This morning our scripture will again come from the gospel of Luke. It’s the beginning of the first block of Jesus' teaching; what in Matthew we would call the Sermon on the Mount. But here in Luke, it is actually the Sermon on the Plain or more literally, the Sermon on the Level Place.

This week there was an anonymous call left on the church telephone voicemail. It was, apparently, from someone in the neighborhood who doesn’t like the kind of people who show up for the Wednesday Night Dinner, and wishes they would quit pulling onto these local side streets in their junkie old cars and trucks, or on foot in their run-down clothes…because, as the voice on the message said,

“I don’t want to be reminded of poverty.”

I don’t think we’re so different from our neighbor, actually. I don’t want to be reminded of poverty either. And yet, it seems that the same Jesus who said, “the poor will always be with you,” also will not let us rest easy with it.

Up until this point in the gospel of Luke, if you were in the growing group of people who were surrounding Jesus, things were pretty good. Downright exciting, actually.

• Jesus has shown himself to be a captivating and motivational speaker, who teaches with authority…any day, he’ll be doing the national seminar circuit.
• Jesus has shown himself stronger than demons and evil spirits.
• He has proven to be more powerful than sickness and physical ailments.
• He is Lord of creation, wind, sea, fish.
• He answers well when confronted by others, and in fact confounds the arrogant religious leaders who seem to hover around him like gnats.
• Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath, of traditions; he knows and interprets the scriptures like a pro…
• And he has garnered a following by simply saying, “Follow Me!”

Now here he is “on a level place,” surrounded by Jews and Gentiles from all over Palestine and the surrounding areas. In fact, Luke seems to be telling us…The whole world has come after Jesus. And those close to him are beaming. They’ve backed the right guy. “Follow me!” he said, and they followed.

Maybe they should have read the fine print. Because here for the first time Jesus looks his followers square in the eye and speaks right to them, sharing good news and bad news. Blessings and woes. And it’s no accident that Jesus gives the blessings before the woes, the gifts before the warnings, the grace before the judgment. That seems to actually be part of Jesus’ character.

“Blessed are you,” Jesus begins.

The way that Jesus uses “blessed,” it’s like what he says actually occurs, it is a blessing that he gives. “The blessing of God, of the Kingdom, on you!” It has substance. It’s not just a descriptive thing, but rather declares it so. One author says this is like the declaration of a judge handing down a decision…of a minister at a wedding…or of an umpire in baseball. The word is pronounced, and it is so. Whatever things were just before…now they are different. Blessed are you. “You are blessed by God,” or perhaps better: “May the blessing of God be on you.” It is Jesus’ way of saying, “God is (and therefore I am) on your side!”

Imagine you are one of Jesus’ followers and you hear this beginning, “Blessed are you…” Oh, wonderful, he’s blessing us! He’s affirming us! Well, of course! After all, we’re the ones who have followed, we’re the ones doing the right things. What will he say?

“Blessed are you that follow me!”

Or “Blessed are you who tithe!”

Or “Blessed are you that worship at Bethany!”

What will he say? Instead,

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”

Oh. Maybe we should switch over and read Matthew’s version. He’s a little easier to understand. Matthew’s Jesus begins, “blessed are the poor in spirit,” those who are crushed, depressed, broken. That’s easier to understand. Poor on the inside is easier to understand than poor on the outside. Or at least it’s easier to ignore. But not here in Luke. The poor are the poor. Blessed are you who are poor.

When we started Luke, I told you that Dale Bruner called Luke the “gospel for social workers.” Here it is. The poor…are near and dear to God’s heart. God is on their side.

Theirs is the kingdom of God.

Incidentally, here’s why we need both Luke’s and Matthew’s Jesus. Luke reminds us that the poor are the physically poor. And Matthew reminds us that the poor are the spiritually poor.

“I don’t want to be reminded of poverty,” the voicemail message said. Me neither. Because poverty is hard and painful. Poverty means poor, and poor means people, and people are hard to ignore.

Hear the four “blesseds”:

• Poor people,
• hungry people,
• grieving people,
• people excluded because of faith in Jesus.

Those are God blessed. Why? Should we aspire to these things? Should we try to be poor, hungry, grief-stricken, outcast? What is it about these people?

They are people on the outside looking in. They are at the fringes of society and the margins of the community. And God is at work declaring them insiders, drawing them in. Both in heaven (the fourth “blessed,” your reward is great in heaven), and in the future (you will laugh, you will be filled), but also now (yours is the kingdom of God).

The kingdom of God is upside down, and outsiders become insiders.

“I don’t want to be reminded of the poor.”

Me neither.

When we lived in Minneapolis, the church we were at hired a custodian whose name was Jimmy Joe. Jimmy Joe was about 30. He’d grown up in Washington D.C., sort of. Really, he’d grown up in a bunch of different orphanages and boys homes. He’d been in more trouble than you could list out. Used and sold drugs. Addicted to alcohol. Spent some time in prison. When he came to be custodian, he was in a rehab program trying to re-start his life. We were trying to partner with him. He didn’t make it, at least that time.

I learned a lot from Jimmy Joe. Not long after he started to work with us, he came over one night to our house for dinner. Our kids were young at the time, probably 5, 8 and 11. Jimmy Joe was an absolute magnet for the kids; they loved him. He was after all, one of them!

