Sermon: "Good News / Bad News"

2nd in the "Ready for Real Life" series.
Delivered February 17, 2008 by Rev. John Schmidt.
Other sermons in this series - 1 / 2 / 3 / 6 / 7

A study guide for small groups or individual devotions is available online.

The audio file of this sermon is available for download and listening in MP3 format.

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Well, we just celebrated Valentines Day and I hope that many of you in this sanctuary remembered that. It would be a lot safer if we have. At least we need to send cards on Valentine's Day if we are in that sort of relationship, because in our culture we send cards for everything, every holiday, every kind of occasion. There is a card that's made just for that. What if you got a card though that was like this one? It's got hooray on the front and inside it says this; congratulations, you can't make the rent, you don't know where you next meal is coming from. I know that you are still mourning the loss of a family member, congratulations, because God's grace extends to you. In fact, it was made for you. You are not alone. Step in to the kingdom made for you, a kingdom that will last forever, sincerely, Jesus.

Now that is sort of a wild card to get. It's not the sort of thing that we normally congratulate people for. We congratulate people for things that are very different than that normally in life, but that's not the only card that I have here. I've got another. This one is a sympathy card. My condolences, you've just gotten that raise that you were looking for. You eat in the best restaurants in town. You are one of the most respected people in town and folks just love your sense of humor. My condolences in the face of so much offered to you from God, this is all you are going to get. You're missing the offer of a lifetime. In fact, you are missing the whole point of life. Be careful. Sincerely Jesus.

We are in a series right now called "The Secret to Life". We are looking at Jesus' teaching about what life if all about and one of the things that we are discovering as we go in to Jesus' teaching is that what he says about life, what he says about what real life is all about is often very different than what we expect. Now we are going to go in to the sixth chapter of the Book of Luke and take a look at a teaching that Jesus gave. It's a small part of a bigger series of things that he was teaching that we are going to be looking at the next few weeks. And in this, Jesus takes the normal thinking of his disciplines and turns it upside down. So let's go to the sixth chapter of the Book of Luke. I am going to begin at the 20th Verse.

"Looking at his disciples, he said: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. "Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets. "But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets."

Let's pray: Lord God may you open my lips so that I might speak somehow your truth. Open our ears that we might hear it, our minds that we might understand it and our hearts that we might believe it and obey it. For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

Now this is the start of a teaching that's captured both in the gospel of Matthew and the gospel of Luke. In the gospel of Matthew its much more famous. It's the Sermon on the Mount that begins with the beatitudes and beatitudes meaning blessings. This is Luke's version of it, possibly from a different time that Jesus taught a very similar thing. But there are some big differences in what Matthew presents to us and what Luke does, because Luke preserves a version where Jesus not only gives blessing, but he also gives some woes to people. It's not just blessing, it's also warning. Now, we are not going to look at each part in great detail, but we are going to look at the whole unit of the blessings and woes and get a sense of what Jesus is telling us here.

But to do that we first need to look at the context. Where is Jesus and what is going on when he says these things? That comes up in Verses 17 to 19. He goes and stands on a level place, a place where the crowd can gather and a large crowd of his disciples come and then another great number surrounds them and these people are coming from all over Judea and Jerusalem, but they are also coming from Tyre and Sidon; places that were predominantly Gentile. It might have been Jewish people from those places or it might have been non-Jewish people, but a large crowd is gathering and why are they gathering? It says here to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. They want to hear him. They want to hear what he is teaching, but they also have many of them great needs, physical needs and they are crowding around it says. People are trying to touch him. It's not just a big crowd, but it's a big crowd that is crowding in on Jesus, because of the size of their need.

And so Jesus looks around at the people and what might he had seen? Without a doubt he looks around and he sees all kinds of physically broken people. People have come there maybe being carried by friends in their cots. There are people who have come who are limping. They are wrapped in blankets. Maybe some people are standing on the edges because the law has said that they can't get too close to people and yet they want to come with an ear shot of Jesus. And when he looks around at this group he sees that so many of them are poor as well. For some of these families for years the breadwinner has been sick and so this family has ultimately lost their farm or lost their home and they have nothing, because they have not been able to earn anything. There are widows there, divorced women, people who are penniless and having to live with their families. Maybe there are some young men in the crowd too who grew up without parents and they have gotten to a point in life that they have strength and are working, but they are working for nearly slave wages, because the richer people are saying, "this is what we are paying, take it or leave it" and they don't have any choice. They have to take it. They have no land. They have no home. They don't even have a change of clothes. This almost certainly is the kind of crowd that is crowding around Jesus.

