February 16, 2025
Blessed Discomfort
Luke 6:17-26
On A Level Place
The story begins that, “Jesus came down with them and stood on a level place.” Now, this detail about the geography of Jesus’ sermon matters deeply. Unlike Matthew’s account, where the sermon takes place on a mountain, Luke tells us that Jesus chose to teach on level ground. This isn’t just about where the pulpit was – it speaks to one of the key themes that runs throughout Luke’s gospel: the way that Jesus consistently levels the social distinctions, boundaries, and barriers of society.
Over and over, as we follow Jesus, we see groups that wouldn’t normally mix rubbing shoulders with each other: rich and poor, the healthy and the sick, oppressors and the oppressed, the elite and the humble, those who are deemed righteous and those labeled sinful. By creating these encounters, Jesus isn’t just crossing social boundaries, or being a really cool rabbi: he’s embodying what God’s coming kingdom looks like. As Paul says, famously, “In Christ, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female, slave nor free.” So, when Jesus preaches on level ground, the geography of his ministry becomes a powerful symbol of his message.
You know, this resonates particularly with me as I think about our geography as a congregation. First Presbyterian Asheville has been on this geographic spot since 1831, when our forebears deliberately moved here from a hillside about a mile away to be in the center of a growing city.
I heard someone once describe downtown ministry as happening “where cross the crowded ways of life.” That’s a line from an old hymn, and I’ve always loved the image. Our life and our ministry as a congregation unfolds at the intersection of all society’s cross-currents. Wealth and poverty travel the same sidewalk, historical privilege and systemic inequality share the same parking, business and culture and leisure live the same building, residents and tourists go to the same stores and restaurants, those for whom life is going well and those who are struggling to survive literally breathe the same oxygen.
Our calling as a downtown congregation happens on level ground, in a place where the crowds gather, where the crowded ways of life intersect. And it’s here that we seek to hear the word of the Lord, to love of God, and to love our neighbors.
Blessed are You Who are Poor
So, on this level place, what did Jesus say? A unique feature of Luke’s version of this sermon is that he records Jesus’ message as a series of blessings and woes – or warnings – with each beatitude carefully paired with a corresponding warning.
Jesus begins with words that must have electrified his audience: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.” It’s worth noting that Matthew’s version reads “blessed are the poor in spirit,” but in Luke Jesus speaks with stark simplicity: “blessed are you poor.”
Now, to truly understand the impact of these words, we need to grasp the crushing reality of poverty that surrounded Jesus on that level plain. Historians and archaeologists estimate that 85-90% of the people listening to Jesus were living in poverty. Even more sobering, 70% existed below the level of stable subsistence, with absolutely no safety net beneath them. That means that any small misfortune could tip them into life-threatening poverty – a bad crop, an unexpected storm, an illness, a surprise child, a death in the family, a debilitating injury, higher taxes, a war.
If you have ever lived in poverty yourself, you know how emotionally and mentally crushing that experience can be. In my own family growing up, we moved in and out of poverty several times. One year stands out particularly clearly in my memory.
It was about 1988, and my father had quit his job, for reasons that still baffle me. We were living in a rented house, and two things about that time remain vivid in my mind. First, the landlord promised to fix the heat, and he removed the oil burner but never replaced it. So we lived through that entire winter with just two kerosene heaters and electric blankets on the beds. To this day, I can remember the snow of that winter and how bone-chillingly cold it was. The smell of kerosene still brings back memories of huddling by that heater in the morning before school trying to stay warm.
We were eligible for government assistance, but we didn’t take it. We did, however, use a local food pantry, and that’s my second vivid memory. I remember the week when the pantry received a big shipment of Dinty Moore beef stew. I can picture opening our cabinet and seeing can after can of Dinty Moore beef stew and we ate it several nights a week for a long time. To this day, I can’t say the name Dinty Moore Stew without staying in front of that cabinet in that house.
With memories like this, I can imagine how much it would have meant to those in Jesus’ audience to hear the words, “Blessed are you poor.” I can imagine what it would mean to our neighbors today – people in our congregation, in our downtown, 13% of North Carolinians who live in poverty – to hear these same words: “Blessed are you poor.”
And it’s crucial to understand that Jesus wasn’t saying they were blessed because poverty feels good, or because poverty itself is somehow virtuous. They were blessed for a very specific reason: “for yours is the kingdom of God.”
Yours is the Kingdom of God
These words – “for yours is the kingdom of God” – change everything. The poor are blessed not because of their economic condition, but because God’s coming kingdom belongs to them. Think about what blessing means: God sees them. God protects them. God stays close to them. God defends their cause. They live in special proximity to God’s presence.
And in God’s coming kingdom, Jesus promises, they will be fed, they will be secure, they will live without fear.
The prophet Amos describes this kingdom of God as a time and place where everyone will sit under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid. No risk of war or calamity or disaster to undo their life.
