Sixth Epiphany
Luke 6: 17-26, I Corinthians 15:12-20, Jeremiah 17:5-10
We were standing looking at the children playing. I asked her what she thought the future would hold for them. She watched them play a while longer. One child busy digging and building in the sand. The other child singing rather freely while twirling around the pole in the climber. “Hard to think of them growing up," she replied with a rather distant look in her eyes. "I just want them to be happy." That is probably what most people would also want for themselves--happiness. To seek happiness--to be happy. Secretly, of course, most parents also want success of some type for their children or at least a certain level of respectability. But officially we settle for happiness. This is especially true for American parents who embrace the Jeffersonian assertion of our certain inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of the right mood.
Our gospel lesson for today would raise the question of exactly what it is we pursue or seek. The setting of the story about Jesus has a crowd of his disciples. Not just the twelve but also many others who were interested in his teachings, and a multitude of other people from the surrounding areas. Jews and Gentiles (those who were not Jews). All coming out to hear him and to be healed of their diseases and troubled spirits. Apparently seeking something. Some of the people were no doubt suffering from serious illnesses. Based on other healings reported in the gospels there must have been the lame and the blind. But there were also many more who were curious about his preaching and troubled in ways not easily diagnosed. They were seeking after various things but it would probably be safe to assume that most if not all of those who came to Jesus were seeking happiness or at least would not refuse any happiness that came into their lives.
Our text tells us there were healings and miracles. But then Jesus turns to those gathered around him and proclaims a series of blessings and woes--blessings and woes. In the Gospel of Matthew these teachings are quite lengthy and are known as the Sermon on the Mount. But our lesson today from the Gospel of Luke is shorter, less spiritual than the Matthean version. More focused toward the physical lives of the people and is delivered on what Luke refers to as "a level place"--the Sermon on the Plain. Most of us are at least passingly familiar with the beatitude or blessing portion of these sermons. "Blessed are the poor--blessed are the hungry--blessed are you who weep," but we struggle to understand exactly what meaning they are to have for us. Especially as a modern suburban audience. If anything the woe portions seem to strike too close to home. "Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry." That always makes me a bit uncomfortable.
Blessings and woes--not exactly common terms in our daily lives. Happiness is an easier term. Yet there is a significant difference between blessedness and happiness. To understand our lives as a quest for happiness is not something new. It has actually been around for a very long time dating back to the Greek philosophers. Old Aristotle began his writing of the Ethics with the axiom: "All human beings seek happiness." As simple as it sounds this ideal sweeps through the centuries of the history of ideas becoming a basic tenet of our modern culture--the pursuit of happiness. We believe it is natural and normal to seek happiness. And according to Thomas Jefferson we have the God-given right to do so. From Aristotle to Jefferson to today's parent, seeking happiness stands as the cultural norm of the secular society in which Christians find themselves. But contrary to what some translations of this text may say, Jesus really doesn't have anything to say about happiness, nor does he promise it--nor does he tell us to pursue it. This is not to say that happiness is a bad thing. After all, happiness is not the result of acting badly or from harming others. Quite the contrary--one definition of happiness is the reward for contentment that flows from a well-ordered life of self-discipline and responsibility. There are certainly many far worse things to pursue. In fact, the right pursuit of happiness sounds like a perfectly Christian thing to do. But here is were we need to be careful. Happiness may be good but it is not the best thing.
A problem arises when happiness becomes the highest goal to which we aspire. In that moment happiness becomes the highest threat to our Christian life and faith, because happiness is not obviously evil or sinful. Many Christians of good faith may think that when they strive for happiness they are seeking the best that God offers. The main problem with happiness is that it presents itself to us as an end in itself. Something to be pursued for its own sake, as if the purpose of life is to be happy. Blessedness is fundamentally different. We do not seek blessedness--it is given. It comes to us. Not because we have achieved a properly ordered and balanced life or have attained contentment and peace, but in spite of our failures or limitations. Blessedness is not our purpose in life. Blessedness is God's gift to us. Happiness comes when we are right with ourselves and with the world. Blessedness comes when we are right with God.
What would make you happy? The answer depends on your mood and the moment. Last night--actually early this morning at about 1 a.m. Pastor Chris and I were on the 2nd shift at the PADS shelter in Wauconda when a little girl came walking into the kitchen. Everyone else was asleep--She was maybe 3 or 4--and she was wide awake. Chris was sitting on the floor reading by the kitchen light and the little girl came over and sat down on her lap--she sat down, leaned back against Chris and smiled at me across the room. A smile of happiness achieved for the moment. Happiness depends on the mood and the moment. At other times in life happiness is found in a spot on the team or a date with that certain person--or a job, or having enough money to do the things you always wanted to do. Or for some of us happiness will be when the kids graduate from college and get jobs and move out on their own--true happiness takes many forms. To the hungry happiness is a meal. To the homeless it is a place to sleep that is warm and safe. We seek happiness in so many things--so many forms. But what brings happiness one day may be meaningless the next. The happiness of owning a sailboat is lost to the anxiety of a diagnosis of cancer. The happiness of possessing some object may become a quest for health and may well shift again and again as the days and years pass.
