6 th Sunday After Epiphany, 02/11/2007

Sermon on Luke 6:17-26, by Luke Bouman

Luke 6:17 He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. 18 They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. 19 And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them. 20 Then he looked up at his disciples and said: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
21 "Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.
"Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.
22 "Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. 23 Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.
24 "But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.
25 "Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.
"Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.
26 "Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.

God?s Blessings

I belong to a community service organization where I live. Every month our meetings begin with a dose of civil religion. After a brief prayer we sing, ?God Bless America? with as much gusto as we can muster, and that?s usually quite a bit. And I think I know what most of us mean when we sing it. It is a mixture of patriotism, thanksgiving for ?blessings? received and the hope that ?blessings? will continue to come. But what most of my fellow patriots believe they are singing when we ask for God?s blessings is continued health, wealth, and prosperity for those of us fortunate enough to be born here.

In fact, this view of blessings is nearly as old as time and religion itself. A quick survey of the Old Testament shows us that Israel thought of blessings much the same way as we do today. They told the story of Abraham and Sarah in such a way as to show God?s favor upon Abraham through his wealth, some of it at the expense of foreign kings. Israel?s national blessings were thought to be at a peak during the prosperous reign of David, when their territory was at it largest. They knew blessings when they saw them, and so do we.

A quick look at Jesus list of blessings and woes tells us that something is out of place. The poor, the hungry, the weeping and the hated do not top most people?s lists of the ?blessed? folks that they know. Even if those folks are promised rewards later, we still wouldn?t consider them terribly blessed. And the rich, the full, the laughing, and the well spoken of are not usually thought of as particularly cursed or afflicted. In fact, to echo the words of Tevye, talking to Perchik, the communist revolutionary soon-to-be son-in-law from Fiddler on the Roof, ?If it is a curse to be wealthy, may I be so cursed!?

It is not enough to explain these things away as trouble now for some future reward. This kind of thinking gets a well deserved critique at the hands of Marx and Engels who called such religion ?the opiate of the masses.? And we don?t do any justice to the radical nature of Jesus teaching either, if we simply commend the usual blessings as such, just deferred. First of all, Jesus defers only half of the blessings and curses, the first and the last are connected to the here and now. Mind you, I don?t think Jesus was some kind of radical communist reformer, nor do I intend to be. I do think that Jesus was warning the people of his day, as the prophets did before him, of the danger of associating God?s blessings with the fleeting comforts of life.

Strange Beatitudes

In Matthew the beatitudes are mitigated by the modifiers that Matthew provides: the poor in spirit, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness; not to mention that Matthew does not record Jesus? sayings of woe to the rich and otherwise comfortable. But in Luke, we have stark and hard to understand statements. One doesn?t have to think long to see how Jesus might have been on the naughty list of the political and religious authorities of his day. I?m not sure he wouldn?t be on the same naughty lists today.

But that leaves us with the perpetual guiding question for our reflection: What is Jesus doing? Of course, we must always be careful how we answer that question, for Jesus is generally doing far more than we can imagine or comprehend. But unless we want to be mired in an endless revision of our own ethical norms, we have to address this question and come to some answer, no matter how incomplete it might be.

Here, it is important to note a couple of things. First of all, Jesus is using both present and future language in both the blessings and the curses of this passage, giving us a sense that there are things that will be part of and will be rejected by the ?already present/not yet fulfilled? messianic reign that Jesus very presence initiates. Second, we have already seen that Jesus himself stands under both the blessings and the curses of this passage. People have already both ?spoken well of him? and reviled him. He will walk a path that leads both to the ?hosannas? of a triumphant entry into Jerusalem as well as the shouts to ?crucify him? before Pilate.

I may well be the fact that he calls for restraint on the part of those singing his praises as well as his rejection of their aspirations for him and his movement that give us a clue how we are to read what Jesus is saying in these strange beatitudes. Jesus, time after time, insists that whatever is happening is not about him. It isn?t about his own enrichment, it is about his journey to the cross. By Chapter 9 of the Gospel we find Jesus turning his face toward Jerusalem, warning the disciples in no uncertain terms that he intends to go to the cross.

