Sermon for The Sixth Sunday After the Epiphany - February 15, 2004

 
The Rev. Dayle Casey
The Chapel of Our Saviour
Colorado Springs, Colorado
February 15, 2004

 6 Epiphany - C
Jeremiah 17:5-10
1 Corinthians 15:12-21
Luke 6:17-26



       Part of the life and vocation of a pastor, it is said, is to comfort the afflicted. And that's certainly what Jesus did for the crowds that day; he comforted the afflicted, curing those with diseases and strengthening those with spiritual torment. And on that occasion we just heard about in Luke's Gospel, Jesus spoke the familiar words that we have come to know as the Beatitudes:

      Blessed are you who are poor; the kingdom of God is yours.
      Blessed are you who hunger now; you shall have your fill.
      Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.
      Blessed are you when people hate you and abuse you and denounce you on account of the
            Son of Man. On that day be glad and dance for joy. Your reward will be great in heaven,
            for this was how their ancestors treated the prophets as well.

       But another part of a pastor's vocation, it is said, is the opposite, to afflict the comfortable. And it certainly is part of the vocation of a Savior, because Jesus goes on to say:

      Alas for you who are rich; you have had your time of happiness.
      Alas for you who have plenty to eat now; you will go hungry.
      Alas for you who laugh now; you will mourn and weep.
      Alas for you when everyone speaks well of you! This was the way their ancestors treated
            the false prophets.

       In other translations, Jesus doesn't say, "Alas." In some translations, he says, "Woe to you who are rich." Or, how "miserable" or "terrible" it is for you. Or, as the prophet Jeremiah says before him, "Cursed are you." "Cursed are you who are rich. Cursed are you who have plenty to eat now."

       These are hard words, uncomfortable words, afflicting words, and many in the Church have spent a lot of energy trying to explain them away. Jesus probably didn't mean them to be taken literally, they say. But I don't know. I'm not so sure.

       Jesus is not condemning those of us who are wealthy, but he certainly is afflicting us. He is reminding us of the facts of life, and that can be uncomfortable, even afflicting at times.

       Have you noticed that Jesus seldom, if ever, tells us what we should do or how we ought to live? Unlike many of his followers, Jesus is not much for moralizing. Instead, like a good umpire, Jesus just calls 'em as he sees 'em.

       Jesus is like Harry Truman. Truman's fellow Democrats used to love to encourage him with "Give 'em hell, Harry!" Meaning the Republicans, of course. And Truman would reply, "I don't give 'em hell. I just tell 'em the truth, and they think it's hell."

       Jesus is a realist, not a moralist. He says, "Life is like this." And nowhere does he do this more emphatically than in the Beatitudes. These are the facts, he says: When one is rich, there is serious trouble ahead. He points out the way wealth can snare us. Like God himself back in the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, Jesus points to the trap we can fall into when we finally reach the Promised Land, when we finally make it to the pinnacle of whatever it is in life we always thought we couldn't live without, or when we read too many of our own press releases, or when we put too much stock in the flattery of others.

       There are those who call religion, and especially Christianity, a pie-in-the-sky way of looking at life. They are dead wrong. Christianity is the most realistic view of life I know. And that's not surprising, because Jesus is the most realistic person who ever lived, and that's largely why I'm a Christian. Jesus spent his life trying to open eyes to the facts of life. His sermon we know as the Beatitudes was not a finger-wagging "you-should-live-like-this," but a sober account of the way life is.

       Jesus sought to open eyes to Good News living. But the difficulty, for us, is that we resist Good News living, because it costs us. It costs us our illusions. It costs us our illusions about ourselves, our illusions about what's really important in life, our illusions about what the purpose of life is, and our illusions about where security and hope are to be found in life as it actually is.

       And that's the most difficult thing about being a priest or a preacher or a pastor. The vocation of the priest is to be a bridge, a connection between the realism of Jesus, on the one hand, and, on the other, the fantasy of a world that would just as soon remain blind to the facts of life. The vocation of the priest is to seek to proclaim Jesus' realistic Good News of how and what life actually is to a people, including the priest himself, who prefer our illusions about life to God's facts of Good News living.

       So we come 'round again to the Beatitudes. Here are the facts, says Jesus. This time we hear them from Eugene Peterson's New Testament in Contemporary English:

       It's trouble ahead if you think you have it made; what you have is all you'll ever get.

       (And here, in this sentence, if we had time, lies the possibility of a whole sermon in itself, a sermon about the dangers of living in the past tense, about the spiritual trap of ever thinking that we've arrived, because those who have arrived are those who have nothing to look forward to, which, when you think about it, is a good definition of death.)
       So you're blessed, [Jesus adds], when you've lost it all, because then God's kingdom is there for the finding.

       And it's trouble ahead if you're satisfied with yourself, [which is just another form that thinking you've arrived takes]. Your self will not satisfy you for long. So you're blessed when you're ravenously hungry, because then you're ready for the Messianic meal.

       And it's trouble ahead if you think life's all fun and games. There's suffering to be met, and you're going to meet it. So you're blessed when the tears flow freely, because now joy can come.

       It's trouble ahead when you live only for the approval of others.... Popularity contests are not truth contests....

       So to you who are ready for truth, I say this: Love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, [don't respond in like manner. Instead,] respond with the energies of prayer for that person.

       If someone slaps you in the face, stand there and take it. If someone grabs your shirt , gift-wrap your best coat and make him a present of it as well. If someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more of this tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously.

       Here's a simple rule of thumb for behavior: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you; then grab the initiative and do it for them!