But there are some rich people there too. They stand out from the rest of the crowd because they are dressed so differently and look so different and some of them really seem to be listening to Jesus, but some seem to be there maybe just to find fault. They are not very comfortable being this close to a rag tag group of people. They are well dressed, well fed and they are occasionally talking to one another and pointing to someone and laughing at an inside joke. Jesus looks around at the crowd and sees this and then he focuses his attention on his disciples who are right by his side and he begins to teach so that they will understand what's happening right around them.

And so the first thing Jesus does is he pronounces some blessings and I want to read those to you again. "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. "Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets." The word that is used here in the text or the word that Jesus used is a Greek word called Macarius and what it means is the highest kind of blessing possible. It's a word that other Greek people would use to talk about the blissful existence of the Gods; to be in a state where there is absolutely nothing to worry about, that people are compelled to congratulate you because of your great fortune. So he uses this incredibly powerful word and yet the kinds of things that are listed here are not the kind of things that we normally congratulate people for. Far from it. These are hard circumstances in life. And in fact, these are circumstances that other people would look at someone who is poor and sick in this situation and might be tempted to think that they are in that situation because of some kind of moral failure. It happens. It happened then and it even happens sometimes now. Since God gives blessing if you are totally cut off from those blessings, if you are poor, if you are grieving because your life is falling apart and people are dying, if you are not well, its easy for other people to look and say, "what's wrong with you that you are like that?"

But Jesus shows us that real life is not always that simple, because he takes those very things that people say this is a sign that God isn't blessing you and he says, ""You are blessed beyond imagining." Now what does he mean by that? Now he is not telling them that because of their circumstances. In other words, this is not salvation by situation. If you find yourself in a bad enough situation relax because you are saved. You know, God is going to bless you. And it's not telling them that they will be blessed because after the revolution they will be the rich ones; that doesn't seem to be part of Jesus' bigger message either. And we don't have to spiritualize each one either and say, "Well, he is really not talking about poor and he's really not talking about hungry people and he's really not talking about people who are sad; its just people who are sad because they are not the good people they would like to be."

Now we can spiritualize that on a certain level, but you can't spiritualize the second half when he talks about the rich people and the well fed. There is no way of spiritualizing that and so if we are not going to spiritualize that, we've got to face the fact that Jesus is saying that even in these very real physical bad situations you still are blessed by God. Why? I don't think it's either that we have to seek these things. In other words, if we are not poor, if we are not grieving, let's go find a reason to grieve so that we will be blessed. I don't think that is what Jesus is saying either.

It's just that we don't need to fear them and we don't need to fear these situations because Jesus is saying that even though the whole world and maybe you yourself feel like you are not blessed by healing them, by teaching them the good news, by inviting them to follow him, Jesus is saying that God is extending his grace all the way out, even to them. In other words, they viewed themselves on the very fringe of society, on the very fringe of what God could ever consider and Jesus is saying, "I am reaching out all the way to the very edge. There is no one that is beyond my blessing." That is the basic point he is saying here. There is no one excluded. Congratulations, favored ones.

But, in the same breath Jesus confronts those who are rich and this is troubling. You know the natural assumption that we have when we are rich and at ease is that these riches are a direct sign that all is well between us and God. That's they way they thought then and occasionally we think that way now. The fact that they were respected in their community was something that they felt like was a natural overflow of God's high opinion of them. And that's true often enough. God is the giver of every good and perfect gift including monetary gifts and God grants us favor with people. These are the sorts of things that we ask for so often in our prayer when we are asking for blessings; how often does it end up being something that is ultimately financial or only has to do with your security, ultimately has to do with something that involves other people respecting and accepting you. We count these things as blessings. But again Jesus is telling us that reality is not that simple. Because the same riches that can seem to be God's blessing can blind us to something that is much more important and a much bigger blessing from God.

So Jesus uses the word here that we translate as woe. Woe to you who are rich. Woe to you who are well fed now. Woe to you who laugh now. Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you. The word translated here woe can mean either of two things. On the one hand it can mean watch out, be careful, you are in danger or it can mean I am so sorry for you, my condolences. The New Century Bible translates woe this way; how terrible it will be for you and that carries that same ambiguity as in the original language. It could be how terrible it will be for you where it's a confrontation or it can be how terrible it will be for you, I am so sorry. It could mean either one and so Jesus says this to them, but he can't mean this. He can't mean that being rich absolutely, positively prevents someone from being blessed by God, because in the Old Testament we have Abraham and God made Abraham rich. We have David and God raised him in to the kingship and made him rich. All the good kings of Israel were blessed in a physical way. Even the family of Lazarus; there are indications in the kind of land they owned and the kind of home they had and the kind of gifts they gave that they were a rich family as well. We never find Jesus telling them that they have got to get rid of it all in order to follow him. It's more complicated than that.

