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!
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