Blessing and Challenge on the Plain

February 16, 2025 - The Sixth Sunday after Epiphany

Grace to you and peace from our Creator God and from Christ Jesus, who invites us to be willing vessels for the healing of the world. Amen.

Some of you have encountered Eugene Peterson's remarkable paraphrase of the Bible entitled The Message. This excerpt is Peterson's paraphrase of Luke 6 from our Gospel this morning. It reads:

You're blessed when you've lost it all. God's kingdom is there for the finding.

You're blessed when you're ravenously hungry. Then you're ready for the messianic meal.

You're blessed when the tears flow freely. Joy comes with the morning.

But it's trouble ahead if you think you have it made. What you have is all you'll ever get.

The Gospel of the Lord.

My sisters and brothers, blessed are those who hunger this day for the Lord with love and a spirit of sacrifice, and blessed are those who act for the kingdom's coming on earth as it is in heaven. Jesus teaches that now is the day of blessing, or of curse... of conversion of heart, or of hardened heart.

Now is the time to choose. Now is the time of salvation. In Luke's version of Jesus' great sermon, we are told that following the Lord is done every day, or it is not well done on any day.

Jesus teaches that the kingdom's coming on earth as it is in heaven. So, blessed are the poor, blessed are those who hunger now, who weep now, who are hated now, and woe to you who are rich now, who are full now, who laugh now.

Again, from Peterson's paraphrase, it's trouble ahead if you think you have it made. What you have is all you'll ever get. And so, we must choose, conversion of heart or hardening of heart. The gospel couldn't be more clear. Now is the time of salvation, this day, every day.

So, friends, and this is my question almost every Sunday, how then shall we live?

Rabbi Arthur Waskow wrote, "The choice we face is broader than politics, deeper than charity. It is whether we see the world chiefly as property to be controlled, defined by walls and fences that must be built ever higher, ever thicker, ever tougher, or whether we see the world as made up chiefly of an open weave of compassion and connection." That open weave of compassion and connection evokes our calling to be pure capacity for God, receptive, open vessels for the healing of creation, making manifest a holy potential. "The essential thing is not what we say," Mother Teresa wrote, "but what God says to us and through us."

Woe to you who are rich now, full now, laughing now. Woe to you when everyone speaks favorably of you. That is, woe to you if you reside in your smug complacency. But you have choices to make. Do you perceive that you have a calling to employ your gifts to make manifest what God would work through you for the healing of creation itself? Do you perceive the impulse to free yourself, to be pure capacity for God's will?

Some of you know the difference between Matthew's version of the Beatitudes and Luke's. Matthew's version, not today's gospel, but Matthew's version of the Beatitudes, which is literally the blessings, comes from what is called the Sermon on the Mount, which begins in Matthew chapter five. Matthew presents Jesus as a new kind of Moses, so he sets his version of the sermon up the mount. Just as Moses received the Torah on Mount Sinai, Jesus' sermon is on the mount. But in our version this morning, and perhaps you noted this subtle difference, Luke presents his sermon from Jesus on the plain, on a level place, in the tradition of the prophets, in the tradition of Jeremiah, down among the people in the knit and grit of every day life.

Evoking Ezekiel's valley of dry bones, down and dirty, the place where God restores life. Jesus walks and heals and teaches in the valley and on the plain, meeting us exactly where we are. And Jesus comes among us, offering a map of blessing and woe. An orientation of how the world actually works despite its appearances. It's as if he's saying, let me give you the lay of the land. As you look around, it looks like the rich and the well-fed and the happy and the admired have it made. That God's blessing belongs to them. And that the rest of us, poor, hungry, sad, excluded, are left out in the cold. That God's forgotten us.

But I've come to tell you that the opposite is true. The dawning kingdom of God belongs to you. And when heaven comes down to earth, as it now has begun to do, you will have places of highest honor. It's hope-filled good news, right? Unless we are the rich and the well-fed and the happy and or the admired... look around, will this be as good as it gets?

And as we sojourn through the woes, from our distraction to our arrogance to missed opportunities for generosity, Jesus is crystal clear that riches and worldly prestige are major obstacles to participating in God's dawning realm. In the Gospel of Jesus Christ, these woes, however, function as exhortations, not condemnations. Woe to you if you stay there, if you remain there. Woe to you in your complacency, in your distraction, in your failure to pay attention. Woe to you because you are challenged as the rich and the prestigious to change your ways and reorder your priorities and join the movement.

You've heard it said that it's harder for a rich man to get into the kingdom of God than for a camel to get through the eye of a needle. It may be camel through the eye of a needle difficult for a rich person to enter God's kingdom, but later in the Gospel, Jesus puts it this way: "What is impossible for mortals is possible for God." Again, open yourself to that open weave of compassion and connection. Don't close it in, don't build the walls higher and tougher and stronger. It's never too late to get on board. It's never too late to reorder our priorities.

So going back to the Rabbi's reflection, quit building walls and fences around your property, ever higher, ever thicker, ever tougher. We're enjoined to see the world as an open weave, an open weave of compassion, an open weave of connection one to another. And we can embrace a holy calling to be vessels for the healing of creation, making manifest the holy capacity to bear God to the world.

In actuality, in this gospel today, Jesus encourages the rich and the well-fed and the happy and the admired to be in solidarity with the poor and the hungry and the mourning and the outcast, to become potential instruments and channels of divine blessing, simply to live a more generous and just life.

And we do understand the choice before us. Even within this congregation, we make manifest the very love of God in volunteering at the Pullman Pantry and joining the We Care "Sit on the Island" and participating in the Ward One Scholarship Initiative, in offering to provide a ride or bring food to those who need desperately community, taking yet the need to simply be with one, to be present with one who could use a friend.

There are times when it is right to be challenged in our smug complacency, for we have been called to be a blessing, one to another, making love, the very love of God, manifest in our lives.

Closing excerpt from the writings of Toni Morrison, from her Paradise, formatted as a poem. Listen to it as Morrison suggests, "God carefully," God carefully.

She wrote, "Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy, you are a fool. If you think it is natural, you are blind. Love is a learned application without reason or motive, except that it is God. You do not deserve love regardless of the suffering you have endured. You do not deserve love because somebody did you wrong. You do not deserve love just because you want it. You can only earn by practice and careful contemplations the right to express it, and you have to learn how to accept it. Which is to say, you have to earn God. You have to practice God. You have to think God carefully. And if you are a good and diligent student, you may secure the right to show love. Love is not a gift, it is a diploma.”

My sisters and brothers, our lives are complicated. To the extent that we find ourselves in need or in despair or left out, Jesus brings us words of blessing and encouragement. And to the extent that we find ourselves in prosperity or satisfaction or privilege, Jesus brings us a word of challenge, exhorting us to share God's blessings with our neighbors and with all of creation. And one can rightly say, they are two sides of the same gospel. Let us practice God. Let us learn to think God carefully. And let us be a blessing, one to another.

In Christ's name, Amen.