January 17, 2010
Blessed Are Who? - Luke 6:17-31
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadI am not poor. There is no way around that statement for me. We
are not poor. I know that some of us may be struggling financially. Some of us may have lost our jobs and we may be rightly worried about our financial futures, but we are not poor. Compared to the rest of the world, we are not, by any means, poor. This may be hopelessly naïve, but I doubt seriously if we ever will be poor. I am obviously not hungry, not one bit. In fact, I have no idea what real hunger is like. In fact, most of us in America have the opposite problem. We eat way too much, while most of the rest of the world eats way too little. My children have never been hungry. I could not imagine the helplessness of not being able to feed my children. What would I do if my baby was critically hungry and I could do nothing at all to feed her? We know nothing, not one thing, about being hungry. We are not persecuted, in any way. It’s true that somebody might make fun of us at school for saying “gosh-darn” instead of something else. But not one of us has ever come close to dying for our faith. Not one of us has ever been thrown in jail or had our property taken away or has been beaten or threatened or has had our families threatened for our faith. As much as we think it might be changing in this country, Christianity is still the majority, mainstream religion. That will not change anytime soon. The day that Ramadan gets the same fanfare as Christmas, we’ll talk. Until then, we know nothing at all about being hated because of our faith.
So, aside from the “woe” section in verses 24-26, what in the world does this passage say to us? By the way, the woe section is not very nice to us. In fact, none of Luke 6 is very nice to us. Matthew’s version of Jesus’ sermon (the Sermon on the Mount) takes the edge off of it. “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” Matthew quotes Jesus as saying. That gives us an out. Luke isn’t so nice. “Blessed are the poor, period,” Luke says. And, just in case we didn’t get it the first time, Luke throws the woes in there. Just in case Jesus doesn’t think we can infer that because we are not poor, we must therefore not be blessed, Jesus specifically says, “woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your reward.” “Woe to you who are full!” I wonder what he would say about our obesity epidemic. “Woe to you who are happy, who are not persecuted!” I wonder what Jesus would say about our pursuit of happiness? There is no way for any of us to read this without getting a punch to the gut.
Let’s just be honest with one another and admit that we’re not going to give any of that good stuff up anytime soon. One of the most disturbing passages in all of the Bible is Luke 18, the story of the Rich Young Ruler. This is a good kid in Luke 18. He’s kept all the commandments. He’s shown up in Church every Sunday. He’s played by the rules. He asks Jesus what he would have to do to enter the Kingdom of God. Jesus tells the boy to sell everything he has and give the proceeds to the poor. Jesus tells the boy to essentially become poor himself, which was just too high a price for the boy to pay. So he walks away. And it’s too high a price for me to pay, too, and so, if I’m honest, I walk away, too. If it’s true, this woe to you who are rich, if we really are receiving our reward now while the poor will receive an eternal reward later, if that’s true, we’d really rather just take the cash right now. Would we not? It’s a sure thing right now, and waiting until later takes faith, probably more faith than we have. So what in the world are we supposed to do with this? We know what we’re not going to do, and that’s to become poor. That’s not going to happen. But I do think there is one thing that we can do, maybe, to obey if not the letter of this law then maybe the spirit of it.
By the grace of God, we are in Charlotte, NC, here at Central Steele Creek Presbyterian Church. I believe very strongly in the church and I believe very strongly in this particular church. I love it here, and I know that you do, too. I want to see this church do well. I want us to reach out to the community. I want us to grow in our faith. I want us to learn more about the Bible. I want us to live into the vows that we made at our Baptisms. I want us to be faithful. That’s a tall order for us, and we need each other very much if we’re going to stand any chance of actually doing it. Good, bad, ill, or naught, this is God’s Kingdom in the Steele Creek part of Charlotte. Do you want to see what the Body of Christ looks like? Well, look around at all these people, at these walls that need a coat of paint, at the choir, at the Table, and at the Font. This is it. This is where God has placed us, in this small but wonderful part of the Kingdom called Central Steele Creek Presbyterian Church. I’m a big dog-lover, and one of my favorite quotes is this: Dogs are our link to paradise. I believe that’s true to a large degree, but I also think that this church is an even stronger link to the Kingdom of God.
We all are called to serve the Kingdom of God. The Gospel of Luke mentions the Kingdom of God many times. We are all called to serve the Kingdom, and a large part of that call is right here at Central Steele Creek. For me, that means putting on a robe and preaching every Sunday, and administering the sacraments and running session meetings. For you, it means something else. For five of us today, it means becoming an active elder, one of which is being ordained. For four of us today, it means becoming an active deacon, and one of them is being ordained.
It used to be that when I asked people to serve the church, I would start off with an apology. The nominating committee would always meet a certain time of year (for us it’s the fall) and I knew that people dreaded that phone call from me. I would start the conversation off with an apology. “Listen, I’m sorry to be bothering you tonight, but the Nominating Committee has been meeting and we need to find one more elder to fill this class, so could you serve?”
That was garbage. I will not apologize for asking you to do anything for the Kingdom of God. I will not apologize for asking you to give your money. And I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that it will be easy. You could use that money to send your kids to college, or to go on vacation. And goodness knows you could use the time it takes be an elder or deacon to go on a number of vacations. Serving the Church is not easy. You will have to sit through some meetings, and they get tedious. There will be miscommunication. There will be frustration. When you looked around at the Body of Christ and saw all those people, well, they are just that, people. Therefore, things won’t always run smoothly.
We serve a God who ended up hanging, bleeding, and suffocating on a cross. Jesus was also dirt poor, his entire life. I don’t believe our faith calls us literally do to either one of those things. But it does indeed demand a great deal of sacrifice. You new elders and deacons will be asked to work and to sacrifice. I hope like anything that it’s fulfilling work, but I can tell you for a fact that it’s hard work, especially when it’s done well. It’s very hard work. And not only is being an officer hard work, but working at Church period is hard. Being a member requires sacrifice. If we want this Church to flourish, it will take a significant sacrifice on everybody’s part. Being a disciple of Jesus Christ is hard.
I do not believe that my faith in God requires that I be poor. I struggle with that. A number of people have held that opinion before, but I’m not one of them and neither is that the opinion of our Church. But I do believe that God asks us to give ourselves to him and to primarily be citizens of his Kingdom. For us, that at least partly means getting very involved with what we do here at Central Steele Creek. I am immensely proud to be your pastor. I love this place very much. I am also proud of these new elders and deacons. They have already sacrificed a great deal to be here. So may we all get to work, and I mean hard work. We may not be poor and we may not be hated for our faith, but I do hope that whatever it takes, that we are faithful to our God.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
