Lk 6:17, 20-26
17And [Jesus] came down with [the Twelve] and stood on a stretch of level ground [with] a great crowd of his disciples and a large number of the people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon.
20And raising his eyes toward his disciples he said: “Blessed are you who are poor,/ for the kingdom of God is yours./ 21Blessed are you who are now hungry,/ for you will be satisfied./ Blessed are you who are now weeping,/ for you will laugh./ 22Blessed are you when people hate you,/ and when they exclude and insult you,/ and denounce your name as evil/ on account of the Son of Man./
23Rejoice and leap for joy on that day! Behold, your reward will be great in heaven. For their ancestors treated the prophets in the same way./ 24But woe to you who are rich,/ for you have received your consolation./ 25But woe to you who are filled now,/ for you will be hungry./ Woe to you who laugh now,/ for you will grieve and weep./ 26Woe to you when all speak well of you,/ for their ancestors treated the false prophets in this way.”
The Great Reversal
Commenting on the Beatitudes, Philip Yancey writes in his book The Jesus I Never Knew: “The Sermon on the Mount haunted my adolescence… Once I became so convicted about my addiction to material things that I gave away to a friend my prized collection of 1,100 baseball cards, including an original 1947 Jackie Robinson and a Mickey Mantle rookie card. Anticipating a divine reward for this renunciation, instead I had to endure the monumental injustice of watching my friend auction off the entire collection at a huge profit. ‘Blessed are those persecuted because of righteousness,’ I consoled myself.”
The author continues, “Over time I learned to respect, and even long for, the rewards Jesus promised. Even so, these rewards lay somewhere in the future, and dangled promises do not satisfy immediate needs. Along the way, I have also come to believe that the Beatitudes describe the present as well as the future. They neatly contrast how to succeed in the kingdom of heaven as opposed to the kingdom of this world.”
The fact is that the Beatitudes are not easy to understand, and more difficult to follow even for well-meaning and serious Christians. They simply run contrary to ordinary human experience!
To understand the meaning of Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, it is important to note that it was primarily addressed to the disciples: “There was a large gathering of his disciples, with a great crowd of people… Then fixing his eyes on his disciples he said: How blessed are you who are poor…”
Certainly, the disciples were not rich, but neither were they dirt-poor. The first disciples had their homes and boats; many others owned less. Why then are they called “blessed” (fortunate or happy)?
In the previous chapter narrating the miraculous catch and the call of Jesus’ disciples, Luke concludes the episode thus: “Bringing their boats back to the land, they left everything and followed him” (5:11). A similar conclusion is given to the story of the call of Levi: “Leaving everything, Levi got up and followed him” (5:28). The disciples are blessed because they have understood that happiness, success, and yes, the whole life of man do not depend on the fame, wealth, or power that one has. They depend, rather, on one’s welcoming in faith the kingdom of God which comes in the person of Jesus.
The happiness of the poor, the hungry, the weeping, and the persecuted does not come from their suffering which Jesus himself tried to alleviate during his public ministry. Rather, it comes from the certainty that they, because of their plight, can depend only on the just God who favors them here and now, and so will provide them with all the essential things in life here and now—profound joy, peace, and security.
Moreover, they are blessed because in the Kingdom hereafter their painful situations will disappear. The future promise of eternal rewards, however, is not simply a “pie in the sky” and should in no way stop us to fight for justice now. Like the sound of a drum and bugle corps heard from afar, Jesus’ promises of rewards announce that no matter how things are, there is no bright future in evil but only in good. And so, to those who have learned to anticipate and enjoy God even in the midst of their difficulties on earth, heaven is truly a long-awaited homecoming.