Nov. 10, 2019

 

November 10, 2019         Luke 6:20-31       Daniel 7:1-3        Ephesians 1:11-23

                About a dozen years ago when my car broke down, my dad offered me one of my uncle Dave’s cars.  Uncle Dave collects cars.  He probably has 100 of them rusting in his yard.  They picked one that ran.  When I got there to pick it up, I noticed it had a lot of scrapes and dents.  I noticed that you didn’t put in a key for the ignition, but it was a Gerry-rigged button that you pushed.  I noticed that the seat didn’t adjust forward and backward.  It was rusted in place.  It turns out my uncle had used it in a demolition derby.  It was a terrible care, but I just couldn’t think how to refuse such an offer.  If I refused would I be that spoiled person who would refuse such a gift?  I filled the car with gas as we left town.  When we arrived after 60 miles, the gas gauge was down to almost nothing.  It was a small car, but it got terrible gas mileage.  All of a sudden I pictured driving up to my church in such a car.  What would people think?  I thought of offering someone a ride somewhere, like to a joint service at another church, or to a meeting.  Could I find it within myself to actually ask them to get in this disaster? As generous as my dad and uncle were being, the car was not appropriate for me to drive.  I wasn’t that desperate.  I should have just told them that, but instead I lied and said it didn’t pass the emissions test, and drove it back to them the next time I had a chance. 

From an early age the world tells us what is important and who is important.  It shapes our values and aspirations.  It tells us how to divide ourselves and who to make alliances with.  A lot is based around wealth.  A person’s value is sometimes equated with their bank account or the kind of car they drive.  A person’s value is sometimes equated with the kind of food they eat.  A person’s value is sometimes equated with their mood, whether they are happy or sad, celebrating or mourning.  I have bought into the world’s views many times in my life, like with this beat up car.  But Jesus says, “Blessed are those who don’t measure a person by the world’s standards.  Blessed are those who drive junk heaps or who take public transportation.  Blessed are those who can’t afford bus fare.  Blessed are those who have to ride their bicycle everywhere.”

                Jesus here in the sermon on the plain, is in a flat place, eye to eye with the crowd, on their level, giving them a picture of the world God values, which is very different from the values of this world.  We put riches up on a pedestal, up high, and being poor down low, but Jesus levels the playing field by reversing which one is actually blessed and which cursed.  We value riches and being full and laughing and having fun.  But God knows those situations are only temporary.  Sooner or later we’re going to ner mourning or hungry or poor.  God knows that sometimes when we get in those states this world values, we think we deserve to be happy, rich and full, and we start to worship ourselves for having got us into those situations.  “Thanks to my hard work, I got this car or job or house,” I might say to myself. “I did it!”  But we forget all the people who helped us get to this point, all the dumb luck that happened to us, and our privileges like being able to get a loan.  And we forget God who made all things.  Sometimes when we are rich, happy, and full, we don’t have any room for God.  We don’t recognize our need for God because we think we have what we need.  Sometimes, when we start to worship riches and laughter and stuffing ourselves, we blame people who do not have those things and believe that they are lazy or undeserving.  Sometimes when we are rich and laughing and full, we forget those people who are not those things and we don’t think it is our problem that people are suffering.  When we have been rich and full and laughing, our efforts are often toward staying that way.  We fear that someday we will not be so, because it is true, sooner or later we won’t be.

                But that doesn’t mean we aren’t blessed.

                When I was poor as a kid, I didn’t always feel blessed.  I wanted more toys, more cheese, my own space, not to be embarrassed when my friends came to dinner and we had sandwhich bread as hamburger buns or went to a Birthday party with gifts wrapped in funny papers.  But we had many blessings.  We found our happiness in something other than our stuff or our food.  We made our own games.  We made our own fun.  And our hope was in God that we knew through our sharing, life-giving community.

