A Lesson on the Kin-Dom
This week I heard a conversation amongst pastors that I found unsettling. We were talking about some of the efforts we were doing to make the valley a better place. One of them eventually piped up and said, “None of this matters if we are not saving people’s souls.” This set off a cascade of nods and “amens.” Eventually, someone else added, “Saving people’s soul is our primary job. We must care about people’s eternity above all else.” Friends, I sat at this meeting deeply unsettled. This is one of the most common and damaging theological mistakes made today. It is the privileging of the eternal over and against any reality here on earth. It contains in it the idea that we will flee from this earth and with that all responsibility for caring for it. I think this is in part a misreading of Scripture, and specifically an approach to reading Scripture that spiritualizes passages such as our own.
We have all heard the Sermon on the Mount, but did you know that Luke has a version of Jesus’ most famous sermon? Luke describes this sermon not on the top of a mountain, but a level place. Hence we shall refer to Luke’s account of this sermon as the “Sermon on the Plain.” Here we have the second instance of Jesus’ teaching in Luke—the first time of course being the disastrous episode in his hometown of Nazareth. Its content is in the same vein as his inaugural address. Having declared his mission “to bring good news to the poor” in Luke 4:18, Jesus begins his sermon with “Blessed are you who are poor…” Notice the differences between Luke and Matthew’s account. Matthew says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” while Luke says, “Blessed are the poor.” Matthew says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” while Luke says, “Blessed are those who are hungry now.” Here, Luke adds something significant to this discourse. He adds woes countering those who are blessed. “Woe to you who are rich… to you who are full now… to you who are laughing now...” The two sermons differ slightly, but their differences have massive implications.
Let me first say that the Sermon on the Plane does not imply that it is better to be poor, hungry, and miserable than to be rich, well-fed, and in good spirits. God does not only love us when we are miserable. That is not Luke’s intention nor Jesus’ meaning. They are promises to those who are suffering in this world that God sees them, loves them, and is intent on their thriving.[1] Catholic Liberation Theologian Gustavo Gutierrez refers this as God’s preferential option for the poor. The preferential option for the poor is God’s initiating and positive action on behalf of and in favor of society’s neglected, deprived, and disadvantaged. Gutierrez notes that material poverty is never good but an evil to be opposed. "It is not simply an occasion for charity but a degrading force that denigrates human dignity and ought to be opposed and rejected."[2] Importantly, he notes that poverty is not a result of fate or laziness but is due to structural injustices that privilege some while marginalizing others. This is an important point and one we must be vigilant to uphold. Personal responsibility is important, but we must also bear in mind the structural sins that lead to and reinforce poverty. Additionally, Gutierrez notes that poverty is neither inevitable nor impregnable. Collectively, we can organize and facilitate social change. Third, poverty is a complex reality and is not limited to its economic dimension. Mahatma Gandhi put it this way: poverty is the greatest form of violence.
While Jesus’ Sermon on the Plane is a promise to society’s vulnerable, it is also a warning to his hearers that they are called to live with attention and generosity toward their neighbors, even as God is attentive and generous.[3] Gutierrez idea of “comprehensive salvation” is important for us. Gutierrez interprets salvation ultimately as communion with God and one another in history and in life beyond it. In his vision, liberative communities among the poor and marginalized are the primary subjects of salvation. This is because they are places of transformative action where communion with God is experienced tangibly so that it anticipates full communion when Jesus shall come again. God is creating a realm, bringing it to life among us by that same power that emanated from Jesus, in which no one is hungry or mourning, poor or disregarded, unseen or talked over at the very same time that others are overstuffed with food, rich beyond measure, laughing, and respected. It’s the contemporaneity of these two opposite circumstances that God promises to remedy, and we are called to address in our own lives.[4]
Gutierrez picks up on the warning to those in Jesus’ audience who are not vulnerable. He writes of modern Christians saying:
Christians have not done enough in this area of conversion to the neighbor, to social justice, to history. They have not perceived clearly enough that to know God is to do justice. They have yet to tread the path that will lead them to seek effectively the peace of the Lord in the heart of social struggle.[5]
When Jesus said "Blessed are the poor," Gutierrez points out, he does not say, "Blessed is poverty." Justo Gonzalez calls this a “hard-hitting gospel” in that God’s good news to the poor is also tough news for those who are not poor.[6] For God’s reign to be good news for the well-fed, rich, laughing, and admired, we will have to wake up and be attentive to the poor in our midst. We dare not overlook or spiritualize this aspect of Luke’s gospel. For, indeed, history has shown us at the struggles of a church that either ignored worldly suffering altogether or considered it to be merely a vale of tears on the journey to the eternal. For Gutierrez, "Standing in solidarity with the poor began to mean taking a stand against inhumane poverty."[7] Indeed, we find here that sin is not merely an individual reality but has a structural component. Sin must account for all the ways we are separated from God both individually, communally, and structurally. Real poverty means privation, or the lack of goods necessary to meet basic human needs. It means inadequate access to education, health care, public services, living wages, and discrimination because of culture, race, or gender. Such poverty is evil. It is a subhuman condition in which the majority of humanity lives today, and it poses a major challenge to every Christian who prays, “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done. On Earth as it is in heaven.”
