Epiphany VI                                               The Rev'd David Cobb  I Corinthians 15:12-20,                                  February 11, 2007

Luke 6: 17-26                                             Solemn Mass

 

But now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept

 

I suspect that is rather easier to get Jesus wrong, than it is to understand him.  At least that's what  the story suggests.  The disciples are usually off in the wrong direction unless they are ready to deny him altogether.  The religious leaders, except for one or two, seem to detest him and everything he says.  The crowds treat him as a spectacle, and Roman Power ignores him until forced to pay attention, and then they kill him. 

 

Perhaps they needed the benefit of four gospels to read,  commentaries to consult and years of sermons- though there is evidence that those advantages are not error proof either.  With those advantages, we are still just as likely to misread what this man says and does. 

 

These few verses- utterly clear and utterly confusing are a case in point. The words and the grammatical structure are simple.  There is no uncertain imagery to lead us down winding paths of interpretation.  Blessed are the poor, the hungry, those who weep and the scorned.  Woe to the rich, the satisfied, those who laugh and the respected. 

 

Actually, you probably did at least look off down a winding path of interpretation.  And don’t you want to start playing with those words, poor, rich;  scorned, respected;  most of us can put ourselves on different sides of those polarities, its all in where you place the dividing line—or who’s doing the scorning or providing tributes. 

 

It is the same when we hear the other great reversal- the first shall be last and the last first, you think I can't work or shove my way to the end of the line just like I could to the front?  When we read these beatitudes or the teachings that confound us, and then let our competitive or anxious selves turn them into a secret code, or a blunt weapon against others, we turn his words against what is best in us and use them for what is worst in us.  . 

 

I don't know what we are to do with these blessings.  I know that it does not help the run away or cast out teenager, to suggest that being utterly without resources or connections or reserves is blessed.  It isn't.  It is dangerous and degrading.  And then, looking farther away, to a mother whose infant just died because her village doesn't the means to find water free of disease and filth, I am not going to tell her that her poverty and her grief is blessed.   When I know that gays are attacked and beaten, racism still divides and embitters us, I am not going to say that being scorned is a blessing, it is deadly. 

 

These verses all but terrify me.  Because that is what being poor and hungry, mourning and being ostracized is about.  Being left on the edges and pushed aside.  Point blank, it is about dying. 

So I don't really want to push to the end of that line, if that's being last to be first;  I'm happy at about  position 347 or wherever the unobserved middle might be. 

 

So what is Jesus saying here?   What is he blessing, and what does this blessing mean for us?  

 

It means this for certain, that run away teenager I pass by on the street- the person whose culture or skin color I quickly categorize and then ignore, the woman utterly without means to control her destiny sitting in some forgotten primitive village, they are blessed, at least in this.  God knows and follows their lives with concern and attention.  The ones we discount and ignore, faceless victims in a news report or someone we push past on the street, we may not have means or time or compassion to know them;  but God does.  Is that a blessing that heals the ulcerated wound or that restores what the street has beat out of someone? Maybe not.  But God's blessing remains.  Jesus at least wants us to see that God's attention is just that much more generous than ours. The ones we pull back from revolted or frightened, Jesus will walk up to and ask them their name and get them to tell him their story.  There is a blessing in there somewhere. 

 

And those unnerving woes, to the rich, the satisfied, the respected and the cheerful.  There are those who hear these words directly, and their lives follow a path of renunciation and service.  In some people in ways that we see and note, in others it's a quieter and all but hidden renunciation.  The vast majority of us hear these words and go home a little uneasy, but quickly distracted.  Maybe the point is that more of us should sell all that we have and give to the poor, as Jesus pointedly said to one young man.  Maybe its not about anything that would affect our bank statements- at least not at first.  Maybe it really is about where we place our confidence and the direction in which we direct our hope. Christians have gotten Jesus wrong before, and as simple and direct as these words seem, I am going to approach them with some trepidation.  I could get them wrong, you might as well.  But I need to hear them, they need to disturb me, I need not to take some things for granted, just as I need not to ignore some people.  At the heart of these words, is the great and unimaginable reversal that God is working within Creation through Christ, in each of us through Christ. 

 

The great reversal is a theme that runs through out the Gospels and that Luke loves particularly.  He has cast down the might from their thrones and lifted up the lowly: Jesus wants us to call a dirty Samaritan “Good” and see a neighbor in his face.  Older brothers need to dance and feast when the wasteful and dissolute younger brother comes home.  A woman finds a lost coin and spends five times in celebrating the discovery, in the midst of an respectable gathering for Sunday lunch, Jesus is happy to have a prostitute wipe his feet, clean and despicable, unforgivable and graciously forgiven, blessing and woe, we can easily get Jesus wrong because we get so many other things wrong. 

 

And so we stand here, some of us blessed in our poverty, others all but cursed in our wealth; we weep or we laugh and we don't know which he prefers.  Scorned or overlooked, carrying recognition and respect like a banner, where is this upheaval going to end? 

 

When Jesus names blessings and woes, it leaves me to think long and hard about myself, the people around me and the people I don't even see, and it leaves me with a real sense my counts of first or last, of even blessing or woe might not be accurate. It is not only Jesus we get wrong, we don't always even see ourselves that clearly.  Think about these words long enough and it foolish to claim either side of the equation, or to assume you know where anyone else stands.  The world moves swiftly, and so even our conditional judgment alters as blessings and woes move with the tide of time.  Our lives and the lives of others are complex and formed by the past while they open to the future, there may be blessings in places I never expect it and woes might hide in prosperity and laughter.  If it were only that God wanted to turn the world upside down, rearrange the chairs at the banquet table, there would be no gospel here, no good news. 

 

We know that Christ is raised and dies no more.   And in that affirmation, there is a reversal that will contain all of our fears and that answers the questions that trouble us.  The one we've misunderstood so badly, that we reject and ignore, or betray and crucify, Christ returns to stand with us, resplendent in life stronger than death and graciously drawing us back who have ever reason to cower.  If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.  Yes, and more than that, if Christ was finally defeated and silenced by the Cross- then these blessings and woes make no sense, and his preaching is in vain. 

 

But now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept

 

If there is any blessing in the abandoned teenager on the streets, in the victim of bashing and the butt of jokes, if there is an blessing in that woman mourning a child dead for lack of nothing more than water, if we can say, blessed are the hungry, the scorned, the mourners and the poor, it is because Christ has been raised, the beginning, the first fruits.  If the satisfied and the amused, the respected and the rich can put down their burdens and find hope and joy in something lasting, it is because the Living Christ is bread and fulfillment, joy and riches.  The living Christ is the Beatitude and the healing for woe, in Christ the rich find courage to give something away and in ways that I dare not take for granted, the forgotten and miserable are blessed. 

 

IF only in this life we have hope, than the world's account of blessing and woes will suffice.  But if Christ is raised, and raised as the beginning of what God is doing, than this worlds joys do have a fulfillment and this worlds woes will find healing.  The First fruits, the beginning.  And now a harvest that includes us, and reaches farther beyond than we can imagine.