#blessed, #woe
Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God ( Luke 6:20 ). This is Super Bowl weekend…anybody join a betting pool on who’s going to win, Cincinnati or Los Angeles? This competition wouldn’t really be very interesting, would it, if there weren’t a winner and a loser? The Super Bowl is, of course, a zero-sum situation: whatever is gained by one side is lost by the other; one team’s success is possible only with the other team’s loss. One of the important underlying themes in today’s Gospel, I think, is a reminder that our lives as disciples in the grace-filled Kingdom of God are not part of a zero-sum game. As you were just listening to the deacon read the Gospel, you might have been thinking, “Wait a minute…these Beatitudes, they don’t sound quite like the ones I remember! What about the merciful? What happened to the meek inheriting the earth?” Well, as you know, the four different Gospel writers tell their stories of Jesus to four different audiences, and from dif