But what Jesus is saying is how terrible it is for people who are satisfied with just that. How terrible it is when someone is satisfied with the rest and ease they have now and they cluster back in that group that is surrounding him and they are judging the other people and they are laughing at them and they are not aware that they need the same grace that God is extending in Jesus Christ. They can't see that they need Jesus too. Physically well fed they can't see that they are spiritually needy as the poor. They have money, good food, good times, good name and they are hungry for nothing more from God and so what Jesus tells them is how terrible that is for you and forever.

Now there is a problem, a very serious problem in this text for us. We primarily fall into the category of the rich. We have heated and air conditioned homes. We have carpets and warm beds. We have fresh food from all over the world all year round. We are spared many of the hardships and sorrows that afflict much of the world and the very thing that we call blessings give us the power to protect ourselves, to be self-sufficient and self-satisfied and they can numb us to our deeper spiritual need. So we need to ask the question, how might the good things in life, things that we rightly call our blessings, things that we call our successes, how can these very things be blinding us to something that's even more important in God's eyes? It's a question we have to ask. How can these good things, things that God actually gives his blessings, how can they have gotten rooted in our lives in such a way that they are now numbing us and blinding us to the more profound things that God wants to give us in relationship with Jesus Christ? Sometimes we have to repent of the grip of even good things in our lives.

Now I want to call Andy and John to the front. How are we called to loosen up the grip of some of the good things that God has given in our lives? I want to have them play a song to give us few minutes to reflect on our own state and then once they are done we will have another minute of silence before I come back up.

It's a very personal song and when I heard it, it really convicted my heart about the way that I look at my life and how it lines up with God's will. And so as we sing it maybe it will resonate with you or maybe there will be things in it that speak to you, but I hope that in these next few moments you do get a chance to really let God speak to your heart about how we look at the blessings and the woes in our lives.

Song: "I repent. I repent of my pursuit of America's dream. I repent, I repent of living like I deserve anything, like I house my task, my kids my wife, in our suburb where we are safe and wide. Well I am wrong and of these things I repent. I repent, I repent of creating my liberty. I repent. I repent of paying for what I get for free, for the way I believe that I am living right by trading sins for others that are easier to hide, I am wrong and of these things I repent. Well I repent, judging by a law that even I can't keep, no, no, no, where right is enough, like God is God, cause he sees through the plan in my own eyes. I repent. I repent of trading truth for false unity. I repent. I repent of confusing peace in authority by caring more of what they think than what I know of what we need, by domesticating you until you look just like me. Well I am wrong and of these things. I am wrong and of these things I repent. I am wrong and of these things I repent."

We may not be poor and hungry, but there are other things in life that put us down. There are other things in life that push us to the margin where we don't feel like we are acceptable and make us feel like we are beyond the blessings that Jesus can give, things that even can affect us as richer people in the world. One of the things that Jesus is pointing out in the blessings and the woes is that the poor are not excluded and the rich still need the grace. In other words, we are all the same in some crucial ways on the inside.

We need special grace. We need God's unmerited acceptance. We need a relationship with Jesus. Everybody is broken. Everybody needs forgiveness. Everybody needs God's unmerited embrace and acceptance. Everybody needs healing somewhere in their lives. And so the other part of Jesus' words do still apply to us. It applies to the depressed, the emotionally fragile, the emotionally starved, the emotionally dead. It applies to those who struggle with their past, the flunk-outs, the dropouts, the burnouts, the HIV positive and the herpes ridden, the brain damaged and the incurably ill, the barren and those who have gotten pregnant at the wrong time, too tall, too short, too fat, too skinny, too loud, divorced, widowed, orphaned or simply that we have outlived our friends, no matter how bad it feels, no matter how bad our situation seems to us or to others, congratulations. Congratulations, God loves you. Not what you wish you were, but who you really are right now. You have access right now to a spiritual dimension. You have been invited into a kingdom that exists right now and that right now is filled with comfort and power and you have a future as well where all of the limitations and brokeness you feel right now will vanish in the embrace of God. That is the promise that Jesus brings. All the promises of God, all the glory of God, all the gifts of God, all the security of God, the very Son of God and his eternal future belongs to you.

I have one more final card here. It is sort of like a Valentine's card. It's got a short message inside. Feeling broken, feeling unacceptable, congratulations, all that I have is yours. Let's pray.

God, help us to know our need if for no other reason than that it opens our hearts to the incredible grace and love that you provide. Lord help us to see clearly what life is all about as we follow you. For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

© 2008, Rev. John Schmidt
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org