I start a series tomorrow on Luke’s Gospel. Whenever I come to Luke, it always gets me thinking about the whole issue of Luke’s emphasis on the poor and weak. The classic case being, Luke’s record of Jesus’ words “Blessed are the Poor” ie. not the Poor in Spirit. But tomorrow I come to Mary’s song which also carries this theme – God will exalt the humble, he will fill the hungry with good things and send the rich away empty. How do you preach this with a firm grasp of the imperitave to preach the gospel? How do I speak of the compassion of Christ to the poor but help people to not lose sight of the need to bring people into the spiritual/eternal kingdom? Or is this all part of my evangelical nervousness which inevitably leads me to wrongly de-emphasises the need to care for the poor and needy in society?
In preparation for yesterday when I”ll preach on Mary’s song, I came across a nice neat summary from Darrell Bock’s commentary. Not the 1 million page mega commentary but from ‘Little Bock’ – IVP New Testament Commentary Series. Page 46-47:
Some see the song “soley as a reference to God’s defence of all the poor, all the hungry. A whole theology of liberation is built around such a reading of these verses and others like them. This ignores the spiritual dimension present throughout the hymn (ie. 1:50 – mercy to those who fear him), not to mention the national character of the hope expressed in verses 54-55. On the other hand, some want to dilute the references to the poor and hungry altogether and speak only of the poor and hungry in spirit. This also undercuts the passage’s force. The spirit of the text is reflected in other New Testament texts (1 Cor 1:25-31; Jas 2:5). Often it is those in need who are the most spiritually sensitive to God and who are gifted with faith by him. God promises them that despite their current deprivation, they will experience great reward in the future”
I reckon a pretty good way of thinking about it. Thanks Darrell Bock!
Garnet Swann