[This was shared during both worship services of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio.]
Luke 6:20-31
There are many things we Christians believe that seem outrageous to the rest of the world.
They may not seem outrageous to us because you and I are accustomed to our memorized confessions of faith.
We affirm beliefs like the resurrection of the dead, eternal life for those who believe in Jesus, Jesus’ virgin birth and bodily resurrection. All of these teachings seem outrageous to an unbelieving world.
And the truth is, left to our own devices, you and I couldn’t believe these things nor experience the joy of knowing that we have been saved by grace through our faith in the crucified and risen Jesus.
Martin Luther writes in his commentary on Galatians: “Christ’s benefits are so precious that He will dispense them only to those who need them [by which, he means, who know they need them] and really desire them.” Faith, even the shakiest of faith, comes only to those who want to believe. The Christian faith that teaches that we must die to sin and trust in Christ to raise us as the Father raised Him on the first Easter, is a scandal, an outrage to a world that likes to think it’s self-sufficient.
And then, we come to the Gospel lesson appointed for this All Saints’ Sunday.
In it, Jesus seems to move to a deeper level of outrageousness. He talks not about the outrageous things Christians are taught to believe or trust, but the outrageous ways we are to live because we believe.
In the opening verses of our lesson, Jesus talks about the blessed life, the lifestyle of a saint.
A saint, the Bible teaches, is a forgiven sinner fighting the good fight to ignore the temptations of a sinful world, the sinful self, and of the devil, to hold onto Jesus as the only way to God, our only hope in this world and the next, the only Savior Who can free us to be the people we were made to be. This, Jesus is saying in these opening words, the kind of life God blesses.
Knowing this could make us feel uncomfortable. It could even make us feel doomed.
“I can’t possibly live the way Jesus says we’re to live,” we could say, “So, why even try being a Christian?”
But Jesus’ words here are descriptive. They describe the life we can live if we keep turning from our sin and trusting in Him.
His words are not proscriptive. By that I mean, Jesus is not telling us that we have to live this way in order to earn life with God. Jesus isn’t giving a new law, impossible for us to keep. He’s describing the life we can live if we let Him live in us, in every part of our lives.
Let me show you something. Please pull out a Bible and turn to Deuteronomy 11:26-28. (Page 130 in the pew Bibles.) Deuteronomy is a long sermon given by Moses, who was soon to die, to the people of Israel, just before God allowed them to enter the promised land. Moses says: “See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse-- the blessing if you obey the commands of the LORD your God that I am giving you today; the curse if you disobey the commands of the LORD your God and turn from the way that I command you today by following other gods, which you have not known.” These are proscriptive words. They’re commandments.
Now, turn to our Gospel lesson, Luke 6:20-31. (Page 720 in the pew Bibles.) Jesus says, speaking to His disciples (that is, all who had come to believe in Him): “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man.”
See the difference between Moses’ words and those of Jesus? Jesus is not saying, “Do this and you will be blessed.” He’s saying if you are poor, you’re blessed. If you are hungry, you’re blessed. If you are in sorrow, you’re blessed. If people hate you because you believe in Christ, you’re blessed. Jesus is being descriptive.
But, here’s the question Jesus’ words raise for us: Who wants to sign on to be poor, hungry, in mourning, or to be hated?
And how do we react to how Jesus describes the cursed lifestyle?
Look at that description, starting at verse 24. Jesus says: “...woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets.”
Now, let’s be clear about what Jesus is saying in these descriptive words.
He isn’t telling us to aspire to poverty, hunger, sorrow, or persecution.
Nor is He telling us that it’s a sin to be rich, well fed, happy, or respected by others.
Instead, Jesus is telling us that whether we have what the world calls success or happiness or not, whether we’re seen as powerful or powerless, important or insignificant, the saint--the forgiven sinner who trusts in Jesus Christ as their only Savior, only God, can live with joy, hope, and peace.
Are you living with that joy, hope, and peace today? You can be!
Even in the midst of a world that counts faith in Christ as an outrage, an absurdity, a curiosity, a weakness.
Please turn to Philippians 4:11-12 (page 820 in the pew Bibles). The apostle Paul writes this to the first century church at Philippi: “...I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” Then, in verse 13, he says: “I can do everything through him who gives me strength.”
A saint then, is a person who is blessed whatever the condition of their life.
They walk in confidence, no matter what’s happening to them.
A friend of mine who has been through more than any human being should have to endure, told me recently, “I am blessed.”
When saints like that make the outrageous assertion that, despite what life in this fallen world has done to them or what hurt unbelieving people--even unbelieving people within the fellowship of the Church--have done to them, and despite what temptations dog them or past sins may sometimes haunt them they are blessed, I have to confess I feel ashamed.
Too often, I bellyache and complain about my lot in life. Too often, I forget that the God Who came into this world, experienced this life, suffered and died for sinners like me, and then rose to give those who repent and believe in Christ life with Him despite the death and condemnation I deserve.
Jesus has conquered all the things I bellyache about, all the things that frighten me.
He has overcome sin and death, even my sin and death.
I forget that even when Christians are hungry, they can be filled with Christ’s goodness, grace, and power.
I forget that when Christians are poor, we nonetheless have a rich life with the Creator of the universe that will only be perfected after we have died and risen to be with Him.
When believers mourn, we know that one day, He will wipe away every tear and that even now, living with Him, He can turn our mourning into dancing.
When we are spurned or even persecuted for our outrageous faith in Christ, we can, as Jesus prompts us, “Rejoice...and leap for joy” because we know that through Him, we have a great reward in heaven.
Certain that nothing can separate us from Christ’s gracious love, we can even dare to “love [our] enemies, do good to those who hate [us], bless those who curse [us]...”
When we hold Christ in the grip of faith, we will even find ourselves sometimes capable of doing to others as we would have them do to us.
Despite our sin and disbelief, we, like saints before us, can be filled with the strength to live lives of outrageous faithfulness to Christ.
