February 12, 2010
Sunday Scripture
Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
BY FATHER DONALD DILGER
This Sunday’s gospel consists of a major part of Luke’s Sermon on the Plain. Why is it called by this name? Our first sentence reads, “Jesus came down, (from the mountain on which he had spent the night in prayer and chose his twelve apostles), with them and stood on a great level place with a huge crowd of his disciples and a great multitude, . . .who came to hear him and be healed of their diseases.” This will be Luke’s version of the teachings which Matthew enclosed in the Sermon on the Mount. The difference in location reveals their respective theology of Jesus. For Matthew, Jesus on the mountain was the new Moses, who proclaimed the perfection of Moses’ Torah or teaching. For Luke, Jesus is the first Christian Saint, standing on a level with his people to exemplify the words of Luke 17:21, “The kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”
While Matthew opens the Sermon on the Mount with a traditional enumeration of eight beatitudes (although there are actually nine), Luke gives only four beatitudes. One might say he does come up to the number eight by adding four curses, “Woe to you, etc.” Luke’s four beatitudes bless the poor, the hungry, the sad and depressed, and those who are persecuted because they are Christians. Luke is more direct than Matthew. Luke’s beatitudes are in the second person. For example “Blessed are you poor . . ., in contrast to Matthew’s “Blessed are the poor in spirit, etc.” Luke seems to have had a far keener experience of and with poverty. His gospel of the poor and suffering has a sharper edge than that of Matthew. This seems to reveal his intention of teaching an overwhelming Christian commitment to alleviate poverty and suffering. This theme runs throughout his Gospel and into the earlier chapters of his Acts ofAposties.
The four curses are formed as direct contrasts to the four beatitudes. Therefore Luke curses in the same order as he blessed. He curses the rich first, secondly those who have too much to eat, thirdly those who live for partying, and fourthly those of whom all speak well. His curses are startling to us who generally live in a world of plenty, although they may not be so startling to people living in abject poverty, hunger, depression and persecution. (Let us not think Matthew’s gospel superior to that of Luke because he blesses nine times and there is no cursing sequel. Matthew saves his curses (SEVEN of them) until chapter 23. He uses them not to attack the enemies of the poor as Luke does, but to attack his own critics.)
Most shocking is Luke’s condemnation of the wealthy. It seems he himself was supported by the wealth of Theophilus to write his two books. How will a homilist explain this curse to the wealthy people sitting in front of him, who not only support the parish, but perhaps furnish him with those extra perks enabling him to live a lifestyle a cut above what the gospels seem to envision for a minister of the gospel? There is much to be said on this issue, but for now let us listen to Clement of Alexandria (Egypt), a very moderate teacher of about 150 A.D. “Why would wealth have sprung from the earth at all, if it is the cause of (spiritual) death? If no one had anything, what room would be left for giving to anyone? Did not the Lord say, “Make friends for yourselves with your wealth, and when your end comes, they can receive you into the everlasting dwellings?’ In that way you will accumulate treasure in heaven. How could one feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, if all divested themselves of their wealth?”
This reading was selected because, like today’s gospel, it consists of cursing and blessing. The cursed man is the one who entrusts himself not to God but to human beings, and who relies on human strength alone. The prophet compares him to a shrub in the desert, in a parched wilderness, in an uninhabited land of salt. In other words, the man who does not turn to God receives neither nurturing nor nourishment. The prophet then blesses the man who trusts in the Lord. He is like a tree close to a stream, which never becomes dried up in the heat of summer, but remains green. Even in years of drought such a tree continues to bear fruit. Let Jeremiah’s striking metaphors speak for themselves.
Paul continues his discourse on the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of the dead. He is overwhelmed with the foolishness of those who deny Jesus’ resurrection. He had just given a list of the many who saw Jesus alive after his crucifixion and burial. If Jesus has not been resurrected, he says, then you can forget about those who have died before us. Then he reaffirms the resurrection of Jesus. Considering the sufferings of this life, and what he, Paul himself., endured for the gospel he proclaimed, he writes, “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, then we of all people are the most to be pitied.” Resurrection of the dead was a relatively new and difficult teaching. Paul feels compelled to return to this issue repeatedly.