Luke 6:17,20-26 Happy are you who are poor, who weep, who hunger

Jesus focuses on his disciples, fixing his eyes on his disciples – not the crowd – he tells the disciples that they’re happy… if  they’re poor! 😂 You couldn’t make it up 😂 What is that about?

When Jesus uses the word poor he means it very broadly – thus he uses other words like hunger and sorrow to broaden our understanding. He means anything that diminishes the self, breaks us down, anything that might lead us to a profound awareness of our need of God.

Our need of God is all important, no need of God will almost always mean no God in my life!

Thats the danger of wealth in all its forms – again he uses other words to broaden our understanding of wealth, always having our fill, always laughing. Wealth tends to insulate us from our need of God. Affluence is perhaps the greatest enemy of God in our time.

Not always mind, I know very wealthy people with a profound sense of their need of God but they’re mostly older people, people old enough to have known some level of poverty in earlier life, back in the day, and they’ve never really lost a sense that they need God. They’ve never really been completely insulated by their wealth.

But the next generation tends to be well and truly insulated. Again, not always, there are always exceptions.

Jesus says “they are having their reward now” meaning they don’t know anything else and might not… ever!

So, how will the wealthy recover the poverty, the hunger, the sorrow, that releases their need of God? How will they find a need of God if they’ve never really had it?

Hugely difficult 😣 

As Jesus said: “Nobody who has been drinking old wine wants new. The old is good enough he says.” Luke 5:39

Many years ago a parishioner, a CEO of a multi national, and a very wealthy man, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Mind you, he’d never completely lost his need of God… I’ve never forgotten his initial responses; he listed the stuff he dealt with every day, huge stuff he took in his stride, but added after each achievement; but I don’t know how to deal with this.

Over the next few months he fell apart, into shattered pieces, and then we slowly put him back together again. He literally became a new man, the insulation that his wealth gave him was torn away, quite violently, and he became very poor, as Jesus says blessed, because he now knew his need of God. There was nowhere else to go, nothing to hide behind, he was an empty vessel ready to be filled with God.

Sickness as a form of human poverty is always intended to expose, to release, to uncover our need of God. Failure can do it too, addiction, lots of stuff can do it… 

Really Jesus is saying; nothing matters… only getting ourselves to him and unless we have a real need of God, a real need of Jesus we’re not likely to get there.

It was the disciples’ need of God, and the peoples’ growing need of God that had them on that level piece of ground half way up a mountain looking for Jesus in the first place.

Thus Jesus fixed his eyes on them and said: How happy are you who are poor – it’s brought you here to me – and yours is the kingdom of God.

It’ll be no different for us.