Who Are the Less Fortunate, Anyway?

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

“Blest are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”

Translating the Bible from its original languages into modern, understandable English is a complicated endeavor. Sometimes one word in Hebrew or Greek can mean two or three different things in English, but the translator can only choose one English word, and the full range of the original meaning is obscured. Other times, there are two or three words in the text that all get translated using the same English word – and then we are led to merge together concepts that are quite distinct in the original text.

One of those English words that translates multiple Biblical expressions is “blessed.” Sometimes “blessed” translates the Hebrew barak or the Greek eulogeo, which has the idea of God’s approval. If you are blessed, you have God’s approval – and the opposite of to be blessed is to be cursed, to have God’s disapproval. These are the words used in our reading today from Jeremiah. “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,” Jeremiah says, but “cursed are those who trust in mere mortals, whose hearts turn away from the Lord.” God approves those who trust in God; but those who turn their hearts away from God and put their trust instead in kings, or money, or this-worldly power, God disapproves of such people.

But there is another Biblical concept that, confusingly, also gets translated as “blessed.” This is the Hebrew word ashré and the Greek word makarios, which is used in our psalm today, Psalm 1, and by Jesus in the gospel text we just read. This word means something more like “enviable,” “fortunate,” or even “lucky.” It isn’t directly about what God thinks or says about a person, it’s more about what we think of a person. You won the lottery, you must be lucky, I wish I had your good fortune.

So in Psalm 1, we read Ashré, happy, blessed, enviable is the one who has ignored the advice of the wicked but has paid attention to the law of the Lord. They are like trees firmly rooted near flowing water, they can withstand storms and droughts and hard times. How wonderful it would be to have that kind of resilience. How awful it would be instead to be like the wicked who get blown away by the wind, who have nothing to get them through tough times. The person who is rooted and resilient and knows God’s ways is to be looked up to, admired, a model for others, ashré. The person who cannot withstand the storm is unfortunate, pitiful, not to be emulated.

Now these two distinct concepts both often get translated by the English word “blessed,” and they are not entirely unrelated. I suppose that someone who is rooted in God’s law and is therefore happy and resilient and unflappable probably is also looked upon favorably by God. And likewise someone who hasn’t rooted themself in God and who loses their way when trouble comes and is therefore unhappy, a sad case, unfortunate, perhaps such a person could well also be disapproved of by God – but not necessarily. And even if they were, these are two different concepts – blessed as in approved of by God, as opposed to cursed, disapproved of by God, and blessed as in fortunate, admirable, a model for us all, as opposed to unfortunate, pitiful, a warning to us all.

I think it is important to recognize in today’s Gospel when Jesus says “Blessed are the poor” and “Woe to the rich,” the words being used here in the original text are the second sense of “blessed,” makarios, which is how the Greeks translated the Hebrew ashré, and not the first. Jesus is not saying that God approves of the poor and disapproves of the rich. Perhaps God does, but not necessarily, and in any event that’s not what this text is saying.

What the text means is that the poor are fortunate, lucky, worthy of emulation, a model for us all. If you’re poor, good for you! The kingdom of God is for you. Are you hungry? Good, I have good news for you – you will have your fill. Are you weeping now? Excellent! Laughter is just ahead of you, and you’ll look back on this moment and know that God was with you. Do people hate you and exclude you and look down on you? Lucky you! I hope you realize just how lucky you are; the same thing happened to all the prophets of old.

Now, it’s not immediately obvious why the poor should be happy about it. I’ve had times in my life when I was doing rather well financially, and I’ve had times when I was working two jobs with no health insurance and worried if I’d be able to make the rent. And money isn’t everything, but I can tell you from experience it’s better than not having money. And in fact, isn’t it a common euphemism for poor people to say “the less fortunate.” It sounds better, less harsh, less judgmental, to say “the less fortunate” – because poverty usually is not a just punishment for bad choices, poverty is usually caused by bad luck, a lack of opportunity, misfortune. But that the poor are “less fortunate” than the rich is kind of obvious, isn’t it?

Well, Jesus says, not to me. Actually the poor are the “more fortunate.” The kingdom of God is for them and they know it. Remember what Jesus quoted from Isaiah at the beginning of his public ministry in Luke’s gospel – The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to announce the year of God’s favor, to proclaim release to captives, sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed, good news to the poor. Release to captives – so lucky for you captives! Sight to the blind – so fortunate for you blind people! Freedom from debts – the more you owe the better news that will be. And good news for the poor. For the “less fortunate”? No, for the more fortunate!

And conversely, when Jesus says woe to the rich, he’s not condemning them or saying that God doesn’t like them. Jesus is sympathizing with their problem. Oh, if you’re rich, there are probably a lot of poor people who owe you money. My announcing freedom from debts might not sound like good news to you. You’re healthy and able-bodied? I’m sorry, my ministry of healing may not have anything to offer you. Everyone looks up to you and speaks well of you?  Ooo, bad break. It can be so seductive, having the approval of everyone around you. When the time comes to stand up against the crowd and do the right thing, you may not be strong enough to do it.  It’ll be so much easier for those who have nothing to lose.  The arrival of the kingdom of God is good news for you too, don’t get me wrong – but you may have a hard time seeing it, and you might wind up resisting it, and if so I feel sorry for you.  You rich who think you’re luckier than the “less fortunate” -- you’re really not.

This is a strange teaching of Jesus – that the poor and the hungry and the mourners and the despised are actually more fortunate, more admirable, more to be emulated than the rich and the successful and the happy and the respected.  It runs against common sense – why on earth isn’t success better than failure, why isn’t being full better than being hungry, why shouldn’t we prefer to be loved than hated?

In some ways this is just the gospel. The last shall be first and the first shall be last – so the less fortunate are actually more fortunate and vice versa. And making yourself last so that you can be first doesn’t count … the whole point is that our hope and salvation comes from our trust in who God is, not in what we do or accomplish. The fewer accomplishments we can point to, the easier it is to trust in God.

I think that’s why Paul stresses so much in our second reading today that Easter really happened. “If Christ is not raised,” Paul wrote, “your faith is useless.” If Jesus was crucified and died and that’s the end of the story, then what is the point of trusting in God rather than in ourselves?  But if Christ is raised from the dead, if the crucifixion is not the end of the story, then there is no defeat that cannot be overturned by God, there is no suffering that cannot be redeemed by God, there is no shame and exclusion and hardship that God has not already experienced for us and with us. And so those who are right now being defeated by life, those who feel lost and overwhelmed, those who have been cut off and rejected – these are the ones who are most fortunate of all, because God is with them and for them.

And if all of this sounds too difficult, if the words of Jesus sound like judgment to you because you are one of the unlucky ones who have it well and so seem to have a lot to lose from a God who doesn’t care at all about our accomplishments – well, I have good news for you too. It is precisely in your difficulty that Jesus will come to meet you. It is precisely in your lack of true good fortune that you will have the opportunity to turn to God in faith. And that’s all the good fortune we can ask for, and all that we really need.