Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 13, 2022 – Jeremiah 17:5-8; 1 Corinthians 15:12, 16-20; Luke 6:17, 20-26

You may have noticed that the ‘blesseds’ are just a little bit different from the way you remember them being. What happened to ‘poor in spirit?’ What happened to ‘the meek?’ Where’d they go? And where’d these ‘woes’ come from instead? In order to understand today’s gospel, we have to understand how the gospels were created.

During St. Paul’s lifetime, by the time he and Peter were executed by Nero in Rome, in the mid-60s, almost all Christians, small little communities dotted here and there around the Mediterranean, almost all Christian communities knew about Jesus and basically what He said and did. They knew it by word of mouth. First Jesus’ inner circle, then other people, spread the word from town to town and person to person. So, the gospels were written, beginning with St. Mark, after those events. They were written for a purpose. Each gospel writer wanted to retell and already-known story to add more detail and to make a specific point that he thought was essential to the spiritual life of his community.

If we turn to the very beginning of St. Luke’s gospel, we find out that he addressed it to somebody, a guy named Theophilus. That tells us a couple of things. It tells us that St. Luke’s patron was not of Jewish origin. That’s a Greek name. Which means that St. Luke was writing to a convert from paganism. And it’s not exactly clear who Theophilus was because the word means someone who loves God or someone who God loves. So, it could really be an individual person with that name, or it could just be all of the Christians whom God loves.

But, either way, St. Luke must have had a wealthy patron who paid him for the expenses of gathering together the materials that were already out there. What happened was, first little bits and pieces of Jesus’ story got written down. Then there were collections of Jesus’ sayings, but no indication of where He said them or what prompted them. And so, Luke puts together all the things he’s got, spreads them out on a table, and using St. Mark’s gospel as an outline, begins to fill stuff in along the way. One of the things he has is a tradition that Jesus said some ‘blessings’ and said some ‘woes.’

When we look at St. Matthew’s gospel, St. Matthew’s gospel puts what we now call the Beatitudes at the very beginning of Jesus’ teaching. The very first time Jesus speaks in public, He begins, says St. Matthew, by going up a mountain, sitting down, gathering His disciples around Him, and teaching them, “Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the sorrowful.” The mountain He went up is not a real mountain, it’s a metaphorical mountain, because the first great law-giver of Israel, Moses, went up a mountain. When Moses got up there, God gave him laws. When Jesus gets up on the mountain, no one give Him stuff to teach, it comes out of His own head. He sits down, the posture of the teacher in Israel.

But Matthew saves the ‘woes’ until the very last public speech of Jesus, when He lays out the Sadducees and the Pharisees in scarlet for their hypocrisy and their evil. St. Luke takes a different approach. St. Luke says that Jesus came down from wherever He was, down off the mountain, to a level stretch. This plain is also a metaphorical plain. Why? Because he wants us to imagine Jesus looking people in the eye, walking up to one of His followers and saying, “You are so lucky to be poor.” And to another one, “Blest are you because you have the ability to know how to grieve.” And then looking out into the crowd, who are overhearing the teaching and saying, “God help you who think you’ve got everything you want now, because someday you’re gonna go hungry.”

This is just like what St. Luke did two Sundays ago, when Jesus appeared in His hometown, in the synagogue. Hometown boy made good. And in the midst of all the good feeling that that generated, Jesus lobbed a live grenade into the crowd by telling them that He was the one who would fulfill all the scriptures. No one like change. And Jesus told them, “Things are gonna change because of Me.” They disliked it so much that they turned on Him and tried to kill Him.

Jesus is doing the same thing in this story. He’s lobbing another grenade into the crowd and saying, “My word turns life upside down for people. Things you think you could count on, you no long can count on.” Why would St. Luke present it that way? Because of who he’s writing to. He’s writing to Gentile Christians.

In the pagan world of that time, the greatest store was put on wealth, status, reputation, and power. The four pillars of the Roman Empire - wealth, status, reputation, and power. And there’s nothing wrong with those things, in themselves. But they almost always lead to one or another kind of corruption. And that’s how St. Luke understands the gospel. It may even be a warning to his patron. To look beyond the status symbols of his society to what Jesus is really all about.

When I was in college, in graduate school, in the seminary, I worked each summer for an office in the archdiocese that was located on 22^nd Street on the east side of Manhattan. And every morning I would take the D train all the way down to lower Manhattan, walk from the west side to the east side, and reverse the process at night. Of course, the subways back then were packed. And it was summertime. It was hot, it was icky. But every Friday, when I got my paycheck, I would reward myself by taking the New York Central Railroad home. I’d walk from 23^rd Street up to 42^nd Street, to Grand Central and get on of the local trains that stopped right at the bottom of the hill where my parents’ apartment was. And it was great because, you know, when you get on at 42^nd Street, you get a seat and the cars were air conditioned. But New York Central begins underground at 42^nd Street. Around 123^rd Street, it comes up out of the ground and rides level with the street for a little while, then it begins to rise, like and Ell train.

And I would look out the window, every Friday night, as you went through Harlem and the southeast Bronx, and think to myself, “I couldn’t bear to be a priest working in these slums. I don’t know how I could do it.” By the time I was halfway through graduate school, my revulsion at what I saw was so powerful that I went to speak to my spiritual director about it, to ask if maybe I should not become a priest if I felt that way. He said to me, “No.” He said, “So maybe you’re going to serve the middle class Catholics instead. Just go and be a good priest.” And he was right, but he was wrong. What he said really was not an answer to my question. And it was the wrong answer. But, looking back after fifty years, I did have a meaningful ministry.

But things have got to change. My generation of priests was tasked with bringing to life the vision of the church in the Second Vatican Council. And in some ways we did a pretty good job, and in other ways, not so much. We did a good job on liturgy. We did a good job on a couple of things. But not such a good job on the vision of the church in the modern world. Journeying with people is still in its infancy. The popes are still talking about getting us out of our heads, and back into the streets. They’re still talking about justice for the poor. Peace. Security. All those things that we really didn’t work for.

You and I, our generation of Catholics, kind of are rear-guard action for a kind of Christianity that really needs to fade, so a stronger and more robust Christianity can take its place. We need to be grateful for all it is that we’ve had. We also need to encourage the next generation to pick up and move on to a Christianity where the poor are blessed, and the mourners are blessed, and the meek are blessed.