SERMON PREACHED BY
THE REVEREND NATHAN A. RUGH, CURATE
CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH,
PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
ON THE SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY
11 FEBRUARY 2007

 

 

Well, right off the bat let's get something out of the way. Jesus is NOT saying that rich people are bad and that poor people are good. Here in the Beatitudes and Woes, Jesus is not making a moral judgment. He is not saying that wealth makes one evil and therefore that one has something to fear from God's retribution. Jesus is not being a Marxist here. Nor, is he saying that it is wrong to be joyful. And he is not advocating being jerk so that everyone reviles you.

 

Instead, Jesus is asking the disciples to become vulnerable and open. In order to see what I mean let's turn to the story. We are coming off of last week's Gospel reading where Jesus has called Peter, James and John to become his disciples. Since then and leading up to today's reading, he has been healing and teaching. And Jesus has called other disciples too and after going up on top of a mountain to pray Jesus has chosen twelve of those disciples to be his apostles. It is after the selection of these twelve that Jesus is coming down from the mountain with his disciples in tow.

 

And a huge number of people have come to be healed and taught and so we are given this picture of Jesus being surrounded by people. First, there are his disciples and then this greater crowd from all over the region who are following him curiously.

 

And then he turns to his disciples and begins to speak to them. The text says, "Then he looked up at his disciples and said." It is important that we hear that he is turning to talk to the ones who have been called to follow him and it is to them that he says Blessed and Woe. He is not speaking to everybody, but he is talking to his disciples in such a way that he is being overheard by everybody. It is in the context of being overheard by the world that he speaks to his followers.

 

What he gives to them is something outrageous and ridiculous. In speaking to his disciples, Jesus emphasizes the concrete particulars of life. He is talking about economic wealth and poverty. He is talking about physical hunger. He is talking about emotional grief and joy and social rejection and acceptance. But Jesus is not talking in these terms because they are the only things that matter. Jesus is not advocating a social program. Instead, these very particulars of life are addressed because they are basic and central to our existence. In proclaiming in the way that he does, Jesus wants his audience to know that God is intimately involved in all of these concrete particulars. Seen in the light of what else has been said in this Gospel up until this point, Jesus is saying that God will decisively act and out of that action there will be a tremendous reversal of fortune. Jesus is talking about the triumphant salvation of God that is coming and is even now bursting into our world. His proclamation to the disciples is about how God is going to put this world's order on its head. And he does this in a way for the world to overhear.

 

But for the disciples to truly get what Jesus is talking about, he gives them one oxymoron after another in order to shock them out of their preconceived notions and to break them out of the worldview that enslaves them.

 

I say oxymoron because what Jesus has to say makes no sense. How can we talk and think about the world in a way that glorifies poverty and hunger? We simply cannot. Not if we are going to take these things seriously. How can we talk about depression and grief as good things? We cannot say to someone whose whole world is covered in darkness that in all actuality that darkness is really light. I do not think that we should hear Jesus as saying that.

 

Rather, Jesus is handing us verbal grenade that is meant to blow up our worldview.

 

Jesus gives us these beatitudes and woes to help us throw off the shackles that this world has clamped on us. These words are meant to help us overcome the fear that this world loves to cultivate in us. The salvation that God is bringing about is so absurd that poverty and hunger and grief are to be seen as good things. Jesus is trying to show us that what we call bad and good are relative in the ultimate and absolute light of God's coming action. Moreover, the world to come is not a maintaining of the current order, but is instead a transformation where those who have been low are being lifted up.

 

So, the disciples are asked to live into this seemingly oxymoronic worldview that Jesus is presenting to them. Instead, of following and relying on common sense, Jesus is asking them to walk out onto the limb of God's coming kingdom and risk. These beatitudes are an invitation to be vulnerable and to be radically available to the world.

 

These woes are meant as a reminder that when we fail to risk, when we hide behind the world's assurances of what is good, then we are failing to live into the call of who we were meant to be. By hiding behind our comfort in this age, we fail to show forth the age to come, the age to come that has already been ushered in now.

 

In the already and not yet quality of God's kingdom, we are meant to recognize that we have much to lose if we should hide. Jesus calls his disciples out to risk and be vulnerable. Jesus looks to shatter the worldview that makes might, wealth, and social status right and elevates the coming of God's action on behalf of the lost and the least. The people of the world are gathered, as they were gathered the day Jesus pronounced these words to see if we will risk for their sake. They long to know whether there is a community that is willing to risk in living out God's outrageous dream.

 

I pray that there are such communities and that we are given the grace to live out just such a call.

 

Amen