Idiotes (Don’t be One)

Luke 6:17-26

He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.

Then he looked up at his disciples and said:
‘Blessed are you who are poor,
   for yours is the kingdom of God.
‘Blessed are you who are hungry now,
   for you will be filled.
‘Blessed are you who weep now,
   for you will laugh.

‘Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.
‘But woe to you who are rich,
   for you have received your consolation.
‘Woe to you who are full now,
   for you will be hungry.
‘Woe to you who are laughing now,
   for you will mourn and weep.

‘Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.

Everyone loves the Beatitudes… at least, everyone loves Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed are the peacemakers…” It’s that lovely sermon where Jesus makes note that those who are often looked down upon as cursed, as less-than, and nobodies are the truly blessed ones, a divine reversal of what their corrupt society deems as good or bad.

But Luke takes this divine reversal further, as he is wont to do. He makes the reversal crystal clear by not only including these lovely blessings, but also by including some very harsh woes. During this time of oppressive empire, those who are rich have already gotten their prize; those who are full of decadent food will go hungry; those who are laughing will weep; those who receive praise will be revealed as false prophets. But this is not new in Luke. In fact, the gospel of Luke has been filled with this kind of language even before Jesus’ birth—remember Mary’s powerful Magnificat—

His mercy is for those who fear him
  from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
   he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
   and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
   and sent the rich away empty.

 It's been clear since Jesus’ immaculate conception what he was sent on this earth to do; it has been clear since he was a miracle in Mary’s womb— he’s been sent to reverse the societal norms and sins that subjugate people under others for no rational or moral reason. And it is here, in Luke’s version of the sermon on the mount, which, is tellingly, it not on a mount, but rather, “on a level place.” Jesus is one of the people, so he comes down to be with the people. This is not by accident.

I’ve talked before about what the Biblical concept of sin means, and it really just means turning away from God, turning away from the kind of life and the path of peace and of love and of compassion that God calls us to. It means isolating ourselves from God. Jesus is making it clear that this is what extreme wealth does. It changes people. It isolates us from other and from the kind of life in community that Jesus calls us to.

There are a lot of people right now trying to make sense of all the chaos going on in our country right now. There are a lot of theories, there’s a lot of anxiety, and there’s a lot of anger and fear. There are a lot of people fuming at the fact that an unelected billionaire seems to have taken control of much of the country’s inner workings, and the reasons are, on the surface, to reign in inefficient government spending; but in doing so, hundreds of thousands of people are losing their jobs and thousands more around the world are losing life-saving funds and resources, and ultimately, any amount that’s being saved from cutting this aid is miniscule.

Well, it happens that extreme wealth can change your brain. Extreme wealth isolates you from the common person. It takes you away from the real struggles and the real joys of normal people. And so you lose your sense of compassion. You lose your empathy. Now—let me be clear, I don’t think anyone in this congregation is guilty of this, and I don’t think anyone in this congregation is at risk of being so wildly wealthy and isolated from the real world that we stop understand and therefore caring about other people. But I do think thinking of what extreme wealth does to people helps us to understand what’s going on right now in our world; and I also thinks it helps us to understand what Jesus was warning his disciples and his listeners of, and that what he’s saying is still so relevant today, and always be— extreme wealth isolates and separates people from God.  It isolates people from others and therefore doesn’t allow for those people to act towards others in compassionate, empathetic and thoughtful ways. It isolates people from community, and therefore doesn’t allow for them to know or understand what would make a just and good and peaceful world for all people, which is what we are called to create—so for the ultra-wealthy, being isolated from people, they are also isolated from God.

When I tell you that wealth changes your brain chemistry and how we act, I’m not being glib. There have been a great deal of studies showing this. One study done at UC Berkely had two people playing Monopoly; one was given way more money than the other to start; the study showed that even with fake money, the person with more was more likely to lie and cheat to keep that money and to take over the board.[i] Statistics show that the wealthy, obviously give technically more money to charity than the middle class or poor, but the middle class and poor actually give higher proportions of their money to charities.[ii] Another study showed that because upper-class people are insulated from the world around them thanks to their exorbitant wealth, they don’t have to depend on others; and therefore, they don’t have to exercise their empathy muscle very often, or maybe ever.[iii] But it’s depending on and interacting with one another and the empathy that comes with that, that strengthens social bonds, and strengthens our world.    

What got me going down this rabbit hole was a passage from an essay from the political writer John Ganz. He writes of Elon Musk’s attempts at gutting USAID and other government departments he deems wasteful or useless,

Musk’s total idiocy is structural: it goes back to the very origin of the Greek term idiotes, a person who cannot understand the shared political life of the city. These people cannot understand that their wealth and power are not their sovereign creations but the shared product of the wider state and society that supports and sustains them.[iv]

Their extreme wealth did not happen in a vacuum. It happened because of a lot of factors that economists and political scientists and political philosophers are better equipped to explain to you, but these ultra-rich are so far removed from those factors— from the things that happen in a civil society to make it function, to make it so that people can have happy and content, if modest lives, that they can’t comprehend a world in which people might need help; a world in which people might need assistance; a world in which people might need to depend on one another; a world in which we are each connected to each other and therefore care for each other. To the unimaginably rich, anything that doesn’t add to personal wealth, to this ability to not need civil society anymore, is waste. To those who haven’t had to depend on direct service or help for decades, or maybe ever, they can’t fathom that others may need a little support, or a leg up.

