Bible for Catholic Nerds – The Announcement of Grace

 The Announcement of Grace

“In those days he departed to the mountain to pray, and he spent the night in prayer to God.” The evangelist Luke is very interested in prayer. It is his character to emphasize that, in the important moments of his life, Jesus prayed and prayed for a long time. We have already found it in the initial investiture at the Jordan.

Luke does not properly narrate the baptism of Jesus; he says that after Jesus was baptized, while he was in prayer, “heaven was opened and the holy Spirit descended upon him” and the Father spoke to him. It is important that Jesus was in prayer, and in that context, the revelation takes place. That is why now, in chapter 6, before the election of the twelve apostles, the evangelist Luke specifies that Jesus goes up the mountain to pray and prays all night, then chooses the Twelve. He will repeat the same in the episode of the transfiguration as well.

Luke is the only one who says that Jesus went up the mountain to pray; and as he prayed his face changed in appearance. For Luke, Jesus is not simply a teacher of prayers or style of prayer, but he is a man who prays; He is the Son of God who enters into a full and loving prayerful relationship with his Father. Thus, with the election of the twelve apostles, the programmatic discourse begins in Luke.

We are used to calling it the ‘Sermon on the Mount’ because we find it in the Gospel of Matthew, set on a mountain, but it is an editorial style typical of Matthew. All that material composed of many sayings of the Lord, present in Matthew and Luke and absent in Mark, belong to that older tradition that has been defined as source “Q”.

Both Matthew and Luke have extracted the material from this same source, and have organized it as a programmatic speech. Matthew places him on the mountain because the mountain for him represents the place of the encounter with God, and Jesus on the mountain gives a new law, as God on Sinai had given the law to Israel.

Luke, instead, emphasizes the descent into the plains; on the mountain, Jesus went up to pray. “And he came down with them stopped in a plane place. There was a great crowd of disciples, great crowd of people and stood on a stretch of level ground. A great crowd of his disciples and a large number of the people” who came from all the neighboring regions. And then, “raising his eyes toward his disciples he said…” And the discourse on the plain begins.

For Luke, with an editorial retouch, the plain place becomes the atmosphere of the meeting with many people. It is difficult to meet the crowd on the mountain. For Luke, it is more important to emphasize that Jesus comes down to the level of the people. He has been on the mountain with his Father. He chose the disciples, after which, he goes down to the people. It is the normal environment of daily life and it is to that crowd that is gathered that Jesus offers the proclamation of the beatitudes.

Luke preserves a more archaic tradition than that of Matthew. Four beatitudes were immediately followed by four woes. Instead, Matthew has eight beatitudes and then the eight corresponding woes answer at the end in chapter 23, at the beginning of the last speech, so that the first speech begins with the beatitudes and the last discourse begins with the woes. Luke, on the other hand, seems to keep the most archaic form and keeps four blessings together and four woes, perfectly symmetrical, as if we were to say four coins with heads and tails. “Blessed are you who are poor,… But woe to you who are rich”; “Blessed are you who are now hungry,… But woe to you who are filled now”; “Blessed are you who are now weeping,… Woe to you who laugh now”; “Blessed are you when people hate you,… Woe to you when all speak well of you”. Perfectly parallel and opposite.

The beatitude is a congratulation, a wisdom way with which Jesus announces the good fortune that happens to humanity. What is important is the motivation: “the kingdom of God is yours.” This is the source of beatitude, not poverty. Jesus most likely is speaking in Hebrew, and he uses the term ‘anawim’ which indicates the poor, but in a spiritual sense, not simply those who have little money, but the humble ones who are willing to embrace God’s project. Matthew adds in his version that small expression that helps us to understand better: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Luke does not add anything; he retains a more archaic formulation, probably one of the earliest Greek versions because Jesus spoke in a Semitic language.

