REFLECTION 16 FEBRUARY 2025 

The Upside down nature of God’s Blessings 

By Rev Dr Fei Taule’ale’ausumai 

I had dinner yesterday with my cousins in Lyall Bay who have just returned from Samoa.  They have a daughter with special needs Cerebral Palsy she is non-verbal and, in a wheelchair, but very aware she turned 30 last year.  Anyway, they took her to McDonalds in Apia, Samoa’s main town.  OMG she said, a chicken McNuggets combo was $36 tala which is $22 NZ dollars. That is equivalent to a day’s pay for most people. Only the rich can afford to eat there.  She said, after church on a Sunday you can see all the ministers and their families eating at McDonalds because they are the only ones who can afford it.  I attended a service in the main town church, and it was when the fortnightly ministers alofa or love offering is collected.  They announce everyone’s donations from the lectern.  He received $7,500 tala for that fortnight which is equivalent to $4,688.81 NZ dollars totalling $9,377.62 a month around $4,000 more than a Presbyterian minister here in Aotearoa NZ.  So even though the weekly wage of most Samoans is $4 an hour which is $2.50 NZD an hour totally $100 a week they still managed to raise $7,500 tala for their ministers stipend for each fortnight.   A McDonald’s combo just for one person would cost a days wages.  Can you imagine how much a family of four would cost?    

There are two types of Gospel, Good News for the poor and Bad News for the rich.  It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich person to enter into the kingdom of heaven.  The prosperity gospel whereby the rich are blessed by God that’s why they are rich.  I’m not going to name anyone, you will all know someone who falls into that category and then there is the upside down Gospel which says blessed are the poor, blessed are the downtrodden, blessed are you when people persecute you.  Have you ever wondered how these negative states or conditions of life can ever be a blessing?  What is that about?  God’s blessings of reversal offer hope to the marginalized and oppressed, affirming that God’s justice and mercy will ultimately prevail.  I can hear the hungry saying I don’t want life after death I want life now.  We probably all have stories of Christians who feel entitled, entitled to the riches of this world because they have been blessed by God it is believed to be a sign of God’s abundance in their lives based on John 10:10 I came that you might have life and have it abundantly.    

‘Blessed’, but in what sense? Why does Jesus declare the poor happy, fortunate, blessed? Unfortunately, the guesses have been wild and often wide of the mark. Are they blessed because despite their poverty they can have inner serenity, so that their poverty does not matter or is perhaps an advantage, causing them to trust solely in God and so find true happiness? I grew up with the scripture, Treasures in Heaven  

19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.  

The promises can be spiritualised so that they no longer address real poverty. In Matthew’s gospel they have been expanded and now serve to commend attitudes of lowliness and humility, hunger and thirst for righteousness. It is usually Matthew’s version which derails the interpretation of the beatitudes we have here in Luke, and which are likely to be closer to what Jesus said. But even in Matthew we should not miss the convergence between attitude and need. Lowliness is commended, but those who mourn are offered hope. The lowliness that counts is lowliness in solidarity with those who have been laid low. The righteousness for which to hunger and thirst is none other than the justice which addresses the needs of the downtrodden.  

There is an opposite danger, in part caused by what might have been Luke’s own supplement: the woes. We can reduce the focus to economic poverty. That would be typical of simplistic analyses of human need which focus only on outcomes. In the world of Jesus’ day (as already in Isa 61) ‘the poor’ are the people, the people of Israel. They are poor in so many ways, dispirited, overtaxed, exploited, lost, hopeless in spirit. To these Jesus announces the promise of reversal when God’s reign is established. It is about poverty, but in a much wider sense as well.  

The Gospel of Luke assures us that the Realm of God, in its fullness, will confound all our expectations and will overturn our experiences. In fact, in the “Realm of God” everything will be turned upside down.  

This is especially true when it comes to power, privilege and wealth. Luke assures us time and again that in God’s realm those who struggle in life now—those who are at the bottom or on the edges of human society—will suddenly find themselves at the top and in the center.  

This is a warning to those who now enjoy the greatest human security and social advantage that their experience may one day be very different. As Jesus tells his listeners on one occasion, “Behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last”. This notion that in the end God will turn everything we know upside down is often called the “Great Reversal.” It is a hallmark of Luke’s Gospel, where it appears frequently.  

If Jesus was addressing the people of Galilee in these terms and holding out the prospect of change so that they could hold out for that blessing and rejoice, Luke and the early Christian movement took these promises also to apply to themselves, not just as core Israel, but also as people who were living at the margin.   

The blessedness was always more than a promise for the future. The community which prayed, ‘Your kingdom come’, was itself a place where the reign of God began to be realised. Some even argue that this was really Jesus’ primary focus: changed lifestyle and changed communities in the present rather than in some dramatic reversal wrought by divine intervention in the future.   

Certainly, the tradition shows that Jesus was more than a dreamer of future utopias. Much of his teaching is about how the change can take place right now. It included radical sharing of food and resources, later stylised in the eucharistic feast. Vested interests will often prefer a Christianity that will leave the status quo as it is and focus only on the world to come. Then we betray the poor when we call them blessed. Luke has illustrated the earthiness of the promise of change in the way he has been describing the impact of Jesus’ ministry. Nazareth was not an announcement about another world and a far off future role, but about mission here and now.  At the same time neither Luke nor Jesus spoke of such change without envisaging something more encompassing still to come.  

The relationship of material wellbeing to discipleship must have been a particularly critical issue for Luke’s audience. The question was: How should Christians who are socially secure relate to their own well-being and to the needs of others?  

Contemporary Christians, particularly those of us who live in relatively prosperous societies, are certainly called to ask the same question. To those of us who are able to enjoy material and social prosperity, the Great Reversal may seem like very Bad News indeed. What are we to make of it? What does Jesus want us to know?  

One thing that is very clear about the Great Reversal is that it is the work of God, the God who acts to set things right, to bring healing and liberation in this world and in the next. It is not something that humans can carry out, and so the announcement of the Great Reversal is not a call for humanly orchestrated social upheaval.  

At the same time, it is not a call for maintaining the status quo by assuring poor people that their poverty is a blessing.  Our call is not only to care for the disadvantaged but also to work actively to bring about economic justice for all people. This charge remains our religious obligation, just as it was for the rich man.  

The Great Reversal assures us that the poor, the vulnerable, the marginalized—all those who count for nothing in this world—count very much in God’s realm.  The future holds great promise for them because God cares deeply for them.  

For those who find this life easy and satisfying, the Great Reversal serves as a warning. While they are not evil in themselves, wealth and power are spiritually dangerous, always threatening to lull us into complacency and insensitivity to the needs of others.  

Blessedness in solidarity with poor and the blessedness of the poor lie ultimately in the blessedness of sharing the life of the God of compassion and change and living out that hope, whatever it means in our situation. Such compassion begins where we are at.    

The hungry are blessed because they are to be filled, the weeping because they will laugh. These are promises of reversal. The poor are blessed because there is a real chance they will cease being poor! The blessing is partly in knowing that such a reversal is coming and partly in the reversal itself. Luke 6:24-25   

“But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. 
25 Woe to you who are well fed now, 
    for you will go hungry. 
Woe to you who laugh now, 
    for you will mourn and weep.   

This is like a threat “be afraid, be very afraid”.  This confirms this with the opposite: future threats of reversal directed to the rich and comfortable. The sayings envisage change, liberation for the oppressed, food for the hungry, joy for those in mourning.  Amen. 

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