[This message was shared with the people of Friendship Lutheran Church, Amelia, Ohio, during worship celebrations on February 10 and 11, 2007.]Luke 6:17-26
He was a sophomore second-string quarterback at Boston College. The son of a former NFL player, he had all sorts of talent. But, maybe because up to that point in his life everything had come so easily to him, he was, by most accounts, a so-so college player. Years later, he recalls, “...also...I didn’t work as hard as I needed because I think that gave me an out if I wasn’t successful...”
Then, during his second year of college, he took a mission trip to Jamaica with a priest and sixteen classmates. First stop was a place called Riverton City, “a shanty-town built on a garbage dump near Jamaica’s capital city of Kingston...” There, the young quarterback saw poverty as he’d never seen it before. For several days, “he worked in a home for elderly lepers.” Leprosy, Hansen’s Disease, “can eventually cause a variety of skin problems, loss of feeling, and paralysis of the hands and feet.”
A recent article in the magazine, Sports Spectrum, says: “He cleaned, scraped, then painted a bathroom in the home. In the evenings after a day’s work, he’d join the lepers for song and worship. It was then that [he] met George McVee, [a] man disfigured by leprosy. That first evening, [the college athlete] was the last to arrive and only one chair remained. It was next to McVee.
“’I’m ashamed to say this, but it was hard to look at him,’” he recalls. “’I didn’t really want to sit next to him. His leprosy was so much worse than everyone else’s. They said it wasn’t contagious, but I was a kid. I didn’t know.'"
Once the young man was seated, George McVee, the man disfigured by this horrible disease, who had lost his forearms, held a harmonica to his mouth with his remaining stumps. He played songs of praise to God. All around the room, accompanied by McVee’s harmonica, voices emanating from aged bodies being destroyed by leprosy joined together to worship God.
“In between songs, McVee...[recited] long passages of Scripture and poems he had composed. One of his poems he called, ‘My Cup Runneth Over.’” In his affliction and desperate poverty, McVee still regarded himself as a blessed man, all because of the God we know in Jesus Christ.
The athlete from Boston College recalls: “’I’m saying to myself these people should be angry. What they were born into--poverty, poor health. What do they have to be happy about?...But in their eyes, it was the exact opposite. Their attitude was what my attitude should have been like.”
The young man saw a lot of other things on that trip to Jamaica. And the thing that struck him most was how faithful and how joyful the people he encountered in Jamaica were.
Shortly after his return, the quarterback was stricken with Hepatitis A, which he probably contracted while in Jamaica. In the hospital for six days, he went from 215 to 185 pounds. As “he lay in the hospital, [jaundiced], waiting for his release” he wondered “about his future in football. ‘But I never really thought, “Why me?”’” he says. “’I thought, “This is nothing compared to what the lepers in Jamaica deal with.” And they had so much joy in their hearts because of the Lord, despite their circumstances.’”
It was then that sophomore Matt Hasselbeck, who would go on to play in Super Bowl 40 in 2006, “made a promise to God.” He first apologized to God for not being all that he could be and told the Lord that in all departments of his life, he would always try his hardest. Second string, practice squad, also ran, whatever, he would always do his best. Hasselbeck says that it was not only the moment that changed him as an athlete, but also the moment that changed him as a human being. And it all happened because of the faith and joy he saw in people suffering from the worst poverty and disease, people the world would say had nothing. But Hasselbeck knew that the world was wrong: George McVee and the others he met had Jesus Christ!
Today’s Bible lesson begins a section in Luke’s Gospel in which Jesus delivers what’s called, The Sermon on the Plain. It has a lot in common with the more famous Sermon on the Mount, found in the Gospel of Matthew. You’d expect to find similarities in them; after all, Jesus was the preacher in both cases. But I’ve sometimes wondered, why is the sermon in Matthew more quoted than the one in Luke? Both are equally beautiful and important.
I think I know the answer: In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” In our lesson today, Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor.” Jesus was saying: Blessed are the George McVees, the elderly lepers in Jamaica, the homeless in downtown Cincinnati, the destitute in New Orleans, the fleeing refugees of Darfur, the orphans in Iraq, the military veterans of America living on the street.
This is a jarring thought, this notion that those who have nothing of the world’s wealth are blessed by heaven. We’d much rather quote Jesus’ words from Matthew and speak of ourselves as “poor in spirit.” (I know that I would.) To be poor in spirit sounds less specific, like a description of people who are, well, just like us...you know, humble, kind, nice folks.
