- Sermon - Mickey Anders

Text: Luke 6:17-26

A friend once came to Harold Kushner, author of the book, Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, and said to him:

"Two weeks ago, for the first time in my life I went to the funeral of a man my own age. I didn't know him well, but we worked together, talked to each other from time to time, had kids about the same age. He died suddenly over the weekend. A bunch of us went to the funeral, each of us thinking, 'It could just as easily have been me.'

"That was two weeks ago. They have already replaced him at the office. I hear his wife is moving out of state to live with her parents. Two weeks ago he was working fifty feet away from me, and now it's as if he never existed.

"It's like a rock falling into a pool of water. For a few seconds, it makes ripples in the water, and then the water is the same as it was before, but the rock isn't there anymore.

"Rabbi, I've hardly slept at all since then. I can't stop thinking that it could happen to me, that one day it will happen to me, and a few days later I will be forgotten as if I had never lived. Shouldn't a person's life be more than that?" (1)

This man had just experienced a wake up call! For all of us, there are times like that when life hits us on the head, when we are brought up short, and we are left thinking disturbing questions like, "Shouldn't a person's life be more than that?"

Today's Scripture gives us what may be an unwelcome answer to that question about what a person's life should be. The Beatitudes will hit us on the head!

Most of us are very familiar with the Beatitudes, but it is Matthew's version that is most often studied. When we look closely at Luke's version, I think are shocked and disturbed. We are so used to hearing Matthew's phrases, "Blessed are the poor in spirit… Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness," that we are shocked by Luke's abbreviated versions: "Blessed are the poor… Blessed are the hungry…" It is no wonder we all prefer Matthew's version.

And Luke's version presents woe's as well as blessings, and he does so in four tight parallels.

Blessed are the poor...but woe to the rich.

Blessed are the hungry...but woe to those who are full.

Blessed are the weeping...but woe to those that laugh.

Blessed are the rejected...but woe to those who are accepted.

Luke's version makes us uncomfortable because this view of the world is in stark contrast to ours. We say, "Be rich, be happy, be self-confident, and be satisfied." Jesus says, "Be poor, be hungry, be grieving, be persecuted." Here are two kingdoms in conflict, with the disciples and us caught in the middle. Jesus turns our values upside-down.

In Phillip Yancey's book The Jesus I Never Knew, he suggested that the Beatitudes apply on at least three levels: dangled promises, the great reversal, and a psychological reality. His analysis is one of the best I ever read on the Beatitudes, and I want to borrow his outline and a couple of his stories.

The first understanding is "dangled promises."

Many people think that Jesus' was merely throwing a sop to the unfortunates. Jesus was telling them, "Well, since you aren't rich, and your health is failing, and your face is wet with tears, I'll toss out a few nice phrases to make you feel better. Listen, you may have it tough in this world, but you'll have pie in the sky by and by."

Jesus once said, "The poor you shall have with you always." Some of us think that relieves us of the burden to care for the less fortunate. We can assume that we don't have to help the poor because they will get their reward in heaven.

The idea of heaven endorses our gut feelings about justice - that there has to be a righting of earth's wrongs in heaven. It may be one of the most important reasons for believing in an afterlife. Hitler will get his due punishment. Slaves will get a divine freedom. Many injustices remain for a lifetime on this earth, but God will adjust the scales in heaven.

It is a message that the African slaves in the old South heard and understood. This conviction of future reward led them to sing songs such as these:

"Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home."

"When I get to heaven, goin' to put on my robe, goin' to shout all over God's heaven."

In the future, the rewards of heaven will offset the injustices of this world. C.S. Lewis wrote, "Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea." (2)

To people who are trapped in pain, in broken homes, in economic chaos, in hatred and fear, in violence - to these, Jesus offers a promise of a time, far longer and more substantial than this time on earth, of health and wholeness and pleasure and peace. It will be a time of reward, of pie in the sky by and by.

The second understanding is the great reversal.

When we carefully study the point of view of Luke, we find him proclaiming that the Kingdom of God brings a great reversal.

In the Magnificat, he has Mary proclaim, "He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty."

In Jesus' first sermon, he quotes Isaiah saying, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor."

When we study Luke 16, we will find the story of the rich man and Lazarus. When they both die, their fortunes are reversed though no virtue of their own. Lazarus enjoys the bounty of heaven because he had known only the scraps from the rich man's table on earth.

Throughout Luke's writings we find a radical gospel which represents a dramatic reversal of fortunes for the poor and the rich. It is a message we do not like, but we must hear it.

God's kingdom turns the tables upside down. The Beatitudes describe a truth about the present as well as the future, and it calls into question our normal attitudes about life.

If we were to write the Beatitudes according to the world's standards, it would look something like this:

Happy are those who appear on American Idol; for they shall be famous.

Happy are the famous; for they shall be admired.

Happy are the subjects of the tabloids; for they shall translate fame into wealth.

Happy are the CEO's; for they shall earn millions in golden parachutes.

Happy are the lottery winners; for they shall achieve instant wealth.

Happy are those who complain the loudest; for they shall get their way.

Happy are those who die with the most toys; for they are the real winners.