In Jesus, we follow a Savior and God Who has lived the very life He calls blessed in today’s lesson. Do you remember what Jesus prayed for the crowds who cried for His death and nailed Him to a cross on the first Good Friday? With His dying breath, Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
Fine, you may say, Jesus was and is God. He knew how His suffering would end. Beyond His cross lay an empty tomb. He could afford to put the most charitable construction on the actions of those who hated and hurt Him. It was easy for Him to live the blessed life, we might think.
But how to explain someone like Stephen, a disciple, the first Christian to be martyred for his faith? Stephen was an ordinary man who believed in Christ, a sinner and a saint. As he was being stoned to death for his refusal to renounce his faith in Christ, Stephen prayed, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” Stephen, unlike Jesus, God in human skin, had no power over sin or death. But he knew he belonged to the God Who does and so could pray just as Jesus had on the cross.
Jesus Christ lives in those who trust in Him.
He empowers those who dare to trust in Him to not be caught up in the ways of this world, to become, as Luther puts it, “little Christs.”
This is why the apostle Paul could write: “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed to us.”
The saints in Christ know that this world is very important. It's a world God created, then died and rose to set free.
But saints also know that this world is not the end of the story.
No matter what the states of our bodies, our finances, or our relationships, saints know that through Jesus’ resurrection, His life is pulsating within us!
He has us in His mind and in His hands.
By His grace and our enduring faith in Him, our life with Him won’t end here.
And at those moments when we dare to give ourselves totally to Jesus and to God’s purposes for us, we gain the courage to live the outrageous life--the blessed life--that Jesus commends to us this morning.
The funny thing is that the saintly life that Jesus describes is, I believe, precisely how, in our heart of hearts, we all want to live, no matter how outraged we may sometimes feel about this lifestyle that Jesus calls blessed.
Even cynics and the persecutors of Christians want to live as saints, to be people who forgive, people who give, people who treat others as they themselves want to be treated.
By the grace of God in Christ and our openness to Christ, may the Holy Spirit teach us how to live as saints. God bless you all. Amen
Showing posts with label Luke 6:20-31. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Luke 6:20-31. Show all posts
Monday, November 04, 2013
Sunday, November 07, 2010
How Emptiness Can Be Blessedness (All Saints Sunday)
[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]
Luke 6:20-31
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 recalled, “...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 went on 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.” **
An 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 remembered years later. “’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, McVee, 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 remembers: “’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 to the States, 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 then 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 Gospel lesson begins a section in Luke’s Gospel in which Jesus delivers what’s usually referred to as 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 to appear in the two sermons; 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. The sermon in Luke's gospel has the added asset of being the shorter and, in some ways, more elegant of the two.
But I think I know why the sermon in Matthew is quoted more often. You see, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” In our lesson today, Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor.”
In today's lesson, Jesus is saying: Blessed are...
We’d much rather quote Jesus’ words from Matthew and speak of ourselves as being poor in spirit. To be poor in spirit sounds less specific, like a description of people who are, well, just like us...you know, ordinary.
But when Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor,…blessed are the hungry….blessed are you who weep now,” it may make us feel left out. While all of us in this sanctuary have experienced or are experiencing adversities in life, few of us have known the yawning emptiness and grief that Matt Hasselback saw in George McVee and the lepers in Jamaica.
In fact, George McVee seems to be exactly the sort of person Jesus is describing in the first verses of today’s Gospel lesson.
But where exactly is the blessedness of poverty or disfiguring disease, in poverty or hunger or grief?
Matt Hasselbeck saw how even those experiencing the worst that life brings can be God’s blessed ones.
The people he met on that college mission trip were stripped of things that we all count as valuable, things like money, property, position, health.
But precisely because they lacked such things, these people turned to Jesus Christ and found...
Jesus, of course, isn’t saying that only the poor, hungry, and grieving can have a relationship with Him.
Nor is he saying that folks like these aren’t sinners.
Salvation is still a matter of sinful human beings, in response to all that God has done for us in Jesus Christ, turning from our sin and trusting our whole lives to Jesus Christ.
That’s true whatever our circumstances in life.
But it also is true to say, that the poor, hungry, and grieving, though, have a much easier time knowing how much they need God!
When you’re cruising along in life with a full belly, cash in your bank account, and no troubles on the horizon, it’s easy to forget about God, easy to think you don’t need God. Life’s tragedies and difficulties can act as, in a wonderful phrase coined by C.S. Lewis, God’s trombones. It's hard to ignore trombones! And when adversities blare at us, they wake us up, showing us how much we need God after all.
So, where does that leave you and me, people who, by the mysteries of life and history find ourselves not living in places like Jamaica, Haiti, Sudan, Indonesia, Iraq, or the inner city of Columbus, people whose lives, though not untouched by difficulty, are still likelier easier than most of the people who have ever lived or who are living now?
We find the answer to that question in a verse that comes just before our Gospel lesson, one that sets the stage for it. It’s Luke 6:17, which you’ll find in the pew Bibles on page 592. This passage comes just after Jesus calls the twelve apostles, an event that happens up on a mountaintop after Jesus prays. It says:
This same Jesus tells us today that those who are truly blessed—those who are His saints—are the ones who, filled with the certainty of a grace that loves us just as we are and is committed to helping us to become all that God made us to be, live in those same level places.
Saints aren’t exalted beings whose lives are spent in a series of mountaintop experiences.
Saints are ordinary sinners, just like us, who, through Jesus, have been filled with the power to live in life’s ordinary places and, when a need is made known to them, extend Christ’s hand of love to others.
Ann, our then two year old son Philip, and I were living in the almost-one bedroom cinder block apartments the seminary had originally built for single students, but which were then being used as housing for seminarians with a spouse and a child. We didn’t have two pennies to rub together. As the saying goes, "We had nothing and thought we were going to keep it."
Ann commuted by bus to a job that paid close to minimum wage at the downtown Columbus Lazarus store. One day, she accidentally left her purse on the bus. It contained a couple of credit cards, a few dollars in cash, and her driver’s license. We put a stop on the credit cards and Ann planned on calling the BMV the next day to start the process of getting a new license.
