Lukan Beatitudes- pt.1

In the beginning of his intro, Kendrick Lamar said, “This revolution is about to be televised. You picked the right time but the wrong guy.”

It doesn’t seem to matter much who performs at the Super Bowl halftime each year, it always seems to divide people. Half of the people love it and appreciate it. The other half hate it and label it is as the worst year after year. Others couldn’t care and turned the tv off. No matter how you feel about it, recent statistics claim that this year’s half-time show is now the most-watched one of all time. Halftime performances are always on the field, on a level place, in the midst of a massive crowd.

I began to wonder this week what it would look like if Jesus took up the half-time slot? A whole lotta people gathered around and Jesus comes in and preaches.

Well that just sounds preposterous! People come to the Super Bowl to be entertained, not to hear a sermon. Boring! People flocking to Jesus centuries ago weren’t there for a sermon. They were there to be healed, and healed they were. It says they were clamoring just to touch him because power was flowing out of him. And then in the midst of this huge crowd, Jesus comes down the mountain to a level place and begins to preach.

But Jesus didn’t just give them any sermon. He gave them the Beatitudes. And not just any Beatitudes (like the ones we are pretty familiar with in the gospel of Matthew) but the Lukan Beatitudes with their blessings and their woes.

It was shocking to their ears. Kinda like when you are expecting one thing, and you get something else entirely. Like when you expect all blessing but have the woes or you expect to be entertained and are called out and challenged instead.

Jesus came to a level place and began to give this series of blessings. Blessed are you who are poor, you who are hungry, you who are hated, reviled, and excluded for yours is the kingdom, you will be filled, you will laugh, and your reward is great. Unlike the gospel of Matthew, there are no spiritual add-ons here like poor in spirit or hungering for righteousness. Luke seems intent on pointing out that Jesus is actually declaring a blessing over the destitute, the starving, the bereft, and the persecuted. Jesus is blessing the outcast and the othered in a real and tangible way.

In blessing them, Jesus sees them. In seeing them and blessing them, Jesus is turning everything around. The Beatitudes is the table-flipping sermon in which the order of the divine supersedes the present hierarchy of power and privilege.

Blessed are the nobodies and the nothings.

Bless are those who rely on food pantries and homeless shelters.

Blessed are those who have no family to call their own and no children to pass any stories down to.

Blessed are those who are drowning in debt and can’t afford to pay their bills.

Blessed are those you label as illegal, foreign, just plain different, or the ones you refuse to acknowledge at all.

The half-time gospel message of Jesus wouldn’t make any of us very comfortable, except for those who are longing to hear it the most. If Jesus were to come and deliver the Beatitudes today with a modern-day list of blessings and woes, we would probably try to get Jesus cancelled. We would think we picked the wrong guy.

Blessed are. Blessed are. Blessed are.

These blessings of the Beatitudes hearken us back to Mary’s song and Elizabeth’s proclamation of her in Luke 1:45 which says “blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

The Beatitudes aren’t meant to entertain us, they are meant to comfort and to awaken, to console and to convict, to bless and to warn.

It is tempting to skip over the woes, because who wants woe? Woe to the rich, to the full, to the laughing or content, and to the popular. If that’s the case, we might all be getting a dose of woe today in one form or another. Mary Hinkle Shore says “And who can endure character assassination, which we know as canceling or bullying, even for the sake of our faith? We aim to be rich, full, laughing, and respected. Hearing the beatitudes from Jesus, we may be tempted to think, “I’ll take my chances with the status quo.”

But Jesus is changing the narrative saying the status quo leads to woe.

What is really meant by woe here? The Greek word for woe even sounds kinda like woe. Ooheeh. Almost like you are saying uh-oh. It is more of a sound or a sigh that is brought on by circumstances. In one sense, woe is a warning, but in another way it is also a disappointed sigh. Matt Skinner talks about this sigh as imagining Jesus sighing and saying “your vision is so small and so limited. If you only knew what you were missing out on.”