Blessedness does not depend upon health or wealth or any other thing. It does not depend upon what we possess or what we achieve. Blessedness can come to us in our emptiness and neediness as well as in abundance. Blessedness depends on belonging not on possessing. We belong in the body of Christ--the church. The greater community of faith that we entered through our baptism. Jesus spoke of the blessing for those who stood with God's son. Those who were on the side of Christ and the prophets. When you live your life where you belong, Jesus said, then you are blessed. Clearly Jesus wanted us to see how blessedness turns things upside down. The very conditions and categories that we would prefer to avoid--poverty--hunger--grief, become the very points of entry for God's blessing--divine presence. This is not to say that poverty or hunger or grief are good. The purpose of the blessing is to point beyond the moment. Unlike happiness which is an end unto itself--blessing is only a beginning. It is a gift intended to re-order reality--redefine up and down--winner and loser, success and failure--have and have not. It is God's way of creating justice in the face of injustice. Turning things over in order to make things right. Vindicating those who are abused and exploited.
It is too easy to make the ultimate measure of our lives pleasure or control or success measured by our standards. Our modern drive it to pit human power over against the threats of the world. We no longer fear the cold. our houses are strong against the storms and our cars have become all terrain vehicles. We defeat ignorance with an open press. The world wide web and the best education opportunities in the world. We still fall victim to age and disease but our life expectancy is double that of any period of human history prior to last century. We have been to the moon and are beginning to look at the planets and beyond. We take comfort in the security of the biggest and best military, the strongest world economy, and yet we are haunted by the words of Jesus. "Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now for you will mourn and weep." We are tempted to settle into the happiness we have found and yet there is this haunting suspicion of curse. We can't seem to live in the fullness of the moment, in the midst of our joys we have sorrows, even the most satisfied among us finds that there are things that are still desired--maybe even needed. We live in fear of falling victim to the very things that make us happy.
At some point we realize that happiness is not having a warm puppy. It is not about feeling good but about being and doing good. Blessedness is not about the "good life"--it is about a life that is good. The Hebrew writers have given us a very simple image in our reading from Jeremiah to help us understand the tension between "happiness" as the world defines it, and the blessing God offers. The image is that of a tree--planted by streams of living water. A tree that is so deeply rooted in the ways of God that no matter how violent or desolate the world around us may become we stay connected in a very deep and basic way, connected to the vast ocean of God's grace. The Biblical picture is the contrast between the verdant green watered haven of northern Palestine and the barren dry desolation of the shrub land around the Dead Sea where the earth is parched and life quickly bakes away. The prophet basically gives us a choice this day. Do we live our lives in the dazzling dessert brightness of the world seeking happiness or rooted in the faith fed by streams of living water that bring blessing.
The words Jesus proclaimed are not intended to condemn lives that are rich with money, health and happiness. Life is never that simple--we do not live in a world of simple contrasts. It is not just either/or --blessing or curse--our world is a world of both/and. We know the stories--from our own families and from the lives of those we know. From the history books and from the media. A successful business built by those whose marriages have failed. The happy good soul who is taken too soon by illness--the talent that is lost. The opportunity that is missed--blessed to be able to fail. No life is lived to perfection. The happiness is for but the moment--To every blessing there is the possibility of curse. Jesus is offering this morning a caution for the moments that seem too good to be true. And a promise that the most cursed moments will also pass. Ours is a world of blessing and woe. Our natural expectation is that it is our happiness that is our strength. But Jesus' words turn that upside down. He would have us live out of our vulnerability and need. Out of our moments of emptiness and not our fullness. We are called to not only recognize our need and dependence on God. We are called to also recognize the need and vulnerability of others.
Blessed by God we offer to them the rich soil of compassion and justice. This is not about what might be. This is about what is. This is God's agenda--God's vision--God's kingdom. The reality described in the Beatitudes will happen--is happening. Whether we choose to be part of it nor not. Only a few of us are called to be hungry. A few more of us are called to work with the hungry. But all of us are called to be for those who hunger, because that's what it means to be God's people. And so at least once each month from the blessing of our bounty we offer what we can against the curse of famine, disease and want. God actually calls us to be in solidarity with the hungry and the homeless, with the poor--with the innocent victims. The question Jesus poses for us is how can we respond to the curse in our blessedness. How do we proclaim--reveal--celebrate the blessing. The answer is not so much our doing as our receiving.
She sat on Chris' knee and smiled at me. At 1:30 this morning eleven children had a warm safe place to sleep. And one of them smiled at me--And I felt blessed--for such is God's kingdom. The prophet speaks even today.
Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals... Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, Sending out its roots by the stream.
So may we be blessed--And so may we be a blessing to others.
Amen.