The gospel for the 6th Sunday, Year C is St. Luke’s version of the Matthean “Sermon on the Mount”, referred to as the Sermon on the Plain. The Beatitudes, which begin each of the “Sermons”, have a tendency to lead readers/hearers of the text to assume that the sacred author has constructed a general ethical code which forms the core message. Craig Keener (A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, 160) notes that there are more than thirty-six discrete views about the sermon’s message. He summarizes 8 of them:

The gospel for this coming Sunday, the 6th Sunday, Year C is St. Luke’s version of the Matthean “Sermon on the Mount”, referred to as the Sermon on the Plain. Lest one presume that they are simply copies of one another, it should be noted that there are differences between the Sermons. They share significant overlap as both sermons convey Jesus’ teachings on the Kingdom of God and ethics. Yet, there are key differences. For example, in Matthew the Sermon on the Mount takes place “on the mountain”  (Matthew 5:1) while in Luke’s narrative the sermon is delivered “on a stretch of level ground” (which does not preclude that the level ground is in a mountainous region).