We are not sure if he spoke Hebrew or Aramaic, a Semitic language without a doubt. And his disciples also spoke the same language and therefore memorized his words in that language, but when they found themselves preaching the gospel to people who spoke Greek because Greek was the lingua franca that everyone knew in the Mediterranean basin, at that time and they necessarily had to translate into Greek the words they had heard from Jesus in Semitic language.

The early versions were probably very literal and made by people who didn’t know Greek very well, with some unconvincing translations. And Luke, who found these ancient documents of the teaching of Jesus, faithfully preserves and transmits them. So, the emphasis is not on poverty but on the kingdom of God. Jesus announces that the kingdom of God is present, and is present thanks to his person. The kingdom of God is Jesus himself. Later, only the evangelist Luke mentions a ‚’logion,’ a very important saying of Jesus: ‘The kingdom of God does not come in a way that attracts attention; You cannot say it is here or it is there because the kingdom of God is in your midst.’ Not exactly ‘within you’ as a discourse of intimacy, but right in your midst. That saying is directed to the Pharisees who are the perennial enemies of Jesus.

God’s kingdom is in the midst of those people because Jesus is present among those people. The kingdom of God is Jesus, it is his person and his presence; he is the powerful, operating presence of God in history. He is the decisive intervention. “You are blessed” because Jesus is on your side. You can be poor, but you can recognize that you are weak because the Lord Almighty is on your side. You are not blessed because you are hungry but because you will be satisfied. You are offered the possibility of being satisfied. “Blessed are you who welcomes it.” You are not blessed because you cry. Jesus does not announce weeping, hunger, or poverty; he announces the overcoming of poverty, overcoming of hunger, overcoming of tears. “Blessed are you for you will laugh.” There is a possibility of being happy.

Take note that also, in this case, the text: ‘you will laugh’ is elementary and is translated into Greek, a Semitic expression that refers precisely to joy. You are happy because the kingdom of God, here present, allows you to be happy. Even if people oppose you, have patience; happy you because God is on your side. But be careful because the same reality can be reversed: God’s presence can be rejected. If you are rich (as in the case of the poor, we said that it is not a matter of money, so it is valid also for the rich) if you are rich in pride, you are presumptuous, you feel self-sufficient, the kingdom of God does not welcome you, and therefore, it does not do any good to you. You already have your consolation, you are closed in what you have and do not welcome the kingdom of God. “Woe to you who are filled now, (not because you are full, but because “you will be hungry”), because you refuse the offer being given to you, and by refusing it you will find yourself empty. “Woe to you who laugh now, (not because you laugh, but because “you will grieve and weep”) because by refusing the kingdom of God, not accepting the person of Jesus, you are putting your hand in misfortune.

‘Woe!’ doesn’t mean = ‘this will get you into trouble’ but rather an exclamation of pain, As ‘blessedness’ -happy’ is a congratulation. Thus ‘woe’ is a commiseration. Try to imagine a paradoxical expression with which we could say ‘poor-rich people’ when commenting on some cases, in the news where a rich, famous, powerful has gone bad and has ruined himself. What do I mean by ‘poor-rich’? I mean that despite their condition of material well-being, they are poor people who live unhappy lives, who ruin their lives. This is what Jesus means: ‘Blessed’ and ‘woe’ depends on the acceptance of the kingdom of God, which is the person of Jesus. Jesus is present as the savior who works the grace of God; he offers that life-changing grace; he announces God’s mercy.

As a fundamental discourse, after the Beatitudes, we also find in Luke, as in Matthew, some beautiful words, a free, generous love, that goes beyond the merit of others. “If you do good to those who do good to you, what gratitude is due to you?” So says the new translation. The previous translation said: “What credit do you have?” I personally don’t like either of them. I propose a third translation: What kind of love is yours? If you love those who love you, what kind of love is yours? In Greek, we use the term ‘jaris’ which we generally translate as ‘grace.’ What is your grace? What gratuitous affection…? Grace supposes the idea of ‘gratuitousness.’ If you give a gift to whoever gave you the gift, what is free in all that? Generally, when you return a gift that you have received with another gift, you calculate how much they have spent on the gift they gave you and you try to spend the same amount to return the favor. It is a market in disguise; it is not authentic love.