                I fear romanticizing poverty.  I fear that people will say that God wants some people to live in poverty and suffering, so we keep them there and refuse to share.  When I was a kid, we had our basic needs met.  We always had enough to eat, although we didn’t gorge ourselves or eat poptarts.  We had a roof over our heads, we had warm clothes.  Sometimes my mom sewed them.  She always had a mending pile going.  There are many people who live in abject poverty, whose children die of preventable causes, who have fled warfare and famine, who don’t know when they will ever see home again.  These are blessed, not because suffering is the point, but because God is with them.  When God came to this Earth as Jesus, he didn’t choose to come as a king on a throne with fancy clothes and fancy food and fancy parties.  He came to us poor, among the animals, no roof, no home, no comforts.  But that didn’t mean he wasn’t blessed.   God was poor in the person of Jesus.

God came to us hungry.  As soon as Jesus was baptized he was driven out into the wilderness where he fasted for 40 days and 40 nights.  He wouldn’t compromise with Satan who promised him fame, fortune, and power, all the things the world values, but Jesus refused.  On the cross Jesus thirsted.  He was in want.  But that didn’t mean he wasn’t blessed.  There was a bigger picture in mind than a momentary comfort, a fleeting fullness gone in a couple of hours.  In solidarity with all the suffering, malnourished, hungry, Jesus took hunger upon himself to highlight the injustice and brokenness of this world that makes people hungry, keeps them hungry, when we actually have all everything we need to feed every single person on this earth.

God came to us weeping, in Jesus.  He wept at Lazarus’ grave.  He wept in the garden of Gethsemane.  He wept over the city, Jerusalem, where injustice grows stronger and hurts God’s beloved children.  He came as a little baby, crying in the night.  But it didn’t mean he wasn’t blessed.

I think the biggest blessing of those who are struggling, is the future hope.  It won’t always be like this.  It gets better.  And even the martyrs knew it gets better, because no matter how bad this life is, there is a promise of new life.  Even if they kill you, you live on.  Sometimes that new life takes the form of inspiring a community going forward to work for justice and peace and God’s reign here on earth.  Sometimes that new life points to an eternal life in another realm, the Kingdom of Heaven.  Either way, it will get better, not because of us, but because God will bring God’s Kingdom to Earth and make us in God’s image.

The biggest curse of those who are rich, full, and laughing, is that all that is fleeting.  It’s here for a moment and then it’s gone.  And after that the hope is always in the past.  I remember when…the church was 50% children, or Wednesday night was church night, or when I won at the track meet.  But the past is never coming back.  It’s gone.  God is drawing us forward into a future that we have to decide to embrace or resist.  If we’re comfortable or we’re fighting to stay in the past, we are resisting the future God gives us, one of equality, where we’re going to be giving up a few things that we thought we needed, but we really didn’t.  We’re all going to be making space for God.  God is giving us a future with a level playing field, like the sermon on the plain, in the field, where we all stand before God blessed and woeful, our values all a mess in the face of God’s values.  Because we really all are blessed and full of woe, comforted and challenged.  We are simultaneously saint and sinner as Martin Luther reminded us.

The Saints are blessed.  Those who have died now share God’s values and see the big picture that God sees.  They have all won and lost.  They have all been full and hungry.  They have all experienced deep sadness and great joy.  But now they simply know the blessing of God’s presence regardless of outward circumstance.  Now they see what is really important:  Community, love, forgiveness.  And through their examples we can see how to give our blessings away and live a life of blessing whatever our life situation.

Since this week is Veteran’s Day, I thought I might lift up Veterans as an example.  They give up everything to serve.  They give up their families for long periods of time, their comforts, their homes, their free will.  But would anyone not see that they are blessed?  They have the opportunity to fight for the freedoms that we share.  We call them blessed and we bless them, we give thanks to God for them.  They weep.  They suffer.  Yet, we call them blessed because they know more what is important in life, how short life is, the value of a human life.  Veterans take our commonly held values of riches, food, and laughter, and they show us a more blessed way.

We are in the midst of contemplating stewardship.  Compared to most people in the world, we are rich.   But is that really the blessing?  The blessing is being able to use what God has lent us for a little while to further God’s vision, for God to work through us as stewards to use all our gifts, time, money, possessions, skills, to build the Kingdom of God, a society on the plain, equal, just, generous, forgiving, community-oriented.  Let us use God’s blessings to be a blessing to others until all our neighbors, the poor, the hungry, and the mourning and weeping know they are blessed and loved by God.