It was a very casual dinner. Jimmy Joe sat at the table in the dining room with us. We had dinner, we chatted for a while. After a while, the kids ran off to play. When Anne went out to get something out of the kitchen, Jimmy Joe leaned over to me and said,

“So…this is the family thing, huh?”

He was all eyes. He’d never been inside a family. Never inside. Always on the outside. Blessed are you.

“I don’t want to be reminded of the poor.”

Me neither.

Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.

Again, Luke’s Jesus will not let us spiritualize this. You who are hungry. That might be someone like John, who used to sleep out here on the cement parking strip across the street. Now he stays in a little lean-to down the alley. Sometimes I talk to John. Sometimes he knows me and talks to me, sometimes he doesn’t. I regularly see John going through the Dumpsters of the restaurants on Queen Anne, looking for food. John is on the outside. Blessed are you.

I don’t want to be reminded of the hungry, either.

Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. A woman, we’ll call her Kristin, sits and weeps. Her husband hit her several times, there was a separation and restraining orders and a divorce. She never dreamed that she’d be in that spot. She’s ashamed to tell her friends, even though they suspect. She’s ashamed to be in the middle of all the happy-looking people at church. She weeps. Kristin is on the outside. Blessed are you.

I don’t want to be reminded of painful grieving.

Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you on account of the Son of Man, for your reward is great in heaven.

This week I heard about a man named Abraham, whose family was from another faith. When he accepted Jesus Christ in college, he went home and told his father. His father screamed at him for half an hour…and then quite literally kicked him out of the family; wrote him off. So there he was, on the outside of a church he had yet to come to know, and on the outside of a family he had known all his life. Blessed are you.

I don’t want to be reminded of the hardships people go through because of Jesus.

It’s interesting that all of these “Blesseds,” are places that we don’t want to be. In fact, places we work hard to not be there.

Who wants to be poor?
Who wants to be hungry?
Who wants to grieve?
Who wants to be excluded or scoffed at for our faith?

Nobody!

And so we work hard: to be rich, not poor. To be filled, not hungry. To be happy, not sad. To be admired for our faith, not reviled or outcast. All of which, of course, puts us directly in line to receive Jesus’ “Woe to you’s.”

So what are the followers of Jesus to do?

Take on the positions of poverty, hunger, grief and persecution? Some have chosen to do so. Monastic vows of poverty. Don’t want to undersell, because at every stage of this sermon, Jesus will stand his listener’s worlds on their ear.

Or go read only Matthew’s beatitudes, which are more easily seen in a spiritual light?

At the very least, it seems we must pay attention to Jesus and his kind of blessed—the one that says to the poor, hungry, grieving, and persecuted in a compassionate voice:

I’m on your side. I’m declaring you who have always been outside on the fringe…inside God’s beloved circle.

At the very least, it seems we will need to think about two things:

1. In Jesus, God was about this same ministry, bringing us from outside to inside. Outside of faith, outside of community, outside of salvation…to inside. When Jesus was crucified on a hill outside of Jerusalem, it was for your sake and mine. Jesus became the poor, the outcast, the despised, the one on the fringe…that we might be welcomed in God’s house, in the midst of God’s people, at God’s table in the kingdom. It is not “us and them,” but “we.”
2. Jesus invites us to share in his ministry. And so we try to live in such a way that invites others inside. Inside of God’s people. In from the fringes. From staring through the window to sitting by the fire. That ministry is both to the physical part of a person and to the spiritual.

As a church, we have tried to partner in ministries that will touch both parts of people. If you came on a Wednesday night to the community dinner, you would find over 200 people, mostly from off the street, lined up for dinner. You would find people cooking and serving a meal, but you would find more than just a feeding program.

You would find people who come and sit at tables just to meet people, to have conversation, to build friendships. Inviting others in. You would find a Bible Study, some people taking communion, some getting haircuts. You would see people standing up to have Happy Birthday sung. You would hear laughter and words of welcome.

Wednesday Night Dinner is just one example. I wonder who the people are in your life that you might invite into the midst of God’s upside-down kingdom? Someone you might share your faith with, at the risk of being “excluded, reviled and defamed” on account of Jesus. I wonder who you might invite into the inside of God’s community?

Thanksgiving is just weeks away. Who do you know that may desperately need an invitation to be part of a celebration of thanks to God? That might say, “Wow, so this is how the family-of-God-thing works, huh?” You know, often the very thought of inviting someone in from the fringe is a stretch: You may not know them well, they might be awkward, or socially inept. Or poor, or hungry or full of grief.

I confess to you that I am a person who likes things neat and clean. And when I read these words of Jesus, it is far from neat and clean. I am unable to solve or maybe even make a dent in things like poverty and hunger…though maybe I could reach one poor and hungry person. I am unable to solve these things, yet find I am also unable to throw up my hands and be content with where I am at. There is a tension there, a tension that more and more I suspect I am somehow supposed to live with.

When Frederick Buechner defined the word “compassion,” he said,

“Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it’s like to live inside somebody else’s skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.”

So woe to us who are rich. Full. Content. Admired by all. For there’s trouble ahead.

And Blessed are you. Blessed are you, Jimmy Joe. Blessed are you John. Blessed are you Kristin. Blessed are you Abraham. Blessed are those on the outside. Yours is the kingdom of God.

And blessed are you…who pull others inside.