But then our phone rang. It was a woman who had found Ann’s purse. We later met her. She was neat in appearance, but elderly and, from the look of things, could have used what little cash was in the purse herself. She was an African-American woman who worked as a cleaning lady and was raising her great-grandson.
As she handed the purse over to Ann, we thanked her profusely. She smiled and said, “I just loves the Lord.”
Folks, that is a saint.
No airs.
No self congratulation.
Just a person who lived Jesus’ love.
A saint isn’t a person grimly trying to live up to the golden rule Jesus cites at the end of our lesson—“Do to others as you would have them do to you.”
They’re people so grateful to the God Who, in Christ, has come down to them, so filled with thankfulness for the undeserved blessings of God, that that the love commanded by the golden rule spills out of them every day…just because the Lord loves them and they loves the Lord.
May we ever be so thankful!
*The true story, extensively quoted, appeared in an issue of Sports Spectrum magazine three years ago.
**Leprosy, Hansen’s Disease, “can eventually cause a variety of skin problems, loss of feeling, and paralysis of the hands and feet.”
***This comes from the New King James Version translation.
Luke 6:20-31
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 recalled, “...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 went on 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.” **
An 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 remembered years later. “’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, McVee, 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 remembers: “’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 to the States, 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 then 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 Gospel lesson begins a section in Luke’s Gospel in which Jesus delivers what’s usually referred to as 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 to appear in the two sermons; 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. The sermon in Luke's gospel has the added asset of being the shorter and, in some ways, more elegant of the two.
But I think I know why the sermon in Matthew is quoted more often. You see, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” In our lesson today, Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor.”
In today's lesson, Jesus is saying: Blessed are...
- the George McVees,
- the elderly lepers in Jamaica,
- the homeless who sleep in Worthington Park, just one block from this church building,
- the destitute in Haiti,
- the orphans in Iraq and Afghanistan,
- the military veterans of America forced to live on the street.
We’d much rather quote Jesus’ words from Matthew and speak of ourselves as being poor in spirit. To be poor in spirit sounds less specific, like a description of people who are, well, just like us...you know, ordinary.
But when Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor,…blessed are the hungry….blessed are you who weep now,” it may make us feel left out. While all of us in this sanctuary have experienced or are experiencing adversities in life, few of us have known the yawning emptiness and grief that Matt Hasselback saw in George McVee and the lepers in Jamaica.
In fact, George McVee seems to be exactly the sort of person Jesus is describing in the first verses of today’s Gospel lesson.
But where exactly is the blessedness of poverty or disfiguring disease, in poverty or hunger or grief?
Matt Hasselbeck saw how even those experiencing the worst that life brings can be God’s blessed ones.
The people he met on that college mission trip were stripped of things that we all count as valuable, things like money, property, position, 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, hungry, and grieving can have a relationship with Him.
Nor is he saying that folks like these aren’t sinners.
Salvation is still a matter of sinful human beings, in response to all that God has done for us in Jesus Christ, turning from our sin and trusting our whole lives to Jesus Christ.
That’s true whatever our circumstances in life.
But it also is true to say, that the poor, hungry, and grieving, though, have a much easier time knowing how much they need God!
When you’re cruising along in life with a full belly, cash in your bank account, and no troubles on the horizon, it’s easy to forget about God, easy to think you don’t need God. Life’s tragedies and difficulties can act as, in a wonderful phrase coined by C.S. Lewis, God’s trombones. It's hard to ignore trombones! And when adversities blare at us, they wake us up, showing us how much we need God after all.
So, where does that leave you and me, people who, by the mysteries of life and history find ourselves not living in places like Jamaica, Haiti, Sudan, Indonesia, Iraq, or the inner city of Columbus, people whose lives, though not untouched by difficulty, are still likelier easier than most of the people who have ever lived or who are living now?
We find the answer to that question in a verse that comes just before our Gospel lesson, one that sets the stage for it. It’s Luke 6:17, which you’ll find in the pew Bibles on page 592. This passage comes just after Jesus calls the twelve apostles, an event that happens up on a mountaintop after Jesus prays. It says:
And He came down with them and stood on a level place with a crowd of His disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem, and from the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, who came to hear Him and be healed of their diseases...***Jesus could have stayed on the mountaintop, could have kept spending time with His Father in prayer. But He came to a level place, the place where all of us—rich and poor, hungry and full, happy and sad—live.
This same Jesus tells us today that those who are truly blessed—those who are His saints—are the ones who, filled with the certainty of a grace that loves us just as we are and is committed to helping us to become all that God made us to be, live in those same level places.
Saints aren’t exalted beings whose lives are spent in a series of mountaintop experiences.
Saints are ordinary sinners, just like us, who, through Jesus, have been filled with the power to live in life’s ordinary places and, when a need is made known to them, extend Christ’s hand of love to others.
Ann, our then two year old son Philip, and I were living in the almost-one bedroom cinder block apartments the seminary had originally built for single students, but which were then being used as housing for seminarians with a spouse and a child. We didn’t have two pennies to rub together. As the saying goes, "We had nothing and thought we were going to keep it."
Ann commuted by bus to a job that paid close to minimum wage at the downtown Columbus Lazarus store. One day, she accidentally left her purse on the bus. It contained a couple of credit cards, a few dollars in cash, and her driver’s license. We put a stop on the credit cards and Ann planned on calling the BMV the next day to start the process of getting a new license.
But then our phone rang. It was a woman who had found Ann’s purse. We later met her. She was neat in appearance, but elderly and, from the look of things, could have used what little cash was in the purse herself. She was an African-American woman who worked as a cleaning lady and was raising her great-grandson.
As she handed the purse over to Ann, we thanked her profusely. She smiled and said, “I just loves the Lord.”
Folks, that is a saint.
No airs.
No self congratulation.
Just a person who lived Jesus’ love.
A saint isn’t a person grimly trying to live up to the golden rule Jesus cites at the end of our lesson—“Do to others as you would have them do to you.”
