When you play a game, the first thing you want to know is the rules: how do I play? But, what if Jesus changes the rules of the game?
In the Old Testament, just before the Hebrews were allowed into the Promised Land, Moses gathered all the people and gave them the rules of the game.
If they were to be God’s people, then here are the blessings they are to abide by. If they mess it up, here are the curses. These are recorded in the book of Deuteronomy.
Today, we see Jesus give his own version of these blessings and curses.
The world is a dog eat dog sort of world. It can be vicious, which leaves us in a panic. Our anxiety grows and becomes depression.
However, Jesus turns the world upside-down, or should we say, right-side-up?
The last become first and the first become last. It’s through weakness (the cross) that one becomes strong.
This is why Jesus’s rules sound a bit different. This is why the poor, the hungry, the sorrowful, and the hated are blessed.
God has come to put the world right so that we can be comforted.
The Reading
And descending with them he stood upon a level place, along with a large crowd of his disciples, and a great multitude of the people from all of Judaea and Jerusalem and the coastal country of Tyre and Sidon, Who came to hear him and to be cured of their diseases; and those troubled by unclean spirits were healed. And all the crowd sought to touch him, because power went forth from him and healed all. And he, raising his eyes to his disciples, said: “How blissful the destitute, for yours is the Kingdom of God; How blissful those who are now hungry, for you shall feast; how blissful those now weeping, for you shall laugh; How blissful you when men hate you and when they exclude you and reproach you and reject your name as something wicked, for the Son of Man’s sake: On that day, rejoice and leap about; for look: Your reward in Heaven is great; for their fathers accordingly did the same things to the prophets.” (Luke 6:17-23)