This Kingdom is a Kin-Dom, where we see ourselves not as individuals inheriting the riches of a salvation after death, but as connected creatures in creation sustained by the love, grace, and compassion of God in this life. “We have been made by love and for love,” Gutierrez writes. “Only by loving can we fulfill ourselves as persons; that is, [by responding] to the initiative taken by God's love.”[8] This Kin-Dom is one marked by participation in God’s saving work. Gutierrez notes that “Our conversion to the Lord implies conversion to the neighbor. To be converted is to commit oneself lucidly, realistically, and concretely to the process of the liberation of the poor and oppressed.”[9] We call God's love for us is grace because we do not merit it. It is a gift we receive before we were even aware of it, and thus as Christians aware of God’s grace, gratuitousness is a mark of the Kin-Dom where we are led to love generously and to want to be loved gratuitously. Then, to make an option for the poor is to make an option for Jesus.[10] That ultimately is the spiritual basis for our solidarity with the poor. We opt to be with Jesus, to serve Jesus, and to accompany Jesus among the world's poor in the nonviolent struggle for justice. Christ is present with the poor and marginalized, and as ambassadors of God’s Kin-Dom we are called to join the struggle to end poverty.
The “wealth gap,” “food deserts,” the “education gap,” the “health gap,” and myriad other gaps and failures around the globe mark the two sides of the blessings and woes of the Sermon on the Plane.[11] It’s the gap we are called to address by this passage for God’s sake and our own. It’s what we as the children of God are called to do and what we repent of not having done. In our own backyards, God has given us opportunities to be the hands and feet of Christ in the heart of the valley. We have heard of rising homelessness in our valley. We are well aware of inflation. It is our calling to move from hearers of the Word to doers. To be the Christians who live as people touched by the grace of God. Continue to fill up our collection basket with Loads of Dignity. Sign-up with Tom and Deb Stephenson to support community meals. Volunteer with Haven House. Donate new and gentle used items to Salvation Army. Let us be the ones who not only pray and hope that God’s Kingdom would come, but that we would be the very ambassadors God’s uses to bring it to the valley. Whether you are poor or rich, hungry or stuffed, laughing or crying, God is creating new possibilities where the lion may lie down with the lamb, where the snake and the newborn sit in harmony, and we where we might live in harmony with one another. As the new creations of God begins to break into the world as we know it, may we be the ones who proclaim, rejoice, and participate in what’s to come. Let us pray.
[1] Sarah Henrich, “Commentary on Luke 6:17-26,” Working Preacher (Luther Seminary), accessed February 10, 2022, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/sixth-sunday-after-epiphany-3/commentary-on-luke-617-26-2.
[2] Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation, (Orbis Books, 1988).
[3] Henrich, “Commentary on Luke.”
[4] Henrich, “Commentary on Luke.”
[5] Gutierrez, A Theology.
[6] Justo Gonzalez. Luke. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 93
[7] Gutierrez, A Theology.
[8] Gutierrez, A Theology.
[9] Gutierrez, A Theology.
[10] Gutierrez, A Theology.
[11] Henrich, “Commentary on Luke.”
