Reflection
In the early part of his ministry, Jesus went to two Jewish synagogues: Nazareth (Lk.4:14 - 30) and Capernaum (4:31 - 44). He received negative responses from both. Nazareth was fiercely opposed to the Gentiles and tried to kill Jesus for saying that God would show grace to Gentiles. Capernaum tried to keep Jesus from leaving, and just wanted wanted him for themselves. In response to this, Jesus left and began to call disciples, shaping them according to his heart and plan. He called Simon and the other fishermen, saying, ‘I will make you fishers of men’ (5:1 - 11). From this point, Jesus begins a process of recruitment and selection.
However, after Jesus provokes controversy on the Sabbath (6:1 - 11), the Pharisees and scribes are ‘filled with rage’ (6:11). The Pharisees’ plot, while not specified, is already likely to be one of murder. Luke hints strongly at this because the phrase ‘filled with rage’ was used to describe the Nazareth synagogue attendees after Jesus’ disconcerting sermon in Lk.4:16 – 27. In that incident, the synagogue members ‘rose up and cast him out of the city, and led him to the brow of the hill…in order to throw him down the cliff’ (4:29 – 30). Jesus escaped that mob, possibly by exercising divine power but more probably by staring them down, by the mere force of his personality. This time, the Pharisees and scribes form the new faction that plots against Jesus. Since they too are ‘filled with rage,’ we expect that they will also make an attempt on Jesus’ life. This is no longer an isolated incident in Nazareth; the full-scale rejection of Jesus by Israel’s leadership is now underway.
In response, Jesus forms the nucleus of his new community, the twelve apostles, in 6:12 – 20. These disciples embody the community that will (eventually) overcome the hatred for enemies that caused Nazareth to reject him, and the apathy towards others that caused Capernaum to try to confine him. Except for Judas Iscariot, these apostles will eventually adhere to Jesus’ central teaching on love for enemies and sacrificial generosity. In Luke 6:12 - 49, Jesus prepares his twelve disciples to give up their financial mooring in national Israel. Jesus teaches his followers to expect persecution and extreme forms of sacrifice, at least in part because the rejection of Jesus by Israel’s leadership had already begun.
Jesus therefore says, ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God’ (Lk.6:20). This is different from Matthew’s ‘poor in spirit.’ Without question, Luke has in mind people who are materially poor. But Jesus’ benediction falls not on ‘the poor’ as a general class of people, but on his particular audience – the disciples, the ‘you’ – who were poor ‘on account of the Son of Man’ (6:22), i.e. because they followed Jesus. It is appropriate for Jesus to call his disciples ‘you who are poor.’ Both the fishermen and Levi ‘left everything’ and ‘followed him’ (5:11, 28). This fact is mentioned again in 18:28 concerning the twelve. Jesus makes that benchmark an explicit challenge for all in 14:33, ‘None of you can be my disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.’
Jesus is inviting others to leave the multitude and join his community of disciples. Although he addresses the disciples, he speaks within hearing of ‘a great throng of people’ who are distinguished from the disciples (6:17-19). Initially, he praises his disciples for leaving behind their wealth, and even their ancestral lands, to follow him. Jesus bestows on them the long-awaited ‘kingdom of God.’ The four beatitudes climax with a comparison of Jesus’ disciples with ‘the prophets’ (6:23) of old, Israel’s heroic men and women who suffered immensely at the hands of Israel’s unrepentant leaders. He then pronounces four woes on those in the crowd who are rich, well-fed, laughing, and honored. Jesus is presumably addressing those who are not yet his disciples who fit aspects of that description.
However, hostile pressure from outside the community is not the only reason the disciples will suffer. Regardless of whether persecution breaks upon them or not, disciples will suffer because of Jesus’ radical ethic of giving. Jesus commands his disciples to love their enemies, do good to others regardless of how they treat them, give without demanding a return, and lend without expecting a return on the human level (6:27-35). Jesus does not say this to merely convict people of sin and emotionally drive them to the atonement. He delivers this amazing relational ethic because he expects it to characterize his community.
