This sermon was preached at The First Congregational Church of Tallmadge on February 11, 2007.
Strange Blessings
Luke 6:17-26
Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
Dedicated to my brother James, and always to the glory of God.
I want to talk about parking. I heard the story of a minister who served a church in a large city, the kind where parking is always an issue. One day he was making a short visit to the home of a man in his congregation. He drove around and around the man’s building looking for an empty space. Finally, since he was running out of time to make the visit, he double parked near the entrance, and left this note on the windshield:
“I am a minister and I have been around this block for 10 minutes. There’s nowhere to park and I must visit my parishioner. I will only be a few minutes. Forgive us our debts.”
Ten minutes later he returned to the car where he found a parking ticket and a new note:
“I am a police officer. I have patrolled this block for 10 years. If I don’t write tickets, I lose my job. Lead us not into temptation.”
Patton Dodd, who writes for beliefnet, recently wrote a column on why we should not pray to God to give us a good parking space. God is in the business of bringing about the kingdom of God, not the business of convenience and luxury.
I want to illustrate something about the reality of life by asking you to hold in your imagination two simple, but very different, scenarios. As many of you know, our family lives in Hudson. Our house is one block west of route 91, and this church is one block east of route 91, so my driving route to church is a straightforward 9 miles. Near my street is the Western Reserve Academy, which was formerly the college of the Western Reserve. Now, I’d like to read you part of a letter that comes from April of 1827, written by one of the fathers of Tallmadge and of this church, Elizur Wright, Senior, which is included in the book The Wrights of Tallmadge by our own Jim and Carolyn Mackey. Elizur was involved in the founding of the college in the 1820’s, and this letter describes one of the regular trips he made from Tallmadge to Hudson:
“Monday about noon, with our steady faithful old beast, Moll, attached to a hired vehicle your Ma and I trudged off for Hudson. The sad dilacerations made upon the road by the big Pennsylvania wagons, cutting it all up into deep ruts, rendered our progress rather slow. Late in the afternoon, by proceeding with caution in a zigzag direction, and often tacking about, we arrived safe.”
Now move 180 years forward. Almost every day, I drive the very same route in my heated car, listening to the radio or a cd, on a paved road that is often four lanes wide. If I should happen to need something, or if I should simply want a snack, I pass no fewer than six gas-station-convenience-stores, two post offices, two grocery stores, and one library along the way, and that’s not to mention the restaurants, all of them with many paved parking spots directly in front of the store. Sometimes, I will stop at Giant Eagle for groceries, and perhaps the weather is bad or I’m in a hurry, and if I cannot park right next to the entrance, I will be upset that life is so difficult. What is wrong with me?
You and I enjoy a standard of living better than the medieval kings and queens, better than the pillars of wealth from the turn of the century. We enjoy ease of travel, unprecedented medical care, fresh fruit at almost any time of year, central heat and air conditioning to keep us comfortable with no effort. And yet, for all of the benefits that come from living in the wealthiest nation on earth in the wealthiest century, something is missing. We are no happier than the generations before. Now we get upset about parking places.
Jesus said that you are blessed when you are poor, hungry, weeping, and put down, but woe to you when you are rich, full, happy, and praised, because you have already received our reward. In just a few words, Jesus sounds an alarm for us, but within that alarm is a message of great hope.
The warning is that when people become too satisfied with the way things are, too rich, full, and comfortable, we lose sight of the goodness of God. To be satisfied with your life and the way of the world is an awful fate: there’s nothing to which you look forward, nothing for which to hope, and nothing to call forth your best effort to make a difference in the world. Jesus brought the good news that the kingdom of God is at hand, but when we are happy and satisfied with the present kingdom, we can’t hear the good news. When the things I most often hope for (or complain about) are good parking spaces, warmer weather, and something good on television, that’s a sign that my spiritual life is not in good shape. I’ve lost the way of Jesus, who proclaimed a new order that would bring good news for the down and out, the poor and hungry.
