Are We Blessed Or Cursed?
2019년 2월 17일Most of us are familiar with the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s gospel. Today’s gospel according to Luke gives us, instead, the Sermon on the Plain. What’s going on? Well, by putting these sayings of Jesus on a mountain, Matthew is portraying Jesus as the new Moses. Luke, for his part, has all the people standing on a level field to underscore the new equality we enjoy in Christ. Rich and poor, men and women, children and adults, sick and healthy, Jew and Gentile: all are equal.
This equality has consequences. To attain equality, the upper class must be lowered and the lower class raised. The hungry must be fed, but those who are full must go hungry. Sounds pretty revolutionary, till you realize these very ideas were proclaimed by the Virgin Mary: “God has cast down the might from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly. He had filled the hungry with good things, but the rich he has sent away empty.” (Luke 1:52-53) The gospel of Jesus is revolutionary. It turns the world upside down.
To drive home his point, Luke not only lists those who are blessed (the poor, the meek, those who mourn etc.) but he adds a list of those who are cursed: the rich, the powerful, the HAPPY! Luke doesn’t want us to be weak and miserable. Rather he is saying ALL conditions are temporary and everything changes. Today we may be happy, but the day will come when we will weep. But if we are weeping now, the day will come when we will smile once more. Life conditions constantly change. The only unchangeable is Christ.