This is a sermon on Luke 6:17–26 preached on 2.13.22 at Redeemer Church (watchable here).

The World Hurts

I was putting Beau to bed recently—he’s nine now—and he groaned and began telling me how it feels like the weekends last just ten minutes. On another Sunday night, he lamented to me almost teary-eyed how it seems as if he spends 80% of his life at school. Sunday nights are hard for both of us. They’ve always been hard to me for various reasons, but I think both Beau and I feel on Sunday nights the burden of toil. Toil is that cursed experience of work in a broken world. It makes us feel helpless and lonely. I told Beau that it is encouraging to hear that he feels it, too. It’s comforting to know that you aren’t alone in your experience of the world.

Can you relate? Do you ever sit uneasily at night and feel like things just aren’t alright? Sure, if someone were to ask you, you would say “I’m OK,” but in those moments you know that isn’t the whole story. It wouldn’t take more than about sixty-seconds to survey the room and get much more significant examples of how it hurts to walk through this life. It hurts to be human, and this is the world that Jesus stepped into and lived in for just over thirty years. In the lead up to our passage, Jesus himself is having a hard time.

Do you ever think about the fact that life was hard for Jesus, too? It wasn’t just the passion week that was hard for him. He’s doing everything right, but the world around him doesn’t seem to be working for him.

Life Was Hard for Jesus too

Listen to this quick overview of Jesus’s life between his baptism in Luke 3 and where we are in Luke 6.

• Jesus fasts and prays and is tempted by the devil in the desert for 40 days (4:1–13).
• He goes home, reads Isaiah, and they actually try to kill him (4:14–30).
• He is criticized for healing a man and saying, “Your sins are forgiven” (5:17–26), he’s criticized for eating with the wrong people (5:17–32), criticized because his disciples don’t fast (5:33), criticized for eating at the wrong time and in the wrong way (6:1–5), and criticized for healing a man on the Sabbath (6:6–11).
• It’s around this time that he tells the cryptic little parable about patches and wine skins. With the parable, Jesus says: I don’t fit into your categories (5:33–39). While it is good that Jesus didn’t fit the mold, at the same time it sounds a little rough for him. It sounds like lonely work, even toil.
• Furthermore, Luke tells us twice in these chapters that Jesus would withdraw and pray all night long (5:16, 6:12). When is it that people separate themselves and spend long hours in prayer? It isn’t usually in times of peace and relaxation.
  

Let’s notice three things about this portion of Jesus’s life.

Three Observations

First, Jesus’s hard days didn’t start in the Garden of Gethsemane. He knows unjust criticism. He can relate to our late night groanings. What do you think it sounded like when he would retreat and pray to the Father all night? What makes the most sense? During these days, do you think he is out in the middle of nowhere by himself singing praise songs? Or were his prayers, even here at the beginning of the Gospel, maybe more like what we hear from him in Gethsemane?

Second, remember our liturgy. “What is it that you believe?” We say,

“He came down from heaven …” and “he was made man.”

If you believe Jesus was a human being, then surely you must believe that he was affected by his experience of this world. Because Jesus was a true human being, he was deeply impacted by this world, just like you and I are. Jesus was impacted by criticism and insults and being questioned. He was influenced by hunger and harsh weather. I’m pretty sure forty days in any desert without food hurts. Hear this good news: hard days for Jesus felt like hard days to Jesus. When Jesus speaks the blessings of our passage this morning, he isn’t talking just about other people. He is speaking from within those who walk through life and feel the hurt.

Third, Jesus’ determination to move forward despite the pain testifies to the fact that his kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36). So, in our passage, when Jesus offers hope of another world, he knows what it is like to wait for comfort and bear the hurt and the pain for now.

This is Jesus’ headspace as he comes down with his disciples and addresses the multitudes in John 6:17.