How did we get here? How, in a country that so many purport to be a Christian nation, did we get to the point of a complete lack of Christian empathy and compassion and a sinful idolization of money and power? For our purposes at least, this can probably be traced back to the 19th century and the rise of what’s now known as the “Prosperity Gospel,” a deeply flawed theology that claims those who have material wealth have it because God wills is, you too can have incredible material wealth, if only you pray and believe hard enough. But this type of thinking started because of our American obsession with wealth and individualism. It’s long been thought by many that those who are stuck in the cycle of poverty are there because they have sinned, they have been deemed unworthy for some reason—they they’re simply not trying hard enough to pull themselves up from their boot straps.

It’s ludicrous that this viewpoint ever gained any traction at all, and it’s especially troubling that it’s still a widespread line of thought at all in our modern times—Jesus says, clear as day—blessed are the poor. Blessed are the hungry. Blessed are the weeping. Blessed are those who are excluded. Jesus wanted to make sure that we all remain connected to and compassionate towards one another—that we all realize that we live in a world that thrives when there are safety nets and systems set in place so that everyone is ultimately taken care of; a world in which we value relationships with one another because we want the same for all people as we want for ourselves—I mean, that’s the golden rule, right? Jesus knew, thousands of years before any of these studies I mentioned came out, that extreme wealth and power inherently changes a person and therefore inherently changes a society— it allows people to shield themselves from… anything they want to be shielded from, really. And now the people who are as disconnected from civil society as they could possibly be are making decisions that are affecting the lives of hundreds of thousands of people—of the meek, the poor, the weeping.

This is why we now need each other, more than ever. This is why we need to figure out ways that we can lift each other up, and continue to show this faith community to be a beacon of hope and of love, during this time when those with the least compassion are calling the shots. And here’s the thing—money does buy comfort, safety and power. But it is indeed true that money does not buy happiness. In fact, studies have shown that once you reach a certain income threshold, a certain level of financial comfort, that you plateau; from then on out, you’re just making money for the sake of making money. But it’s not just money that doesn’t buy happiness— it’s also our devices, our technology that doesn’t. (again, I realize this is ironic saying this from a computer screen, but again, circumstances out of our control, tech isn’t all bad). But in general, the dangerous combination of extreme wealth, social media, and rapidly-advancing tech, all these things make it easier to stay apart, easier to isolate, easier to withdraw from community and each other.  

It all comes back to togetherness. It all comes back to the compassion and love that come with being in community with one another. Extreme wealth destroys that compassion and that and the understanding of what it means to be a part of civil society, what it means to depend on other people; and our increasing levels of isolation and decreasing socialization is destroying that as well. A study by the economist Enghin Atalay, showed the 21st century to be the “century of solitude,” and in one finding he noted that “A five-percentage-point increase in alone time was associated with about the same decline in life satisfaction as was a 10 percent lower household income.”[v]

Jesus knew this, Church. Jesus knew that the more insulated and isolated we become, the more meaner we get. We lose our empathy and compassion. We lose our ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, to understand what it is to mourn, to struggle—“woe to you who are laughing now,” Jesus says— those who laugh and scoff at undocumented people taken away in chains and thrown into prison camps; those who laugh and scoff at people who work multiple jobs but fail to pay rent; those who laugh and scoff at the homeless asking for a little help…

We find happiness in our ability to connect with each other. We find kindness, love, and compassion in our faith, which tells us to uplift the oppressed and the downtrodden. We find hope in a better world in each other, in community.

Blessed are you who are poor, because you understand what it means to want, and the importance of all people receiving the comfort they deserve. Blessed are you who are hungry now, because you understand the importance of every belly on this earth being full. Blessed are you who weep now, for you understand what true joy is when you receive it in the form of love from your friends. Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you, revile you, because you know what it means to be a part of a sacred community, one in which all are unconditionally loved and accepted. These are beatitudes to live by. And we live these beatitudes by being together and by building this community to be a place in which no one feels isolated from comfort, from compassion, or from love. Amen.

[i] https://nymag.com/news/features/money-brain-2012-7/

[ii] https://www.npr.org/2010/08/08/129068241/study-poor-are-more-charitable-than-the-wealthy

[iii] https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_money_changes_the_way_you_think_and_feel

[iv] https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/what-happened-here-c9f

[v] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/02/american-loneliness-personality-politics/681091/