February 11, 2007: Sixth Sunday After Epiphany

What a text to preach! Here are Jesus' words as plain as day. Blessed are you who are poor, blessed are you who are hungry, blessed are you who are persecuted for my sake. Woe to you who are rich, woe to you who are full, and woe to you when all speak well of you.

Now I'm still getting to know this congregation, so I could be dead wrong about this, but have any of you had to get help from Greensboro Urban Ministries to pay your rent or utility bills? How about help with groceries? No, as I look around the congregation, we all look well to do enough to be giving to, helping out the poor. In fact when you consider the middle class as, well, folks in the middle income wise—between the 25th and 75 th percentiles with the rich being those who make more than 75% of the rest of world, and the poor being in the bottom 25% then even those of us here in the United States living right at the government defined poverty level—$20,000 a year for a family of 4, even folks who live in poverty here are still in the world's top 25% of income. Rich by global standards.

Makes me wonder what bible folks are reading when they believe America 's wealth is a sign of God's blessing.

Also as I look around I see a lot of beautiful, healthy, vibrant people, who haven't missed too many meals unless is was to lose some of these excess pounds we're carrying around on our hips and chests. That's one reason I like to be behind a pulpit up here! Again from a global perspective, including all of God's children, we in this congregation fall into the quarter of the world's population who always have enough to eat, blessedly saved from being included in the 60% of the world's people who are almost always hungry. Just hard to imagine isn't it? That over half of the world's population is almost always hungry for food.

And the gospel text doesn't let up! Blessed are you when people hate you for my sake! Woe to you when all speak well of you! I mean who in their right mind wants to be hated, and what the heck is wrong with living so that our funeral memoir just glows with all the good things our friends and family remember about us? Aren't we suppose to be nice and polite and say the right thing to people to make them feel good?

Its texts like these that can get a pastor run out of the church for meddling where she shouldn't meddle--just as we read about Jesus getting driven out of his home church two Sunday's ago. If we could go through our Bibles with some scissors and just cut out those verses we really don't like—those verses that exclude us from blessedness, that curse us on account of our possessions, on account of our excess weight, on account of trying to get along with people, these verses would be at the top of my list.

Where do we, gathered here this morning at First Moravian church, find God's love for us--the rich, the overweight, the joyous and the polite?

Jesus came down with them and stood on a level place with a great crowd of his followers and a great multitude of people from all over Judea and as far away as the coastal cities of Tyre and Si' don. They had come to hear him and be healed of their diseases: and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured.

And all in the crowd were trying to touch Jesus, for power came out from him and healed all of them.

Biblical scholars tell us that Jesus' form of speech was a pattern familiar to his hearers. Beautitudes are short two part affirmations that sum up the common sense wisdom of the world. It's like us saying: “Blessed are you who have good medical insurance, for you will receive health care.” Or, “blessed are you who study for tests and turn in your homework, for you will get good grades.” So while the form of Jesus speech was familiar to his listeners, the content was not. Blessed are the poor? Blessed are the hungry? People who are mourning? People who are hated and reviled? Blessed?

One of my favorite preachers, Barbara Brown Taylor observes: for the crowd to hear these blessings of Jesus was like drinking from a glass that looked like lemonade and finding out it was bug spray instead. It was a shocking substitute of bad things for good things, in which blessedness was equated with the very things we do our best to avoid—poverty, hunger, grief, hatred. In each case Jesus made the blessings even stronger by joining them with a reversal of fortune. Blessed are you who are hungry, you will be filled. If you are mourning, you will laugh.

And as if to emphasize this reversal of fortune even more, Jesus matches them with opposite woes—the woes were things that people did their best to achieve—wealth, food, laughter, respect and esteem. In the same way Jesus made bad things sound good, he now makes good things sound bad. “Woe to you who are rich, you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, you will be hungry.” These words of Jesus have been with us for two thousand years so it's hard to duplicate the shock value they had on his original hearers. Perhaps if I told you, “Blessed are you who have cancer, you shall be made whole.” “Blessed are you whose prayers go unanswered, for you will see God.” Or, “Woe to you who have good retirement plans, for you have received your consolation.” “Woe to you who live in nice houses, for you will be homeless.” Then you might experience some of the shock Jesus had on his listeners.

