The crowds gather close for healing. They are healed, and then Jesus gives them a sermon. The Sermon on the Plain in Luke’s Gospel is similar to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel but is also different. The present tense of “Blessed are you” and “Woe to you” are conspicuous—they assume that there are already people in the community who are hungry, weeping, hated, and full, laughing, and speaking well of themselves.
Whenever we think about a sermon Jesus preached, in the front of our minds we should remember that the sermon is about Jesus before it is about us—Jesus knows our hunger and our thirst and becomes the victim of hatred. There is a strange solidarity we discover in the God who truly becomes one of us.
Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain, on the Mount, and the sermons lifted up in church week after week are about Jesus before they are ever about us.
We often think of faith as something that lifts us out of hardship. This is what the prosperity gospel declares. Preachers like Joel Osteen, Kenneth Copeland, and Paula White, through their bleach-white teeth and custom-tailored suits, preachers of the heretical prosperity gospel, tell us to be more faithful and that God will be faithful in return. Just pray a bit harder, give more, and then the blessings of God will be showered upon you.
But you see, Jesus does not just bless the poor—he becomes poor. He doesn’t just notice suffering—he steps into it. The Son of God, who had everything, was born into poverty, spent his ministry relying on the hospitality of others, and died with nothing to his name. He was laid in a borrowed tomb. And when he preaches this Sermon on the Plain, he speaks in the present tense because he knows firsthand the hunger, the weeping, and the rejection of those on the margins.
Jesus shows us that God is most present in the midst of the worst humanity has to offer one another.
And if Jesus places himself in solidarity with the poor, then the question for us is: Where do we place ourselves? Do we stand apart from the suffering of others, keeping it at arm’s length? Or do we enter into it, sharing in the burdens of our neighbors, reflecting the kingdom that Jesus proclaimed?
That is why the Church’s call is not to stand at a distance and offer handouts, but as Christ’s body, to step into solidarity, to see and serve, to become part of the lives of those who are struggling. That is what the chapel does at our Community Assistance ministry embodies—a tangible expression of Christ’s own ministry.
Community Assistance is not a long-term solution; it does not eliminate the injustices that keep people in cycles of poverty. The work we do at Community Assistance will not lift anyone out of poverty. It is instead a ministry of presence. A ministry that offers guests a word of welcome, a hand to hold, a prayer, and a personal connection that many yearn for as we become more disconnected from one another. It is a way the Church refuses to look away from the suffering at its doorstep. It is a way of living into Jesus’ own words: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”[i] When someone shows up, needing groceries, we are not just offering material support. We are standing with them, recognizing them as beloved, dignified, and blessed in the eyes of God—not because their suffering is good, but because God’s love is already there with them.
The Church’s call to stand with the vulnerable is not just a personal or moral choice but a theological one. And throughout history, whenever the Church has forgotten this, whenever it has aligned itself with power and privilege instead of the way of Jesus, it has needed prophets to call it back.
The Barmen Declaration was one of those prophetic moments. In 1934, when much of the German Church was capitulating to the demands of Adolf Hitler, when Christianity in Germany was being reshaped into a nationalist ideology that justified racial purity and state power, a group of pastors and theologians—led by Karl Barth, and later signed by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (whose work we will study during Lent)—refused to let the gospel be co-opted. Led by Karl Barth, they drafted the “Barmen Declaration” to make a simple but radical claim: Jesus Christ alone is Lord. Not the state. Not the nation. Not any political leader.[ii]
“Jesus Christ… is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death… he (is) also God’s mighty claim upon our whole life… The Christian Church is the congregation of the brethren in which Jesus Christ acts presently as the Lord in Word and Sacrament through the Holy Spirit.”[iii]
They recognized that when Christianity is twisted to serve power, it ceases to be Christianity. When the maintenance or furthering of power becomes the goal, that is when Jesus unleashes his “woes.”
When faith is used to justify oppression, when it is use to do harm to the poor, the hungry, and those who weep it has abandoned Christ. The Confessing Church stood against the idea that God’s blessing could be claimed by any one nation or people at the expense of others. They refused to worship a Jesus remade in the image of the Third Reich.
And today, we find ourselves in another moment where the Church is being asked to choose. Christian nationalism is not just a political ideology; it is a distortion of the gospel. It baptizes power and privilege. It claims that God’s blessing belongs to a specific nation, race, or political movement. It replaces the humility of the cross with the arrogance of empire.
We see this when Christian symbols are wielded in ways that justify violence, when the gospel is reduced to a tool for cultural dominance, and when faith is used to demand power rather than to serve the least. We see it when people conflate their country with the kingdom of God, as if God’s blessings are limited to one people over and against another.
If our faith leads us to seek power rather than serve, if it makes us comfortable while ignoring the suffering of others, if it justifies hatred rather than love, then it is no longer the faith that Jesus preached. And Jesus has one thing to say to us when that happens, “Woe to you.”
Jesus’ blessings and woes are a direct challenge to every form of Christian nationalism. Because Jesus does not say, “Blessed are the strong.” He does not say, “Blessed are the victorious.” He does not say, “Blessed are those who dominate.” He says:
Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the hungry. Blessed are those who weep. Blessed are those who are hated.
When Jesus declares, “Blessed are you who are poor, hungry, and hated,” he is not offering empty consolation. He is speaking as one who knows what it means to be poor, hungry, and rejected. He speaks as one who stands with those the world would rather forget. He is speaking as the sermon, flesh and blood, standing before the crowd. Standing before those on the receiving end of healing and grace, He is the God who has become like them. The God who has become like those we would rather forget. The God who has become like us.
And if Jesus stands there, then that is where we, as his body, stand too, not in pursuit of power, not in service to privilege, but in the places where people are hurting. The call of the gospel is not to remove ourselves from the suffering of the world but to step into it—to be a people who see, who serve, and who stand in solidarity.
The crowds are gathered. The sermon is being preached again. And the question remains: Will we stand where Jesus stands?
[i] Luke 6:20
[ii] For more, read Jason Micheli’s sermon titled “Being the Light in an Empire of Lies” where he recalls a lecture from Dr. George Hunsinger. https://jasonmicheli.substack.com/p/being-the-light-in-an-empire-of-lies
[iii] The Barmen Declaration 8.11, 8.14, and 8.17
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