“Blessings and Woes”
Psalm 1
Luke 6:17-26, from The Message
I came across an email yesterday that included the readings we just heard, noted that Elon Musk had referred to people who depend on government programs as “the parasite class,” and then said, “This week in America, every sermon wrote itself.”
Well, I can assure you that this meditation did not write itself—precisely because it takes intention and humility to resist the binaries suggested by our psalm, our gospel reading, and our politics.
In times like this, when we are tempted to think we are powerless in the face of the wanton destruction of so much we hold dear, it helps just a wee bit to think that the wicked will get theirs. It’s helps just a little to think of ourselves as strong trees planted by life-giving water, and to remember that as long as we ground ourselves in love and goodness, we’ll be okay.
Especially at times like this, we prefer Luke’s Sermon on Level Ground to Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew Jesus speaks only beatitudes, but in Luke he speaks both blessings and woes.
In times like these, when people who seem greedy and heartless—if not downright evil—are wreaking havoc on our government and on the lives of millions of people around the world, when we are worried sick about the impact their cruel actions will have on immigrants, trans folks, people of color, the poor and so many people and places we love, it is only natural to want to separate ourselves from them, to assure ourselves that we are nothing like them.
In other words, it is tempting to fall into the same us-them mentality that they operate from, the same us-them worldview that helped get all of us into this awful mess. It is tempting to resort to simple and over-generalized binaries because fear and suffering leave us looking for people to blame and—let’s be honest—we have to do something with our anger and frustration, and at least blaming and name-calling are harmless, we think.
But are they, really? I want to suggest this morning that blaming and hating and dividing people into categories and camps hurts us all. It separates us from one another, and it disconnects us from our true selves.
As the Russian writer, Soviet dissident, and political prisoner Alexandr Solzhenitsyn said, “There is a line between good and evil, but it doesn’t run through groups; it runs through the human heart.”
By speaking in terms of blessings and woes Jesus seems to be referring not to different kinds of people but to different aspects of ourselves—the times when we’re discouraged and the times when we’re on top of the world; the parts of us that are longing for something and the parts that are self-satisfied; the parts of us that are grieving and the parts that refuse to acknowledge what we’ve lost.
It is only natural to want everything to be great, Jesus seems to be saying, and, of course, we want to be happy. But the hard times bring blessings and growth that nothing else can; our longings drive us outside of ourselves in ways that connect us to the light of God in all people and all creation. It’s all a part of life, Jesus says, the ups and downs, the ends and outs—and God’s healing, transforming love can work in and through all of it.
I wonder if the blessings and woes are less about judgment and more about encouragement, less about condemnation and division and more about reminding us of our common humanity, our common weaknesses, our common suffering. I wonder if the blessings and woes are meant to encourage everyone to walk through this world with more humility, with a deeper awareness that, while we are not in charge, a tender mercy is.
I wonder if Love can help us find ways to work for all that is right and good without adding to our suffering by obsessing over all that is wrong and evil. I wonder if planting our hearts in God’s love and mercy like so many trees planted by stream of water could bear fruit enough to feed the world.
Before we take some time to reflect on these things, I want to leave you with some words on hope from the poet Wendell Berry:
Hope then to belong to your place by your own knowledge
of what it is that no other place is, and by
your caring for it as you care for no other place, this
place that you belong to though it is not yours,
for it was from the beginning and will be to the end.Belong to your place by knowledge of the others who are
your neighbors in it: the old man, sick and poor,
who comes like a heron to fish in the creek, and the heron who manlike
fishes for the fish in the creek, and the birds who sing
in the silence of the fisherman
and the heron, and the trees that keep the land
they stand upon as we too must keep it, or die.This knowledge cannot be taken from you by power
or by wealth. It will stop your ears to the powerful
when they ask for your faith, and to the wealthy
when they ask for your land and your work.
Answer with knowledge of the others who are here
and how to be here with them. . . . .Found your hope then, on the ground under your feet.
Your hope of heaven, let it rest of the ground
underfoot. Be it lighted by the light that falls
freely upon it after the darkness of the nights
and the darkness of our ignorance and madness.
Let it be lighted also by the light that is within you,
which is the light of imagination. By it you see
the likeness of people in other places to yourself
in your place. It lights invariably the need for care
toward other people, other creatures, in other places
as you would ask them to care toward your place and you.
Reflection questions:
- 1. Is there something about your experience of these times might be a blessing in disguise?
- 2. How can we honor the humanity of those whose actions we deplore?
- 3. How and where are you finding hope in these days?