We are all tempted to believe the hype of modern media - How blessed are the rich and famous! The owner of the Chicago Bulls gave a compact summary of the rules governing the visible world on the occasion of Michael Jordan's temporary retirement. "He's living the American dream," said Jerry Reinsdort. "The American Dream is to reach a point in your life where you don't have to do anything you don't want to do and can do everything that you do want to do." (3)

But the Bible calls this notion into question. Remember the man who spoke to his rabbi and asked, "Shouldn't a person's life be more than that?"

Jesus was never impressed with the powerful and famous people of his day. Instead he was impressed with a widow who placed her last two cents in the offering plate, with a outcast tax collector named Zacchaeus who was so riddled with guilt that he climbed a tree to get a better view of Jesus, with a woman with a string of five failed marriages, with a blind beggar, with a man with leprosy. And his heart was broken over the rich, young ruler who could not leave his possessions and follow Jesus.

Jesus wisdom is the opposite of "Blessed are the famous, the CEO's, the lottery winners." Instead he says, "Blessed are the poor for theirs is the kingdom of God."

The early Christians were known for their radical commitment to the ways of Jesus. They sold their possessions and shared what they had so that nobody went hungry. In Acts 17: 6, some opponents of the early Christians said, "These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also…"

Finally, the Beatitudes represent a psychological reality.

Not only did Jesus offer a promise of ultimate rewards in heaven that will right wrongs and balance the scales, not only did he turn the tables on our success-addicted society; he also set forth a plain formula of psychological truth. The people we admire, strive to emulate, and feature on the covers of popular magazines are not the fulfilled, happy, balanced persons we might imagine.

Anna Nicole Smith died this week at 39 years of age. She was an American icon, and the major news organizations interrupted their regular programming to give hours to coverage of her death. Someone has said, correctly I think, that she was famous because she was famous. She had no skills whatsoever, but she had more money than she knew what to do with. And yet, she seemed to be a miserably unhappy woman. She appeared to be on drugs in many public appearances. Her twenty-year old son died of a drug overdose two days after the birth of her baby, and now that baby is left without a mother. Three men are in the courts claiming to be the father of the baby.

How many times has her story been repeated by other famous people? And I ask you, "Does fame and money bring happiness? Is that really the secret to life?"

Philip Yancey says that his work as a writer led to many interviews with the "stars" of popular culture - NFL football greats, movie actors, music performers, best-selling authors, politicians, and TV personalities. They are the people who dominate our media. We fawn over them, poring over the minutiae of their lives: the clothes they wear, the food they eat, the aerobic routines they follow, the people they love, the toothpaste they use. But Yancey concludes, "I must tell you that, in my limited experience, I have found… (that) our idols are as miserable a group of people as I have ever met. Most have troubled or broken marriages. Nearly all are incurably dependent on psychotherapy."

Yancey says he has also interviewed people he calls "servants" - Doctors and nurses who work among leprosy patients in rural India. A Princeton graduate who runs a hotel for the homeless in Chicago. Health workers who have left high-paying jobs to serve in a backwater town of Mississippi. Relief workers in places like Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Bangladesh.

When he compared the two groups side by side, the poor servants clearly emerge as the favored ones, the graced ones. "Without question," he says, "I would rather spend time among the servants than among the stars: they possess qualities of depth and richness and even joy that I have not found elsewhere. Servants work for low pay, long hours, and no applause… among the poor and uneducated. Somehow, though, in the process of losing their lives they find them."

The Beatitudes remind us that we are not saved by our bank accounts, our reputations, graduate degrees, achievements of our children, the success of our spouse, the connections we have, the books we read, the cars we drive, or the jeans we wear. Nothing this world offers as a key to value and self-worth provides anything but illusion, fraud, and empty living.

A writer named Susan Taylor tells of lessons learned from experiencing a California earthquake. She was in bed in the early hours of the morning when an earthquake struck. As her house shook, she tumbled from her bed, and managed to stand underneath an arched doorway in her hall. She watched in horror as her whole home literally tumbled down around her. She lost everything -- every button, every dish, her automobile, every stitch of clothing.

Susan huddled, scared and crying, in the darkness of her house. As exhaustion set in, she thought that maybe she should be listening for rescuers rather than calling out. She grew still and listened. In the silence around her, the only sound she heard was the beating of her own heart.

It occurred to her then that at least she was still alive! She was unhurt except for cuts and bruises. She may have lost everything else, but not her life! As she thought about her situation, she was flooded with a feeling of indescribable peace and happiness, the likes of which she had never known. That experience was to permanently change her.

Later, she heard sirens and voices of people calling out to her. They had found her. And this is what she says: "Before the quake I had all the trappings of success, but my life was out of balance. I wasn't happy because I was clinging to things in my life and always wanting more. My home, my job, my clothes, a relationship -- I thought they were my security. It took an earthquake and losing everything I owned for me to discover that my security had been with me all along."

She adds, "There's a power within us that we can depend upon no matter what is happening around us. Now, each day of my life I take time to sit in silence and allow God to be God in me."

It's as if life sometimes has to hit us over the head to get our attention! But when we realize where to find true security, then we know also where to find peace. (4)

Endnotes:

1) Kushner, Harold. When All You've Ever Wanted Isn't Enough, p. 20

2) Yancey, Phillip. What's So Amazing About Grace.

3) Ibid

4) http://pluto.matrix49.com/15635/?subpages/c1111907.shtml, Retrieved 2/6/07.