Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE MISSION OF JESUS §13.4
sus' attitude to the poor: high as the priority for the poor is, there may be particular
situations where even higher priorities prevail. 169
The inference that Jesus' call to and teaching on the poor are not reducible
to some class-war dogma is strengthened by another interesting feature within
the Jesus tradition on this theme. I refer to the fact that Jesus seems to have been
heard differently by the two other main interpreters of his teaching — Matthew
and Luke. Or perhaps we should say that Jesus' teaching in regard to the poor
was heard across the spectrum of the meaning of poverty.
Luke had no doubt that Jesus spoke for the poor, the materially impoverished.
His version of the first beatitude is abrupt and to the point: 'Blessed are
you poor' (Luke 6.20b). It is followed by the equally stark, 'Blessed are you who
hunger now, because you will be filled; blessed are you who weep now, because
you will laugh' (6.21). And the sequence of beatitudes is followed by a parallel
sequence of elsewhere unattested woes — on the rich, those who are full, those
who laugh — warning of the corresponding eschatological reverse (6.24-25). 170
Here we need to recall also that it is Luke who has recorded the Magnificat, with
the matching confidence, 'He (God) has filled the hungry (peinöntas) with good
things, and the rich he has sent empty away' (Luke 1.53), with its echo of
Hannah's song in 1 Sam. 2.7-8. It is Luke who alone records the minatory parables
of the rich fool (12.16-21) and of the rich man and the beggar (ptöchos) Lazarus
(16.19-31). 171 It is Luke who elaborates the shared tradition which urges the
storing of treasure in heaven with the exhortation: 'Sell your possessions and
give alms' (Luke 12.33-34/Matt. 6.20-21). It is in Luke too that Jesus urges his
host to invite the poor to the feast and presses his point upon his host with a parable
(14.13, 21). 172 It is Luke who has Jesus warning against 'every kind of greediness
(pleonexia)' (12.15) and who accuses the Pharisees of being 'avaricious
(philargyros)' (16.14). And it is Luke who tells of one (Zacchaeus, the rich tollcollector)
who did what the rich (young) man refused to do (19.8). Who can
doubt that this is a Lukan emphasis. 173 At the same time, bearing in mind the
169. Schräge may be right in pointing to the uniqueness of the situation, which 'forbids
making the woman's action the norm of Christian conduct after . . . Good Friday' (citing
R. Storch). He is on stronger ground when he adds, 'The story does not enshrine a timeless
principle to be cited in downplaying social obligations in favor of emphasis on the cult' (Ethics
73).
170. See above, § 12.4c.
171. See above, chapter 12 n. 213. Cf. Bammel, TDNT6.9Q6: 'The point of the story ...
is not the failure of the rich man in relation to the poor but the ineluctable alienation of his life,
and that of all rich men, from the sphere of God. The hope of the poor man ... is in the world to
come, though not entirely'. The rich man 'thinks of life in complete isolation from the communal
responsibilities that life in a covenant community entails' (Kaylor, Jesus 145).
172. See further below, §14.8.
173. See further, e.g., Fitzmyer, Luke 247-51; Schottroff and Stegemann, Hope of the
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