This is Jesus’ question: ‘What kind of love is it? What kind of gratuity is yours? If you lend something to those who can give back, what kind of love is yours? Also sinners, tax collectors … animals do this. If you give the dog a cookie he is happy and wags his tail, but if you kick him he shows you his teeth. It’s an instinctive, normal reaction. This is what we also do: we treat well those who treat us well.

Jesus proposes something extraordinary that does not come instinctively; loving enemies is not part of our instinctive baggage. To those who instinctively hurt us we want to respond with evil. Here is the evangelical announcement. The good news is that we are given the possibility of extraordinary love that it is not ours, but belongs to God. Here is the kingdom of God, his presence is this power of love.

Jesus saves because he offers this possibility, free from a diabolical bond that forces evil, to return evil for evil, and gives a new, divine possibility of doing good for free. “Be merciful, just as also your Father is merciful.” In the text of Matthew, the same saying of Jesus is rendered as: “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” According to our way of thinking there is a big difference between mercy and perfection. Obviously, on the other hand, the evangelists did not have such a distant idea. Mercy is perfection, that is, it is the fullness of love.

The fullness of God is mercy, and by grace, we have obtained the possibility of being merciful like the heavenly Father. It is not a matter of effort; Jesus is not saying ‘strive to be,’ but embrace this grace that is given to you to become merciful like the heavenly Father. This is the salvation that the Lord works for.

In our modern world, it is difficult to speak of salvation because two very different mentalities are perceived. On the one hand, there is the idea that salvation is impossible; and on the other hand, on the contrary, that salvation is not necessary. Those who have a negative view of the world, like some great philosophers, poets, pessimistic storytellers, who believe that the world is a web of irrecoverable evil, nothing makes sense, there is no end, there is no possibility of change, salvation is impossible. Nothing changes.

On the other hand, we have the thinkers, the optimistic writers for whom man is good; all people are good … deep down they are all good; there are no serious elements of negativity. Today, there is an attempt at ‘seen everything as good’ that everything is fine, that all religions are good, that all people have something good deep down, everything is fine. Salvation is useless for these people.

The announcement of Jesus, which is the Christian announcement, presupposes at first a vein of pessimism, that is, of a realistic consideration of reality: things are bad, it is not true that we are good; there’s a notable underlying evil in everyone and we need to be saved, but the good news is that this salvation is possible.

Nature, wounded by sin can be changed, is not irretrievable, it can be healed. And God’s mercy is therapy. Jesus heals the wounded man; frees him, saves him. Mercy saves and salvation consists in becoming merciful; in being able to do good for free, as the heavenly Father.

In this section, especially in chapter 7, Luke insists on narratives that are exclusive his. He wants to show how Jesus reveals the face of the heavenly Father’s mercy. He heals the servant of a centurion, a foreigner, a man of faith, a man capable of relating, who loves the servant, who is appreciated by the people, those subjected by the Romans. He narrates the resuscitation of a dead child, son of a widow, in Nain. Jesus feels his maternal viscera move, he is moved like a mother, shows the life-giving mercy of God. During a banquet in the house of the Pharisee Simon Jesus is surprised by a woman, a sinner, who cries at her feet without saying a word, while the Pharisee misjudges her; Jesus recognizes that something has happened to that woman. There is repentance, she humbled herself and wept. She recognized her own sin. She loved Jesus so much that she entrusted herself to him. She lost her dignity, she threw herself under the table like a dog; and clung to the feet of Jesus at the risk of being kicked. Jesus acknowledges her salvation.

The mercy of the Father heals sinners, does not judge them; transforms and heals them.