The Great Sermon

The Great Sermon - A

Feb 13, 2022

Luke 6: 17-26

Where do we find the Great Sermon in the Bible?  Well, we don’t find “The Great Sermon” in the Bible, but we do find the Sermon on the Mount.  How many of you have heard of the Sermon on the Mount?  Most of us?  You remember the opening pieces, Blessed are you poor, hungry, and grieving.  The Scholars Version puts it “Congratulations” you poor, hungry, and weeping.  You remember why the poor, hungry, and grieving are blessed and/or congratulated, don’t you?  That’s right, because the Kingdom of God is theirs.  That is part of what some call the “The Great Sermon.”

                Where else do we find The Great Sermon in the Bible?  This one is not so well known; it is the Sermon on the Plain.  And where is it in the Bible?  That’s right, Linda read part of it a few minutes ago; we will read the rest of it next Sunday.

                Much of the two sermons is the same.  On Matthew’s telling, Jesus went up on a hillside to address a crowd of people.  Luke reports that Jesus has just come down from a mountain and speaks to the people on the plain.  Matthew and Luke both present much the same teachings.  That’s why some scholars reference it as The Great Sermon.

                We believe that The Great Sermon came from the Q source or Sayings Q Gospel.  Remember, the writers of the Gospel of Matthew and of the Gospel of Luke appear both to have had a written document that contained a series of short teachings and parables that were attributed to Jesus.  At times Matthew and Luke repeated some or all of them in essentially identical language; that’s why it is assumed that this was a written document.  More than likely, after it was subsumed into the two narrative gospels, there was little reason to copy it any more – a very expensive process, so it was not saved.  It is a hypothetical document.

                There is another source of some of the material in The Great Sermon:  the Gospel of Thomas.  No, the Gospel of Thomas is not in the Bible.  It is a collection of short teachings and parables much like the Q document.  Q seems to have grouped materials by subject matter; Thomas seems to have put things in as they came to him with no kind of editorial ordering.  So, Thomas’ parts of The Great Sermon are not grouped together.

Small pieces of documents containing sayings of Jesus were found shortly before 1900 in a trash heap in Egypt.  But in 1945 in what is now called the Nag Hammadi Library, the full text of the Gospel of Thomas was found.  It was written in ancient Coptic, an Egyptian language that very few scholars could translate.  But it has in the last 40 years become available in English translation.

                So, we have two independent sources of sayings in our lesson this morning:  the hypothetical Q document (represented in both Matthew and Luke) and the Gospel of Thomas.  Since Q and Thomas go back to about year 50 – twenty years after Jesus’ active ministry, we have two separate sources of short teachings and parables that probably go back to people who listened to Jesus speak and became disciples in his personally-led movement.

                Scholars conclude that Matthew usually adds additional materials to what he found in Q; he seems to do so in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 4 through 7.  Luke, scholars think, when he used the Q document material did not add much to it.  But both Matthew and Luke writing their gospels around years 85 to 90 or 95 often softened some to the Q teachings to make them work better in the congregations to which they were writing.

                Let’s listen to this part of the Great Sermon.  We don’t have the Q document, so I will read first Luke and then Matthew who, we think, are both based on Q.  Then I will read the parallel passages from Thomas.  I am quoting the Scholars Version which tries very hard to reflect the writing style of the authors in the Greek originals.

                Luke 6:20:  Congratulations (or Blessed), you poor!  God’s domain (or kingdom) belongs to you.

                Matthew 5:3:  Congratulations (or Blessed) to the poor in spirit!  Heaven’s domain (the Kingdom of Heaven) belongs to them.

                Thomas 54 Jesus said, “Congratulations to the poor, for to you belongs Heaven’s domain.

                Notice how similar they are.  And, Matthew softened it; congratulations to the poor in spirit; being poor – desperately poor did not feel like a blessing to his community.

Luke 6:21a:  Congratulations, you hungry!  You will have a feast.

Matthew 5:6:  Congratulations to those who hunger and thirst for justice!  They will have a feast.

Thomas 69:2:  Jesus said, “Congratulations to those who go hungry, so the stomach of the one in want may be filled.”

Again, Matthew softened the blessing of being hungry.  He made it “those who hunger and thirst for justice.”  Going hungry did not feel like a blessing to him and to his community.

Luke 6:21b:  Congratulations, you who weep now!  You will laugh.

Matthew 5:4:  Congratulations to those who grieve!  They will be consoled.

There is no parallel record in Thomas.  This congratulation is only in the Q document.  Matthew’s changing “weep” to “grieve” would seem to soften the statement again.

Luke does not include this next one.  He leaves out about 60% of the material in the Q document, assuming that he had the whole document.

Matthew 5:10:  Congratulations to those who have suffered persecution for the sake of Justice!  Heaven’s domain belongs to them.

Thomas 69:1:  Jesus said, “Congratulations to those who have been persecuted in their hearts:  they are the ones who have truly come to know the Father.” 

