and bear his cross, to give them comfort for what lies ahead for them. There will be persecution. There will be hardships. You will be mocked, slandered, emptied of everything even. But when that happens (not if, when), regard it as blessing.
Why? Because, although following Jesus will be difficult, even deadly, one glorious day it will be different. Jesus assures us that, no matter what we might have to suffer for his name in this life, renewal and restoration and reward will one day come, in his eternal kingdom. Because you wear the name “Christian,” you may lose everything, but one day, by his grace, you’ll gain everything. Anything we lose now for the sake of Christ and his kingdom points us forward to all that will be gained in heaven.
These strange blessings are a reminder that Christ’s kingdom, his work for us, among us, and through us, cannot be measured by the litmus of this world’s success. Being a Christian will often look like, feel like failure. Those who follow Jesus, who remain faithful to him and his kingdom work, will experience poverty, hunger, sadness, and hatred. But stay faithful. Stay faith filled. Keep your eyes on the one who lifted up his eyes upon us, for the kingdom blessings are on their way.
Now for the judgement part. Ready for the woes? St. Luke records for us in this “sermon on the plain,” a collection of rather equal and opposite “woes” to mirror the blessings. “Woe to you who are rich… who are full now… who are laughing now… who are spoken well of now.” To be clear, our Lord is not here glorifying poverty nor demonizing wealth. He’s not endorsing a sort of “constant Christian crabbiness” — you know like a Lutheran Eeyore moping around about how miserable we all should be. As if being miserable is virtuous. Rather, he is upending how we truly measure success and joy, and where it truly comes from. Blessedness is not measured in a full belly, a full bank account, or even living a “full life,” well-spoken of by this world. But blessedness is measured solely in how we followed Jesus and what work we’ve done for his kingdom.
Jesus’ “woe warnings” here really call us out, don’t they? What are you rich in? What fills your inner being? What feeds you? What brings you joy? Where do gather your great reputation? Whose words of affirmation matter most to you? The “woe warning” is that none of the things of this world can truly fill us, and they all one day will be taken from us. For those who find their identity and worth and fulfillment only in this world’s kingdoms, Jesus says, “Woe, alas, how horrible, [cursed are you] because one day it will all be gone and you’ll have nothing.”
Christ’s own words of blessings and woes would soon be (strangely, mysteriously) fulfilled in himself, at the cross, for us. The crowds would turn on him, most of his followers leave him, even the those of the Twelve would betray, deny, and flee. There he would hang naked, impoverished, empty, weeping, crying out into the darkened sky with no answer and no relief, cursed and defamed by this world. Yet all these his woes become our blessings. For there he forgives and fills by his grace, winning for us a kingdom and crown that can never be taken.
St. Paul put it this way in Galatians 3: Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us — for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to [us] the Gentiles....
My brothers and sisters, my Christian friends: there is no greater blessing than to be persecuted for his name and no greater woe than to have only this world. But in Christ Jesus, and he alone, we have riches, joy, and fulfillment forever.
Come soon Lord Jesus. Amen.
[1] Michael Card, Luke, 89