There's A Typo in the Gospel!!

     One of the centerpiece monologues for our Lord Jesus Christ is to be found in the book of Matthew.  We know it as the Sermon on the Mount.  So, a sermon is a religious monologue.  It leads off with the Beatitude's, the "blessed be's" and then moves into a rather incisive and sometimes disturbing exposition of the Law of Moses, especially into a couple of the latter Ten Commandments.

    Begins in Matthew 5 and feels like it goes through about chapter 18 (but it doesn't).

    But that's not what I want to talk about.  Well, maybe kind of, because it serves as an introduction.  

    As you may or may not know, there are four gospels, four books focusing on the life and times of Jesus.  There are overlapping stories, parallel stories, stories with the same punchline but different details, some bits that seem to assume that you are reading the other gospels because they all but say, "go read this bit over there".  

    Devotees of the Bible have worked hard and deeply to track how stories develop between the gospels.  I don't know why, but I am strangely proud of the reality that there has been actual academic infighting over what these books have to say.  It doesn't really matter to me, ultimately, who is 'right' and who is 'wrong'.  What matters is that God's Word is being taken so seriously.

    Our passage this week continues us in Luke.  Luke 6: 17-26 more precisely.  Here comes the typo.  The Study Bible I am using (I won't say which one) calls it the Sermon on the Mount.  Like it is Luke's parallel to Matthew's Sermon of the same name.  Except there is a problem (in several pieces).

    The first problem piece.  Matthew says, in 5:1, that Jesus went up the mountain to talk to the people.   In Luke 6:11, it says that he went down with them and stood on a level place.

    The second piece is that this passage in Luke I was raised to refer to as the "Sermon in the Plain" (see the first piece of the problem).  

    The third piece is that the blessed be's are different.  I know the blessed be's  from Matthew more deeply that I know the blessed be's from Luke.  Matthew is definitely the more popular one, to the point that when Monty Python decided to humorize Jesus in 'the Life of Brian', there is the moment when the crowd member goes "What did he say?"  "Blessed are the cheesemakers?" came the response.

    Luke's beatitudes are a lot sharper in tone.  Matthew offers us a religio-salvific set of beatitudes.  These are religious bits and salvation bits, spiritual application to life, death, and the pursuit of happiness.  Luke is more pointedly socio-economic.  There are social bits and there are economic bits.  Blessed are the poor, the hungry, and the hated, because God's blessings will be there for them.  Matthew offers us 'poor in spirit'.  Luke offers us 'poor', like empty-wallet poor.

    Then Luke offers a downside. the woe-to-you's.  Rich now?  Well fed now?  There's your reward.  You are done.  Does not go so far as to deny salvation to them, but maybe just as there are rich and poor in this life, there are going to be rich and poor in the next life, and there is going to be a flip.

    Wonder if there are people out there who might wish this were the typo...

Peace,
Pastor Peter