David Ostendorf says “God does not take kindly to halfheartedness. God does not bless us as we maintain the status quo, reaping the accolades of those who hear us and follow us. God does not bless us as we bathe in respectability in the eyes of the world. God does not bless us as we quietly maintain tradition and gloss over or ignore prophetic voices calling us back to God—in the church and in the world. God does not bless us as we protect and build institutions and empires. God does not bless us, well off, full, comfortable, hearty, and well spoken of....The realm of God rests among those who have nothing but God.”

The text from the prophet Jeremiah today tells us that when we trust in mere mortals, when we rely on other humans for our strength and shield, when we turn away from the Lord, then we are no more than a parched, dry shrub with no relief. We are empty. No roots. No purpose. No clue.

But Jeremiah 17:7 says “blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. Let me say that again. Pay attention to the slight difference in this one verse. Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord.

Think for a moment. If you are really honest with yourself, what or whom do you place your trust in?

Do we place our trust in ourselves and our abilities? Our job security? Our bank account, sometimes even a trust fund? Our government including local and national leaders? Our reputation and good will? Our family and friends? Our assets and property?

Think about what or whom you trust, about everything you have accumulated. Add it up in your mind and what kind of foundational trust it gives you. What if the Lord is your trust?

Jeremiah says that when the Lord is our trust, that “they shall be like a tree planted by the water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.

In 1932, students of Karl Barth felt rather hopeless. They were meeting underground in Barth’s preaching class at the University of Bonn. Barth was telling his students to “preach like nothing happened,” but Hitler was not nothing. They were surrounded by the threat of a very big something. These students began to stress over how the church could even have a voice that would be heard in the midst of it all. Would they be heard at all when there were so many who drowned out any witness they could have?

Barth’s response to his students was this: ““The little man in Berlin is not the Lord of History. Inform him, if you’d like, the Lord of History is a crucified Jew from Nazareth.”

“Nevertheless, the Church must not allow its imagination to be captured by the world… we must not give the lordless powers of the world inappropriate glory, honor, and dominion that only belong to God. We are in this mess because our witness has become so muddled we can no longer tell the difference between the nation and the Kingdom of God. Anybody can see why he (Hitler) is a threat to everything that Christians hold dear. More difficult is to see how idolatry, failure to worship, confusion of culture and patriotism with Christianity, and timid biblical interpretation made his (Hitler’s) movement possible. Most difficult of all is to see the Church as God’s answer to what’s wrong with the world. The Church is called to be a showcase of what God can do, a people whose lives tell the truth that the world can never tell itself. Bear witness!”

How shall we bear witness?

Right now, many are choosing to bear witness in litigation and protest. On February 11th, United Methodists joined with over two dozen Christian and Jewish groups in a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security against ICE having the ability to raid houses of worship. Their suit is built upon the shared belief that “Every human being, regardless of birthplace, is a child of God worthy of dignity, care, and love,” the suit states. “Welcoming the stranger, or immigrant, is thus a central precept of their faith practices.”

On Thursday in the The New York Times, over 350 rabbis and dozens of Jewish public figures on Thursday placed a full-page advertisement protesting the current proposal to force all Palestinians out of Gaza with the title “Jews say no to ethnic cleansing.”

Others have pleaded for critical USAid funds to be released.

We regularly collect peanut butter and apples for our local food pantry. Right now we are collecting peanut butter for the March of the Mayors which is a statewide food collection to help the local pantries of the cities who participate. At the beginning of this month, we joined together with FUMC for Rise Against Hunger where we packed thousands of meals in an effort to rise against world hunger.

How shall we bear witness?

Now is the time to dig deep, to draw near to the Lord, and to follow the gaze of Christ to see whom he calls blessed.

Now is the time to rise up and rise against oppression and injustice and evil in whatever forms they present themselves as we say in our baptismal vows so that we can stand for and with the marginalized, outcast, othered, and oppressed.

Now is the time for a revolution of goodness which is stronger than evil.