February 17, 2019
Text: Luke 6:17-26
Either
Jesus gets everything backwards, or we do.
I think you know the answer to that, but just consider for a moment how
utterly backwards our Lord’s blessings and woes sound to our fallen human ears. Blessed are you who are poor? Who are hungry, who weep, who are hated, excluded, reviled, spurned as evil? And then: Cursed are you who are rich?
Who are full, who laugh, who are well-spoken of by others?
This is the opposite of the American Dream. We consider those blessed who are wealthy and
happy and have a good reputation. And
the poor? They should get a job. Those who weep need to pull themselves up by
their own bootstraps. Most people with a
bad name have earned it. What on earth
is going on here? What does this
mean? Four blessings, the beatitudes. Four curses, the woes. And all is not as it appears. Jesus turns everything on its head, as He is
wont to do, because you and I, as we
are wont to do, have everything utterly inside out and upside down.
The
question, really, is not how much money you have, how much you eat and drink,
or whether you are persecuted and reviled.
These are but the symptoms of the greater issue, and circumstances
change. The issue is not one of outward
appearance, but of being. Who are you,
and to whom do you belong? The issue is
one of faith. The issue is one of
Christ. And the Prophet Jeremiah makes
this clear in our Old Testament reading (Jer. 17:5-8). You either trust in man, whether it be
yourself, or other men, or the stuff of men, the stuff of this life. Or you trust in the LORD, YHWH, the one true
God, the Father who sent His Son to become flesh, conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary, to suffer and die on the cross for the forgiveness of
your sins, your life, and your salvation.
If you trust in man, if flesh is your strength, if your counting on your
wealth or your possessions or your honor, or even and especially your own good
works, then you may be rich now, and
full now, you may laugh now, and be respected now, but when the drought comes, you’re
like a shrub in the desert. For all your
riches, you’re really destitute. Turns
out you have nothing. You shall not see any good come. You shall dwell in the parched places of the
wilderness, an uninhabited salt land, which is just another way of saying,
hell. No God, no good. That’s hell.
That’s what trust in man gets you.
Hell.
But
if you trust in the LORD, and Jesus Christ, whom He has sent, then you may be
poor now, hungry, mourning, and
persecuted now, but what can any of
those bad things do to you? The LORD God
is on your side. He who did not spare
His own Son, but gave Him up for you to death on the cross, how will He not
also, along with Him, graciously give you all things (Cf. Rom. 8:32)? So when the drought comes, you are like a
tree planted by the water, sending out your roots by the stream. And what is the water but that which is
included in God’s command and combined with God’s Word, the water of your
Baptism into Christ? The worst drought
the devil, the world, and your own sinful flesh can throw at you cannot rob you
of the water. It cannot rob you of
Christ. So you do not fear. Your leaves remain green. You are not anxious in times of economic
crisis or famine, when the money dries up and the tummy rumbles, nor in times
of grief or persecution, when you come face to face with death, when people
hate you and exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil on account
of the Son of Man. You can rejoice and
be glad in that day, for the tree planted by this water, the one in Christ,
cannot be moved. And so their fathers
did to the prophets who were before you.
Learn from the prophets what it means to be rich in poverty, full in
scarcity, filled with joy even in the midst of grief, to rejoice in
persecution. They did not love their
lives unto death, and their reward is in heaven.
That
is why you are blessed when the world would call you anything but. You poor, you who, even in the midst of
worldly wealth, know that you have nothing… Yours is the Kingdom of
heaven.
You
who are hungry now, take the long
view. Your hunger is for this earthly life only. It is the blink of an eye. This is not to say that we should not feed
the hungry. Quite the contrary. But it is
to proclaim good news to those who lack.
You shall be satisfied! The sign
points to the reality of that Day.
Remember how Jesus fed the 5,000 men plus women and children on five
loaves and two fishes? And twelve
baskets full were left over. Jesus is
the living Bread from Heaven. He will
not leave you empty.
And
you who weep now, who know the
sorrows of this world, who have been beaten down by the changes and chances of
this life, who know the cold sting of death… Take heart! You shall
laugh. Your mourning shall be turned into dancing. Jesus is the end of death.
And
to all of you in the holy faith of Christ, who are despised and rejected by the
world, mocked and ridiculed, shunned by family members and those you thought
were friends, those you thought loved you, simply because you confess Christ
and His Word… that is now, but
rejoice for what will be. Your reward is great in heaven. Leap for joy.