They’re people so grateful to the God Who, in Christ, has come down to them, so filled with thankfulness for the undeserved blessings of God, that that the love commanded by the golden rule spills out of them every day…just because the Lord loves them and they loves the Lord.
May we ever be so thankful!
*The true story, extensively quoted, appeared in an issue of Sports Spectrum magazine three years ago.
**Leprosy, Hansen’s Disease, “can eventually cause a variety of skin problems, loss of feeling, and paralysis of the hands and feet.”
***This comes from the New King James Version translation.
Friday, November 05, 2010
"It's no trick to make a lot of money..."
I thought of this line from Citizen Kane while studying the Gospel lesson for this coming Sunday, Luke 6:20-31. We celebrate All Saints Sunday this week, by the way.
Here is Luke 6:20-31:
Here is Luke 6:20-31:
20 Then [Jesus] looked up at his disciples and said: “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. 23Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. 24“But 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 what their ancestors did to the false prophets.
27“But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. 30Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. 31Do to others as you would have them do to you.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
What Saints Are Like
[This message was shared with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, during worship on Sunday, November 4, my first official Sunday as pastor of the congregation. We celebrated it as All Saints Sunday.]
Luke 6:20-31
Today, I'm going to do something which in seminary we were taught never to do. I'm going to give you the two points of my sermon. That way, you can feel free to fall asleep. You can still say you know what the sermon was about. Here they are:
Her name was Mabel and the story of her impact on a young seminary student chaplain is told in John Ortberg’s book, The Life You’ve Always Wanted. Mabel was a resident of a nursing home, blind, nearly-deaf, and suffering from a cancer that was disfiguring her face. She’d been bedridden for twenty-five years. Tom Schmidt was the student chaplain, working at the nursing home where Mabel lived.
It was Mother’s Day and Schmidt was making his rounds. He decided to try ignoring his revulsion at the sight of Mabel and to present her with a flower. He didn’t want to do it, especially since he was sure that Mabel would be unresponsive. “Here’s a flower,” he told her. “Happy Mother’s Day.” Mabel pulled the flower to her face, attempting to smell it and then, in somewhat slurred speech, said, “Thank you. It’s lovely. But can I give it to someone else? I can’t see it, you know, I’m blind.” So, Schmidt rolled Mabel’s wheelchair to another resident and watched her as she held out the flower and said, “Here, this is from Jesus.” “That,” said Tom Schmidt, “was when it began to dawn on me that this was not an ordinary human being.”
As Schmidt’s acquaintance with Mabel grew, so did his sense of awe. He felt each time he entered her room that he was walking on holy ground. Often, he would read a Scripture to Mabel and from memory, she would mouth the words along with him. Then, she might break into a song praising God. “I never heard her speak of loneliness or pain except in the stress she placed on certain lines in certain hymns,” Schmidt recalls. The student chaplain began going to Mabel’s room with pen in hand, ready to jot down the amazing things that she said.
During one week, Schmidt says, he was stressing out, thinking about exams at seminary and a million other things he had to get done, when a question dawned on him, “What does Mabel have to think about—hour after hour, day after day, week after week, not even able to know if it’s day or night?” So, the next time he was at the nursing home, Schmidt decided to ask Mabel. “Mabel, what do you think about when you lie here?” Listen closely to Schmidt’s recollection:
Taking our cue from Jesus’ words for us in today’s Gospel lesson, I think we can say that a saint is a person blessed by God. But as you read or hear this passage, what’s called, “The Sermon on the Plain,” from the Gospel of Luke, it hits you that Jesus has an entirely different idea of what it means to be “blessed by God” than you and I usually have.
Week before last, fires raged through southern California, particularly affecting San Diego. It was a terrible disaster and I’m sure that like me, you’ve been praying for the people affected by the fires. A player for the San Diego Chargers who has a home in the area met with reporters last week and said, that although all of his neighbors’ houses were destroyed, “Thank God” the fire had literally gone around his house, leaving him unscathed.
I’m not picking on this player and I don’t want to read too much into his words. I’m sure that he was sincere in what he said. But I wonder if he believes that God determined to leave his house standing and decided that his neighbors’ places had to be destroyed?
And what would this player say about the victims of other disasters that happen in life?
What would he say about Mabel?
Would he say that because of the multiple tragedies that had stricken her and the long years of suffering she’d endured that she wasn’t really blessed by God?
That she wasn’t a saint?
That she didn’t really have a connection with the Lord she so fervently confessed and in Whom she so clearly believed?
In fairness, he probably wouldn’t say those things.
And yet, in his comments about how his property hadn’t burned down when the homes of his neighbors had, that player, seems to have the world’s idea of what it means to be blessed. That’s because the world appears to believe that when life breaks our way, we’re blessed by God and that when the events of life go against us, we’re not. But in the Sermon on the Plain, Jesus turns ideas like that on their head. He does so in two major ways, I think.
Listen again to how Jesus begins His message for us this morning. He says: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.”
Talk about turning things on their head! You’re blessed, Jesus says, and you’re a saint when you’re poor, hungry, and grief-stricken. If I had to distill those three beatitudes into one, I’d say simply, “Blessed are the empty.” The poor have empty pockets. The hungry, empty bellies. The grieving, an empty place at the dinner table. Or an empty spot in the easy chair in the family room. These are the blessed ones. How can Jesus say that?
Recently, my wife Ann and I spoke with a young woman who had wandered from God. Not in some dramatic way. Instead, she had just allowed her relationship with God to move to the sidelines of her life. But not long ago, her life hit a crisis point. She found a church and began to regularly attend worship there. She’s also established a daily time of prayer and Bible and devotional reading. Ann asked this young woman, “What brought you back to God?” “I was empty inside,” she said. “I just knew that I needed God.” Saints are people who understand the emptiness of life without God and they invite the God we meet in Jesus Christ to fill their emptiness. Blessed are the empty!
Jesus also says, “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.” In these words, Jesus seems to say, "Blessed are you when you risk having others reject you because you follow Christ. You will never be rejected by God!"
