Homily, The Lens of Compassion
The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany, 2025
St. Peter’s Episcopal Church
Plant City, FL
The Rev. Derek M Larson, TSSF
Today’s Lectionary Readings:
In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
On Friday I picked up my son, Barret, from school. It was Valentine’s Day and he got in the car wearing these giant, pink, heart shaped glasses he received from his teacher with the other students. And he began to excitedly share with me about what he saw through those lenses. Everything was pink. The sky was pink. The clouds were pink. The trees were pink. And if some colors were not pink, they were a different shade of red or orange. He kept pointing things out to me, but of course without the glasses, it all looked the same to me. It looked normal. But to him, everything was different. Was interesting. Was unusual. When you put on the glasses, the world was a new place.
When we hear the words of Jesus in today’s gospel passage, it sort of feels like he is wearing a pair of glasses that none of the rest of have on. Jesus looks around pointing things out to us, that we just don’t see. It’s almost as if Jesus is looking at entirely different place.
Blessed are the poor, and woe to the rich.
Blessed are the hungry, and woe to the full.
Blessed are weeping, and woe to the laughing.
Blessed are the hated, and woe to the favored.
Is Jesus looking at the same things that we are looking at? The poor? Who live paycheck to paycheck or perhaps with no paycheck at all. The hungry? The ones across the world who are literally dying because of a lack of food? The mourning? Has Jesus ever experienced what it feels like to lose someone? Where is the blessing?
And why the woes? In Greek, this word can mean condemnation which is what we often think, but here it is simply used as the opposite of blessing or happiness, in other words sorrow or trouble. But where is that sorrow or trouble? The rich seem to be doing pretty well. So do those with full bellies. And the ones who laugh.
Where is this woe of which Jesus speaks?
Some have read this passage in a spiritualized way. That poverty represents inner openness to the Spirit of God in our lives and wealth represents idolatrous materialism which keeps God out.
Some have read this passage as a critique of economic and political systems. That poverty only exists in the world, because of the exploitive means by which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And Jesus, in line with the Hebrew prophets before him, is on the side of justice and of the poor.
Both of these readings, I think, are faithful interpretations of the text, even if they may be hard to hear. But there is another reading that catches my attention this week.
In the ancient mind, and often in our own, the world was seen as a battle between good and evil. Righteousness and sin. Power and powerlessness. Blessings and woes. With clear boundaries between the two. It was a polarized world in which everything was either good or bad. And if it was bad on the outside, it was probably bad on the inside. And if was good on the outside, it was probably good on the inside.
In the ancient mind, poverty and wealth fit into these categories. To be poor was often seen as a curse. If you were poor, there was probably a good reason for it. And to be rich was often seen as reward. If you were rich, there was probably a good reason for it. To be rich, then, was to be honored, admired, and well spoken of. To be poor, then, was to be dishonored, despised, ignored. To be rich was good. To be poor was bad. Does that sound familiar? Do we sometimes see the world in those categories, be it economics, politics, or religion?
Of course we do, though, if we are honest, we also know that the truth is probably more complicated than that. And perhaps that is what Jesus is pointing out here. Those who are poor are not all bad. There is the blessing of God within them. Those who are rich are not all good. There is the brokenness of the world within them.
This is the reading that I’m interested in this week. Perhaps Jesus’ message here is an invitation for us to keep in check our assumptions about what is good and what is bad. Or who is good and who is evil. There is often blessing in the places that we condemn; and there is often brokenness in the places that we praise. Are we sure that we know the difference?
Maybe Jesus’ invitation here, is to beware of overly simplistic moral judgements. God is often present in the last place we expect. And so is the devil.
If we go back to the economic reading of the passage—the one in which Jesus condemns an unjust economic system which exploits the poor (which again, I think is probably the most accurate interpretation here). We may be tempted to see Jesus as an advocate of some kind of class warfare. As a material revolutionist bent on economic change. And a leader of the poor and powerless against the rich and powerful. But if Jesus is that, he certainly doesn’t do it in the way that we might expect. For in the gospel stories we often find him spending time not only with the poor but with the rich. Jesus makes an intentional decision to offer grace and kindness to people like Matthew and Zacchaeus, the unjustly wealthy tax collectors. Or the young rich ruler in Mark 10, where the passage says that Jesus looked at him and loved him. So as often as Jesus calls out the wealth of the rich, he also affirms goodness and grace to those with wealth. The woe that Jesus pronounces is not one purely of condemnation, but of compassion.
Jesus does not see the world in clean binaries of good and bad, us and them. Jesus finds both blessing and woe everywhere. There is goodness and beauty in places the world casts out. And there is injustice and perversion in places the world lifts up. And the question is if we will have the spiritual maturity and sophistication of vision to be able to see them both, or if we will give in to blanket assumptions and over generalized exaggerations that separate the world into good and bad.
And we have to be careful here, because being able to see both blessing and woe in all things is not the same as taking the position of neutrality or excusing ourselves from moral action. Injustice must be named and done away with. Right and wrong, good and bad do exist. But they don’t always exist apart from one another. The truth is, they are most often mingled with one another.
And that is the truth of each one of us. We all have within us both good and bad, blessing and woe. We cannot categorize ourselves or one another in one category or the other. Wholeness and brokenness are mingled within us.
The only faithful response then, is to cultivate compassion, which is what we see Jesus doing. Compassion is that which can hold both of these truths together. We are all both filled with the blessing of God’s goodness, and with the brokenness that comes from the injustice and pain of this world.
Jesus is looking at the world through a different lens. The lens through which Jesus is looking is compassion. The world looks different to him because he sees it with compassion. And only with compassion will we be able to see goodness where things are broken, and brokenness where things are good. Only with compassion will we be able to see God’s blessing in the word’s woe, and God’s woe in the world’s blessing. Only if we look with the lens of compassion. Amen.
Questions for Reflection
- Are there individuals or groups I tend to categorize as solely “good” or “bad”? How might I challenge these assumptions and recognize the complexity within each person?
- How do my beliefs about wealth and poverty shape my views on justice and compassion? What steps can I take to better align my actions with a more nuanced understanding?
- In moments of judgment or condemnation towards others, how can I remind myself to pause and view the situation through the lens of compassion?
- How can I actively seek out opportunities to practice compassion in my community, especially towards those I might not initially see as deserving of grace?
- Who or what would I pronounce woe on? Where is God’s blessing there? Who or what would I pronounce as blessed? Where is the world’s woe/ brokenness there?
Thoughts on Faith 