In fact, it is about God accomplishing the restoration of humanity, of all creation really. The understanding that God does this not through acts of might, or power and wealth, but through the scandal of a cross, must be our guide as we approach these beatitudes. The blessings and curses serve as a reminder that the new covenant of God foretold by Jeremiah and sealed by the cross has a new set of blessings and curses to guide those who live in this covenant. (For the blessings and curses of the broken covenant, see Deut. 28, for example.)

Certainly living out this covenant was difficult for the first century readers of Luke?s Gospel Their lives didn?t carry many of the traditional blessings and they were likely discouraged by this. Did it mean they were not faithful? Luke?s rendering of the beatitudes assures them this is not the case. Instead, here in Luke, we find what was called ?A Theology of the Cross? by Martin Luther nearly 1500 years later. Luther was reluctant to locate evidence of God?s grace in the clearly visible blessings, something he found to be inconsistent with the cross. Luke, surely also is asking difficult questions of the same ?prosperity Gospel? on behalf of his readers, some of whom were dying on crosses of their own as they struggled to follow Jesus.

I don?t think that Luke was trying to pacify his followers with later promises, so much as to say that the lack of blessings is not evidence of the lack of faith. Our culture is slow to understand this. My father used to tell the story of a ?tent evangelist? in the 1950s who used to come to St. Louis. One day my father and several colleagues attended. They witnessed a woman who went to the evangelist for healing and after he had done his thing, she was still afflicted. He then judged that she didn?t believe. As he walked on to the next victim (as his subjects must be called) she was heard to scream, ?but I do believe, I do, I do.?

So Luke, I think correctly, identifies Jesus saying to those who are feeling oppressed that it is not a sign of the lack of faith or response to God. Conversely, Jesus is saying to the well off that this isn?t a sign of God?s blessings, For those faithful who live under oppression the message is not to be discouraged, and the promise of future blessings is in part, I think, connecting them to the messianic feast to come, not any personal blessings. This is entirely consistent with Isaiah?s image of the messianic age to come, for example (see Is. 25, or 61).

Dangerous Blessings

That brings me back to our prayers and songs asking God to bless us. In light of what Jesus says in Luke 6, I am led to understand that this is a dangerous thing. What if we were truly blessed in the way that Jesus says. Would that mean that our blessings would lead us to poverty, hunger, grief and hatred? The surprising answer is, yes, if we are following the way of the cross. For those are the very things Jesus endured, and we are called to follow that very way.

For here the paradox of grace comes full circle: our giving God gives away all outward blessings and power and might for us, and takes on our poverty, pain, hunger, grief, even death itself. Our giving God has always found that giving life is more meaningful than holding onto life, and even in the face of death, his giving did not waver. In a few short weeks we will be asked to take the journey to the cross with Jesus, and finally, when we arrive, we will discover that all of the comforts of life, all of the so-called blessings of life mean absolutely nothing in the shadow of the cross.

And here?s the rub, if we try to hang on to those things as blessings in light of the cross, we may even be allowed to keep them, but they finally do not satisfy us, and we feel impoverished and empty despite the abundance around us. The blessings we crave are dangerous because they tempt us away from the God who gives them. God, in Christ, did not choose the blessings of wealth and power for himself, but rather chose the deeper blessings of the things that will make the restoration project finally come to all creation, even though, for a time, it will trigger want and even rejection. It is through that rejection, giving himself willingly for the sake of other, even when they reject him, that God finally defeats even death itself.

Now he calls us to give up our fear of those things, and the insanity that self preservation brings. In covenant with God we are promised true bliss, true blessings, true joy. I wonder if we have this clearly in mind when we pray for God to bless us and our families? I wonder if that?s what we are thinking when we sing ?God Bless America.? My instinct tells me that it isn?t, but my hunch tells me that it should be. We invest so much of ourselves in being the strongest, the best, the most prosperous people the world has ever known. Perhaps, when we are truly blessed, we will find purpose, meaning and life even when we are weak and vulnerable. Jesus did. Can we, his followers, do otherwise?

Rev. Dr. Luke Bouman
Pastor, Tree of Life Lutheran Church
Conroe, Texas
E-Mail: lbouman@treeoflifelutheran.org

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