Methodist bishop Will Willimon once served as dean of the chapel at Duke University. He tells about a Duke student he encouraged “to go out for rush,” joining a fraternity. Willimon explains, “He had grown up as an only child. I thought the incentive to socialize would be good for him, get him out, expose him to others. [But] That night, there had been too much alcohol, and people under the influence are sometimes people at their worst. The incident…involved a number of people. Afterwards, when a police report had been made, a secret meeting was held and everyone was asked to keep the whole thing quiet. And everyone agreed to keep quiet. Everyone but him. It’s not right, he had said to them. This isn’t what a fraternity is to be about. We’re making a wrong even worse. From that night on, he was no longer considered by them a ‘brother.’” In Jesus’ terms, he was excluded, reviled, defamed because of his relationship with Christ and his desire, despite the difficulty and pain of it, to follow Christ’s lead.
Being blessed, being a saint, doesn’t mean that we’re insulated from the pain or grief of this life.
This isn’t heaven.
This is an imperfect world in which bad things happen to even the most faithful people.
The loved ones and friends of those Saint Matthew saints who passed from this life this past year whose names we honored a short time ago can testify to that. Sometimes, in fact, the world reserves its worst treatment for people who seek to follow Christ. But Jesus, the Savior Who, the New Testament tells us, ”emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant” so that He could die and rise and secure eternity with God for all who believe in Him, brings blessings to those who dare to follow Him!
Blessed are the empty; they will be filled with God!
Blessed are those who risk rejection by others; God will never reject them!
Today, I invite you to trust, however hesitantly or incompletely, that Jesus’ words are true. Trust that you are among His saints and that You are part of His Kingdom forever.
Because you are!
Luke 6:20-31
Today, I'm going to do something which in seminary we were taught never to do. I'm going to give you the two points of my sermon. That way, you can feel free to fall asleep. You can still say you know what the sermon was about. Here they are:
- Blessed are the empty.
- Blessed are those who risk rejection by others because they follow Christ.
Her name was Mabel and the story of her impact on a young seminary student chaplain is told in John Ortberg’s book, The Life You’ve Always Wanted. Mabel was a resident of a nursing home, blind, nearly-deaf, and suffering from a cancer that was disfiguring her face. She’d been bedridden for twenty-five years. Tom Schmidt was the student chaplain, working at the nursing home where Mabel lived.
It was Mother’s Day and Schmidt was making his rounds. He decided to try ignoring his revulsion at the sight of Mabel and to present her with a flower. He didn’t want to do it, especially since he was sure that Mabel would be unresponsive. “Here’s a flower,” he told her. “Happy Mother’s Day.” Mabel pulled the flower to her face, attempting to smell it and then, in somewhat slurred speech, said, “Thank you. It’s lovely. But can I give it to someone else? I can’t see it, you know, I’m blind.” So, Schmidt rolled Mabel’s wheelchair to another resident and watched her as she held out the flower and said, “Here, this is from Jesus.” “That,” said Tom Schmidt, “was when it began to dawn on me that this was not an ordinary human being.”
As Schmidt’s acquaintance with Mabel grew, so did his sense of awe. He felt each time he entered her room that he was walking on holy ground. Often, he would read a Scripture to Mabel and from memory, she would mouth the words along with him. Then, she might break into a song praising God. “I never heard her speak of loneliness or pain except in the stress she placed on certain lines in certain hymns,” Schmidt recalls. The student chaplain began going to Mabel’s room with pen in hand, ready to jot down the amazing things that she said.
During one week, Schmidt says, he was stressing out, thinking about exams at seminary and a million other things he had to get done, when a question dawned on him, “What does Mabel have to think about—hour after hour, day after day, week after week, not even able to know if it’s day or night?” So, the next time he was at the nursing home, Schmidt decided to ask Mabel. “Mabel, what do you think about when you lie here?” Listen closely to Schmidt’s recollection:
“...’I think about Jesus...[she said]’ I sat there, and thought for a moment about the difficulty, for me of thinking about Jesus for even five minutes, and I asked, ‘What do you think about Jesus?’ She replied slowly and deliberately as I wrote...’I think about how good He’s been to me. He’s been awfully good to me, you know...I’m one of those kind who’s mostly satisfied...Lots of folks wouldn’t care much for what I think...But I don’t care. I’d rather have Jesus. He’s all the world to me.’ "Although Mabel was blind, nearly deaf, suffering from cancer, and confined to her bed, she was likely more alive and happier and, as she said, “satisfied” than many of the people we know. Why is that? The short answer is that Mabel was a saint. But on this All Saints Sunday, it’s good for us to ask, “What exactly is a saint?”
Taking our cue from Jesus’ words for us in today’s Gospel lesson, I think we can say that a saint is a person blessed by God. But as you read or hear this passage, what’s called, “The Sermon on the Plain,” from the Gospel of Luke, it hits you that Jesus has an entirely different idea of what it means to be “blessed by God” than you and I usually have.
Week before last, fires raged through southern California, particularly affecting San Diego. It was a terrible disaster and I’m sure that like me, you’ve been praying for the people affected by the fires. A player for the San Diego Chargers who has a home in the area met with reporters last week and said, that although all of his neighbors’ houses were destroyed, “Thank God” the fire had literally gone around his house, leaving him unscathed.
I’m not picking on this player and I don’t want to read too much into his words. I’m sure that he was sincere in what he said. But I wonder if he believes that God determined to leave his house standing and decided that his neighbors’ places had to be destroyed?
And what would this player say about the victims of other disasters that happen in life?
What would he say about Mabel?
Would he say that because of the multiple tragedies that had stricken her and the long years of suffering she’d endured that she wasn’t really blessed by God?
That she wasn’t a saint?
That she didn’t really have a connection with the Lord she so fervently confessed and in Whom she so clearly believed?
In fairness, he probably wouldn’t say those things.
