Past Sermon

Sermon Title: "Blessings and Woes, Promise and Peril "
Date: February 11, 2007
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Luke 6:17-26

On Christmas Eve, I mentioned in my prayer that we had had a homeless woman sleeping on our office porch much of December.  In fact, she attended the 10 p.m. Christmas Eve service.

Denise showed up early in December, sleeping in the evening mid-way across the office porch walkway.  Sometimes, folks needing shelter sleep in the alcove area by the entrance to the Christian Education wing outside my office.  Years ago, when our porch lights were more accessible, sometimes they even unscrewed the bulbs to be a little less obvious.

Denise would usually be in the process of getting up and folding her bedding when I arrived between 8:30 and 9 a.m.  She would go into the women’s restroom and wash up.  On a couple of occasions, I asked if she wanted a cup of coffee or tea, but she always declined.  She was always pleasant and cordial.

You might have seen her during the week.  She would sit on top of her bedding in front of the post office on Second Street inviting donations.  On December 24, when I was driving home after morning worship, I saw her sitting outside St. Bartholmew’s with her collection box after their noon mass.  Our church secretary, Maureen, attends there, and told me she put in twenty dollars.  I said I hoped she told Denise that should be credited to Bay Shore Church, because we were the ones hosting her and, after nearly a month, were ready to have her move on!

It was getting a little wearisome, but somehow, I could never bring myself to tell her she could not stay here anymore.  It was near Christmas, and I seem to recall another woman who couldn’t find any place to lodge some 2,000 years ago.  A few days after Christmas, after several previous promises, Denise did leave and headed back to northern California.

Her camping out on our porch was made all the more pointed after our friends downtown at First Congregational Church were told by the City last month they would be fined $1,000 a day for allowing homeless persons to sleep on their church property.  I say, more power to that church.  Jesus wouldn’t have turned them away.  When our city provides enough housing for our homeless population, then they can complain to any church or other social service agency that is trying to feed or care for that population.

This is all a long introduction to wondering how Denise might have responded to Jesus’ words in Luke:  “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”  Did she feel the kingdom of God was in her possession, when she couldn’t quite get enough money together to accomplish whatever it was she was hoping to do here in southern California?  Did she feel blessed?

One of our problems today is that we have forgotten the power and the art of blessing.  Long ago, God made a promise to bless Abraham and his descendants and make them a blessing to all the peoples of the earth.  The oldest scrap of Scripture that we possess are the familiar words the Lord gave Moses to pass on to his brother Aaron with which I will conclude today’s service:  “The Lord bless you and keep you…” (Numbers 6:24-26)  The blessing of Aaron was found a dozen years ago on a piece of silver in a tomb just south of Jerusalem that dates from about 600 years before Christ.  The biblical message is not only that God redeems us, but that God blesses us as well.

Beyond their individual words, the beatitudes call us back to the power of blessing and being blessed.  It is with sincerity and true prayerfulness that, after praying at someone’s hospital bedside, I might well say, “God bless you” as I leave the room.  For some time I have closed many of my notes to people with “Blessings.”  I would like to think that Denise felt a sense of blessing from us during her stay on our porch.  She seemed grateful when she bade us farewell a few days after Christmas.

The first of Luke’s beatitudes, “Blessed are you who are poor…”, describes a way of life, and we, who are not really poor, run to the more comforting version in Matthew.  The poor are those whose desperate need and inability to help themselves have driven them to turn to God for their hope.  Gustavo Gutiérrez, the liberation theologian, has commented that “God has a preferential love for the poor not because they are necessarily better than others, morally or religiously, but simply because they are poor and living in an inhuman situation that is contrary to God’s will.  The ultimate basis for the privileged position of the poor is not in the poor themselves but in God, in the gratuitousness and universality of God’s agape love.”

When we were studying this lesson at last Wednesday’s Bible study, we read it in three sections:  the teaching and healing of Jesus, the blessings, and finally the woes.  And after reading the latter, one member said, “They’re not going to like hearing that here.”

Because we are not poor, the woe issued to those who are rich either mystifies us or leaves us feeling guilt rather than joy.  But I do not believe Jesus was criticizing those who have worked hard to accumulate wealth.  Rather, the rich are shortsighted and are lulled into a false security when they think that their presence abundance ensures their future comfort.  The rich who neglect the poor at their gate will find that in the hereafter they will have none of the abundance they enjoyed in this life.  We’ve all heard the statement, “You can’t take it with you!”

Let us think of the setting in which Luke recorded these teachings of Jesus.  For me it was brought home when I saw the movie, The Nativity.  Both Nazareth and Bethlehem are depicted as wide spots on the road.  A windy uphill path with modest stone houses, we might even call them huts, on each side.  Even members of the Holy Family are depicted as poor, honest, hardworking people with dirt under their fingernails.

When Mary and Joseph journey to Bethlehem for the census on the eve of Jesus’ birth, they pass through Jerusalem.  The opulent palace of King Herod is shown high atop a bluff, with his servants and royal courtiers inside.  When the wise men later pass by, the whole of Jerusalem is shown, again with the rich palace of Herod dominating the screen.  There is the contrast between the poor, who have great hopes of a better life in heaven, and Herod, who presumably had it all, and did nothing for the poor while he was here.

Instead of blessings and woes, Jesus’ teaching here in Luke today might also be summarized as promise and peril.  The promise of God’s blessing upon the needy at the end of the age is beginning to be fulfilled in Jesus’ ministry.  The very approach of the end holds out peril to those who would seek to garner those blessings only for themselves.

Jesus’ “woes” go out to those with no unmet need—or even any unmet desires.  They have plenty to meet their needs.  But Jesus celebrates and blesses those in need.  His kingdom is for those who are not self-dependent.

The text tells us that Jesus came down from the mountain and stood on a “level place” to teach.  But he also preached of an un-level place, an upside down kingdom.  Needs of others being met by those whose needs are already met. 

The late Catholic priest, professor and spiritual writer Henri Nouwen summarizes this concept as Christian voluntary displacement:  “The gospels confront us with this persistent voice inviting us to move from where it is comfortable, from where we want to stay, from where we feel at home. … Voluntary displacement leads us to the existential recognition of our inner brokenness and thus brings us to a deeper solidarity with the brokenness of our fellow human beings.”

I don’t want to become such an overly affirmative back-patter as to say we’re already doing plenty of this and we don’t need to do any more.  But I hold up this week’s Carillon and note the $134,000 we gave away last year in actual dollars, food or goods.  This says to me, ‘yes, we are blessed in our abundance, and this is what we choose to do for others who need a blessing even more.’

This is but one illustration to recognize that out of our blessings, out of our riches, we attempt to be a blessing to others.  Cooking dinner for COA or serving there, working on a Habitat for Humanity build day, donating and/or delivering gifts to our Christmas families are some others.

So, enjoy your Starbucks or Peet’s or Polly’s coffee or tea.  I do.  You deserve it.  Just remember that we, too, are in the blessing business—the blessing of others like Denise who can’t afford to drink coffee there.