The Needy: An Object Lesson

Jesus comes down with his disciples and a crowd all around and opens with some unexpected words: “Blessed are the poor.” How do you hear those words this morning? Collin said the other week that Jesus is a master of street theater, and this passage is a good example. It is similar to the time when Jesus set a child in the middle of people and said if you don’t become like a child, you can’t enter the kingdom of God. Did he mean you must literally become a child? No. Did he mean we should strive to become ten years old? Did he mean anything at all by putting the child forward? Yes! The child was an object lesson to say, “Look at this! This child as a child has something to teach you.” If you look at a child you can see what it means to be dependent, what it means to look outside yourself for provision and to trust. He’s doing a similar thing here. Jesus doesn’t qualify the word poor because he wants us to consider the poor, as an object lesson, those who are literally without money, many of which were, no doubt, standing around him as living examples.

It’s a heavy opening for a sermon. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, I know you have come to hear Israel’s long awaited Messiah so let’s get right to the gospel and think about people who weep and hurt.”

We read and hear these words in the light of day, and they seem somewhat out of place, but that is because these words mean more at night. These are words for those who know how life can disappoint and frustrate and leave us longing for something more. The church has words for the joy of day. We have Easter! But Jesus also has words to speak for those who hurt in the night and know about all about pain.

Each group of sufferers in this passage is an object lesson representing those who hurt. The poor know the world doesn’t work for them. Those who weep, know that their circumstances are not sufficient. Those without food, know the pleasures of the world do not satisfy. Those who are insulted and criticized know that people aren’t a good source to get the approval they want. All these people have this in common: they know they are in need.

Can you identify with the poor in this respect? David could. David closes out Psalm 40 with these words:

As for me, I am poor and needy.

But the Lord takes thought for me. (Psalm 40:17)

I look out and see faces of people today that I am really getting to know, and I know you weep. Blessed are those who weep, says Jesus, and it is at this point that I want you to resist the urge to scoff.

No Trite Blessings

Have you already this morning felt that involuntary reflex to yawn or sigh at the thought that your weeping can be blessed? “Blessed are those who weep” – Hah, yeah in some oxymoronic, irrelevant spiritual way, whatever, I hear you. If that is you, talk to yourself about that reflex. Do you really think Jesus would offer you a trite blessing? Does that fit with the Jesus you profess? When Jesus says blessed are those who weep, it is no trite, southern “Bless ‘em, Lord.”

When Jesus says blessed are the poor and those who weep, he is not saying that suffering in and of itself is good. That would be yawn and sigh and scoff worthy. Jesus isn’t saying suffering is a virtue or something to chase after. There really is something for you in these words.

Jesus is looking at his own experience of suffering, the suffering of the people around him, your suffering, and he recognizes it exists and even speaks blessing over it! He doesn’t try to tell these people that they are wrong. If you pretend that life doesn’t hurt and that those who live as though it does are wrong, you are not being honest with yourself. These states of pain — hunger, weeping, poverty — are part of human existence, and in some very real sense Jesus speaks blessing over them. Don’t you maybe just a little bit want to give Jesus a high five and say, “Thank you, God! It’s about time someone said that!”

But Blessed How?

You might follow that high-five up with a question, though. “So what do you mean by blessed?”Blessed is kind of a Bible word. You could rephrase it as fortunate or some would argue for another strange way to say it: flourishing. You can’t really get around the Bible-ness of the wording because the concept of it is Bible through and through. I mean of all the things you might see during Super Bowl commercials tonight, I guarantee you won’t see one that says “blessed are those who hurt.”

Here’s the point this morning: The poor are fortunate, at the very least, because they are in touch with the fact that this world is not enough. That realization won’t save you, but you can’t encounter Jesus’ saving grace without it.

One old saint known to wear black has written,

How many times have you heard someone say

“If I had his money, I could do things my way.”

But little they know that it’s so hard to find

One rich man in ten with a satisfied mind.¹

What about weeping? How is it fortunate to weep? In our weeping, the spell is broken. You see, the worst state of all is not to experience loss. The worst state of all is to be filled and satisfied with this life and have no need of repentance or God. Those satisfied with this life are the ones about whom Jesus says, “They have no need of a physician.” Those who weep, however, know their hope is outside this broken system. As Johnny Cash sings in another song: “Oh what mercy sadness brings.”²

Our struggles point us to the need for another world, a new world. That’s the kingdom of God that Jesus talks about so much.