And yet, in his comments about how his property hadn’t burned down when the homes of his neighbors had, that player, seems to have the world’s idea of what it means to be blessed. That’s because the world appears to believe that when life breaks our way, we’re blessed by God and that when the events of life go against us, we’re not. But in the Sermon on the Plain, Jesus turns ideas like that on their head. He does so in two major ways, I think.
Listen again to how Jesus begins His message for us this morning. He says: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.”
Talk about turning things on their head! You’re blessed, Jesus says, and you’re a saint when you’re poor, hungry, and grief-stricken. If I had to distill those three beatitudes into one, I’d say simply, “Blessed are the empty.” The poor have empty pockets. The hungry, empty bellies. The grieving, an empty place at the dinner table. Or an empty spot in the easy chair in the family room. These are the blessed ones. How can Jesus say that?
Recently, my wife Ann and I spoke with a young woman who had wandered from God. Not in some dramatic way. Instead, she had just allowed her relationship with God to move to the sidelines of her life. But not long ago, her life hit a crisis point. She found a church and began to regularly attend worship there. She’s also established a daily time of prayer and Bible and devotional reading. Ann asked this young woman, “What brought you back to God?” “I was empty inside,” she said. “I just knew that I needed God.” Saints are people who understand the emptiness of life without God and they invite the God we meet in Jesus Christ to fill their emptiness. Blessed are the empty!
Jesus also says, “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.” In these words, Jesus seems to say, "Blessed are you when you risk having others reject you because you follow Christ. You will never be rejected by God!"
Methodist bishop Will Willimon once served as dean of the chapel at Duke University. He tells about a Duke student he encouraged “to go out for rush,” joining a fraternity. Willimon explains, “He had grown up as an only child. I thought the incentive to socialize would be good for him, get him out, expose him to others. [But] That night, there had been too much alcohol, and people under the influence are sometimes people at their worst. The incident…involved a number of people. Afterwards, when a police report had been made, a secret meeting was held and everyone was asked to keep the whole thing quiet. And everyone agreed to keep quiet. Everyone but him. It’s not right, he had said to them. This isn’t what a fraternity is to be about. We’re making a wrong even worse. From that night on, he was no longer considered by them a ‘brother.’” In Jesus’ terms, he was excluded, reviled, defamed because of his relationship with Christ and his desire, despite the difficulty and pain of it, to follow Christ’s lead.
Being blessed, being a saint, doesn’t mean that we’re insulated from the pain or grief of this life.
This isn’t heaven.
This is an imperfect world in which bad things happen to even the most faithful people.
The loved ones and friends of those Saint Matthew saints who passed from this life this past year whose names we honored a short time ago can testify to that. Sometimes, in fact, the world reserves its worst treatment for people who seek to follow Christ. But Jesus, the Savior Who, the New Testament tells us, ”emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant” so that He could die and rise and secure eternity with God for all who believe in Him, brings blessings to those who dare to follow Him!
Blessed are the empty; they will be filled with God!
Blessed are those who risk rejection by others; God will never reject them!
Today, I invite you to trust, however hesitantly or incompletely, that Jesus’ words are true. Trust that you are among His saints and that You are part of His Kingdom forever.
Because you are!
Friday, October 26, 2007
Fourth Pass at Bible Lessons for November 4
[To see the first three passes at the lesson for November 4, All Saints Sunday, go here, here, and here. The first of those links explains what these "passes" are all about.]
The Gospel Lesson: Luke 6:20-31
(Verse-by-Verse Comments)
20Then he looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
(1) Contrary to our usual thinking, Jesus says that the poor are the blessed ones. Conventional Jewish thought held that the wealthy were especially blessed by God and that poverty was a sign of God's displeasure. (We tend to think the same things today.) Jesus turns that thinking on its head.
(2) The "poor" to which Jesus refers here are the absolute poorest of the world.
(3) Jesus uses the present tense here to say that the poor are now in the kingdom of God. In the beatitudes which follow, Jesus uses the future tense. Jesus seems to be making several points:
(1) The filled here in the original Greek is related to the term chortazo. That's the same word used of the prodigal son looking longingly at the pods being eaten by the pigs after he'd left his father. The same word is used of the fictional Lazarus in Jesus' parable about a poor man who would have gladly eaten the scraps from the rich man's table. Chortazo is usually used of an animal eating its feed. So, the idea here, is of a poor person, perhaps dehumanized and ignored by the world, who is desperately hungry.
Mary uses the same term in the Magnificat, the words she speaks after being told that she will give birth to the Messiah:
(3) Notice that Jesus uses the future tense to describe the blessedness here. As long as we live in this world, the possibility of suffering is with us. We aren't guaranteed that in this life we will go without hunger or intense sadness. But we are promised that if we will follow Christ, we will be part of the Kingdom of God forever. The apostle Peter writes:
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.
(1) This may be topsy-turviest of the beatitudes Jesus presents here. Don't we associate popularity with being blessed? But Jesus is saying here that if people turn on us because we follow Him we are blessed. Present tense again.
23Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.
(1) An extension of the previous verse, Jesus moves here to describe future blessedness because we steadfastly follow Christ in spite of those who hate and revile us for our faithfulness to Christ.
24“But 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 what their ancestors did to the false prophets.
(1) These woes basically reverse the blessings of the previous verses.
(2) Dictionary.com defines woe as "grievous distress, affliction, or trouble."
(3) "False prophets" are those who claim to speak in the Name of God, but overlook sins that God doesn't overlook. A prophet, whether entrusted with words of encouragement or condemnation from God, is always to deliver God's counsel to God's people. The prophet is to remind people of the consequences to their relationship with God when they are faithful and when they are unfaithful. The false prophets mentioned in the Old Testament were popular because, like pandering politicians, they always told people what they wanted to hear. The true prophets got into trouble because sometimes God tells us what we don't want to hear, such as our need to repent for our sins.
27“But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. 30Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.
(1) Here, Jesus outlines the radical ethic that flows from a dependence on the grace of God granted through Him. These words may be even more stunning than the beatitudes that precede them.
(2) I like what Brian Stoffregen says about these verses:
This is harder than we can imagine...and I pray that under the most adverse and dire of circumstances I would heed Jesus' words and be faithful to Him!
