Feb.11, 2007

Campaign Promises

By Harry T. Cook

Luke 6: 17-26

This gospel reading is the less well-known and more consistently neglected version of Matthew’s so-called “Sermon on the Mount.” Luke’s version is chronologically later, though it includes much of what Matthew proposed yet is considerably briefer. Both appear to be derivative of an earlier source, material from which is scattered here and there through both Matthew and Luke. This source may have been a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus of Nazareth, which circulated among communities organized around his egalitarian ethic prior even to the appearance of Mark, the earliest canonical gospel. Some few scholars (including this journeyman one) think that source may have been roughly contemporary with the Gospel According to Thomas which itself is a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus, many of which can be found in one form or another mostly in Matthew and Luke but occasionally here and there in Mark.

[Note: The existence of the document known as the Gospel of Thomas had been guessed at and even quoted from as early as the Third Century, but an actual copy of it was discovered only in the mid-1940s, and was in Coptic – probably not its original language. Elaine Pagels in her 2003 book Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas makes a case that part of the impetus for the composition of the canonical Gospel According to John was to refute the image of Jesus found in Thomas. If that case is valid (and I believe on the basis of my own research to be so), then Thomas was in circulation before 90-135 C.E., the earliest and latest dates generally given for John.]

The Lucan version of this speech is called by some “the Sermon on the Plain,” because, in contrast to Matthew 5: 1 which has Jesus going up the mountain to make his pronouncements, Luke has him standing on a level place. It is tempting, of course, to make much of the contrast, and a lot of preachers have. I would simply say that the ethic that can be inferred from the sayings quoted here is harmonious with the second Isaiah’s vision of distributive justice (see 40: 3-5) as in Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low, the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.

Luke has Jesus address a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem and the coast of Tyre and Sidon – a diverse crowd, I think is meant. That would square with the generally universal aspect of Luke, a theme that will be found reiterated in Acts of the Apostles chapter 2: 4ff, wherein all those gathered on the Day of Pentecost are depicted as speaking in other languages as the Spirit gave them utterance with each one hear[ing] them . . . in the native language of each . . . Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappodocia, Pontus and Asia, Phyrgia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs . . .

What Luke imagined the great crowd of disciples and the multitude from Judea and environs hearing were one series of blesseds and one of woes. The consensus of most who work with these texts is that Luke added the woes, rather than Matthew having omitted them. Matthew, however, seemed to have spiritualized the blesseds (as in Blessed are the poor in spirit and Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness). Makarios is the Greek word commonly translated as “blessed.” Makarios is a word the Greeks used of the gods and of the dead, the latter presumably abiding in a kind of bliss or blessedness. So as we see the sayings in New Testament Greek, they may be read this way: How happy like the gods (or the blessed dead) shall be the poor or the hungry or the weeping or those persecuted for their faithfulness to Jesus’ way.

That might seem counter-intuitive to Christians of the developed world and of North America where generally there is no cost whatsoever to be paid for being identified with Christianity. Indeed, in some situations it is considered a liability not to be. Listen carefully to any serious aspirant to the presidency of the United States, and mark the references to God, Christianity and the church. In the First Century C.E., it was as often as not dangerous to one’s health to be identified with what I call Jesus Judaism. It seemed to have been an early target for persecution by Saul of Tarsus (later to be known as Paul), by continuing synagogue Judaism and, from time to time, by the Roman territorial authorities.

Maybe Luke imagined Jesus telling his followers that the cost of following him now had promise for later. Hence: the woes. Those well fed now are headed for hunger. Those who currently are rich in this world’s goods are headed for destitution. Those who kick up their heels in merriment now are about to see the party shut down. It is distributive justice with a retributive twist.

It is reminiscent of Hannah’s song that Luke adapts to make Mary’s song in 1: 46-55: He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.

In some ways we’d rather not think about, being blessed has never worked out very well in practical terms for Jesus Jews and, later, for many Christians not members of the leisure class. For a very long time, poverty and hunger and ostracism were the common lot of those on the line between poverty and destitution – those very people to whom Jesus and his counterpart, John the Baptist, apparently spoke.

In a way, the promises inherent in the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain have all the currency of campaign promises that will not, and probably cannot, be fulfilled. They make Christianity vulnerable to the charge of promising pie in the sky while saying “Tut, tut, there, there. Just bear up now. You will be rewarded later.”

The liberation theologians took the measure of that hermeneutic and rejected it out of hand. Theirs was a refreshing challenge to understand New Testament Christianity as a here-and-now proposition. We would do well to meet that challenge in our homiletic and practical ministries of service.

© Copyright 2007, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.