But when Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor,” it may make us feel left out. I know that I do. My wife and I are by no means wealthy. But we raised our kids in two different houses, one in northwest Ohio and the one in which we’ve been living for the past sixteen and a half years. Both houses are much larger than the homes in which I grew up. And my parents raised five of us in them! Five kids in a house with one bathroom and two bedrooms, one of which my dad subdivided. For much of the first twenty-two years of their marriage, my folks had to sleep on hide-a-beds to make room for all of us. Yet, my parents and our family in those years wouldn’t have fit under the category of the blessed poor Jesus describes in His words today. We were strapped, to be sure. And my Dad worked two full time jobs for a chunk of my childhood. But we never lived in grinding poverty. And few of us in white middle class America ever have!
But where exactly is the blessedness of poverty? Matt Hasselbeck saw how the poor are blessed during his mission trip to Jamaica. They were stripped of the things the world counts as valuable, things I appreciate as much as anybody else, things like money, property, position, even health. But precisely because they lacked such things, these people turned to Jesus Christ and found...
- a God Who loved them,
- a Friend Who would stand by them no matter what,
- a Lord Who would give them a peace that passes all understanding,
- a life that will never end.
Jesus, of course, isn’t saying that only the poor can have a relationship with Him.
Nor is he saying that the poor aren’t sinners.
Salvation is still a matter of sinful human beings--and that’s all of us--turning from our sin and trusting our whole lives to Jesus Christ. That’s true whether we have money or not.
But the poor have less of the stuff of the world, the medical care, the clean water, the luxury items that allow you and me to pretend, sometimes for decades, that we’re not mortal, not vulnerable, not in need of God. The poor have a much easier time knowing how much they need God!
So, where does that leave you and me, we, the world’s wealthiest people?
We find the answer to that question at the very beginning of our lesson for today. It says: “He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd...”
Just before our lesson, Jesus had called the twelve apostles. It happened up on a mountaintop. We all love the mountaintop. But Jesus calls us to go to the level places, to live among and to share with those of all economic conditions. He calls us to love our neighbors in practical ways: to donate coats for the homeless; to give gifts to children in Third World countries; to help build homes for the homeless.
He calls us too, to fill the empty hearts of those suffering from the ultimate poverty, a life without Jesus Christ.
All around us are people hungry for Jesus Christ, spiritually disconnected people who need the Savior.
They need someone wealthy with the riches of heaven--someone like you and me--to bless them by telling them the Good News of Jesus Christ.
The life of the Church, the continuing life of this congregation, depends on our willingness to tell others about Jesus and to invite them to worship with us. But more importantly, we have been commanded to make disciples.
How many disciples will you and I allow God to make through us this year? With how many people--wealthy or poor--are you and I willing to share the Good News that can allow a person to live with God forever?
You know, a funny thing happened to Friendship Church. I remember that in our early years, we had nothing: no sanctuary, no classrooms, no place for our youth to gather, no rooms for meetings or dinners. Yet, for all the things we lacked, we did have a passion for telling others about Jesus.
But since we moved into our building, we seem to have grown passive. We are a praying church. We are a serving church. And both of those things are marks of people who follow Jesus.
But we aren't reaching out to others as we need to.
We're not inviting others to worship with us as we need to.
We're not telling others about Jesus as we need to.
And I am as guilty of this oversight as anybody else!
All of this needs to change.
It's great that we serve others in Jesus' Name. But we also need to be willing to tell others why we serve in Jesus' Name. We need, as I told the Church Council the other evening, to "close the sale": We need to let others know about the Savior Who motivates and empowers our serving and gives us confidence for living this life and for facing the one to come!
From today, let's change the way we've been thinking and living.
Let this be the first day of a new life at Friendship!
I hope that each of us will make it our goal to invite at least one person to worship each month and to make at least one disciple before the end of this year...and every year!
We also all need to take responsibility for telephoning or emailing the people we haven’t seen in worship for awhile. People expect to hear from the pastor, the hired hand, when it comes to inviting people to worship or to check on how folks who haven't been around for awhile are doing. But when you do these things, your simple gestures of love have tremendous impact!
We have so much to give--to the poor in money and the poor in spirit.
Let’s make a vow this day that like Matt Hasselbeck, we will do our best every day for Jesus Christ!
Let’s share the riches of heaven with everybody--in word, in deed, and in telling the good news of Jesus.
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