Blessed Are . . . Jeremiah 17:5-10, Psalm 1, 1 Corinthians 15:12-20, Luke 6:17-26 February 15, 2004, Year c, 6th Sunday after Epiphany The Rev. William V. Livingston, Rector Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi Leafing through last week's Time Magazine I came across the following advertisements: Life's better with the Butterfly. MSN Get the feeling. Toyota Here's to visionaries, mavericks, and wild-eyed dreamers. General Electric Show her that you really know her. And you'll get her thanks for showing how much you care. People Magazine Strive to be your best. Levitra Peace of mind is closer than you think. New York Life For those with one thing in mind. Everything. Nextel's cell phone, walkie-talkie, speakerphone, email, appointment scheduler and address book, GPD all rolled into one. Save enough for a bigger boat. Save enough for a bigger house. Save enough for a bigger nest egg to leave the grandkids. What we choose to do with our money ultimately comes down to what we value. Thrivent Financial for Lutherans Modern marketing has evolved as our since of needs has evolved. At first, it was pretty straight forward: a specific product to meet a specific need and perhaps why that brand was better than others. Next came marketing to placate our insecurities: toothpaste that made us more appealing, dishwasher detergent that left glasses sparkling which equated to being a good housewife, and innumerable products to make us look younger. Recently marketing has evolved to address an emptiness in our lives. In many subtle ways, marketers offer us tangible products to satisfy intangible spiritual emptiness. Jesus understood that emptiness. In the beatitudes, Jesus tells us that God's favor is upon the poor. He neither idealizes nor glorifies poverty, but declares God's prejudicial commitment to the poor. By connecting hunger and weeping as aspects of poverty, he prevents any romanticized view of the poor. As liberation theologian Gustavo Guitérrez says, "God blesses them simply because they are poor and living in an inhuman situation that is contrary to God's will. The ultimate basis for this privileged position of the poor is not in the poor themselves but in God, in the gratuitousness and universality of God's agapeic love." Jesus parallels the blessings with woes for the shortsighted rich, lulled into a false security that their present abundance ensures their future comfort. Jesus' teaching was scandalous because it overturned every conventional Jewish thought that the wealthy were wealthy because God had blessed them. Is Jesus' teaching any less scandalous today? Do we not assume we middle and upper income Americans have our abundance because we have earned God's blessing? For some of us with decent jobs and stable cash flow, it's hard to see the wealth we enjoy in our culture. To borrow an old image, we may be like a fish having trouble "seeing" water. It's around us all the time. So, we hear Jesus' warnings to "the rich," assuming he is not talking about us as we struggle to make ends meet but about those we can always identify who live in bigger houses and drive fancier cars. Those are the rich folks Jesus is talking about, we think. Not us. Having said this, if we try to make Jesus' sermon on the plain, as told by Luke, as a set of instructions on how we should live, or what we should do, they make no sense. Nowhere in the beatitudes is there a directive - to us or to anybody. Nowhere does Jesus use the imperative of how we are supposed to behave; nowhere does he give any orders or requirements. The entire sermon is in the indicative. Jesus is simply describing reality, he is not telling the disciples, or us, or anybody else, to do anything. The beatitudes offer a glimpse into the heart and mind of God, who God blesses and what the kingdom of God is like. Jesus gives this surprising information about God hoping, no doubt, that such knowledge may have a valuable effect on us. But that is up to us. In the beatitudes, and the entire Sermon on the Plain, Jesus offers us his picture of God's values and God's priorities; and he offers them as an alternative to the vision of life we usually carry around with us. We can only act on what we can see; and Jesus is giving us the chance to see farther, and clearer, and deeper. The idea is that if we can see, really see, whom God considers blessed, or happy, then we will at least know the road to blessedness, and perhaps be able to use that knowledge. So we have some new insight into the heart of God - and a question. The question is: if God is really like this; if God has the preferences and the priorities of the beatitudes, then what could that mean? How could our lives be different, how could I be different? That's the issue, and that is the question Jesus leaves us. It's a good question, and worth considering in your life. Perhaps it means we no longer pray as if the kingdom of God is only in the Heaven of the afterlife, but that when we pray 'Your kingdom come; your will be done on earth as in Heaven', we are praying that the beatitudes be realized here, now, in this community, in our personal lives. Dominic Crossan, a contemporary Jesus scholar, argues this was Jesus' primary focus: changed lifestyle and changed communities in the present rather than in some dramatic reversal wrought by divine intervention in the future. Today, Jeremiah, the Psalmist, Jesus, each tell us the world measures us by wealth, abundance and cheerfulness. But those are just bait by which the world seeks to enslave us. Each asks us if wealth is gained at the expense of others, what good is it? If I can eat because another starves, what nourishment do I receive? If I must stifle the sadness and doubt that life inevitably stirs in order not to bother anyone, what does my smile mean? Not just when we encounter God in the afterlife, but today, each of these readings tells us God speaks to us saying, "Welcome." No amount of spending or saving can change that welcome. God isn't the least interested in our wealth or success, except to wonder how much of life we sacrificed to attain it. Out of God's special heart for the poor and suffering, God reminds us about those times when we were poor and wounded. So that God can heal any remaining abrasions, God also reminds us of those times when we gave up family, health and honor in order to get ahead. Both now and when we see God face to face, alongside us in God's presence stand the wretched of the earth, whose dingy, battered state we have spent a lifetime trying to avoid. If we don't see them now, when we do see God face to face, God will ask why we didn't see them sooner; God will exalt them; God will humble us, and then we will all sit down together at God's table. Jesus invites us to that table now, today, to come down from the safety of our hillsides, to relax our acquisitive instincts, to leave behind our credentials and trophies that separate us from others and to join him surrounded by the hungry and troubled, not out of what we mistakenly call Christian charity, but in recognition that here on the plain is truth - truth about God and about ourselves. Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Perhaps, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans is correct. What we choose to do with our money ultimately comes down to what we value. Jesus offers no imperative, but in light of the beatitudes, today would be a good day to do two things: First, examine your life to be sure you are addressing situations where your success is purchased at the cost of others' well-being and personal dignity. And where that is the case, to make changes, avoiding personal prosperity at the expense of others. Second, if you are feeling a loss of control over your life because of the decisions of others, if you are excluded and ignored, if you are weeping, remember you are in good company. Your God is one who comes to you in blessing, and has given you the Kingdom.