Sermon 11.3.2007

Some of you know that I preached at Edgebrook on Saturday night. Pr. Susan offered it to me, as she was going to preside, but I thought it would be a fun (!) exercise to write a sermon with only 24 hours advance notice.

The following is the result of that exercise, for good or ill!

I will preach again at LMC on Christ the King, November 25.

Sermon: Luke 6:20-31

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

How many of you studied the Beatitudes in Sunday School? When I was growing up in small-town Iowa, it seemed like we covered them every other week! We would study each of Jesus' lines to death – what it meant to be meek, what it meant to be a peacemaker, and what it meant to show mercy. After a while, they became “old hat.” They were simply a list of Christian virtues to add next to the Ten Commandments.

Funny thing is, I can never remember studying Luke's version of the Beatitudes, which we just heard. And after hearing the Gospel today, I realize that there may have been a reason for that! None of the blessings concerning meekness, mercy, peacemaking, or hungering and thirsting for righteousness show up. Not only that, Jesus accompanies these beatitudes with corresponding woes. There are fewer opportunities for blessedness, but more for damnation! Jesus then launches into his sermon, which, truth be told, isn't very Lutheran. Rather than giving us good news, Jesus tells us what we should do. Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, turn the other cheek, do not withhold anything that belongs to you, give to everyone who begs from you. It's simply a list of attributes to strive for.

But this is no ordinary to-do list. This is a list of the impossible. We're all familiar with “Love your neighbors” and “Turn the other cheek,” even if we aren't so good at keeping that. But phrases like “Give to everyone who begs from you,” and “If anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again,” seem simply impossible. How can you build an economy when everyone is giving to those who beg? It makes begging pretty lucrative, doesn't it? We might say that it doesn't encourage responsibility. And we're not supposed to ask for stolen goods back? Sounds like a sit-down doormat ethic, doesn't it? What the heck is Jesus saying? Perhaps we might want to argue with Jesus. And, on All Saints Day, what does this have to do with the community of saints?

Luke wants to emphasize that the world is on the edge of a great reversal. The birth of the Messiah to an unmarried Jewish woman living on the wrong side of the tracks, the wisdom of the boy Jesus in the Temple, and the banquet of society's outcasts in Luke 14 all emphasize that God's values are not just different from our own. They are diametrically opposed! Blessedness in God's reign is applied differently.

Brian Stoffregen, a Lutheran pastor, gives a brief history of the meaning of “blessedness” in Greco-Roman society. Blessedness first applied to the gods – those beings who dwelt in the blessed realm in all contentment with no fear of death. Blessedness then applied to those few humans who managed to reach the realm of the gods after death – the blessed realm. Then, blessedness was applied the elites of society. To have power and rule over others meant one was blessed. Then, blessedness was applied to those who had a blessed life – those with many material possessions, big and beautiful things. If you had the most chickens, then you had lived a virtuous life, and the possession of all those chickens was your reward.

But, to whom does Jesus apply blessedness? Jesus applies blessedness to those who have nothing. In God's eyes, the blessed are those who go hungry. Those who sleep in the street. Those who have lost those they cared about. Those who are insulted and disrespected on behalf of Jesus.


So, why does Jesus point these people out as blessed, when they clearly don't appear blessed? Because in such people one sees the reign of God most fully revealed. In response to the claims of the powerful upon the Divine – the Roman Emperor claimed to be the son of a god, for example – Jesus, the Son of God, dwells with the most unlikely, unappealing people.

It is important to remember that Jesus changes audiences several times in his sermon – from the poor and hungry, to the rich and full, and finally the entire audience. What does this mean for us? What about those of us who aren't poor, who aren't hungry, and who are well-respected? Well, here is where we are all tied into the community of saints. Jesus, who has knit us all into one community of faith, calls on us to act as one community. We identify with those on the margins because they are our brothers and sisters in Christ. We realize that our ultimate dependence is on God and not on anything on this earth that we have or that we can do – and that he is not revealed in ways we might consider “proper” for God. Like Brother Martin Luther, we realize that God isn't in the high and lofty places, not in the Roman Emperors of the world, but in the streets – in the least powerful places. Places like the cross. As the community of saints, we all point to a man on the cross, and collectively say, “Apart from this man, I have no God.” As the community of saints, we see God and the true power of the Kingdom in those unlikely, weak places. And it is in those weak, unlikely places that Jesus has come for us. Soon, in the Eucharistic meal, we will encounter Jesus in the most humble substances – bread and wine. But it is in this meal that we experience the fullness of the community of saints – and the fullness of God.

Perhaps Pr. Eugene Peterson describes this unlikely revelation of God best in one of his poems based on the Beatitudes.

"Blessed are those who mourn"

Flash floods of tears, torrents of them,
Erode cruel canyons, exposing
Long forgotten strata of life
Laid down in the peaceful decades:
A badlands beauty. The same sun
That decorates each day with colours
From arroyos amd mesas, also shows
Every old scar and cut of lament.
Weeping washes the wounds clean
And leaves them to heal, which always
Takes an age or two. No pain
Is ugly in past tense. Under
The Mercy every hurt is a fossil
Link in the great chain of becoming.
Pick and shovel prayers often
Turn them up in valleys of death.

Thanks be to God for revealing himself, not in power and glory but in “every old scar and lament”, and in all unlikely places of the world – for all the saints. Amen.