Later today, the Super Bowl’s Lombardi will be awarded, and regardless of which team wins, Kansas City or Philadelphia, in the post-game interviews it is virtually guaranteed that players will point heavenward and give thanks to God and Jesus for the blessings that allowed them to play well and achieve this goal.
At one level, I get this and even
admire it: it’s great to live with a sense of gratitude, and to interpret one’s
accomplishments and high points as blessings from God. No, I don’t think God gives one thought to who
wins a sporting events, only to the health of its participants; but if we
understand God as our source and destination, it makes sense that the ecstatic
moment of victory would be perceived as a “God Moment.”
What’s funny, though, is that
when he had a forum to name the places and people where God’s blessings
are most easily found, Jesus came up with a very different list of those
who are considered especially blessed by God: the poor, the hungry, those who
grieve, those who are reviled on Christ’s account. Our reading this morning,
from Luke, remembers it as the Sermon on the Plain, while the gospel of Matthew
remembers it as the Sermon on the Mount, but whatever the topography, both sermons
begins with similar core lists of those who experience the presence of God in
all its fullness: the poor, the hungry, the grief-stricken, the reviled. Matthew’s version (5:1-11) adds the meek,
the merciful, the pure in heart, the righteous and the peacemakers to this the
list of the blessed.
What Jesus says here is
nothing short of counter-cultural in his day - and ours. This isn’t, “Blessed
are you when you win the championship, blessed are you when your stocks triple
in value, blessed are you when your social media page has the most followers”
and it most definitely is not, “blessed are you when you try to bully your
neighbours into submission”. No, the
list of blessed ones spoken by Jesus, as remembered by Luke, is this:
“Blessed
are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
21 “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be
filled.
“Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.
22 “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they
exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son
of Man. 23 Rejoice on that day and leap for joy,
for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is how their ancestors
treated the prophets”.
Although Matthew’s list of the
beatitudes is more familiar and beautiful in its prose, I appreciate how direct
the words are in Luke’s gospel. In Luke,
Jesus isn’t just speaking about “those people out there in the world somewhere
who are blessed” in the distant, third-person way remembered by Matthew. No, in Luke, Jesus looks directly at his
audience and says, “YOU are blessed: You, who are poor, hungry, bereaved,
reviled. You, YOU are blessed by God’s
holy presence in your hard times and when things improve. And they WILL improve. God is with you in
your tears and God is still with you when you are released from your suffering.
God will rejoice, even dance with you when things get better”.
ALL of this, I find so
hopeful and so necessary in the deeply strange days in which we live. Jesus, well-acquainted with mean-spirited
leadership, stands in complete solidarity with those whose lives are made
miserable, either by the circumstances of their lives or the specific actions
of those who hold power over them. While
I don’t want to wallow in the weirdness we Canadians are experiencing, I cannot
step into the pulpit and ignore what’s going on in: not just the tariffs being
dangled over our heads, not just the disrespect of suggesting that Canada is
nothing more than the 51st state-in-waiting, but even more so it’s the
targeting of entire populations of people that is so evil: women, immigrants,
people of colour, people of diverse sexual expression, all singled out and
summarily blamed, mocked and dismissed (or as Jesus put it, hated and excluded
and reviled and defamed). Things are broken in so many ways right now, in much
of the world, not just here; and as followers of Jesus we can’t just ignore
that.
We can’t ignore it, but
neither can it defeat us. For amidst that brokenness, amidst the seeds of chaos
so generously sown, we seek rootedness and solid footing and confident hope, we
seek good news, and we find all these as we gather in the name of Jesus. Looking directly at those seeking his path of
new life Jesus says “don’t you believe it when the power of Empire tries to
demean you or unsettle you or threaten you. You who are impoverished, you who
are hungry, you who have cause to weep, you who are being rounded up and sent off,
you are held in the very heart of God.
You are beloved. You are BLESSED.”
