Sermon on the Plain - October 2
Today’s Readings: AM Psalm 102; PM Psalm 107:1-32; Hosea 10:1-15; Acts 21:37-22:16; Luke 6:12-26
Today’s Gospel reading is the first part of what people often call the "Sermon on the Plain." At least from where I sit, people seem to know the Sermon on the Mount, from Matthew’s Gospel, much better. Luke’s version contains some similar themes, but it can be much harder to sit with:
“Blessed are you who are poor. Blessed are you who are hungry now. Blessed are you who weep now. Blessed are you when people hate you.”
And then come the warnings: “Woe to you who are rich. Woe to you who are full now. Woe to you who are laughing now. Woe to you when all speak well of you.”
Those are hard words to hear.
On more than a few occasions, I have walked down a hospital corridor and heard screams and cries coming from one of the rooms. It happened to me a few weeks ago and it was hard to hear. When I spent a summer as a pastoral care resident at Mary Washington Hospital in Fredericksburg, Virginia, those were often the rooms where they sent us chaplains.
Healthcare workers and social workers know how painful life can really be. They see the moments when the stories we tell ourselves about control, security, and self-sufficiency fall apart. If you have been to an emergency room waiting room recently, you know exactly what I am talking about.
I’m hearing that cry from a few weeks ago, when I read Jesus’s words.
Jesus is not saying that poverty, hunger, grief, or rejection are good things. He is not asking people to pretend that suffering is a blessing. He is speaking directly to people who are suffering and telling them that their present circumstances do not have the final word. God sees them. God has not abandoned them. God is coming to transform this world, or maybe as I suggested last week, return the world to its intended state.
Maybe we are all more familiar with the “Sermon on the Mount” than on the Plain, because of how this reading lands. It’s tough, for sure. I’d like to suggest that the “woes” are not there simply to make comfortable people feel guilty. They are a warning about how easily comfort can become a wall. When we are full, secure, admired, and entertained, we can easily cut ourselves off from the pain of the world. For some, it might be easy to avoid the waiting room, or places where suffering is more visible. At least that is true for me in my life.
Perhaps that is one of the reasons Jesus’ words are so difficult. They ask us where we have become comfortable with a world that leaves other people hungry, grieving, excluded, or alone.
To believe in Jesus Christ is to believe that God is making all things whole, that God is intending the world to be different, and even doing something about that! And we should remember it is Jesus who invites us to join in alongside and become part of that transformation by seeing him in the one in need, to listen to the cries, to enter the room, to sit beside the bed, and to trust that love can be present even where easy answers are not.
Faithfully,
John+