31Do to others as you would have them do to you.
(1) Jesus' Golden Rule. It describes how I want everybody else to treat me, but I always seem to have excuses for why I can't or shouldn't always behave this way. I can only pray for forgiveness for my failure to obey Jesus' command to love God and love neighbor unstintingly.
The Gospel Lesson: Luke 6:20-31
(Verse-by-Verse Comments)
20Then he looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
(1) Contrary to our usual thinking, Jesus says that the poor are the blessed ones. Conventional Jewish thought held that the wealthy were especially blessed by God and that poverty was a sign of God's displeasure. (We tend to think the same things today.) Jesus turns that thinking on its head.
(2) The "poor" to which Jesus refers here are the absolute poorest of the world.
(3) Jesus uses the present tense here to say that the poor are now in the kingdom of God. In the beatitudes which follow, Jesus uses the future tense. Jesus seems to be making several points:
- a. God's kingdom has already invaded our world. The term, kingdom of God (basileia tou theou, in the original Greek), can more accurately be called, "the reign of God." Irrespective of outward circumstances, despite intense poverty, people may live under the reign of God. There is an "already/not yet" quality to God's Kingdom. Through Jesus, God has already established His Kingdom in the hearts and lives of those who follow Christ. But we await its completion with Jesus' return at the end of history.
- b. Will the Kingdom of God be composed only of the poor? If that were the case, Abraham, the patriarch of Old Testament faith, wouldn't be in the Kingdom. Nor would Joseph of Arimethaea, who donated his tomb for Jesus' burial. Jesus is engaging here in what I would call "accurate hyperbole." As I mentioned in yesterday's pass, wealth is an impediment to faith in Christ because it can delude the wealthy person into believing themselves to be self-sufficient, in no need of God. The poor find it easier to believe that there's Someone bigger than them, Someone they need to follow.
(1) The filled here in the original Greek is related to the term chortazo. That's the same word used of the prodigal son looking longingly at the pods being eaten by the pigs after he'd left his father. The same word is used of the fictional Lazarus in Jesus' parable about a poor man who would have gladly eaten the scraps from the rich man's table. Chortazo is usually used of an animal eating its feed. So, the idea here, is of a poor person, perhaps dehumanized and ignored by the world, who is desperately hungry.
Mary uses the same term in the Magnificat, the words she speaks after being told that she will give birth to the Messiah:
...he [God] has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. [Luke 1:53](2) The word Jesus uses here for weep describes a deep, mournful, agonized wailing. The person who weeps in this way is suffering from a deep, inconsolable grief.
(3) Notice that Jesus uses the future tense to describe the blessedness here. As long as we live in this world, the possibility of suffering is with us. We aren't guaranteed that in this life we will go without hunger or intense sadness. But we are promised that if we will follow Christ, we will be part of the Kingdom of God forever. The apostle Peter writes:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.(Peter goes on to suggest that some trials may be allowed to come our way by God as a way of increasing the strength of our faith. This is a tough idea for us to accept. Tough for me to accept.)
In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials...[1 Peter 1:3-6]
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.
(1) This may be topsy-turviest of the beatitudes Jesus presents here. Don't we associate popularity with being blessed? But Jesus is saying here that if people turn on us because we follow Him we are blessed. Present tense again.
23Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.
(1) An extension of the previous verse, Jesus moves here to describe future blessedness because we steadfastly follow Christ in spite of those who hate and revile us for our faithfulness to Christ.
24“But 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 what their ancestors did to the false prophets.
(1) These woes basically reverse the blessings of the previous verses.
(2) Dictionary.com defines woe as "grievous distress, affliction, or trouble."
(3) "False prophets" are those who claim to speak in the Name of God, but overlook sins that God doesn't overlook. A prophet, whether entrusted with words of encouragement or condemnation from God, is always to deliver God's counsel to God's people. The prophet is to remind people of the consequences to their relationship with God when they are faithful and when they are unfaithful. The false prophets mentioned in the Old Testament were popular because, like pandering politicians, they always told people what they wanted to hear. The true prophets got into trouble because sometimes God tells us what we don't want to hear, such as our need to repent for our sins.
27“But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. 30Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.
(1) Here, Jesus outlines the radical ethic that flows from a dependence on the grace of God granted through Him. These words may be even more stunning than the beatitudes that precede them.
(2) I like what Brian Stoffregen says about these verses:
I think that the theme...is that we are not to let others determine our actions. As Jesus' disciples we are to love, do good, speak well of, and pray--regardless of how others treat us. [When I let bullies speak ill of me or act unkindly toward me] I am not letting them control my life...This, of course, is precisely what Jesus did when He went to the cross.
This is harder than we can imagine...and I pray that under the most adverse and dire of circumstances I would heed Jesus' words and be faithful to Him!
31Do to others as you would have them do to you.
(1) Jesus' Golden Rule. It describes how I want everybody else to treat me, but I always seem to have excuses for why I can't or shouldn't always behave this way. I can only pray for forgiveness for my failure to obey Jesus' command to love God and love neighbor unstintingly.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Third Pass at the November 4 Bible Lessons
[To learn what these "passes" are about and to read the first one, go here. To see the second pass, look here.]
The Gospel Lesson: Luke 6:20-31
General Comments:
1. Of all the Gospels, Luke is the one that most underscores the topsy-turvy, countercultural realities of the Kingdom of God. We see this early on, for example, in the Magnificat, the song of Mary, spoken after the angel tells her that she will give birth to the long-awaited King and Savior. In the Gospel lesson for November 4, Jesus tells us that the "blessed" include the poor, the hungry, the sorrowful, and those hated and rejected "because of the Son of Man." (Jesus characteristically refers to Himself as "the Son of Man.") Only those living under the reign of God would dare to see these conditions as signs of God's favor or blessing.
