Sermon

“Blessings and Woes”

Luke 6:17-26

A sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley

February 8, 2004

University Baptist Church

Minneapolis, MN

There is a woman at my first church in Hartford, CT named Janet Condit. She’s pushing 80 these days and has a number of great-grand children to show for it. Like many people in that church, she’s of African decent, lives in a subsidized apartment and takes care of many of her grandchildren. She became a Deacon, knitted wonderful blankets and always had a smile to share. Whenever I asked how she’s doing, she would say, “I’m blessed.” Now when some people say this it sounds like a platitude. But not with Janet. Her sense of blessing came from deep in her soul. It came from a depth of experience, of struggle, of faith in spite of the evidence. Faith because she knew that she is part of another plan. How are you, Janet? I’m blessed. It doesn’t mean I have no pain. It doesn’t mean I have no hardship or struggle. It means I am blessed by the knowledge that I don’t go through this alone. I know that God is on my side and that God has my back. “I’m blessed.”

Today’s scripture comes from the Sermon on the Plain. Matthew calls this the Sermon on the Mount. It’s when Jesus sets out his systematic theology. He has already set out his mission statement in Luke 4 in his first sermon. Quoting from Isaiah 61, Jesus said “The Spirit is upon me because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim the acceptable year of God.”

Now in one of his early sermons he lays out the life of a disciple.

Clarence Jordan, founder of Koinonia Farms in Georgia wrote that the Sermon on the Mount or the sermon on the plain without Jesus is senseless idealism, an impossible frustrating ethical assignment. It might make you bitter and cynical because the tasks are so huge. At the same time, accepting Jesus without the Sermon on the Mount is unreal emotional cynicism. We need the salvific work of Jesus and we need the ethical teachings of the Sermon on the Mount.

Here are the ethical teachings. Jesus begins with talking about blessings

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.

Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Human One. 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.”(Luke 6:20-23)

Matthew’s sermon is 77 verses longer than Luke’s version. Matthew adds five more blessings:

“Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”(Matt 5:5-10)

But let’s look what Luke replaces these with:

“Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.

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.

Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”(Luke 6:24-26)

Matthew’s Jesus doesn’t say any woes. He’s the more positive of the candidates for the authoritative historical record.

Let’s look at this in a different way, lining up the blessings and woes:

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

“Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.

Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.

Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.

Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.

Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”(Luke 6:24-26)

Now do you see what Luke is saying? The language sounds similar to that in Mary’s Magnificat, also found in Luke. “God has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.”

When you think about blessings and woes, we often think about things that are personal. I’m blessed with health. I’m blessed with wealth. I’m blessed with a strong and healthy family. I’m blessed with this or that ability. We are blessed with great bell music and a fine bell director. We are blessed with this building, although some might think of it as a woe.

But oh, woe is me, what a horrible job I have, what a dreadful boss. What a horrid relationship I find myself in. What a horrible war we are facing. What a long election season this is. Woe is me.

It’s easy to talk about blessings when things are going well. It’s harder to talk about them when they’re not. But we need to watch our theology around blessings. If we believe that God blesses us with prosperity, peace, health and the such, does that mean that God punishes those who are poor, sick and in the midst of war?

Hear this, blessings happen when we live as God would have us live. This can be individual or it can be corporate. When we live as God would have us live, we might feed the hungry and clothe the naked. That would make us feel centered and others feel clothed and satisfied. When we don’t do this, then we not only feel the woe, but so does the rest of the world.

Being blessed means knowing who’s in charge. It means living your life so that you will follow God which means loving God with all your heart soul and mind and loving your neighbor as yourself. That’s pretty simple and it’s what the Gospel is all about.

Gilbert Chesterton wrote: “The ills of the world are not due to the fact that Christianity has been tried and found to be a failure, but to the fact that Christianity has never been tried.”

Jesus’ audience contained people blessed and cursed by Jesus’ words. Matthew focuses on spiritual disposition of his hearers. Luke concentrates on material inequities. “It’s about the economy, stupid.”

The rich do not fare well in Luke’s gospel. Luke contains Mary’s Magnificat, the story of Zaccheus, the story of the prodigal son, the rich young ruler. Wealth and possessions stand in the way of the beloved community. In fact, it is Luke who gives us the early vision of socialism in Acts 2 and four where the early church held everything in common.

Luke is not the feel-good gospel, like John. Luke is saying that you are already blessed if you are poor, because you know where your true wealth lies. Woe to you rich who never ever see this.

Blessed are you who are hungry now for you know what you need. Woe to those who confuse what they need with what they want.

Blessed are you who weep now for you will laugh. You have gone to the depths of your emotions, you are not in denial of the state of the world. You are someone who has access to the full range of emotion and you live in reality. Woe to those who never feel that, who are so numb that they can’t feel for another’s pain.

Woe to you when people say great things about you, for the world is full of people who seek after favor. Instead, blessed are we when we are hated, and when they exclude you, revile you, defame you all on the account of the Human One. Jesus says we are to “rejoice in that day and leap for joy; for that’s the way they treated all of the prophets.”

This is hard for us to get our minds around. It’s even harder for us to get our hearts around. But if we take the Jesus we find in Luke seriously enough, we can’t help but be a bit of an outsider.

We can’t help but be seen as a bit odd.

We can’t help but be excluded now and again.

All because we can’t help but speak the truth, even to those in power.

Being a disciple is not something that will always be pleasing. Jesus says to all of us, “follow me”. He doesn’t say, “admire me for afar.”

He doesn’t say “etch me into stained glass.”

He doesn’t say, “just sing pretty songs about me or even to ring a bell here or there, although it really helps a lot of the time.”

Jesus says, “follow me.”

And we know that following him leads to persecution.

It leads to misunderstanding.

It leads to being labeled a heretic.

It leads to losing family and friends sometimes.

Some of us know this better than others.

But in the end it leads to a kind of salvation the world has never seen.

If we remember that God’s preferential option is with the poor;

If we remember that God wants the hungry to be fed and calls into question the systems we have in place that keep the hungry from being fed;

If we remember that God wants those who weep now over their plight to dance and laugh again;

Then we will see that we are called to worry more about that than we are to worry about how much people like us.

Think about the things that are blessings in your life. What blesses you? Community, jobs friendships, opportunities for service and witness…

Think about the woes: economic hardship, relationships in crisis, war, fractured families, the multiple isms of the world.

Now think about them from the point of view of the discipleship that Jesus was suggesting. You see, he was not just saying some people are blessed and some people are cursed in an abstract way, he was saying that he knew some people who thought they were blessed were actually cursed and those who never ever saw themselves as worthy had God’s favor, God’s second chance.

How are you today?

That’s the question Jesus asks each of us in the sermon on the plain.
How are you today?

The Janets among us might say, “I’m blessed.”

How are you today?

Or better yet, who are you today?