An Altogether Alien Way Of Thinking

February 16, 2025

Rev. Mary Erickson

Hope Lutheran Church

Jeremiah 17:5-10; 1 Corinthians 15:12-20; Luke 6:17-26

An Altogether Alien Way of Thinking

Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.

In the movie White Christmas, Bing Crosby sings the following song about worry and blessings:

When I'm worried and I can't sleep

I count my blessings instead of sheep

And I fall asleep counting my blessings

Count your blessings: it’s something we all do. As both Dale and I look towards the next chapter of our lives, retirement, we frequently remark how blessed we are, especially by the people in our lives.

Blessings are things that foster good welfare or happiness. On a sub-zero night, we count our house and our furnace as blessings. Being employed is a blessing. Having good neighbors and supportive friends are blessings. Health is a blessing. Financial security and full cupboards are blessings. And certainly, faith is a blessing.

Today we hear Jesus’ Beatitudes sermon from Luke. He counts blessings. But his list of what is blessed is quite unlike anything we would choose!

“Blessed are the poor.” What? No! The poor aren’t blessed!

“Blessed are the hungry.” No, no, no, hunger is not a blessing!

“Blessed are the despised and hated.” No, Jesus, they’re not blessed!

This list of blessings doesn’t add up. They’re so far removed from anything we hold true that they jolt us. They’re not just a little off, they’re WAY off.

Jesus isn’t trying to sentimentalize poverty or hunger or hatred. He doesn’t mean to paint a blissful whitewash over their pain and suffering. No, he means it! They’re blessed!

In order to make sense of Jesus’ message, we might think we just need to apply a little bit of counterintuitive wisdom. It’s like backing a trailer. You just need to get used to thinking in this new way, and then it’ll all make sense.

No, Jesus means the poor are blessed. He means the hungry are blessed. He means those who are hated and despised are blessed.

Luke’s version of the Beatitudes differs from Matthew’s. Whose version is more accurate to Jesus’ exact words? We don’t know, we can’t know. Matthew’s version does seem to take some of the edge off. It’s the poor in spirit who are blessed, not the poor. It’s those who hunger after righteousness who are blessed, not the hungry. Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes is a little more lofty.

In fact, even his setting is more lofty. Jesus goes up a mountainside and from there he delivers his Sermon on the Mount. In Luke’s version, Jesus comes DOWN from a mountain. He preaches on the plane. Jesus comes down, down to our reality, down to our world of suffering and misery, death and mourning, disgrace and shame.

Luke’s version is in every way more earthy. The people don’t climb up the mountain to listen to the guru. He comes down to them. He meets them where they’re at, he enters their lives, at their level. His message speaks of real poverty and hunger.

And conversely, Luke includes woes. Matthew doesn’t go there. But in Luke, Jesus continues his sermon by mentioning who is decidedly not blessed. He addresses the flip side of the coin:

“Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.”

But back to the nature of Jesus’ message. He calls the poor blessed and the rich cursed. The hungry are blessed and the satisfied are cursed. The reviled are blessed and the favored are cursed.

This is simply an altogether alien way of thinking. It’s utterly foreign to our manner of making sense of the world. That’s because Jesus is proclaiming the logic of heaven. When Jesus says to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world,” he means it. This is the logos of God, the word from heaven.

Jesus preaches a message entirely alien to our way of thinking. But it’s completely in harmony with the overall message of the Bible. The Lord remembers Israel in their slavery. And they forge a deeper relationship with God through the lean years of their wilderness journey. God commands Israel to remember the stranger dwelling in their midst. They’re called to love their neighbor as themselves.

In the Psalms, the Lord accompanies them through the valley of the shadow of death. When the psalmist doesn’t have a friend in the world, he finds his belonging in the God who doesn’t abandon him.

The prophet Jeremiah recognized the alien truth of God’s word. In our passage today, Jeremiah also speaks of who is blessed and who is cursed. He speaks of our earthly logic. We have a way of thinking in this world, things that we call wise, things that we call strong. But those who trust merely in these things, those who make flesh their strength, Jeremiah says these are the ones who are cursed. He says they’re like a poor old shrub eking out a living in the desert.