lccktacoma.org/pastor
Today, we read of Jesus on level ground, healing and preaching to those gathered.
It’s known as the sermon on the plain. Jesus heals, and then he preaches blessings and woes to the people. I find myself uncomfortable because in the groups named, I think of myself as either in an unnamed middle place or on the woe side of Jesus’s sermon. It doesn’t feel great to have Jesus tell you that you’ll be weeping. As I was preparing for today, I found myself doing what I’m sure a lot of people do when tackling this sermon from Luke. I wanted to sugar coat it. I wanted to make it more palatable for us as generally middle-class Americans. And there are lots of ways to do that. I could focus on Matthew’s Gospel account instead, which leaves out the woes and focuses more on a spiritual aspect of the blessings. But then we lose the healing at the beginning of Jesus’s sermon, and we lose the truth of Jesus’s words to the actual poor and the actual hungry. I thought about focusing on the words of comfort for those receiving a blessing, how Jesus’s words of God’s kingdom reverse the status quo of our world. And I think that’s true, but I found myself going back to my discomfort around being in the “woe group”. I found myself wondering if this reversal was really good news for me. Then I thought about looking at the other readings, because maybe I could just skip preaching on Luke today, but Paul in 1 Corinthians and the prophet Jeremiah gave me no help. Paul is really beginning a whole other sermon that we don’t really get to until next week in our reading. And Jeremiah…well he’s got his own curses and blessings to deal with. So, I realized, after all this waffling around Jesus’ blessings and woes, that I just had to be uncomfortable. And maybe we could be uncomfortable together. We don’t know much about the crowd gathered around Jesus that day. We know that many of them were sick and were in need of healing. We know that many of them wanted to hear Jesus speak. The one thing we can guess, is that by the time Jesus finished with his woes, none of those listening would have been very comfortable. If they were in the group of blessings, they may have been comforted some by Jesus’s words, but at this moment, they’re still facing poverty, hunger, sorrow, or defamation. How does hearing that you’ll inherit the kingdom of God put a roof over your head or feed your family? How does a promise of joy feel to someone who has been totally ostracized from their community? Even in the midst of blessing and hope and comfort, there is a discomfort too. And if they were in the group of woes, then they, maybe similar to my experience of hearing Jesus say these words of grief, may be feeling uncomfortable with their wealth, with their privilege, with their success. Or at least with Jesus’s condemnation of it. I wonder if some of them stopped listening, if they found a quiet way to leave the crowd. This is the kind of discomfort that makes people try to kill Jesus, but also the kind that make his words so hard to hear. Or maybe there were some in the crowd who weren’t listed at all, at least by their own hearing, which has its own discomfort of feeling displaced between the dichotomy of poor and rich, hungry and full. The wondering of which group they are in if they’re not currently hungry, but have known terrible hunger. Or may not be rich, but aren’t poor exactly. If you laugh while you’re weeping, do you receive blessing or woe? There’s a discomfort in not knowing where you stand in Jesus’s sermon too. Jesus’s words provide comfort and discomfort. And I didn’t want to gloss over that. I wonder if there were any people from the “woe group” that came just to hear Jesus speak. That didn’t need healing or a cure in some way too. Throughout the Gospels, throughout Jesus’s life and ministry, he’s met with people from the “woe” category, and Jesus often offers them a new life, a different life. Very few take it. The life they know is too comfortable. As Jesus says, they’ve received their consolation. It’s really hard to stand on a level place with the poor, the hungry, the weeping, and the reviled when it means leaving comfort, plenty, laughter, or success. If we’re comfortable, why would we want to change, especially if it means we might be uncomfortable. But honestly, most things worth doing, are at least a little uncomfortable. Especially things where we find ourselves being God’s hands and feet in this world. Especially when it means going to a level place with others we don’t know or feel we have some privilege around. Whether it’s serving someone who is poor, providing food for the hungry, being present with someone who is grieving, or reconciling with someone who has been excluded, all the ways we can be blessings to others, can also be really uncomfortable. The path that Jesus calls his followers to isn’t one of comfort. It’s one of a level place with those you may have never thought you’d have anything in common with. And sometimes, we experience woe. That word “woe” that Jesus uses is exclamation of grief, of sadness. Because Jesus knows that for many who fall in the “woe group”, the new kingdom coming will be different than what they know, and they will experience woe in it, that in their comfort, they may be experiencing woe already by missing out on what Jesus is offering here. Woe to you who are rich, for prosperity blinds you to the inheritance God promised. Woe to you who are full, for you may find yourself hungry for the abundance of God’s table. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will be unsure of how to handle the discomfort of the new kingdom. Woe to you when people speak well of you, you have not pushed against the brokenness of this world enough. It’s hard to change, to be changed, when we are comfortable. Sometimes we need Jesus to make us uncomfortable, so that we can be part of the blessing Jesus brings, part of God’s Kingdom on earth. Sometimes we need Jesus to make us uncomfortable, so that the broken parts of this world can become visible to us so we can actually try and do something about it. Sometimes we need Jesus to make us uncomfortable, to remind us how much healing we actually need. Many of you, like me, probably found yourself listening to the Gospel and wondering if you were in the woe group or not in any group at all. Many of us find ourselves at least in some parts of our lives, comfortable. And that comfort can make it hard for us to see our own brokenness. Our own failures. That comfort can become our consolation. The good news Jesus brings in our reading today is not one of comfort, but of healing. Before Jesus says anything to the crowd, before they can prove themselves to be worthy of blessing or woe or somewhere in between. Jesus comes down with the twelve to a level place with a great crowd of all kinds of people. People from all Judea, Jerusalem, Tyre, and Sidon. Jews and gentiles, rich and poor, all there to see Jesus, to be healed. And power comes out of Jesus, and heals all of them. Not because they are blessed, not because they are comfortable, not because they are poor or rich or hungry or full. But because they need healing. In the same way, Jesus goes to the cross because the world needs healing. Jesus experiences the worst this world can give on the cross. Jesus dies because he makes people uncomfortable with his blessings, with his reversals, with his words of woe to the rich and successful. And Jesus rises from the dead which makes more people uncomfortable. In Jesus’ rising, he brings a new healing, a new discomfort to the world. Healing is rarely comfortable. If you’ve ever healed anything, from a cut to a broken leg, from flu to cancer, healing is rarely comfortable. The healing of the world isn’t comfortable either. This uncomfortable healing calls people to a level place. This uncomfortable healing forgives sins and brings a new kingdom. This uncomfortable healing brings the hope of eternal life and resurrection. So that we can lean into the discomfort, so that we can be part of this new kingdom inheritance, so that all the world might be healed by Jesus’s power and called blessed. Amen.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
FROM THE PASTOR
Sundays: Categories
All
Archives
February 2024
|