There are times when the
Church is told to “stay in its lane”, and in his words of power Jesus defines
“our lane.” As those who hold the
responsibility to be Christ’s hands and feet and heart and voice in the world,
we are to stay informed, to identify who is most besieged and stand in loving
and rugged solidarity with them; and when we are among those being
targeted, when we are the ones losing sleep with worry, we are to recognize
God’s sturdy, loving presence within us and around us and between us.
While Matthew only lists
blessings, this morning’s reading from Luke goes on beyond the list of
blessings to list a short list of woes:
““woe
to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.
25 “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.
“Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.
26 “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is
how their ancestors treated the false prophets.”
For the most part, the
ministry of Jesus either speaks of making things tangibly better for people who
suffer, doing things here on earth to release them from economic, political or
religious the power of illness, or fear, or violence. Jesus speaks about the new realm to come, the
Kin-dom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven, but he actually speaks very little
about “heaven” in the way we understand it. In this list of woes following the list of
blessings, though, we clearly hear implications not only for life here on
earth, but eternal consequences. To those who are under the pressures of life, Jesus
speaks of blessedness and better days to come, here and eternally. But tor those who are on the upper side of
things pressing down, the message is also clear: enjoy your privilege now,
because you’ll be singing a different tune in the hereafter.
As much as I want to turn
this into a simple binary, with me standing confidently on the “blessed” side
of this and some broadly sinister “them” , the bad guys, receiving the woes, we
all know that life isn’t that simple. I hear
the words of Jesus about those whose lives are typified by comfort and ease, and
I feel the sting. My own comfort, my own privilege demands that I repent of some
of my behaviours and attitudes, and the grace of Christ makes it possible to
change. In our United Church Creed, we name Jesus as “our judge and our
hope” and that is so true in these words of blessings and woes and what we do
about those in a world filled with injustice.
In his transformational work,
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey’s second and third
habits are “start with the end in mind” and “put first things first.” To me, that’s also the intent of what Jesus
is saying here, in listing both the blessings and the woes. Jesus, in his person, in his words, in his
deeds, and, yes, in his death and resurrection, reminds us that the end goal is
the same as the present goal - to live a
life fully intertwined with the heart of God, a life of depth and meaning that
will transcend even the power of death.
In saying that the poor, the hungry, the bereaved and the reviled are
blessed, Jesus is not recommending these as conditions to aim toward, but he is
saying that when you are in those places, you can be confident of God’s loving
care and you are likely to rely upon it. When life is hard, God in Christ holds you
close, opening you to something better and brighter and more
life-affirming. When we, as Church, are
present to people in their suffering, raising a voice where a voice needs
raising, we are close to the heart of God.
When we acknowledge both our privileges and our hurts as we imagine the
future of the Church, when we seek repentance and reconciliation, we also come
close to the heart of God. We “put
first things first” and “start with the end in mind” when we acknowledge that
life with God STARTS NOW and has no end.
Jesus sets the priorities, and empowers us with love.
With that in mind I end with
a quote from one of my favourite progressive Christian bloggers, Debie Thomas:
“I think what Jesus is saying in this Gospel is that I have something to learn
about discipleship that my [comfortable] life circumstances will not teach
me. Something to grasp about the beauty, glory, and freedom of the
Christian life that I will never grasp until God becomes my everything, my all,
my go-to, my starting place, and my ending place. Something to humbly admit
about the limitations of my privilege. Something to recognize about the radical
counter-intuitiveness of God’s priorities and promises…. Something to
gain from the humility that says, ‘Those people I think I'm superior to in
every way? They have everything to teach me.’”
Debie concludes, “Blessed
are you who are poor, hungry, sad, and expendable. Why? Because you have
everything to look forward to. Because the Kingdom of God is yours… Lord, help
me to sit with woe, and learn the meaning of blessing.” Amen.
References cited:
Borg, Marcus. Speaking
Christian: why Christian words have lost their power and how they can be
restored. SF: HarperRow, 2012. (pages 46-51)
Covey, Steven. The Seven Habits of Highly Successful
People, accessed at https://www.franklincovey.com/
Thomas, Debie. https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2089-blessings-and-woes
© 2025 Rev Greg Wooley,
Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge.
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