2. As Lutheran pastor Brian Stoffregen points out, Jesus uses the word makarios, blessed, in a completely different--and subversive--way than it had been used previously. Stoffregen traces the history of the term in the Greek language:
4. In this lesson, Jesus seems to be addressing three audiences: the apostles, the disciples, and the "multitudes," the crowd. The crowd is composed of people who haven't yet begun to follow Jesus. While followers of Jesus are committed to growing up in their faith, the message of the Gospel is the same for everyone.
5. This passage has a lot in common with the Sermon on the Mount. Some insist that this is an entirely different "sermon." (Luke never uses that term to describe it, by the way.) Others that this is essentially the same bit of teaching from Jesus, only seen through the prism of Luke.
Who knows? But the Church, inspired by the Holy Spirit, sees the Word of God in both sermons from Matthew and Luke. I think that as we read both passages, we too experience them as the world-changing, subversive Word of God.
Comparing the two of them:
The Gospel Lesson: Luke 6:20-31
General Comments:
1. Of all the Gospels, Luke is the one that most underscores the topsy-turvy, countercultural realities of the Kingdom of God. We see this early on, for example, in the Magnificat, the song of Mary, spoken after the angel tells her that she will give birth to the long-awaited King and Savior. In the Gospel lesson for November 4, Jesus tells us that the "blessed" include the poor, the hungry, the sorrowful, and those hated and rejected "because of the Son of Man." (Jesus characteristically refers to Himself as "the Son of Man.") Only those living under the reign of God would dare to see these conditions as signs of God's favor or blessing.
2. As Lutheran pastor Brian Stoffregen points out, Jesus uses the word makarios, blessed, in a completely different--and subversive--way than it had been used previously. Stoffregen traces the history of the term in the Greek language:
The Greek word for "blessed" used in our text is _makarios_. In3. As I often point out in these passes, context effects content. Within the context of Luke's Gospel, this lesson comes immediately after Jesus calls the Twelve--the apostles, for their special function in His fledgling Church. It's important to realize that, as Luke tells it, "apostles" (the word means "sent ones") are disciples are with a particular function. They're called to lead the Church and to direct its efforts at fulfilling Christ's mission for the Church.
ancient Greek times, that word referred to the gods. They had achieved
a state of happiness and contentment in life that was beyond all
cares, labors, and even death. To be blessed, you had to be a god,
living in some other world.
That word took on a second meaning. It referred to the "dead". The
blessed ones were humans, who, through death, had reached the other
world of the gods. They were now beyond the cares of earthly life. To
be blessed, you had to be dead.
Finally, in Greek usage, the word came to refer to the elite, the
upper crust of society, the wealthy people. It referred to people
whose riches and power put them above the normal cares and worries of
the lesser folk -- the peons, who constantly struggle and worry and
labor in life. To be blessed, you had to be very rich and powerful.
When this word was used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament,
it took on another meaning: It referred to the results of right living
or righteousness. If you lived right, you were blessed. Being blessed
meant you received earthly, material things: a good wife, many
children, abundant crops, riches, honor, wisdom, beauty, good health,
etc. A blessed person had more things and better things than an
ordinary person. To be blessed, you had to have big and beautiful
things.
In all of these meanings, the "blessed" ones existed on a higher plane
than the rest of the people. They were gods. They were humans who had
gone to that other world of the gods. They were the wealthy, upper
crust. They were those with many possessions.
Jesus uses this word in a totally different way. It is not the elite
who are blessed. It is not the rich and powerful who are blessed. It
is not the high and mighty who are blessed. It is not the people
living in huge mansions or expensive penthouses who are blessed.
Rather, Jesus pronounces God's blessings on the lowly: the poor, the
hungry, the crying, and the hated. Throughout the history of this
word, it had always been the other people who were considered blessed:
the rich, the filled up, the laughing. Jesus turns it all upside-down.
The elite in God's kingdom, the blessed ones in God's kingdom, are
those who are at the bottom of the heap of humanity.
4. In this lesson, Jesus seems to be addressing three audiences: the apostles, the disciples, and the "multitudes," the crowd. The crowd is composed of people who haven't yet begun to follow Jesus. While followers of Jesus are committed to growing up in their faith, the message of the Gospel is the same for everyone.
5. This passage has a lot in common with the Sermon on the Mount. Some insist that this is an entirely different "sermon." (Luke never uses that term to describe it, by the way.) Others that this is essentially the same bit of teaching from Jesus, only seen through the prism of Luke.
Who knows? But the Church, inspired by the Holy Spirit, sees the Word of God in both sermons from Matthew and Luke. I think that as we read both passages, we too experience them as the world-changing, subversive Word of God.
Comparing the two of them:
- The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, occurs, obviously, on an elevated place. The audience is made up of the Twelve, the group Matthew means when he speaks of "the disciples." In Matthew, Jesus and the Twelve retire from the crowds.
- Guess where the Sermon on the Plain, of which our lesson in Luke is a part, happens? As Eliza Doolittle would say, "On the plain." The audience, as noted above, is composed not just of the Twelve (the apostles), but also other disciples and an interested multitude.
- In the Sermon on the Mount, the "poor" who are called blessed are those who are "poor in spirit." In our lesson from Luke, the desperately poor are described as blessed. Why? Probably because they're empty enough of the pretense of self-sufficiency to know that they need God. The rich and that includes most, if not all, who may have the access to technology to read this blog, have just enough of the stuff of this world to think that they don't need God. (See here.)
[The Luke passage] is clearly addressing the poor and the despised of the earth in the literal sense of those words, not the "poor in spirit" or "those who hunger and thirst for righteousness," as in Matthew (Matt. 5:3, 6)...7. The beatitudes of this lesson are followed by what I would call an explanation or expansion of what Jesus shares in 6:20-26. I like what Stoffregen writes:
With the blessings and woes [in vv.20-26], Jesus announces the reversal of fortunes that God is going to bring about. With these verses [vv.27-31], Jesus announces a reversal that is to be part of the lives of those who are listening to him.If I get the chance, tomorrow or soon, I'll present verse-by-verse reflections on this lesson, the text on which I'll be basing my sermon at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan on November 1.
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