       If you love only the lovable, do you expect a pat on the back? Run-of-the-mill sinners do that. If you help only those who help you, do you expect a medal? Garden-variety sinners do that. If you give only for what you hope to get out of it, do you think that's charity? The stingiest of pawnbrokers does that. I tell you, love your enemies. Help and give without expecting any return. I promise you, you'll never regret it.
       So to those who continue to have trouble with a vision of life that centers on generous outreach to the world, either as a vision for yourselves as individuals or as a vision for this parish church, I put on my hat today as the afflicter of the comfortable. Not because I like it (because it means I have to afflict myself as well!), but because these words of Jesus are the words the lectionary assigned me to preach on today, and because it's my vocation, and because I believe Jesus' words carry the ring of reality and truth. As the preacher this morning, it is my responsibility to turn us all toward Our Lord's words:

       Alas for you who are rich; you've got a vision problem, he says. Security and hope in life are not found in what we one can accumulate for himself here; security and hope in life are found in God's kingdom.

       The purpose of God's Church is not to maintain all this wonderful property; the purpose of God's Church is to use it for the sake of our enemies and our neighbors.

       The purpose of God's Church is to be with God and with his people.

       The purpose of God's Church is not to come here to teach our children about Jesus; the purpose of God's Church is to be God's people and to lead our children in the living of the Gospel, servant life of Jesus by showing them the way ourselves.

       The purpose of God's Church is not for us to have a place to meet to sing our praises to God. That is one of the purposes of this building, but the ultimate purpose of God's Church is to live our praises out there in the world. The ultimate purpose of God's people is to live the Good News life of loving and serving our enemies and our neighbors and of making a gift of our best coat to those who would take our shirt. The purpose of God's Church, in short, is to live lovingly and generously as God our Father lives toward us.

       These are not this priest's words; these are Jesus' words. And they are, I believe, the words of life, the words of life for us as individuals, and for us as a congregation, and for the world. If our vision were clear, you know, we would be lining up all night outside the church door the way people line up for tickets to a big football game or rock concert just to be first in line to put our money in the offering plate in thanksgiving for these words, because there's nowhere else in the world, except in church, where we're going to hear the real truth about ourselves the way Jeremiah and Jesus tell it to us.

       In these "blessings and woes" of his sermon in Luke's Gospel, Jesus invites us to open our eyes to the futility of trusting in our wealth, or in our power or good looks, or in our thinking we "have it made," or in our reputation or popularity or righteousness, or in our good health, or in our beautiful church building, or in our wonderful music, or in anything else other than God. Because the fact is that someday all those other things will fail us.

       "Get real!" the world is forever telling Christians. How much more real can Jesus get? Poverty and hunger and suffering and tears will come, he promises. If we have even a smidgen of love within us, if we love any other person at all, then poverty and hunger and suffering and tears will come, at the hour of death if not before. We would do well to see that, because if we get used to thinking that we have it made because of our bank accounts and fine dining rooms, then when the tears come we will have nothing substantial to rely on, nothing spiritual to spend and nothing nourishing to eat or drink.

       The poor and the hungry, those who have lost it all, are blessed, because they are not blind to this basic fact of life, the fact that we all need help. The poor are blessed because their eyes are open to the facts of life; they know they need help. It's the rich, Jesus reminds us, who are most likely to be blind to this fact, blind to the fact that neither wealth, nor our good reputation, nor our power or popularity or good health, nor our knowledge or our own righteousness, nor anything else except the trustworthy promise of God can ultimately feed us and save us. Only the grace of God can do it, and this is what the poor know that the rest of us tend to forget.

       And this is what Jesus' sermon today is about. In the Beatitudes, Jesus does not tell us what we should do to be blessed. Instead, he announces that certain people are blessed and others are cursed. His sermon, after all, is not really about us, about who's in and who's out or about who's misbehaving and who's living right. His sermon is about God, about the Merciful One who is kind to the poor and the lost.

       Because their eyes are open to the facts of life, it is possible for the poor to see God. Because they do not rely on anything else and because they are ravenously hungry for it, it is possible for them to feed on God's grace. And it's possible for them to laugh when that grace happens, because their tears have seen them through the suffering that is a fact of life.

       William Sloane Coffin used to say that hell is "truth seen too late," which would, I think, be a good title for Jesus' sermon, if Jesus had been one to give titles to sermons.

       And if hell is truth seen too late, then heaven is truth seen before it's too late. And here is truth as Jesus taught it and lived it:
       Love your enemies, and love and serve your neighbor. Give away your coat, not just your shirt. Give without any expectation of return for yourself. Respond to God's love for you with the same love for others. This is Good News living. Live it and you won't regret it. I promise.
       And the truth, St. Paul adds, is that Jesus chose this way to live and this way to die, and "Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of all the dead."

       These are the facts, Paul reminds us: Jesus walked his way to Calvary, carrying his heavy burden, the Cross, the facts of life Born of the Virgin Mary, he suffered under Pontius Pilate, because love was the way he chose.

       And so he was crucified, he died and was buried, and he descended into hell. And do you see what that means? It means that he lost it all! Counting his own righteousness as nothing, he humbled himself, giving not only the shirt off his back, but all he had and was. He gave away everything so that we might see and know the righteousness of God. And there, in the tomb and in hell, not even Jesus had a ticket to heaven. No big house to live in, no bank accounts, no gourmet meals, not even hunger and suffering and tears. Nothing. He was dead, separated from God, no life in him, and no right to it.

       But as Robert Capon reminds us, the only people God raises from the dead are dead people.

       Which brings us back to Jesus' "facts-of-life" Word to us this morning: As long as we hang on to anything, as long as we hang on to our wealth, our reputation, our pride, all our security blankets, even our hunger and tears, as long as we hang on to anything for assurance other than the promise and grace of God himself, then God can't do much with us, because we have to be dead to all that before God can raise us to life.

       The only people God raises from the dead are dead people. That's the promise and the scandal, the comfort and the affliction, of Good News living.

       In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.