February 16, 2015, The Blessing and the Curse, Luke 6:17-26 – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ February 16, 2025 ♦ 1 Comment

No recording is available for this sermon.
What is the “Good Life”? What were the basic things your parents hoped and prayed for you, as you went out into the world all those years ago? What are the things you hope and pray for now, for the young people you care about – your children or grandchildren, your nieces or nephews?

If we’re honest, financial security is pretty high on the list. How much of the blood, sweat and tears of our young adulthood was spent on finding jobs or studying for a career or just keeping our heads above water – or a combination of all of that – to achieve a certain level of financial stability? So of course, you want your child to be wise about their finances, too. You warn them not to take out huge student loans or credit card debt. You tell them to work for what they want, so they can avoid debt and put a little money aside for the future. Avoiding poverty is pretty basic for the Good Life.

And that is because the Good Life means, first of all, having our basic needs met – food, clothing, a roof over our heads. And then we tend to throw in other things that are sort of essential: cars, vacations, cool technology. But the truth is, human beings do have basic needs, and as painful as it is to go without those things as an individual, it is even more terrible if we aren’t able to provide those basic things for our family. It is a terrible thing to see your child go hungry. It is a terrible thing not to be able to provide a place for them to live, or adequate medical care.

Everyone, at the most basic level, wants to be happy. And the Good Life means choosing those things that we think will make us happy – the person we marry, the place where we settle down, the work we do, the things we surround ourselves with. And in the end, what we want most for our children, too, is for them to be happy. They might make really different choices than you would have chosen for them. But the bottom line is generally that if you see that your son’s or your daughter’s choices, of education or career or marriage have truly made them happy, you’re OK with that. We say that to them: “We just want you to be happy.” And mostly, we mean it.

And finally, for the Good Life we all have a deep-seated desire for people to think well of us. That becomes abundantly clear when we have a family – we really want other people to recognize how excellent they are – our son, daughter, niece, nephew, grandchild – we want others to see how great they’re turning out, how hard they work, how creative and talented and smart and kind they are. We treasure in our hearts every word of praise we hear people speak about our kid. And if we are honest, we desire that kind of affirmation for ourselves as well.

Jesus’ beatitudes include poverty, hunger, grief, hatred and rejection – if we throw in life-threatening illnesses, that makes a pretty all-inclusive list of what is not the Good Life – everything our parents hoped and prayed would never happen to us, everything we worked so hard and planned so carefully so that it wouldn’t happen to us or to any of the people we love and care about. And that is why we should really sit up and take notice when we hear what Jesus has to say today. Because he seems to be saying that the very things we avoid at all cost, the very things we hope our children will never suffer – poverty, hunger, sorrow, hate – Jesus seems to be saying that these are qualities that belong to the people he calls “Blessed” or “Happy”.

“Happy are you, you poor people. Happy are you, you hungry people. Happy are you people who are sad, who are weeping. Happy are you, you who are the butt of everyone’s jokes. Happy are you when people hate you, and spread rumors about you.”

Is Jesus crazy? Or is he just so spiritual that he is out of touch with reality? Or is it just some kind of spiritual metaphor? What is he really saying here?

I think one of the most harmful ways people have misunderstood the beatitudes is to think that Jesus is saying that there is something inherently noble about suffering. If a person’s life really sucks here on earth, if everything turns against them, and they never catch a break, then they get some kind of extra spiritual brownie points that will pay off big some day, when they get to heaven. It’s kind of easy to see why people might think that’s exactly what he is saying. Blessed are those who are poor now, because later, they get the kingdom of God. Bingo! Blessed are those who are hungry now, because they will be filled up. Some day. Blessed are those who weep now, because they will laugh. Eventually. It’s a blessing when people are hated and rejected and mocked, because they’re going to get a big reward in heaven.”

But there are at least two huge problems with understanding Jesus this way. First of all, it is entirely hypocritical. If a life of pain and misery leads to God’s blessing in the end, none of us should be hoping and praying that we and our children will have Good Lives, free of poverty, and free of want, and free of sorrow (as much as possible), and free of being mistreated. But of course we do hope those things, because we love our kids, with all our heart and soul and mind and strength. Of course, we want good things for them, as well as for ourselves. We dare not claim otherwise.

But the other, and even bigger problem with this understanding is that Jesus would never talk like that. Can we really believe that he looked out over that crowd and told them, “I see you, tired and sick and dressed in rags. I hear your children crying out because their bellies ache with hunger. I see the tears on your faces. I’ve seen the way people curse you and spit at you and throw stones at you to get you to move along and stop cluttering the streets of their villages. And I’m here to tell you, it’s all OK. Just you wait. When you get to heaven, believe me, it’s all going to be great.”

We know enough about Jesus to know that doesn’t sounds anything like Jesus. Jesus touched lepers, with their oozing sores. He ate lunch with nasty little tax collectors and notorious women. When his disciples shooed away a bunch of snot-nosed kids, Jesus called them back. He healed the blind and the deaf and the demon-possessed. Nobody was beneath his notice; no one was beyond his healing touch. Nobody was a hopeless case. Nobody was beneath the notice of the kingdom. When his kingdom broke in to this world, it broke in among these very people, and it blessed them: in their sickness, in their poverty, in their hunger, in their sadness, in their shame.

And“power came out of Jesus and healed all of them.” The sick and the demon-possessed; the poor, the hungry, the sorrowing, the reviled and rejected – they were all blessed, every one of them. But they weren’t blessed because they were miserable. They were blessed because of who Jesus is. Jesus found them in their need. And that was the way to the Good Life.

But then Jesus continued: To some of the people in that crowd, Jesus called out a warning instead of a blessing. “Woe to you who are rich now, for you have already received your consolation,” he told them. “Woe to you who are already full, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you; the false prophets received the same treatment.”

The poor, the sick, the hopeless, the despised – by their very hopelessness and neediness they were ready at once to receive Jesus. But those who had no need received no blessing. Healing is a gift for the sick, not for the healthy. Those who have filled their own bellies don’t need to be fed. And here is where we need to be very careful to listen to Jesus’ warning – here, today, in this affluent, well-insured, comfortable society of ours. We have been brought up to consider self-sufficiency one of the very highest virtues. We have been taught from a very young age to fear poverty and to be ashamed or afraid to admit how needy and helpless we really are.

Most of us here have arrived at some version of the Good Life we worked so hard to achieve. Happy and blessed are we when we admit that in reality, we are all still hopeless cases. Only then can we come to Jesus in our poverty. Only then can we be healed. Only then can we be blessed.

It isn’t wrong to pray and hope and work for good things for ourselves and our children. But we need to hear Jesus’ warning: it is possible for us to be blinded by our security and our comfort and the approval of the world.

It is possible for us to fill our lives, and the lives of our children, with so much of the happiness that the world offers, that we have no room left for the happiness Jesus has for us.

It is possible that in seeking the Good we could miss out on Life.

Blessed and happy are we if we remember these things. +