Blessed are...

2/17

Ready for worship

Today I'm back at Good Shepherd Faith. The choir is rehearsing a medley of spirituals as I arrive. The service begins. And after scriptures, my reflection, or "prompting,' as they call it. 

February is the shortest month of the year...but this years' lectionary selections have been kind of a greatest hits collection  with passages like the  First Corinthians 13 "Love Passage" and today's passage from the Beatitudes as Luke presented them.

Let's start by saying Luke and Matthew tell the same story in different ways. Matthew's puts it "on . the mount" while Luke has it "on the plain"...when you go to the actual site at Capernaum, they explain it very easily. There's a hill that leads down to the sea. Either Jesus was on top and the  people below or vice versa. Doesn't matter. What does matter is what he says.

Well, there's a difference  there too. Matthew likes a little nuance, like poor "in spirit" and "hunger and thirst for righteousness."  Luke keeps it simple and straight, and lefty preacher that I am, I prefer that....the poor, the hungry...no nuance...and Luke is not satisfied to leave it with blessings...he adds the curses...but more of that later.

A friend of mine once pointed out that in Luke, Jesus is addressing the crowd...and in Matthew, for most of the passage he's addressing the disciples about the crowd, speaking of them in the 3rd person. It only turns to the 2nd, directly to the disciples, when it gets to what will happen to them...

 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

Luke introduces us  to the sermon with a lot of action, healing and exorcisms, people coming from very specific places, like Judea and Jerusalem  in Israel and Tyre and Sidon in Lebanon...

let's see who gets blessed in Luke..

* the poor
* the hungry
* those who weep
* people who are hated, reviled and defamed

that would pretty much qualify as qualify as good news...radical good news...

But let me be clear...we need to resist any efforts to romanticize....there's nothing good about any of these...if you ask most people who are poor what want, the first answer would be, not to  be poor...
hungry people want fed...and  after 24 years here, I still don't know how to respond to those "excuse me ladies and gentlemen....." moments on the subway.

And as for weeping, don't get me started... Friday night, I had to do a funeral for a 31 year old man, with mental illness, who committed suicide. His sister had lost her husband to suicide 10 years ago. His niece says that if God is  trying to teach them something, he should stop doing the same thing over and over because it isn't working.

And I have to explain, like my friend Father Duffell from Blessed Sacrament says, sometimes God is surprised. But God's tears flow with ours and God is there waiting with open arms. I am usually lifted by funerals ...but after Friday I only felt sad. And angry.  After  hearing how much the young man meant to all these people, a friend said to me, "if everyone loved him so much, why isn't he still here?" For me, the fact that the answer is because he couldn't feel it...only left me feeling angry.

What's up with all of this? In the exact center of Leviticus, of all the Law, is the command to love neighbor as self. At the very center of the Torah is the Jubilee...every 50 years was to be a social reset button...all debts forgiven, slaves set free, property returned to the original owner...at the very center of the Hebrew Bible is the idea that no person, family or group should ever have to be permanently  dependent on the largesse of society for survival. 

There is no proof that it ever actually happened..some scholars believe that Jesus's self understood mission was to make the Jubilee real....and that this is behind the beatitudes...

Jesus' woes are also specific...(and "woe" was literally the sound of lost souls in gehenna....Jesus is literally saying "damn you" or "go to hell"....note the this this is one of the few times Jesus contemplates anyone sent to hell.. )


24"But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.

25"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.

26"Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets..

We could just read those and go"mic drop"

What then are we to do?

Latin American theologian Pablo Richard says we North American Christians don't understand power...that if we simply walk away from ours, the world doesn't get better, an evil person will add it to theirs...

We must use what we have, in Presbyterian terms, to contribute to the decent and orderly transfer of power to those  who are excluded..

A freind once pointed out that the Spanish word for Blessed in Spanish"...bienaventurado.." has the sense of "well adventured") to it.

What can we do as individuals? Well one thing for sure, vote...it does make a dfference in real peoples' lives...But as a community? to make the jubilee real? Or even one step closer?

May your adventures go well...

As we talk about this, one person asks "what does blessed mean?"
One person suggests "presence, God's presence"
Another something like grace, something undeserved that you receive. And how we sometimes need to both ask for what we need and also offer to others before they ask. And the bottom line importance of gratitude as not only the response to to but beginning of blessing...

Soon enough, the service is over and I am on my way to a winter wedding in Central Park....

                                                                ****

Later in the day, I would preach essentially the same sermon to the Ecclesia congregation of homeless people in Marcus Garvey Park. Police surveillance has been keeping people away. Today we've got two Josephs...one from Arkansas, the other  from a shelter in theBronx who still follows Judaism. Both with intricate, involved, and somewhat exotic, theological theories. And again, being there for one another seems to be the most important expression of blessing...

                                                               ****
At Good Shepherd Faith, I used Paul Simon's "Blessed are.."

Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit.
Blessed is the lamb whose blood flows.
Blessed are the sat upon, Spat upon, Ratted on,
O Lord, Why have you forsaken me?
I got no place to go,
I've walked around Soho for the last night or so.
Ah, but it doesn't matter, no.

Blessed is the land and the kingdom.
Blessed is the man whose soul belongs to.
Blessed are the meth drinkers, Pot sellers, Illusion dwellers.
O Lord, Why have you forsaken me?
My words trickle down, like a wound
That I have no intention to heal.

Blessed are the stained glass, window pane glass.
Blessed is the church service makes me nervous
Blessed are the penny rookers, Cheap hookers, Groovy lookers.
O Lord, Why have you forsaken me?
I have tended my own garden
Much too long.

Songwriters: Paul Simon

Gospel Luke 6:17-26

17He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. 18They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. 19And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.

20Then he looked up at his disciples and said: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

21"Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.

"Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

22"Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. 23Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.

24"But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.

25"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.

26"Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.