Upside Down Kingdom: Good News for the Poor

Jesus’ blessings and woes are an illustration of life in his kingdom, where things are upside down, where they run quite counter to what we think is ordinary and usual. In Jesus’ day, people saw wealth as a sign of divine favor. In our day, people aren’t all that different: sure, they might not put it exactly that way, but we do tend to regard wealth as an unambiguously good thing. And we see poverty as unambiguously bad. What Jesus is trying to do is turn that upside down. In particular, he’s trying to draw our attention to the spiritual danger of wealth, and the spiritual openness of poverty.

Luke 6:20-26