Jesus talks so frequently about the hungry, the sick, the ill, the suffering. If Jesus has an earthly obsession, it is to those who suffer. Jesus leads us through our suffering into another plane of existence. And perhaps these blessings are an explanation of God's agenda rather than a mandate for morality. I do not think Luke is against wealth here. It appears Luke is proposing that people be reminded that this state of wealth is not guaranteed forever: you may be rich today, but that is not guaranteed for tomorrow. You may be well or happy today but there is no guarantee for tomorrow. So too the woes then are not so much incentive to a corrective as they are a type of wake up call that our fortunes may indeed be reversed on a moments notice and we may be faced with a new reality. Perhaps Luke is saying that we cannot count on the fact that what we have we will have forever, just as we cannot count on the fact that if we don't have something, we won't have it forever. I do not think these blessings and woes should be thought of as "goodness" and "badness". I think Luke is telling us to live with a looseness, to live within our present conditions understanding that change is inevitable. Luke is pointing us to the truth that we should not let the condition we find ourselves in rule us, instead let us rule those conditions. Luke is not critiquing wealth or wealthy people (and I'm talking generically here about wealth: financial, spiritual, bodily, mentally), Luke is talking about how that wealth is understood and utilized.

Barbara Gerlach I think sums this up very well in her book The Things That Make for Peace when she says: "In those moments of self-giving, inmost desire and outward deed overflow together. Our divided selves are made whole, and we experience God's blessing. It is when we are pushed to the edge of human possibility: by our poverty or our grief, by our thirst for righteousness or our search for peace, by our suffering or our love, there God meets us. In these moments, which are our perfection and our peace, God comes to us as sure as the taste of salt on our tongues."

God is with us, in good times and in bad, in our poverty and in our wealth, in our sadness and in our joy, in our loneliness and in our popularity. God's love for all God's creation is beyond our understanding but joyfully is always there for us.

Amen.