Luke 6:20-31
All Saints Sunday, November 2, 2025
Sermon preached at Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church, Oakland, CA.
Growing up with my father who came to the US in 1930 as a laborer and enlisted in the US Army during WWII, one of the phrases he would say, “By and by.” He might have learned it in the army or maybe told to him that as a Chinese immigrant that “by and by” you will make it in America and receive your earned rewards. He was industrious and worked hard in a family laundry in Roxbury and then as a waiter in a Chinese restaurant in Brookline, both in the Boston area.
By and by, my father became a US citizen and with the help of First Baptist, Boston sponsored my mother to emigrate to America in 1947.
On this All Saints Sunday, we remember those who have gone before us with the promise of heavenly rewards. But this “By and by” understanding also reminds us of the way to placate the oppressed with the promise that injustice is a part of God’s plan to redeem people through suffering.
In 1911, labor activist Joe Hill wrote lyrics to the tune “Sweet, By and By.” Entitled “The Preacher and the Slave,” most people know it as “Pie in the Sky.” Hill mocks the tendency of preaching to tell the slaves to work hard and not complain because their reward is in heaven:
Long-haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right;
But when asked how ‘bout something to eat
They will answer with voices so sweet:
You will eat, by and by,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.
Not only do we remember all the saints in our lives and in this church, we also explore how we live our lives today on this side of heaven while we can. And to wait for justice and equality “by and by” is not what we as people of faith must condone or tolerate. Neither the Lakeshore saints of yesterday or of today would ever be happy with this.
Beatitudes
The Beatitudes that we know best are those in Matthew 5, known as the 9 blessings on the Sermon on the Mount. Today’s lesson is from Luke which only has 4 blessings in the Sermon on the Plain. Matthew’s Beatitudes are more popular because in Luke, Jesus’ blessings are mixed and not so comforting because they are accompanied with 4 woes.
We have “Blessed are you who are poor…Blessed are you who are hungry…Blessed are you who weep…Blessed are you when people hate you. (vv. 20-22) But what is disturbing is that corresponding with the 4 blessings, we have 4 woes: Woe to you who are rich…Woe to you who are full…Woe to you who are laughing…Woe to you when all speak well of you” (vv. 24-26)
While Matthew puts his woes toward the end of his gospel, Luke puts the bad news right next to the good news and directs both, not just to the crowds who follow Jesus, but specifically to the disciples themselves. And as today’s disciples at Lakeshore Avenue, Jesus directs his words to us.
You can imagine how I have prayed about what I might preach on today, my first official Sunday as your Interim Pastor. I thought about bringing a sugary-sweet message of happy good news to not offend and share my gratefulness for my new call. But when I studied the Scriptures and the lectionary texts for today, I was drawn to preaching on Luke 6. When we recognize that living as Christ’s disciples today is both filled with blessings and woes, we would be faithful to God’s plans for us.
Romanticizing the Texts
It’s easy for us to romanticize or spiritualize the Scriptures to our own liking. When Jesus said in Luke, “Blessed are you who are poor,” he met people who are lining up at soup kitchens for dinner because they can’t afford to go to the grocery store. Today, they are the millions whose SNAP program has no checks in the mail and are lining up at food banks to feed their families. They don’t look or feel blessed or happy.
When we spiritualize the Scriptures, we may feel better about ourselves. We can be happier when we adapt them to sound like: “I am not poor, but I identify with the poor,” or even “I work with the poor,” or maybe, “I send money to the poor, I care for the poor.” We might even want to quibble with the definition of “poor,” or “hungry” or “weeping.”
Maybe in Matthew’s gospel, being poor is being poor in spirit and we can live with that. But in Luke, we are not off the hook.
Jesus’ first sermon takes its text from Isaiah 61 to say he has been anointed “to bring good news to the poor…to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (4:18-19).
Luke is telling us that if we want to do anything with Jesus, we better go out to find the poor, find the hungry, find the captives, find the blind, and find the outcast, and join Jesus, as Jesus cares for them. The way we know who Jesus is, is to go where Jesus is, with the poor, the hungry, and the oppressed.
Deepening Discipleship
How might we do this? When we follow Jesus, to know Christ and the power of the resurrection, sharing in his sufferings, we would need to expect to share in his ministry that includes suffering. For us to have the future inheritance in Christ or to be known as “all the saints,” we would also suffer being poor, hungry, mournful or being despised.
As believers in Christ, we are still between the now and the not yet, between what we say is sanctification and glorification. I know that these are rather big words. These words mean that while we are already seeing the revealing of God’s realm on earth, we are still expecting the full reign to come. We pray, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
What we do today is that we are becoming more and more like Christ through faithful obedience. This is not happening because of our own power or strength; rather, it is the work of Christ and the Holy Spirit in and through us. When we see ourselves as the poor, hungry, mourning, and despised, we share in the ministry with Christ. We experience life with Christ. This is what we mean being sanctified with Christ until that time comes when we enter the glory with Christ.
We are then glorified with Christ when we died in Christ. In faith, we will experience the resurrection in Christ’s return. Out future glorification is an eternal encouragement to endure with Christ when we experience hardships, sufferings and all kinds of calamities for the sake of the gospel.
In the epistle lesson for today in Ephesians 1:11-13, we are taught that those who are in Christ should live for the “praise of his glory,” because we have a pledge of eternal inheritance.
Turning Upside Down
We are not surprise to see again and again how Jesus turns things upside down. In God’s rule, the order of things will be reversed: “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted” (Luke 18:14).
The reverse of fortune is that when you are poor now, you will be rich; when you are hungry now, you will be full; when you are weeping now, you will be laughing; and when you are being despised and hated by others now, you will rejoice because your reward is in heaven.
The 4 blessings are matched point by point with 4 woes to you. We don’t like to say that out of the mouth of Jesus, the Lord of love that he would have said “curses.” But a curse is simply the reverse side of a blessing. So, if we believe that blessings are effective, since blessings are a part of church worship, then we must also accept the notion of curses as powerful and effective in our lives too.
If a blessing is a declaration of the holiness and goodness in a person or a church, then a curse or a woe, is an announcement of the evil and injustice in a person or a church as well. Jesus does this in this text. He is teaching this to the crowds that have followed him through the countryside. He blesses those whose suffering he must have seen up close during these travels. Then he curses those with wealth, comfort, and prestige built upon the suffering that are borne by those who are suffering.
I would be disingenuous or insincere if I didn’t connect the point that as Jesus was sharing these blessings and curses with his own disciples that in turn Jesus is sharing these blessings and curses with us today.
We who are living in the Bay Area may like to see ourselves as the poor, the hungry, the weeping, and the despised but we are far from that reality. Instead, it is woe to us because we are rich with Social Security and Medicare; woe to us because we are full and can afford to go out to lunch today; woe to us who are happy because we might be addicted to the myth of success; or woe to us who are living a good life because we have gathered a small circle of admirers in our little bubble.
Jesus is telling us that a secure financial future, a full stomach, a light heart, and a good reputation are mixed blessings at best, because they are all temporary. Not only are they unreliable marks of the good life, they are also deceptive to your well-being. Our false faith in these things eventually endanger our relationship with God. We see this in the rich fool (12:16-21) or the rich man and Lazarus (16:19-31) or Zacchaeus (19:1-10).
To be blessed is to have a right relationship with God.
Right Relationship with God
Like the rich fool who had abundance of possessions and plan to pull down his barns to build larger ones to store his grain and goods or the rich man whose front gate laid Lazarus covered with sores to wait for whatever fell from the rich man’s table to satisfy his hunger or Zacchaeus who was a dishonest tax collector until Jesus found him up in a sycamore tree, we are more like these people than we would like to admit.
Like these rich people, we can take care of ourselves and become trap in our self-sufficiency that separates us from God. Those who lay up treasures for themselves are not—and cannot be—rich toward God because when we can take perfectly good care of ourselves, it is altogether too easy for us not to trust in God. It is not only greed that jeopardizes the wealthy Christian’s relationship with God, but the simple temptation to think that we can take care of ourselves.
The poor are blessed because God is on their side and because they are forced by their circumstances to rely solely on the mercy of God, from whom all life support comes from. For many of us who are more privileged with abundance, it is more challenging to be blessed because we are more like the audience for the woes.
On this All Saints Sunday, I thought about my father who was never as rich as I am today who I hope is in the kingdom of God. My father never took us out to fancy restaurants to eat our fill but we did have enough to eat at home. My father and mother gave up their home country of China and wept and mourned over the life they left behind but today their children and grandchildren are indeed smiling and laughing for the comfortable lives they are having in the US.
Whereas my father and mother may have been despised and ridiculed even while not knowing it as Chinese Americans in the 1940s and 50s, I can say that I am rejoicing and jumping up with joy because this congregation. Lakeshore Avenue has welcomed me as your Interim Pastor!
I pray that my humble service with you in the coming months will indeed be mutually a blessing as well as holding each other accountable of the woes so that we would be honest in our faithfulness and obedience to Christ.
Life Together
Now that Jesus has helped us to an understanding of the blessings and the woes that he is expecting from us, he gives us a series of imperatives or marching orders to do next.
We are to love our enemies, do good to those who hate us. When someone curses at us, we’ll pray for them. When someone hits us, we are to practice non-violence back. When someone who may have taken something from us or taken our coat, maybe the person has a greater need for it. Give something to the homeless. Finally, treat others as you would like to be treated.
When I reflected on these imperatives from Jesus, they are the same that we teach children in our Sunday School or the Children’s Center. We still have much to learn and Jesus is ever so ready to teach us as we grow, share, and serve together at Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church.
Let us pray.
O God, teach us to listen to the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ to become the faithful and active disciples we can be. Shower us with blessings and guard us against the woes so that in time and today, we may be seen and known as the saints of your church in the world. In Christ, we pray. Amen.
The Lord’s Supper
The Canadian preacher John Gladstone tells the story of a young English clergyman who served a small congregation. It was his custom at evening services to administer the ordinances of the Lord’s Supper to any parishioners who remained at the conclusion of the service. One night so few stayed that he questioned whether the sacrament should be observed, but he decided to proceed. In the midst of the liturgy, he read part of the Great Prayer that says, “Therefore, with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious name.” He read it again, “With angels and archangels and all the company of heaven…” Then he prayed, “God forgive me. I did not realize I was in such company.”
Farewell/Benediction
As you, O God, have blessed our coming in, now bless our going forth; and grant that when we leave your house, we may not leave your presence, but be ever near us and keep us near you. Amen.
Go in peace.