Christ the King-Epiphany, Wilbraham

The Rev. Martha S. Sipe

February 16, 2025 / Epiphany 6C

Jeremiah 17:5-10; Psalm 1; Luke 6:17-26

On the surface, there’s a lot not to like about this gospel.

(1)             Logically, it doesn’t make sense.  If you or I were drawing up lists of those whom we believe are blessed and those whom we believe are cursed, we would surely have the categories reversed.  It’s the rich who are happy, not the poor.  The ones whose hungers are satisfied are blessed, not those who are hungry.  No one would ever think that a weeping person was happy and a laughing person sad.  And who on earth would rather have people hate them than say nice things about them?  It just doesn’t make sense.  And yet Jesus says pretty clearly that God sides with the down-and-out.

Jesus turns our expectations upside down.  But really, we, as readers of Luke’s gospel, should be expecting that.  Even before Jesus was born, his mother Mary was singing a song about bringing down the powerful and lifting up the lowly; about filling up the hungry and sending away the rich empty.  Then, in Jesus’ first sermon, which we heard just a few weeks ago, Jesus preached about his purpose:  bringing good news to the poor, release for the captive, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed.  Then Jesus turned everyone’s expectations upside down by calling the last people we might have expected to be in his circle of leadership – fishermen and a tax collector, and other decidedly non-religious looking folks.  And now today, in what is arguably his most famous sermon – the Sermon on the Plain – we hear this seemingly crazy-talk about who’s blessed and who’s in trouble.  But you know what?  I’m really glad to think that Jesus came to shake things up and turn the world on its head – because you don’t have to be a keen observer of society to see that there’s a lot of shaking up that needs to be done so that love and mercy will win the day.  Here’s hoping – here’s praying – that God’s kingdom will come among us and turn the world upside down now.

(2)           The second thing that I’m not wild about in this gospel is that that it seems to boil life down into a very neat binary system:  you’re either blessed or you’re not.  Reading this gospel, we might be prone to think that we should be able to look around and go, yep, that guy’s really blessed, but wow, that guy, not so much.  You and I know that the world doesn’t really work like that.  Science and experience tell us that very few things are simply one thing or the other, even categories that we may have learned were binary:  good or evil, black or white, female or male – today, we see that the lines are blurred.  And when it comes to the categories of blessed or not, in line with God’s favor or not, we all live on both sides of the line to some degree.  And that’s okay because the Gospel speaks to us all.

The Gospel comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable.  (Repeat)  That’s something that so many Christians in the mainstream don’t get.  I was on a Zoom call with Bishop Pipho and my Lutheran colleagues this week, and one of the pastors in the meeting shared her frustration and anxiety about dealing with current issues in her parish.  Just as I had done, this colleague had shared with her congregation Bishop Pipho’s plea to “choose the path of mercy and compassion for our neighbors and advocate today for continued funding for . . . all faith-based and community-based organizations serving our neighbors in need so that may know the love of Jesus Christ.”  For communicating the bishop’s words, my colleague received a letter signed by members of the parish requesting that she stop talking about current events because they (the undersigned) come to church to feel good.  And I saw in the chat that other colleagues had had similar experiences.  Listen, I understand the desire to feel good.  I understand the need to find comfort and solace in our community of faith.  But Jesus wasn’t about making everyone feel good all the time.  He spoke out for mercy and justice.  And he knew that blessings are not binary – it’s not like you are or you’re not.  So, there on the Plain, he sought to level the playing field by raising up those who were down and out and reminding those whom the world seems to have smiled upon that they have responsibility to follow Jesus in lifting others up.  And that’s a levelling we need.

(3)             The third thing that really makes me squirm in discomfort about this Gospel lesson is:  the woes.  I just really don’t like the idea of Jesus cursing the well-off.  That doesn’t track with the Jesus I know who wants abundant life for all of his children, not deprivation, hardship, and suffering.  

But here’s the redemption for “the woes.”  The word woe actually means something a little different than you might expect.  It’s not a word of cursing.  Jesus isn’t condemning the rich, the full, the happy, and the respected.  Instead, as it turns out, the word that we have translated here as “woe” isn’t about creating woe for someone – it’s an expression of woe.  It’s an exclamation – like alas – or not even a word, but a sigh.  One commentator I read suggested that “yikes” would even be a good translation.  You see, Jesus isn’t condemning the well-off.  He’s feeling for them, feeling for them in the same way that a parent worries about a child when that child is heading down a wrong road.  He wants to warn us not, in the words of Jeremiah, to put our trust in mere mortals or make mere flesh our strength.  If we put our trust in humans or human-made things or human-led institutions, we’re bound to be disappointed.  The one and only place in which we can safely put our trust is in God.  God will not let us down.  So Jesus can woe over me any time he likes.  I know it means he cares.

So go figure – the three things I most dislike about this Gospel reading actually end up being the three things I most cherish about it:  (1) God’s gonna turn our expectations upside down in the kingdom; (2) no matter whether we identify with the blessings or the woes on any given day, no matter whether we’re poor or rich, hungry or full, weeping or laughing, hated or esteemed – or straddling the line – in any case Jesus is with us, either to turn us around or to lift us up; and (3) Jesus feels for us, cares about us, wants us to choose the path that leads to life.  He wants for us to trust in God above all things.  He wants us to be like those trees in our Psalm, bearing fruit by putting our faith into action.  He wants us to know that God will support and sustain us, so that we can share God’s abundance and love with our neighbors.