[6] Sermon: Overflowing Blessing

Have you ever noticed how much less you spend when someone else does your shopping for you? I said this to Melanie a few days ago. I saved money when she shopped for me during lockdown, as she only got what I needed rather than wanted. Most shops rely on us to browse, buy things on impulse and can’t resist a bargain.

On TV and radio we are given encouragement regularly to invest in a number of things to make us look younger or more attractive, feel younger or more attractive but nothing can actually make us younger than the age we are. We are constantly bombarded with slick advertising slogans targeting the young, the elderly and the most vulnerable. If we are honest some of us may have succumbed especially during lockdown, when buying things we neither needed nor wanted became a sort of escapism.

The items may have changed through time but the basic problem is the same as it was in the days of Jeremiah. Through him God spoke to his people about the foolishness of putting faith in things, things which never satisfy and which stunt spiritual growth.

Jesus teaching in today’s Gospel passage comes after the resentful anger of the teachers and Pharisees that resulted in him healing a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath. Luke sets what in Matthew’s Gospel we call the ‘Sermon on the mount’ in a level place so this is ‘the sermon on the plain’ Certainly Jesus did some plain speaking to his disciples and the huge crowd that gathered before him. People had come to Jesus for teaching and for healing and they were aware that power came out of him. In Jesus there were signs of the Kingdom of God at work.

Jesus tells them of the ‘blessed’. Blessed is a good translation of the Greek word ‘Makarioi’ which can simply mean happy, though blessed is also connected with the last times and favour of God.

Jesus connects some strange things with happiness or the blessed and the oddness of what he says should bring us up with a jolt. Happy are the poor. Happy are the hungry, happy are those who weep. Happy are those who are hated on account of the Son of Man. He gave them clear orders as to how his vision of God’s work would go forward. Four promises and four warnings, presented in terms of Israel’s great scriptural codes. In the book of Deuteronomy there were long lists of blessings for those who obeyed the law and curses for those who didn’t. These formed part of the charter, the binding agreement between God and Israel. Now with the renewed Israel formed around him Jesus gives them his own version of the same thing.

And a radical version it is. Tom Wright, the acclaimed new testament theologian, puts it as an 'upside down code' or, as he says Jesus might have said a 'right way up code' instead of the upside down ones people had been following. God is doing something quite new: as Jesus had emphasised in the Synagogue at Nazareth, he is fulfilling his promises at last and this will mean good news for all the people who hadn’t had any for a long time. The poor, the hungry, those who weep, those who are hated. Blessings on them. Not that there is anything virtuous about being poor or hungry in itself. But, when injustice is reigning, the world will have to be turned once more the right way up for God’s justice and kingdom to come to birth. And that will provoke opposition from people, who like things the way they are. Jesus message of promise and warning of blessing and curse rang with echoes of the Hebrew prophets of old and he knew that the reaction would be the same.

But, and this is a big but, there was a large crowd around him but Jesus is actually directing his words to his disciples. We can only guess what was going through their minds. They have given up their security and their earning potential, they have no idea where their next meal is coming from and, they have glimpsed the hostility they are inviting by committing themselves to walking around with this leader.

Jesus speaks into their possible misgivings and natural concerns, reassuring them that that although they have chosen poverty, insecurity insult and rejection they have indeed chosen wisely and bravely and the rewards of living by faith are great and lasting. In contrast those who cling to the material, intellectual or even religious security, which stunts their growth and anchors them to the ground, can never be swept up in the wind of the Spirit and experience the fullness of joy God longs to provide. Luke paints a vivid picture, Jesus is standing surrounded by people who are hungry, to benefit from the power, that streams from Jesus and he announces both through his healings and his words, God’s care for the poor, the hungry and the suffering and it is a power that will work, through the cross and resurrection to comfort and renew the world. But it is not a power that we instinctively recognise or trust unless we are utterly powerless ourselves. Those who have nothing else in life to trust in and so have to fall back on God are the ones who are blessed Luke tells is. The rest of us have had our blessing from what we chose to put our trust in.

The quantity of our possessions does need looking at, and we cannot sweep such teaching comfortably into the realm of attitudes towards our wealth and lifestyle. If we are really living by faith in God it is bound to affect our comfort. If we know we have given up anything or any relationship for living God’s way then today’s Gospel is reassuring and comforting us that we have chosen well and in the long term the tears will be wiped away. And if we discover that much of our happiness our blessings are linked with systems, of others people’s praise then today’s reading challenge us to choose the risky vulnerability of living instead by faith in God.