Cathedral Sermons
6th Sunday after Epiphany, February 13, 2010
Readings: Jeremiah 17: 5-10, 1 Corinthians 15, 12-26; Luke 6: 17-26
Imagine that you have been invited to an engagement party. You enthusiastically go along to celebrate a happy couple’s commitment to each other. There is eating and drinking and much merriment, but during the evening you notice that both halves of the newly engaged couple are no longer in the room. As you looked around to see where they might be, you hear someone ask the gathered group please to be quiet. The wedding march begins to play and the couple enters the room dressed as bride and groom and followed by a celebrant. You are a guest at a surprise wedding.
This was the actual experience of friends of mine. Telling me the story days later they were still trying to get their heads around what had happened. “We thought it was an engagement party,” one of them said to me. “But there we were, at their wedding!” What my friends had expected when they went to the party was not what they got. Their expectation was turned on its head.
This is what I think Jesus does in today’s gospel reading. He turns our expectation on its head. Our expectation of what leads to blessing and to happiness. For people reading this for the first time, their social beliefs may be shaken to their core. The blessings and cautions Jesus proclaims are not in line with how society would tell us life works.
The beatitudes, or proclamation of blessing, which we find in Luke’s gospel are not as well known to us in those in Matthew. Luke does not spiritualize these experiences. He does not include, as Matthew does, the blessing of “those who are poor in spirit” or those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness”. They are firmly grounded in the social and economic reality of this world - the poor, the hungry, those who weep and those who are rejected – these are physical states, physical experiences.
Luke’s beatitudes are shorter both in number and in length. They are finely crafted. The four beatitudes are each balanced by a corresponding woe or cautions. The poor and the rich. The hungry and the full. Those who weep and those who. Those who are rejected and those who are accepted. There is great power in this rhetorical pairing.
If the evangelist is anything like your preacher this morning, those pieces of the text which are most carefully crafted contain a message Luke believes are most important for his listeners to grasp. This is highly crafted. It is an important message for Luke’s community.
While society and the prosperity gospel which seems to be so popular today, would have us believe that the wealthy, the full, those who enjoy life and are socially accepted are blessed, Jesus does not agree. These people have already received, Jesus tells us, what they will. They may even, at a later date, be hungry or mourn.
Instead Jesus turns our expectation on its head. He tells us that those who are poor and hungry, those who mourn and those who are rejected are blessed. Thiers, he says, is the Kingdom of God. They will, at an unspecified time in the future, be filled and they will laugh. Those who are rejected now, will receive a great reward in heaven. Jesus is not explicit about when this will happen. But that it will happen he is unequivocal.
Like the engagement party that turns into a surprise wedding, these comments from Jesus are difficult to get our heads around. We might think the poor and the hungry are to be pitied. But Jesus says, great is their reward in heaven. What is this heaven of which he speaks?
I am reminded of an anecdote which I read in Mitch Albom’s latest book, Have a Little Faith while I was on holiday. It is the story from a sermon preached by Mitch’s Rabbi.
Heaven and hell were shown to a man. In hell, people sat around a banquet table, full of exquisite meats and delicacies. But their arms were locked, unbending in front of them. They are unable to partake for eternity.
“This is terrible,” the man said. “Show me heaven”
He was taken to another room, which looked remarkably the same. Another banquet table, with every meat and delicacy he could imagine.
The souls there also had their arms out in from of them. The difference was, they were feeding each other.
Of course we don’t know exactly what heaven will look like. On this point the scriptures are unclear. But I imagine it will be a place of thoughtfulness, co-operation and kindness. A place where no-one will go without food, shelter, joy or love.
Elsewhere Luke uses the word, heaven, to speak of life in God and in this very text he uses it interchangeably with the expression The Kingdom of God. Luke refers here to the changed social order Jesus said he would bring when he claimed the Isaiah prophecy in Luke chapter 4. “The Spirit of the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, release for the captives, freedom for the oppressed and recovery of sight for the blind.” This changed social order is now, but is not yet fully realised. Jesus himself will bring about its full manifestation when he returns.
In the meantime, Jesus asks his disciples to contribute to bringing about this changed social order. Today’s gospel passage is part of what we have come to know as Luke’s Sermon on the Plain. This discourse is addressed to Jesus’ disciples. In it he offers concrete instructions to his believers. Instructions such as: love your enemies, to good to those who hate you; turn the other cheek; and take the log out of your own eye before you take the speck out of your neighbours. Jesus expects those who follow him, people like you and I, to live differently; to be a part of bringing about the coming of the Kingdom of God.
It is important to note I think that Jesus does not curse those who have food or money or experience joy in the present life. Instead he offers a caution to us and highlights that there is an onus on all of us to contribute. We are all invited to reach across the table and help our neighbour partake of the banquet. We are all invited to send money to the victims of natural disasters; we are all invited to share the resources we have. We are all invited to take seriously our right to vote, and to support government policies and initiatives which empower the most vulnerable members of our society. We are all invited to show compassion and kindness to those we deal with each day at work, or school or in the community. God will through Jesus, bring about the Kingdom of God. We are all invited to be a part of ushering in this remakable new world.