When I am concerned with parking spaces, where are my hopes and prayers for an end to violence, for an end to genocide in Sudan, for homes and food for people right here in Summit County, for people who are sick and dying? The words of Jesus make me ask those questions. And here’s the paradox of what he says: when I stop worrying about my own convenience, and start to share the burden of the real, honest-to-God problems of my community and of the world, that’s when I find myself blessed. That’s when I understand the truth of what Jesus said, that it isn’t the satisfied who are blessed, it is those who know the poverty and hunger and pain of this world.
Dr. Albert Schweitzer taught us this lesson again a centure ago. Schweitzer was one of the leading scholars of the Bible, as well as an accomplished organist, and he traveled Europe and America to give lectures and recitals, especially the music of Bach. Life was very good to him, but he took seriously the words of Jesus, probably the words we heard today, and he decided in 1905 at the age of 30 to train as a medical doctor in order to go to equatorial Africa to give care among the poorest of the poor. There have been critics of his interpretation of the New Testament, but it is hard to question whether he understood the message of Jesus. Schweitzer says to us:
“I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.”
Our culture so often gets in wrong about what it means to be blessed. We think it’s just the opposite of what Jesus said. The rich are blessed, the poor are cursed. Jesus says it’s just the opposite, and that truth will take a long time to work itself out in our hearts and minds. I like the way that Eugene Peterson translates this section in his adaptation of the Bible called The Message: “You're blessed when you've lost it all. God's kingdom is there for the finding. But it's trouble ahead if you're satisfied with yourself. Your self will not satisfy you for long.”
As we move closer to what Jesus means, we should also have some clarity about what he does not mean. We’ll look at three quick points:
1) Jesus is not saying that we all need to become poor and hungry. What he does mean is for us to be in solidarity with those who are poor and hungry, so that their interests become our interests. They are brothers and sisters to us, and they have as much to give us as we have to give them. Jesus does not ask us to become poor but to remember that what we have is a gift from God to be used and shared for the good of everyone. For us to become poor only adds to the problem of poverty. In this age, it takes great care to share our resources in a way that will work for good in the world. That is what we are called to do. The more we involve ourselves with the poor and hurting, the more we open ourselves to the blessings of God.
2) When Jesus says woe to you who are rich and full, he is not saying that we are in trouble if we enjoy a good meal, or a family trip, or the comfort of a warm home, for such gifts are given to us by God’s grace, and it would be ungracious for us to refuse them. There is a Jewish proverb that we will be judged for the gifts God gave us that we failed to enjoy. Jesus enjoyed a good meal. His critics called him a drunkard and a glutton. The catch was that his good meals always had room for the outcasts and the poor. That balance is our model.
3) Jesus is not saying that any of us are rich and full all the time. It is true that by many measures, we are the ones who are rich and full. I’m aware that simply having a bank account with two dollars in it, or a place on the dresser for spare change, qualifies you one of the richest people in the world. That’s an important perspective. But that doesn’t mean that we are always happy and satisfied, as if we don’t also know what it’s like for life to fall terribly short of our hopes. I’m no longer talking about the trivial issues of parking or the cable going out. I’m talking about just hanging on for the next check to come just barely in time, or just a bit too late. I’m talking about the illness that robs you of your freedom or your mind, about never measuring up in mom or dad’s eyes no matter what you do, about the life plans that are stopped short by a diagnosis you never saw coming.
God knows that we all will face pain of the world. God has faced it too. We worship a God who faced the world’s pain not to solve it, or to protect us from it. God did it so that God can bless us when we’re at the bottom of the darkest part of our pain. Because when our arms are empty, when our wallet and stomachs are empty, and our spirits are broken, then we have room for God, who was there all along, always blessing us, always loving us. Then we no longer want the world to stay just as it is. We yearn for the kingdom of God to keep breaking forth, and we are blessed.