And as you can tell from your own reactions to these blessing and woe statements, their impact has everything to do with who you are. And since most of us are rich by global standards, well-fed, and want to be loved, not hated, we can hear these blessings and woes of Jesus and feel guilty about which category of people we are in, and race quickly to the foot of the cross for forgiveness. Or perhaps we ignore this text and file it away with all the other biblical advice that might have applied in ancient history, but certainly not now.

The catch is these blessings and woes are not advice. Nor are they judgments. When Jesus gives us advice it's hard to miss. “Go and do likewise. “Love your neighbor.” “Bless those who curse you.” “Take and eat.” When Jesus judges, he says what folks did and did not do: You fed me. You clothed me. You visited me. You didn't feed me. You didn't clothe me. You didn't visit me.

Instead in these blessings and woes, Jesus gives us a description of all kinds of people, hoping I sense, that EVERY person in that tremendous crowd would recognize themselves, and then, and then, Jesus makes the same promise to each of them:

These words have echoed in my mind as I remembered how many of our church family have been stricken with cancer recently. With Margaret Cass yesterday as she described how ordinary hers and Stuart's Friday evening of going out to dinner and watching a movie together was, and then waking up to the sound of Stuart crashing to the bathroom floor with a massive brain hemorrhage.

Learning of these shocking reversals of fortune I identify with this crowd of people, traveling long distances, longing to be healed of what ails me, being troubled by unclean spirits of fear, anger, anxiety over what I can't control but try desperately to control. I long to be healed of the hopelessness and despair I sometimes feel about our world and the difficulties and sorrows many of you are burdened with.

As I have met and listened to many of you, I've learned we are fellow pilgrims in this crowd. You too long for the power of Jesus to come out and heal what ails you, or folks you love.

As I've pondered and meditated over the four scripture readings for today, I'm struck how three of our four lessons contain blessings. In the first lesson, Jeremiah declares, “blessed are those who TRUST in the Lord.” Psalm one proclaims, “Happy are those who's DELIGHT is the law of the Lord.” For Luke the blessed are the poor, the hungry, the grieving and the persecuted. In essence all three scriptures point to the same affirmation: blessed are you who live dependant upon God, rather than depending on yourself, on your possessions, on anything other than God alone. To be blessed in a biblical sense is to fully entrust your life to God, believing that because God is love, God is completely trustworthy. I suggest we be honest with one another here and acknowledge that when we've had little experience in being able to trust people, it is very, very difficult for us to truly and actually trust God. But I urge you to start, and when you fail, to begin again, for it is only when we realize our utter dependency on God does fear and insecurities vanish.

Because God is love, God will not betray us into the hands of evil doers. God is not arbitrary or capricious. That is not to say evil and bad things will not happen to us. That is not to say any of us won't wake up tomorrow and find ourselves like Job in the Old Testament —stripped of our health, our wealth and folks we love. Jesus might have prefaced his blessings and woes with “stuff happens” in life. There are no guarantees but one: The way things are now, will not always be this way.

Perhaps none of us understand that better than George Andreve who's seen his health go from rarely being sick in his life to battling lung cancer that robs him of his strength and energy. Then within less than a month he lost both his mother and his aunt, his only family. Tuesday George even had a root canal! If the New Testament canon was still open we might have the Book of George to go along with the Book of Job. But if you talked to George today he will tell you he is blessed. Not blessed in all the ways we hope to be blessed, but blessed nevertheless. Blessed by neighbors and many of you who cleaned up his yard, invited him to dinner, allowed me to go with him to Philadelphia , blessed by people we met in Philadelphia who helped us get his aunt's affairs in order. The amazing serendipitous things that have happened that have allowed George to see blessings and to feel blessed amid the trials and tribulations this life has thrown at him. Blessed by community. Blessed by people who love and care about him, being God with skin on to George.

Blessed are you who let go of the way things are, who put their trust in God alone, for God shall lead you in the way things will be. Alleluia, alleluia! Thanks be to God!