Blessings Or Woes?

Reflections on Luke 6:17-19

I know it’s hard to believe, but back in the day, I used to be the model student. I wanted to please my teachers. I was that student, I’m still kind of that student. And although I no longer draw pictures or bring them flowers, if my professor wants us to do something, I’m the one who wants to make sure they have what they need. “Listen up, class! There’s something I need to say, something y’all need to hear!” I’d not only be quiet. I’d tell my fellow students that something is happening and we should be quiet. Immediately. 

IfI were a student of Jesus, and we all are, today is the time to listen up. You can’t miss this. If you don’t, you might not pass the class. All of this is really important, it’s essential and you’d be so sorry you missed it. 

We are hearing the big sermon of Jesus. In the gospels of Matthew and Mark, it’s called the Sermon on the Mount, but in Luke’s gospel, we call it the sermon on the plain. And I know you heard why. Because in Luke’s gospel, everyone comes down to a level place, a plain! And a great multitude of folx come from everywhere to hear Jesus and see Jesus and to be healed of their diseases and their unclean spirits and to touch him. And everyone knows his power. Everyone feels it. Everyone. 

We spent the summer of 2006 in Michigan, as one does when you live in Florida and you’re from Michigan and yearning for all of the Michigan things. We went to a 4th of July concert with the Grand Rapids Symphony at Cannonsburg where they played the 1812 Overture and other patriotic songs. If you brought tickets, you were invited to sit anywhere on the slope, bring a picnic dinner, and then watch the symphony along with perfectly timed fireworks. 

We could see everything because we were up on the hill. 

We can see where Jesus teaches, we can hear him, and we can wonder about this rabbi who said such strange things. Because it’s like he is here this morning. 

“Listen up. Y’all have got to hear this.”  

Blessings! Blessings to the poor, the hungry, those who weep, and those who’ve got people who hate you. And woes. To those who are rich, to those whose bellies are full, to those laugh, to those who are well thought of. 

This is not a world I know. 

In the world I live in having money is always and already better, one of the ways you know that God loves you. Am I right or am I right? In the world I live in, my belly is always full, or at least when it’s empty, I know where my next meal is coming from. In the world I live in, having is better than not having. In the world I know - most of it at least - weeping is embarrassing. In the world I live in, I’d rather be well thought of than be hated. 

But is this right?

Because what if the problem is my imagination? What if the problem is that I haven’t really yet gained a good measure of what the kindom of heaven actually is? What if the problem is me? Because this is not only a story told in our gospel this morning, it’s also one we know, all of us, if not from this story, from other stories. What about Moses and the people when they leave Egypt and outsmart the huge Egyptian army or David and Goliath. Or our corresponding Jeremiah passage, where those who trust in mortals live in the parched places or the reminder from the Psalms that there is another way — delighting in God and not “lingering in the way of sinners” means you’re like a tree which always has water. You’ll never lack for anything that you need. 

It’s when I traveled out west that I saw what it meant to be a tree planted by a stream. 

Here in Michigan, and on this coast there's so much water. Here where no one is every more than six miles away from a body of water. Here, where summers are so green, you can’t even imagine. 

It’s not like that everywhere. I remember driving out west for the first time, past Colorado and into those states with towns called things like “Lone Tree” and it really means that. There is only one tree. It’s by the stream, the crick, the brook, whatever it is you call it. There’s not many places that trees can find the water they need to survive, to provide shade, nesting for the birds, to remind us of God’s goodness to all of us. To remind us of our blessings. 

Deep within the Christian tradition, we know that the world is not always what it seems. We know that our king was born in a manger and that in one of our most favorite hymns, the Magnificat, everything is turned on its head. The rich go empty away, and the poor are filled with good things. And what about the death of Jesus, which seemed to be the end of the end and then it wasn’t? 

Theologian and Presbyterian pastor, fiction and memoir writer Fredrick Buechner said this, ‘Resurrection means the worst thing is never the last thing.” 

Today we’re being asked to turn our world on its end. We’re being asked to deepen our imagination, the imagination that is bound by our cultural understanding of Capitalism, where having more money and possessions is always better, where we forget the gift that God gives us, the gift of seeing and knowing another reality, one that is even more real and better than what we know now. 

We’re being asked to remember the grounding of our faith, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, that reality that pushed the whole world as we knew it into disorder, that reality that never made sense. We’re being asked to re-think what we consider blessings, and what we know to be woes. We’re being asked to develop new muscles which reveal the kindom of God as it is in this here and now. 

Because here’s the thing, the very thing, and we all know this story. The world and all of it’s logics isn’t the final story. It’s not what we are living for, what calls us on a snowy Sunday (that, and bagels and bacon). We’re here because we’ve heard the voice of Jesus call to us. We’re here because we know what it feels like to have God speak into our lives. We’re here because we couldn’t keep on living in that same old way that we used to. We’re here because there has to be, there must, we’re searching for a deeper relationship. We’re here because we’re thirsty for the living waters. We’re here because we want so badly to be those trees planted by streams of water. We’re here because we know there is another way. 

There is. 

There is a way where the meek inherit the earth, where the poor are blessed, where those who weep will laugh and where those who laugh now will mourn and weep. 

This isn’t a balm for all of us. 

But it is a balm for those who know sorrow. It’s a balm for those who know poverty. It’s a balm for those who know struggle, hardship, loneliness, hunger, all of those things which all know. For us, it’s a comfort. For us, this is grace.