The prophet Isaiah paints a picture of God’s kingdom as a rich feast with fine wine and amazing food, a mountain filled with a feast, people streaming in from every direction. There won’t be a single can of Dinty Moore stew anywhere to be found.
Can you imagine the hope these words must have kindled? Jesus looks directly at the poor and says, “Blessed are you, for yours in the kingdom of God.”
Woe to you who are rich…
But, let’s keep going. Because Jesus didn’t speak only to the poor that day. The text tells us there was a great multitude present – a cross-section of society – and some in that crowd were very rich: Roman citizens, military officers, imperial contractors who had managed to profit from corruption.
To these people, Jesus says something that must have landed like a thunderbolt: “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.”
When Jesus talks to the rich, he’s talking to those who have more than enough. Some have inherited privilege and wealth. Some have managed to avoid tragedy in their lives, they’ve been lucky. Some have figured out how to work the broken system to their benefit. These are they who have managed to come out on top.
Jesus isn’t simply criticizing them, he’s giving them a warning that is also a blessing, a blessed discomfort: don’t invest your life in a system that is passing away. Don’t live on the basis of a reality, a world order, that is temporary. Instead, invest your life in the kingdom that is coming, in an eternal reality. The world that belongs to the rich, riddled with tragedy and injustice, is passing way. The eternal kingdom that belongs to the poor is arriving and will be established forever. So, arrange your decisions, and values, according to the kingdom that is coming.
The reality of it is hidden, but it has been revealed in Jesus.
Let me try to illustrate this. In Anthony Doerr’s novel “All the Light We Cannot See” – also a miniseries – two young people are living through World War II and must navigate their lives according to realities they can’t see.
Marie-Laure has been blind since childhood, and she moves through her world by remembering the lessons her father taught her before he left for the war. She’s blind, but these memories and lessons about how to navigate the town stay with her. Werner is a German orphan, and he listens for hidden radio signals from the resistance that tells a very different story than the one presented in Nazi propaganda.
Both of them have this access to a reality they cannot see – but which is no less real – and which helps them find their way through the broken and frightening day-to-day of their war-torn lives.
Jesus’ warning “woe to you who are rich” is not about guilt, but about vision and aligning our lives with a reality we cannot see. Jesus invites us – all of us, wherever we are on the rich-and-poor spectrum – to see the vision of God’s coming kingdom revealed in him and align our present lives with God’s coming reality.
Living Now in Light of God’s Kingdom
The question that faces all of us is: “How do we live as people who believe in and want to participate in God’s coming kingdom?”
This has practical implications for how we see and interpret the world we live in. When a person’s life has been upended by job loss, or a disaster, or illness, or some new government policy, do we see them as the very ones whom Jesus blesses? Do we recognize them as those to whom God’s eternal kingdom belongs?
This shift in perspective, in how we see, changes everything about how we respond.
This has practical implications for how we use our resources. If we have more than we need, are we using our resources to level the playing field for others, to help those who are poor have a chance to not live on the knife-edge of poverty? This isn’t about guilt – it’s about vision. It’s about seeing clearly which kingdom we’re investing in.
This has practical implications for how we engage in mission and the work of justice-making. While we can’t make God’s kingdom happen, we can bear witness to it. We can put up signposts that point toward it. We can create examples of what it looks like when God’s kingdom breaks into our present reality.
Let me share an example. Just a few weeks ago, our city conducted its annual point-in-time count to study the homelessness situation in our community. Residents, homelessness service providers, and elected officials paired up to conduct surveys of those sleeping in parks or near roadways.
I was particularly struck in the story by Jamie Benshoff, who helped conduct the count and was interviewed. She had been living on the street, struggling with untreated mental illness, when an interaction a Homeward Bound representative led her to getting Social Security benefits, then housing. So, now four years later, she’s helping to conduct the survey herself.
She described the experience of homelessness as a constant battle against the elements, bureaucracy, and limited places to sleep. She said it’s like living near a “veil” between the real and unreal. You are seen but not seen. You are there but not there. She said that any opportunity for those operating in normal society to reach “through the veil” and have an interaction with someone experiencing homelessness can be profoundly helpful. Even something as simple as coming by for a survey, or making eye contact, or saying hello as you pass on the sidewalk reaches through the veil.
Reaching through the veil. That’s exactly what Jesus is doing in this sermon. He’s reaching through the veil to bless the poor with the promise of God’s kingdom. He’s reaching through the veil to call the rich to stop investing in a system that is fading away and instead to live in the eternal kingdom that has arrived in Jesus.
Reaching through the veil characterizes Jesus’ whole life – his teaching, his healing, his death and resurrection – reaching through the veil that separates us from God and from one another and even from ourselves and calling us to live differently: to repent of broken systems and broken choices, and trust God’s promise to transform us by his mercy and grace.
May we receive his blessing, feel the blessed discomfort of his call, and may God bless all of us as we respond in faith.
Amen.
Rev. Patrick W. T. Johnson, Ph.D.
First Presbyterian Church
Asheville, North Carolina