Blessings and Woes

I'm not on deck at church this coming Sunday -- I'll just be sitting in my civvies in the pew -- but I've been reading various commentaries on the Gospel lesson, Luke's version of the beatitudes and their attendant woes. An increasingly favorite "makes you think" website for such stuff is Pastor Dan Bollerud's Grace Notes -- check it out.

I also appreciated a comment by Mary Hinkle Shore, in Pilgrim Preaching , where she notes that addressing this text strictly from a socioeconomic point of view, and in a way that "guilts" the majority of relatively affluent listeners while unintentionally marginalizing (yet again) the poorer members of our congregations -- We Americans are the rich and privileged; woe unto us -- isn't particularly helpful; that it creates a kind of non-Gospel dead end. She suggests framing the text in a way that emphasizes the underlying message that, when God's Reign breaks through, everything changes -- how we relate to God and the world and one another -- the status quo is blown away.