All Saints, Year C 2025: Luke 6:20-31

Monday’s child is fair of face,
Tuesday’s child is full of grace,
Wednesday’s child is full of woe,
Thursday’s child has far to go.
Friday’s child is loving and giving,
Saturday’s child works hard for a living.
But the child that is born on Sabbath day,
Is bonny and blithe, good and gay.

“Monday’s child”, first printed in 1836, is one of many fortune-telling songs, popular as nursery rhymes for children. It is supposed to tell a child’s character or future from their day of birth and to help young children remember the days of the week. I think I prefer the version taught to my kids at day care, which sets the days of the week to the theme of The Addams Family. But the poem “Monday’s child” received a bit of a resurgence with its use in the Netflix show Wednesday. It was where Charles Addams found the inspiration for his character Wednesday’s name in the Addams Family comic strip, and the show leaned into the linkage, with every episode title being a play on words with “woe”, like “Friend or Woe” and “You Reap What You Woe”.

Jesus’ words of woe in Luke’s account of the Beatitudes intrigue me. We focus a lot on the blessings part. When people are described as blessed, it’s not in the way the word is used on social media. Jesus is not saying these people - those who are poor, hungry, and weeping - are #blessed. To be blessed in Scripture is to be in the state of being under the approving favor of God, a joy that springs from relationship with God rather than from circumstances. The word makarios, used four times here and another 46 times in the New Testament, frames a theology of blessedness that is simultaneously present, ethical, and eschatological - dealing with death, judgment, and the final destiny of humankind. The word makarios inherits the Jewish idea of ’ashrē, which is translated into makarios in the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament. The tie between the two words anchors the Greek makarios in covenant faithfulness. That is, the one who trusts, fears, or waits for the Lord is this kind of blessed. By the first century, this form of beatitude, or “asherism”, was a familiar literary device in Judaism, preparing the ground for Jesus’ Beatitudes.

But it is important to Luke’s theology that we spend time with both sides - the blessings and the woes. From the very beginning of his Gospel, one of Luke’s main theological arguments is the way in which Jesus turns the world on its head. In the Magnificat in chapter 1, Mary sings, “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.” Both have happened - not just the lowly lifted up but the powerful brought down, not just the hungry filled, but the rich sent away. So if we quit after the blessings, we miss the full impact of Luke’s message.

I’ve been reflecting on why the woes make me uncomfortable. The Beatitudes in Matthew lack any woes - Matthew has nine different categories of who are “blessed”. Matthew’s Beatitudes don’t contain any of the eschatological colorings that Luke has. The absence of woes makes it easier to put ourselves into the categories of the blessed, especially because Matthew has that “blessed are the poor in spirit” and “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”. But Matthew is making a different theological point than Luke is making. He isn’t offering us an off ramp from having to deal with the uncomfortable woes of Luke - keep reading Matthew, you’ll get plenty uncomfortable - Matthew’s beatitudes are Jesus’ preaching on ethics. Matthew wants us to be the blessed, or to not be frightened to be the blessed when we mourn or are persecuted for Jesus’ sake. He wants us to hunger and thirst for righteousness, to be merciful, and to be pure in heart.

I can’t think of a time, outside of Scripture, where I have heard the word “woe” used in a manner that isn’t sarcastic. As in “oh woe is me”. I can hear Rebecca saying it to Roy in Ted Lasso - “this whole ‘woe is me’ thing you’ve got going on is just (fucking) ponderous”. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use the word “woe” in earnest - even the episode titles of Wednesday are just rhyming jokes and to remind you of the theme of the show; they’re not in earnest.

But Jesus isn’t joking here. He isn’t being sarcastic. So I thought what could help me is to look deeper at the word translated as woe. The Greek οὐαί conveys an intense exclamation of grief, dread, or denunciation. While it is just a single Greek interjection, it gathers into itself the prophetic lament of Scripture, the moral outrage of the incarnate Christ, the self-reproach of the apostle, and the final trumpet of eschatological judgment. Just pronouncing it, saying it aloud, οὐαί, you can imagine it shouted, wailed even. Across the 47 times we see it used in the New Testament, its tone varies from compassionate sorrow to uncompromising doom, but it is always in harmony with the righteousness and mercy of God.

The Septuagint, again that Greek Old Testament, uses οὐαί to translate the Hebrew interjection hôy, common in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Minor Prophets. There it commonly introduces oracles of prophetic judgment against nations, cities, or individuals who defy the covenant. The New Testament echoes this backdrop, showing continuity between the prophets and Jesus, the final Prophet.

The word is used in three other instances in the Gospel of Luke. Today’s text is the first time, where Jesus juxtaposes blessings on the poor, hungry, and sorrowful with woes on the self-satisfied: “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation”. The moral reversal anticipates eschatological justice. In chapter 10, Jesus will say, “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida!” For those cities rejected the teachings of Jesus. He contrasts Chorazin and Bethsaida with Tyre and Sidon, which are Gentile towns.  Here οὐαί expresses divine grief at hardened hearts and warns of heightened judgment proportional to revelation received. In chapter 11, there are six woes expressed toward the Pharisees, such as “Woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and herbs of all kinds, and neglect justice and the love of God; it is these you ought to have practiced, without neglecting the others!” These woes uphold the inseparability of external religion and internal righteousness. The final example from Luke is in chapter 21, after the triumphal entry into Jerusalem in chapter 19. Jesus is foretelling the destruction of the temple and says, “woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing infants in those days! For there will be great distress on the earth and wrath against this people.” The word here sounds a compassionate alarm, highlighting the vulnerability of life in impending crises—an echo of prophetic siege lamentations like in the book of Lamentations.

These examples make the woes feel less frightening. We always fear the unknown, and this makes the word more known. It gives us examples of what distresses God - hoarding our wealth, ignoring the hungry, neglecting those who mourn, and people who say what others want to hear rather than the truth they are called to proclaim. It reminds us that those things grieve God, and we are reminded today, as we renew our Baptismal covenants, how we, as members of the body of Christ, are called to live a different way. As we live out that covenant, we can avoid God’s woe, His grief, and we can be among the blessed, having the joy that results from being in right relationship with God. Amen.