This may have been added by Matthew because there was substantial persecution toward the end of the first century, not during Jesus’ active ministry.  Or the variation from Q to Thomas might reflect how oral tradition carries the memory of what Jesus said with variations in the wording.

Luke 6:22-23ab:  Congratulations to you when people hate you, and when they ostracize you and denounce you and scorn your name as evil, because of the ton of Adam!  Rejoice on that day, and jump for joy!  Just remember, your compensation is great in heaven.

Matthew 5:11-12:  Congratulations to you when they denounce you and persecute you and spread malicious gossip about you on account of me.  Rejoice and be glad!  Your compensation is great in heaven.

Thomas 68:1-2:  Jesus said, “Congratulations to you when you are hated and persecuted; and no place will be found, wherever you have been persecuted.

Hate, ostracize, and denounce in Luke become persecute and malicious gossip in Matthew – much softer.                  Matthew and Luke continue:

Luke:  6:23c-24-26:  Recall that their ancestors treated the prophets the same way.                     Darn you rich!  You already have your consolation.  Darn you who are well-fed now!  You will know hunger.  Darn you who laugh now!  You will learn to weep and grieve.  Darn you when everybody speaks well of you!  Recall that their ancestors treated the phony prophets the same way.

Matthew 5:12c:  Remember this is how they persecuted the prophets who preceded you.

This material is not in Thomas.  Q may only reference the way that the prophets of old were treated.  Luke has this expansion, turning the poor, hungry, weeping backwards with “Darn you” rich, well-fed, and laughing.  Matthew expands material with the following:

Matthew 5:5-9:  Congratulations to the gentle!  They will inherit the earth.  Congratulations to the merciful!  They will receive mercy.  Congratulations to those with undefiled hearts!  They will see God.  Congratulation to those who work for peace!  They will be known as God’s children.

That is our lesson for this morning in two independent sources – the Q document and the Gospel of Thomas – adapted, softened especially by Matthew.

What do these congratulations and darns (blessings and woes) mean for us today?  None of us are poor like the people Jesus was addressing – who prayed for something to eat today.  We in our Country are not very often hungry.  And almost never are we persecuted for our Christian faith.  So, what do we do, ignore this part of the Great Sermon?

Let’s try substituting some of our struggles for those of the first century poor folks in Palestine.  Then maybe these teachings will make sense for us.

Blessed are the poor; why?  Because the kingdom of God is for them.  Yes, and we are not so desperately poor as those first century poor people were.  But the poor among us are not focused on keeping up with the Jones family.  They are not able to be fixated on things and stuff like most of the rest of us.  So, maybe, blessed are we when we are poor because we are not caught up in the “gotta buy the latest and greatest gadget.  We are free of the give me, God, blues.  We are free to find God’s love and peace and to live in the fullness of God’s kingdom.

Blessed are you that are hungry.  Thankfully we have food stamps and food closets and the food bank.  God has worked among us enough to lead us to bring relief to the desperately hungry.  That is certainly an important part of God’s kingdom already being partially realized in our society.  So, whenever we find someone who is really hungry, we can send them to the Emmanuel Dining Room here in Wilmington or to one of the food closets so that they can be free of life-blocking hunger – free enough to rebuild their lives so that they can work and earn their livings and be able to contribute to feeding their hungry friends and neighbors.

Blessed are those who weep.  We all lose family and friends and special soul mates; we all grieve, we all weep.  It is when we are hopelessly and helplessly weeping because we have lost that person or that opportunity or that prized goal – it is when we hit bottom that we can begin to understand Jesus and to find ourselves supported by God’s love and peace.  It is when we grieve our tremendous loss that we discover the tremendous force that God can be in our lives.  Yes, blessed are we when we weep because then we can get outside our selfish, self-centered lives and discover God’s presence and power and love and life.

This Great Sermon is not really a sermon as we think of the homily that I am supposed to present each Sunday morning.  It is really just a collection of Jesus’ teachings pulled together and presented one after another.  But it is a great opportunity for us to examine our lives in order to discover whether we are living in or near the kingdom of God that God is providing to our generation in our society.  Jesus seems to say blessed are some – who are poor or hungry or grieving – because they are nearing the kingdom of God.

Listen to these blessings and woes; then reflect upon your life.  Blessed are you when your poverty or hunger of grief help you find the fullness of life that God has for you when you let God bring you through these struggles into new life in Christ. 

Woe to those who won’t get free of their fixations on their own poverty in comparison to the wealthy.  Woe to those who cannot feel well fed because they can’t eat in the most expensive restaurants.  Woe to those who cannot free themselves from their grief by giving thanks for the phenomenal people and opportunities that God has provided us already and by trusting that God will bless us again if we will come to trust what God is doing in our lives.

Blessed are we or woe are we.  It is up to us.  We can be blessed as we sense and follow God’s lead and not our selfish wills.

Amen.