Sermon for 6th Sunday after Epiphany
We Are All Blessed
By The Rev. Eric Christopher Shafer -
Every time I am able to fix something around our home or the church, I think of my Dad. My Dad taught me to be “handy,” to know how to use basic tools and more. How patient must he have been when I was “helping” him as a small child who was probably not actually helping him very much at all!
As I thought of my Dad this week while I was putting together two Ikea desks, I also remembered the week he died. My father died on Palm Sunday some years ago, in the nursing home where he had lived for several years after my Mom could no longer care for him at home. Alzheimer’s disease had taken away his mind, but, fortunately, not his pleasant spirit. In a real sense my Dad had died several years before his actual death, the “long goodbye” those of us with loved ones suffering from dementia know so well.
Kris and I were living in Chicago when my Dad died in Pennsylvania. At that time I was not serving as a pastor of a congregation, but was on the staff of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Presiding Bishop at our church’s national office in Chicago. Somehow, I still am not certain how, but somehow the pastor of the congregation where Kris and I were members learned of my Dad’s death. She called me at home that week and said, “Can my husband and I come by for a visit?” Of course, I said yes.
By the way, my pastor was the Rev. Corrine Chilstrom and her husband was my boss, the Presiding Bishop of our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Rev. Dr. Herbert Chilstrom. Corrine and Herb arrived at our home shortly after her call. Herb and I talked and prayed but mostly we told stories about our Dads. And we wept together.
“Blessed are those who weep now, for you will laugh again.”
Today’s Gospel lesson from St. Luke, called Jesus' "Sermon on the Plain," begins the same way the Gospel of Luke as a whole begins, by painting a picture of a world turned upside down. At the start of his ministry, when Jesus read from Isaiah in his hometown synagogue, Jesus promised that the poor would receive good news, the captives would be released, and that the blind would see. The crowd turned pretty ugly that day. But here on the plain, this is a different day and a different crowd. The great multitude gathered around Jesus are exactly the kind of people Jesus came to proclaim favored by God. And here is Jesus, not high on some mountain talking down to them, as he does in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, but Jesus is right there among them and in the midst of them.
As a matter of fact, Jesus might even be below them. One very interesting detail in this passage is that even as Jesus is busy healing the crowd's diseases, Jesus literally has to "look up" to see his disciples before he can teach them. Are they somehow above him? Have they removed themselves from the seething mass of suffering? Is this why Jesus has to make sure that they really take notice of these poor, sad, discarded folk? "Don't you realize these are the blessed of God," he seems to say, "This is where we should focus our attention because it is these people who have God's attention. God sees them even when no one else does."
To be blessed, after all, is to know that you have God's attention. To know that wherever you go, you will not be alone. To be blessed is to know that you are valued and important simply because God has made you priceless. And suddenly the separation between the disciples and the crowd is removed. Everyone is connected because the only possession anyone really has is the blessing of God. Even while you are still weeping and mourning, you can be blessed.
Now let's be clear. In Luke, Jesus is blessing the real poor, hungry, grief-stricken, and outcasts of this world, not the "poor in spirit" as in the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew. Here in Luke, Jesus promises a world turned upside down, from the poor lifted up and the mighty cast down in the Magnificat, to the captives released in the sermon from Isaiah, to the reviled who are blessed in these beatitudes.
These are the people God notices and blesses. These are the people Jesus came to release.
In Luke, Jesus is also clear that wealth and privilege are real dangers that have the power to separate one from God and from the human community. Jesus spells out the "woes" of which the comfortable and wealthy better beware. The kingdom of God belongs to those who have nothing except God. There seems to be two categories here, distinct and separate, and it's natural to ask, "Which group am I a part of?"
Well, I know I fall into the category of people the "woe-itudes" are addressing. I am like the disciples in this story, somehow removed from the people Jesus is caring for. These warnings challenge me to care more about the people God cares about. But how do I bridge the gap?
