NUCC

Epiphany 6

February 11, 2007

Jeremiah 17:5-10

Luke 6:17-26

            During the past two weeks I have been reading through the annual reports for our church from its beginning in 1959 until now.   It has been interesting reading, both for what is included in the various reports and what is not included.  The reports of the Board of Trustees have often stated:  “Our church is in sound financial condition.”  But then other years the report has begun:  “This year brought some good news and some bad news.”  Then we learn about how the church was able to carry on some projects and made some improvements, but still ended up in the red.

            Today in our scripture lessons we also received “some good news and some bad news.”  Both Jeremiah and Jesus declare blessings (good news) and curses or woes (bad news). 

Jeremiah tells us that trusting in our own ways and the ways of the world will only cause us to shrivel up like a parched plant.  But those who trust in God will blossom and flourish like a tree planted by water.

Jesus has just been up on a mountain praying with his closest disciples, the Twelve.  Then he comes down to a flat place and offers his good news and bad news.  He is even more specific.  Sometimes we call Jesus’ speech in Luke the “Sermon on the Plain” to distinguish it from the “Sermon on the Mount” in Matthew.  In both “sermons” Jesus speaks what we call the Beatitudes ---- pieces of good news.  But in this sermon from Luke Jesus also speaks of some bad news.

The good news and bad news is very specific, very concrete. 

There are four pairs of blessings and woes:

1.      Blessed are you who are poor. / Woe to you who are rich.

2.      Blessed are you who are hungry. / Woe to you who are full.

3.      Blessed are you who weep. / Woe to you who laugh.

4.      Blessed are you who are hated. (Rejected) / Woe to you when all speak well of you. (Accepted)

These blessings and woes are not as nice as the blessings we read in Matthew.  Matthew has sanitized and spiritualized Jesus’ words and changed them from blessing for the “poor” to the “poor in spirit” and from the “hungry” to those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness.”  Perhaps the power people of Jesus’ day couldn’t take his message of good news for the poor and hungry so literally.   The problem with Jesus is that he preached a “scandalous gospel.”  He stepped on some feet.  He turned things upside down, just as one day at the Temple he turned over the table of the money changers.  Being a disciple of this Jesus meant change and challenge.  This was true for the first twelve.  And it has been true for all of us who have followed, all of us who would presume to call ourselves disciples.

            Let’s look at the blessings and woes a bit more closely.  It depends upon which Bible translation you are reading, for one thing. 

• In our rather straight translation we read “blessing.”  In some others you will find the word “happy” and in one the word “congratulations” is used.  Another would say “Oh how fortunate”.
• “Woe” can also be translated as “you are in for trouble” or “there’s trouble ahead” or “alas for you” or “Damn you!”

One piece of “good news” I see in Jesus’ beatitudes here in Luke is that the blessing comes before the woe. The good news comes first, but we can’t ignore the bad.  Let’s look briefly at each pair:

1.         Blessed are you who are poor.  / Woe to you who are rich.

If we read the pages of the Bible we often see Jesus hanging out with poor people.  Like the Old Testament prophets, he was on the side of the poor.  But that doesn’t mean that he thought poor people were innately better than rich people.  And it doesn’t mean that Jesus hated rich people.  It only means that Jesus knew poor people needed special love.  

Gustavo Gutiérrez writes:

“God has a preferential love for the poor not because they are necessarily better than others, morally or religiously, but simply because they are poor and living in an inhuman situation that is contrary to God’s will.  The ultimate basis for the privileged position of the poor is not in the poor themselves but in God, in the gratuitousness and universality of Gods agapeic love.”

            What I see here is that Jesus warns all of us about becoming too attached to our wealth and our possessions ---- no matter if we are rich or poor.  This is not what makes us happy.  But all of us need the basics of life.  We Christians know that and for this reason we have as churches also been on the side of the poor, wherever we may be.  The challenge, of course, is how to be on the side of the poor.  It takes more than band-aids, and the Bible doesn’t give us a how-to-do-it manual on eliminating poverty.

2.  Blessed are you who are hungry. / Woe to you who are full.

            This week the country of Burundi made the evening news.  Burundi is a lush, green country in the middle of Africa, but because of various conditions including floods and storms --- both natural and political ---- 1 in 4 people in Burundi will be starving this year.  The world will have come to its aid with food and seed.  Jesus would tell the people of Burundi that they are special, even blessed.

            Those of us who are full will try to help the people of Burundi, just as we try to help the people of Neillsville at Thanksgiving and Christmas with food baskets, but deep down we realize these are only band-aid solutions ----- for the hungry of Burundi or the hungry of Neillsville.  What is needed is more than a band-aid to solve the problems of poverty and hunger.  What is needed is change --- personal, societal, and governmental.

            In the mail I have received appeals from Bread for the World, which seeks to provide food to places like Burundi but which also seeks to help the governments of Burundi and the governments of countries like our own seek a better way, a just way.  It’s not easy.  But woe to those of us who sit on our hands.

3.         Blessed are you who weep.  / Woe to you who laugh.

            Each one of us has had a time to weep.  Perhaps you have lost a loved one and still feel the tinges of pain, even if that loss was years ago.  Especially poignant to me are the tears of the families of those who have been killed in violence:  the father of a Shiite killed by a Sunni in Iraq, the fiancee of a young American soldier killed by an IED (Improvised Explosive Device), the mother of an infant dead from malnutrition in Darfur.

            The one who wept for his friend Lazarus and grieved over Jerusalem knows our tears and tells us we are held dear.  One day at the great banquet table we will eat and find our fill together and we will also laugh ------ not the laugh of the haughty but the laugh of the holy.

4.         Blessed are you who are hated. / Woe to you when all speak well of you.

            This Beatitude was especially helpful to the early church, because the early church suffered persecution ----- not necessarily because it worshipped the Christ but because it refused to worship the emperor.

            The churches of Germany were in conflict over the rise of Nazism.  Some cooperated and spoke well of Hitler so he would speak well of them.  Others wrote a protest document called the Barmen Confession in which they offered condemnation of the Nazi idolatry.  They would live only by God’s blessing, not Hitler’s and because of this found themselves estranged and even condemned by their world.

            Here is the temptation for all of us in the public eye who wish to be liked, loved, and supported ---- especially us preachers.

            Carlyle Marney, a great preacher of the South, chided pastors for ministry that had degenerated into therapy. "You little preachers!" Marney used to say.   "You are always saying, ‘Bless, bless, bless’ when you ought to be saying. ‘Damn! Damn! Damn!"’

            Good news / Bad news.  Blessings / Woes.  There was some of each in the world that Jeremiah and Jesus knew.  There is some of each in the world you and I know.  The challenge for us 21^st century disciples is to accept God’s blessing and in turn be a blessing to God’s world.  That is the good news for today.