Sermon on the Plain

Text and Content

The sermon appears in chapter 6 of the Gospel of Luke. After praying all night on a mountain, Jesus chooses the twelve disciples (6:12–16), comes down with them, and stands "in the plain" (6:17). A crowd has gathered there from all Judea and Jerusalem and from the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon. After healing the sick, Jesus lifts up his eyes on his disciples and teaches (6:20). The teaching proceeds in the following order:

• Blessings and woes (6:20–26): Jesus pronounces blessings on the poor, the hungry, those who weep, and those who are hated, and he pronounces "woe unto you" on the rich, the full, those who laugh, and those of whom all men speak well.
• Love for enemies (6:27–36): Jesus commands his hearers to love their enemies and bless those who curse them. This section contains the Golden Rule, "And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise" (6:31), and the command "Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful" (6:36).
• Judge not (6:37–42): Jesus uses the image of the mote in a brother's eye and the beam in one's own eye.
• The tree and its fruit (6:43–45): Just as a good tree bears good fruit, a person's words and deeds come from the heart.
• The house built on the rock (6:46–49): The teaching concludes by contrasting the one who hears Jesus' words and does them with the one who hears and does not do them.

After the sermon ends, Jesus enters Capernaum (7:1).

Setting and Terminology

"Plain" translates the Greek topos pedinos ("a level place"). The text does not name the location, and its precise site is unknown. "Blessed" translates makarioi ("blessed"), and "woe" translates ouai, an exclamation expressing grief and warning.

Relationship to the Sermon on the Mount

The Sermon on the Plain overlaps considerably in content and order with the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5–7. It is, however, much shorter, and it contains four beatitudes paired with four corresponding woes. The relationship between the two texts is generally explained in three ways:

• Some hold that the two Gospels report the same sermon in different ways. Proponents of this view sometimes harmonize the two settings by understanding the "plain" as a level area on a mountainside.
• Others hold that Jesus repeated similar teaching in a number of places.
• Still others hold that the two Gospel writers each edited common source material. This view is connected to discussions of the Synoptic Problem.

Interpretation and Points of Debate

• The poor: Unlike Matthew 5:3, Luke 6:20 omits the words "in spirit" and says simply "ye poor." Many interpreters read the two texts together and understand the saying to encompass both spiritual poverty before God and material poverty. Other interpreters emphasize that Luke's Gospel displays a distinctive concern for the materially poor. Some movements, such as liberation theology, read the passage primarily in terms of its social and economic meaning. The passage is often cited from Luke with wording borrowed from Matthew, but the wording of the two texts should be kept distinct.
• Love for enemies and nonviolence: Churches in the Anabaptist tradition take the teaching on love for enemies literally as the basis for a life that renounces violence and armed force. Many Protestant denominations accept it as a principle of personal ethics but distinguish it from the state's exercise of public authority.
• The audience: The text states that Jesus spoke while looking at his disciples, yet it also records that the crowd was listening. For this reason, some interpret the Sermon on the Plain as an ethic for disciples, while others read it as an invitation addressed to all people.

In the Korean Church

In the Korean church, this passage is more often treated together with the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes than on its own. The Revised Common Lectionary, which assigns readings according to the church calendar, divides this passage among the Sundays after Epiphany in Year C. Churches that follow this lectionary preach on the passage on those Sundays.