Maybe if we spent less time celebrating our victories and priding ourselves on our position, we might know more of God's blessing.
And, maybe if we were more honest about our own brokenness, we would know how close we are to one another and how much we need one another.
After all, we are all broken. Some of us have lost health or lost relationships or lost jobs. Our brokenness is personal, it is unique, it is truly ours, it is no one else's. And yet it connects us with one another because we are all broken in some way.
And, when Jesus says blessed are those who weep, Jesus is pointing out that this sadness is also a sign of something deeper, that all of us mourn because the world is so far from God's purposes. Instead of separating us into some kind of imaginary hierarchy of need, we are brought closer in our shared weeping over this world.
We look around, we see injustice, we see exploitation, we see violence, and the faithful cannot help but mourn. The faithful cannot help but morn.
I think that includes all of us, no matter who we voted for, no matter our economic status, our sexual orientation, or our ethnic background, we are all mourning. We hear of borders closed and walls being built and we know, we know this is not how God works. We hear of Hispanic and Islamic brothers and sisters living in fear, and we mourn. We listen to vitriolic words coming to us from all sides, and we wonder where is our comfort to come from?
Well, here is the good news. Blessed are those who weep. God hears you. God knows you. God comes close to you. And God will not let you go. We all deserve to weep, but we are all blessed. We are not alone. How would we look at our neighbors if we saw them as both broken and blessed? Would we see our brother or sister more than a nuisance and not as a threat? Would we hear Jesus say, "Come, you are blessed. Join me here on the plain."
Pastor Mark Larson of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Atlanta, Georgia writes about a wonderful little video that he came across years ago, one that stuck in Larson’s mind.
The video begins with a businessman going about his usual day, except the day is not going very well at all. It seems as each minute passes, the day gets worse and his frustration level rises. He starts to pull out of the driveway, and almost runs over a child on a bike. He gets to his favorite coffee shop, but a woman steals his parking place. The man in front of him in the coffee line places an order for his entire office building. And, because of that large order when the businessman finally gets to the counter, he is told that it will be a few minutes because they have to brew a fresh batch of coffee.
The video continues with the businessman sitting in the corner, seething in frustration. While he is sitting there a man walks up and hands this businessman a pair of sunglasses. No sooner has he handed the businessman the sunglasses, the other man disappears. Confused, but somehow also curious, the businessman puts on the glasses. All of sudden little bubbles appear, like those in comic books or graphic novels, with the sunglasses on the businessman sees little bubbles appear above everyone's heads. And the bubbles tell the businessman what is really going on in everyone's life.
The woman who cut him off is distracted because her child is sick. The man who placed the huge coffee order is worried about a medical diagnosis he just received. The barista is struggling with addiction.
Finally, returning home a bit shaken, still wearing those special sunglasses, the businessman sees that child again, the one on the bike who he almost ran over, and this time the child also has a bubble above his head which says, "Just need someone who cares."
The man gets out of his car and walks over to help the boy fix his bike.
This wonderful story got me wondering how would we treat each other if we could really see what was in everyone's bubble? Perhaps all the walls and all the distance we place between ourselves and others would begin to disappear.
After all, we worship a God who was not content to look down upon us from some safe haven, light years away. We follow a savior who gets down, right down on the same plain with those in the deepest pain, with those who have nothing left.
He looks up, at us, his disciples, and invites us to join him there on the plain, in the midst of the people.
He reminds us that this is where God is looking. And by the way, we are not so different. We are broken, too. We all yearn for a world turned upside down.
And sometimes we all weep. And we will laugh again, too.
And always we all are blessed.
Amen.
(With thanks to the Rev. Mark Larson, Pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Atlanta, Georgia and the “Day1” radio ministry).
The Rev. Eric Christopher Shafer
Senior Pastor - Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
Santa Monica, California
Sunday, February 16 & 17, 2019