Present and Future Hope

In our passage, Jesus himself gives some reasoning as to why those in need are fortunate. There are two movements to the reasoning. First, there are the present tense reasons. The kingdom has come. It’s presently here. Look around you this morning. Over two thousand years later, literally all over the globe, in so many different languages, through unspeakable persecution there are people praising Jesus this morning as testimony to the Spirit’s presence. The kingdom of God is physically seen in the church, and in so many ways the church is here for you who hurt.

Now, the rest of the consolation is in the future tense. The hungry will be satisfied, he says. Those who weep will laugh. Those who are criticized are told their reward is great, but it’s also in heaven — that is, not here now.

Don’t let the future focus of the promises throw you for a loop. Don’t let it hit you in a moment of pain like it is something new. Remember, this is what we’ve always professed:

For us and our salvation

[Jesus] came down from heaven …

… He will come again … and his kingdom will have no end.

The ultimate hope is not here and now, and it won’t ever be here apart from Jesus bringing heaven down to earth.

Waiting Isn’t Optional

So what do we do in the mean time? Well, there is plenty to say about working for the kingdom, but that’s not in our passage this morning. In this passage, we are pointed to the future. You know what that means: It’s like when you really want that new ___, and you are told “Christmas is coming” or “your birthday is right around the corner.” What does that mean? It means we wait.

I think it is REALLY important to hear this NOT because “we live in a culture of instant gratification and we need to learn that patience is a virtue and a virtue won’t hurt you.” Blekh! That is not what I’m saying. I’m saying if you aren’t careful the waiting will catch you by surprise and make you think this whole thing is a bunch of stories people tell themselves.

Let’s get this out in the open and say it in church: We recognize that things aren’t changing as fast as we would like. Jesus hasn’t come back yet. Sin still haunts us. We still mess up. We still weep, and the last enemy called Death still hurts.

Waiting is part of our faith. It is longer than you might expect, and it isn’t optional … but despite it all there is still hope. “I will” has never meant more than when rolling off the lips of Jesus.

The Call to Wait is Affirmation

The message this morning isn’t just that Jesus is with you and understands your pain. The message is also that you are right. When the lady was crying and used her hair and tears to wash Jesus’s feet (Luke 7:38), Jesus didn’t say, “Hey, don’t be silly.” He told the others who were scoffing, she’s right to cry like this! When Jesus himself wept over the death of a loved one, he said to all humanity, you are right to weep like this over the loss of a loved one! Jesus said this hurts and it is not right for the world to be like this! When Jesus submitted his own body to sufferng, he said you who live like this are in the right. It is the world that is broken, in this case, not you.

Affirmation Walks with Condemnation

The is much affirmation here, but affirmation walks with condemnation. To say someone is right here is to say someone else is wrong. Jesus uses those who rejoice and are rich and well thought of as an object lesson, too. There are curses for those who walk through this life and don’t ache for more. Just like the blessings aren’t trite, the warnings aren’t just threats.

Remember Mary’s words and notice how affirmation and judgment are tied together:

He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;

He has brought down the mighty from their thrones.

Who is blessed?

[He has] exalted those of humble estate;

He has filled the hungry with good things,

And the rich he has sent away empty.

There’s good news even here, though. I mean don’t we want to see some things condemned? The enemies of God — Sunday evenings for me and Beau, Sin and Death on the other end of the spectrum, and everything in between — they will all come to an end, but for now we have to wait.

If you want to know how it all plays out, there is a graphic picture book that tells the ending with unbelievable imagery. It tells the story multiple times and in different ways — it’s called Revelation.

Conclusion

Let me wrap up with a notecard version of the sermon. This is the whole thing in a short paragraph: Life so often hurts, and this was Jesus’ experience, too. There is something to learn here. Those who are poor and weep and suffer are object lessons. They’re living examples of people who know that this world doesn’t work for them, and they are right. With his own life and death and these object lessons, Jesus affirms that the world in its current state is not our home, and he calls us to hope despite it.

☩ In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit ☩

1. Johnny Cash, “Satisfied Mind,” American VI: Ain’t No Grave ↩
2. Johnny Cash, “Redemption Day,” American VI: Ain’t No Grave ↩