Thank God that you have been counted worthy to suffer for the Name of
Christ. You may lose your business if
you try to run it according to your biblical convictions. You may have to pay fines or lose your
livelihood. Your Christian confession
may be labeled hate speech. And the day
is coming sooner than later when Christians will suffer imprisonment and death
once again. It has happened before. It is happening now in other places
throughout the world. Don’t think that
you are immune. But let not your heart
be troubled. Your Father in heaven
sees. He hears your prayers. He will come to your aid. He will deliver you. He will never leave you or forsake you.
So
you are blessed. That is the reality
Jesus has pronounced over you. But the
most important thing you have to understand about these beatitudes is that,
before they can be about you, they are first and ultimately about Christ. This is a description of your Savior. He is
the poor man. Literally, born into
poverty, in a stable in Bethlehem. His
parents have to give the sacrifice of the poor when He is presented at the
Temple, two turtledoves, or two young pigeons.
He is raised in a carpenter’s home.
He is not rich. But even more
profound, St. Paul preaches to us, “you
know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your
sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor.
8:9; ESV). His ultimate poverty is that
of the cross. There He is the
Sin-Bearer. He who knew no sin became
sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21). He who is everything becomes nothing on
Golgotha, a worm and not a man, hungering and thirsting for our righteousness,
for our salvation, with shame and grief weighed down, hated by all, excluded,
reviled, spurned as evil. Not just by
man, but stricken by God, smitten by
Him, and afflicted (Cf. Is. 53). Jesus,
our blessed Lord, becomes the Curse for us, for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”
(Gal. 3:13; Cf. Deut. 21:23).
But
what happens in His accursedness? He
defeats it. He rises from the dead. The Kingdom of God is His. He is
the Kingdom of God in the flesh. And
He has purchased you by His own blood to be in His Kingdom as His own beloved
citizen and as a child of His heavenly Father, to live under Him and serve Him
in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness. Where Jesus is, we are, by virtue of
our Baptism into Christ. Who are you,
and to Whom do you belong? You are
baptized into Christ, a Christian, and you belong to Christ. No identity crisis for you. You are not your job. You are not your wealth and possessions. You are not your good name and reputation. And you are certainly not your good works or
merit before God. Your identity is all
wrapped up in the flesh and blood of Christ.
Let me say it again: Who are you, and to Whom do you belong? You are baptized into Christ, and you belong
to Christ. Therefore you are
blessed. And He sets a Feast before you,
His own Body and Blood, which is just a foretaste of the eternal Feast to come. You are filled. You are satisfied. And you laugh and sing and rejoice at this
Feast, as you will for all eternity, for this is just the beginning of your
reward which is great in heaven, all of which is pure gift from the Lord Jesus. The beatitudes are about you, because they are first and ultimately about Jesus.
Now,
we’ve talked about the blessings and the woes, but we dare not neglect the
introduction of our Gospel reading where we learn what happens whenever we
gather around Jesus to hear His Word. He
touches us at the very core of our poverty and lack and grief. And He heals us. He forgives our sins. He fills us with Himself and all of His
gifts. And He frees us from all that
binds us. He heals our sickness and
disease. He puts the demons to
flight. He gives us life where once
there was only death. And notice, that
all these people who came to hear Him sought
to touch Him, and power came out
from Him and He healed them all (Luke 6:19).
Well, here we are, gathered around Jesus to hear His life-giving Word
and be healed by Him. And now we long to
touch Him, so that the same power comes out from Him to heal us. And that is what happens at the altar. His Body.
His Blood. Given and shed for you
for the forgiveness of sins, to put the demons to flight, and to heal you of
all your afflictions. The ultimate
healing, of course, happens on that Day when Jesus comes again in glory to
raise you from the dead. But the
beginning of that healing is here, now, in the gift He gives when He touches
you. That is the power that comes out from Him.
Our whole life is lived around the altar, because our whole life is
lived around and in Jesus. Our identity,
our very being, is Jesus.
Woe
to all who trust in man. They have
received their good things now. Their
punishment awaits. But blessed are you
who trust in the LORD. No evil can
finally harm you. Not really. For you are baptized into Christ. You belong to Christ. He is your wealth, your satisfaction, and
your eternal reward. He is your whole
identity. In the Name of the Father, and
of the Son (+), and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment