A Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany

The Gospel reading appointed comes from the sixth chapter of Luke's Gospel; it can be found here. (The psalm for the day is psalm 1, also referenced below.)

So, just to be clear: is Jesus really saying in today’s gospel reading that it is better to be poor, hungry, grieving, and hated than it is to be rich, overfed, laughing, and popular?

And if he is saying that, then who’s in? Who is ready to trade in on the relative privilege that most of us in this room enjoy for the opposites?

In Matthew’s Gospel these beatitudes mark the beginning of Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.” In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is portrayed as Moses of old who went up Mount Sinai to receive the Torah. Jesus offers a new teaching, yet one firmly rooted in the old. The list of blessings is longer and there are no woes in Matthew’s remembering of it.

But today we get Luke, not Matthew. And let me just pause briefly here. We misunderstand, I think, if we imagine Matthew or Luke with a clipboard taking notes on one sermon preached by Jesus. Like great teachers and preachers throughout history, he did it again and again and again. He preached on the mount and on the plain, by the lake and in the desert. He kept teaching, hoping that someone with ears to hear would listen and then when they got it that they’d act accordingly. The core values of the beatitudes are at the very heart of Jesus’  teaching ministry.

So it shouldn’t concern us that Luke sets the scene for us in a different way than Matthew. As we heard today, Jesus and the twelve come down to a level place, not up on a mountain. In Luke this is the “Sermon on the Plain.” Jesus is speaking to the twelve—that is to the Church—but a whole crowd of people from Judea and Jerusalem and the coastal regions are also gathered around. They are listening in; eavesdropping even. (Sometimes that is when people do their very best listening!)

Did you notice that today’s psalm uses the same format Jesus uses. The word we read as “happy” in English is the same word as “blessed” in the Gospel. So the psalmist says:

Happy (or blessed) are those who follow the rules.
            Happy are those who delight in God’s Torah and say their prayers…

This, the psalmist says, is the path to prosperity. Conversely:

             Cursed are those who ignore the rules.
             Cursed are those who hang out with the wrong kind of people.

Jesus’ words make no sense to us if we don’t first get it that this is how conventional religions function. All of them, so far as I can tell. It’s not that the psalms are Jewish and Jesus is a Christian. Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists all try to teach their kids to obey the sacred texts and to follow the ways of God. And as far as it all goes, it is right. It’s what we learn in Sunday School, to try to be better people. There is nothing wrong with that.

But there is also a shadow side to this, and every religious tradition has to wrestle with this. It is tempting to think that the more we flourish, the more successful we are, the more blessed we are, right? Clearly that must be because we are so well behaved and so deserving and just so wonderful in every way. God has blessed us! Thanks be to God. In a nutshell that is what some have called “the prosperity gospel.” But it’s a false narrative. It’s not what Jesus teaches.

While we may not want to say it out loud, there is a part of us (once we travel down this road) that is prone to add that if people are suffering or hurting or sick or unemployed that they clearly didn’t pray hard enough, or work hard enough, or they were not obedient enough, or they didn’t trust God enough. They aren’t blessed because their faith isn’t strong enough.

This kind of theology reinforces the status quo. Whatever is, is best. And it works as long as we are in the “happy group.” It works as long as all goes well for us and we see our lives as blessed. But if we wake up one morning feeling like Job, then it’s all up for grabs!

I am admittedly caricaturing this a bit, but I want to insist only a bit. We may not want to articulate it this way because as soon as you say it out loud you know it’s not quite right. But I think there is at least a part of all of us that buys into this way of thinking. It’s a kind of piety that runs deep in American culture, and I’ll admit that you can find texts to prove that it is a legitimate way to see the world. Like today’s psalm.

But Jesus pushes us, challenges us, to take another look. So, is he really saying that it is better to be poor, hungry, grieving, and hated than it is to be rich, overfed, laughing, and popular? Does he mean that, literally?

I think that what is happening here is that Jesus wants us to see the world from a different perspective and to be precise, from the bottom up. I don’t think he is romanticizing poverty. That is a temptation we face sometimes in the first world. I’ve been on mission trips to the third world and it is dangerous I think to look at the poor and hungry and grieving and hated and say, “well clearly they have so much more than we do since they are so much more spiritual.”

Our faith is incarnational; not dualistic. I don’t think Jesus is suggesting that we further defend the status quo by denying injustice, which is what happens when we romanticize poverty. No child should go to bed on an empty stomach. Full stop. And yet, the fact is that every 3.6 seconds a person dies of starvation—and usually it is a child under the age of 5. (See http://www.unicef.org/mdg/poverty.html) Blessed are the hungry?

I think what Jesus is in fact doing is directly relevant to us and to our privileged lifestyles. In an upwardly mobile society, Jesus is challenging us to be downwardly mobile. I think that in a society where we can never have enough, he is asking us to choose gratitude for what we have, and generosity by sharing from that abundance. I think that what Jesus is saying is that we must choose to live simply so that others may simply live.

Whatever you may think about the devil or however you understand the ways that evil works, surely we can agree that there are demonic forces at work in the world that destroy the creatures of God. There are powers and principalities at work that dehumanize and destroy community. Evil isn’t simply about the bad choices we sometimes make as individuals. It’s more insidious than that.

I sometimes here people say, “if we just kept the ten commandments the world would be a better place.” Well, yes, of course it would be. But most of the time people are congratulating themselves as they say this because they haven’t killed anyone this week or robbed a bank. But what about the other eight?

The first three commandments deal with our relationship with God. It’s about the fact that God is a jealous God and demands our all. The fourth commandment is where the rubber meets the road—about making Sabbath time in our lives—about making time to be with God. But really, lets be honest—there are lots of other gods competing for our time and money and energy and worship not just on Sunday mornings but 24/7.

But I think the greatest struggle we face has to do with the last two, the two that it is most easy to forget. And I think they are connected. We are not to bear false witness. That doesn’t just mean we can’t lie about one another although it does mean that. It means we have to constantly try to put ourselves into one another’s shoes, because until we stand there ,we don’t know what makes the other tick. It is so easy to see ourselves in the best light and the one who has hurt us in the worst light, and then to tell our story to anyone who will listen. That’s not just gossip. It is bearing false witness when we speak ill of another who isn’t there to defend herself.

We are told not to covet, and I think that one of the main reasons we bear false witness is related to the fact that we feel jealous. Even among our friends, it is tempting to want the biggest gas grill on our deck, the biggest television in our homes, the biggest rock on our engagement rings, the biggest car in our garage, the biggest umbrella in our rum drink on a Caribbean Island in February. It becomes insidious because only one person can have the biggest. If mine is sufficient, but I covet what my neighbor has, then community is already in the process of being destroyed. Having a neighborhood is not possible when everyone wants the best and biggest toys.

So is Jesus really saying that it is better to be poor, hungry, grieving, and hated than it is to be rich, overfed, laughing, and popular?

I don’t think so, especially when it’s not by choice. But I think what he is saying is that to be part of the counter-cultural community he seeks to build, we do need to choose downward mobility. The problem with our striving to be rich is that we can always find someone who is richer, and we will want to be richest. The problem with being popular is that we can always find someone who is more popular, and we will want to be most popular. Jesus turns that all upside down and inside out. He asks us, I think, to look toward those who are poorer than we are. To face the reality that so many people in this nation of abundance really are being left behind.

I think Jesus is saying that our work as the Church is to make a neighborhood possible by loving our neighbor, rather than coveting our neighbor’s stuff. I think we come to Church to learn and then to remember again and again and again. Are the teachings of Jesus hard to follow? Absolutely. But with God’s help, all things are possible.