A Sermon by Pastor Tom Lacey . . .
After she woke up, a woman told her husband, "I just dreamed that you gave me a pearl necklace for our anniversary. What do you think it means?"
"You'll know tonight." he said. That evening, the man came home with a small package and gave it to his wife. Delighted, she opened it to find a book entitled, The Meaning of Dreams.
Matthew and Luke both record a similar collection of Jesus’ sayings.
Matthew calls his, “The Sermon
on the Mount,” the most famous portion of which is called the Beatitudes, where
Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven." Everything important to the Jews always happened on mountains: Sinai,
Ararat, and
Some of you, those of you who are reading Jesus, Interrupted with me, will probably recognize that what I have just done is called a horizontal reading of scripture. A horizontal reading is when the same story from one gospel is compared to the same story in another gospel, as we just did with Luke and Matthew's story of Jesus' most famous sermon.
It is Luke's Jesus who tells us that the poor are blessed. What exactly are we suppose to do with this statement? Look, there isn't a more difficult, outrageous, counter-intuitive, opposite to the way things are declaration in all of the bible New and Old Testament. The only one that comes close occurs just seven verses later when Jesus preaches, "But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies...." Really, the poor are blessed? Theirs is the kingdom of heaven? Jesus doesn't even say that later they will inherit the kingdom of heaven. No, theirs is presently the kingdom of heaven. They are in it right now. What does Jesus know that the vast majority of us don't? What does he see that so few see? You can ask any underemployed person, or unemployed person, talk to just about anyone who used to have stuff, like a home, savings account, a job, pension, and now is living out of their car, or sleeping in a shelter, or on the street, or off an exit ramp of 95, talk to them and tell them the kingdom of heaven is theirs. It's a tough pill to swallow, a difficult belief to hold down.
Back in Jesus' day, the poor were called "anawim." They were truly, and sometimes crushingly poor. Of course this was an economic reality, but it meant something socially and politically and sadly perhaps most of all religiously as well. They were nobodies, nothing. At every institutional point, they were made to feel out of step with real people, with those who mattered and who were blessed, and ultimately with God.
Who knows how they became such. Maybe their family was always poor; maybe the father died early and the widow and children never had a chance after that; maybe someone in their family was lazy or depressed or blind from birth or lame from an accident, and now there was no chance. They had fallen behind and that was that. There was no social mobility for the vast majority of them; no education so the more intelligent of them could make a better life for him or herself, though certainly some did make out better than others. In fact, Peter and Andrew, James and John were small business owners in some respect, since they had workers working with them in their fishing business. Jesus may or may not have been talking about them; in other words, they may have had too much to make it into his category of poor. But others had no dreams left; perhaps fantasies, wishes still, but dreams would have been for the naive or the foolish. They certainly had their tears, calloused skin, and bent backs however. And these according to Jesus are the ones who are blessed. Could he really have meant this?
I remember when the 2005 hurricane hit and we were left for days without power. I preached that Sunday in an electricity-less sanctuary. Our neighbors and we had joined together to make the best of our condition. We ate together, shared information, and checked on one another. It was quite an experience. It was heart-warming, positive. With just five fish and seven loaves of food, water, and charcoal grilling among us, we ate banquets and fiestas, lived joyfully, and slept soundly, other than the effect of noisy generators chugging through the night. Maybe this was what Jesus was talking about.
But we really weren't poor, were we? We knew things would turn our way again: power would come back on, Publix would open, and stations would start pumping gas sooner or later. We weren't really desperate, though some obviously believed so, and without sounding judgmental I should add that perhaps some were. Many people were even able to get money from our government during that time.
Now don't get me wrong. I understand that we have to pay for all this. We need to earn money in order to pay for goods and services. But that's just it; we've got it. We're on the inside. Even the poorest among us can acquire certain goods and services to supply their needs and at times wants. And those who have big bucks, the system is set up to serve and be served, to give and to get, to have and to hold till death and inheritance tax do their part. It's just that for the poor things are different. They don't have, nor do they hold. They don't get. But most of all, or truest of all, they aren't served; they do not receive. For even when given something to help them, most often something essential is taken from them.
Edwina Gately of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, Pennsylvania wrote in her order’s newsletter in 1996 about an event. She once worked in a downtown overnight shelter. She stood at the door and handed out blankets. A man came up and asked her for a blanket without lice. “What,” said the sister. The man repeated himself. She examined several blankets and said, “Here, I’ve got one here. There’s nothing moving on it.” Then she mused, “What am I doing here? Here I am picking out blankets without lice and urine stains for certain folks. This is all wrong.” She went to the supervisor suggesting daily laundering. The supervisor smiled and shook his head. “Edwina, let me tell you something. When you’ve been here as long as I have, you get used to it.” Something made her want to scream, “We must never get used to it. We must never accept the way things are because someone says they’ve always been done like this. The world was not meant for this! We were not meant to live in poverty. We were not meant to be hungry. We were not meant to be homeless. We were not meant to always sleep in lice-infested blankets.” There has got to be another way.
God's kingdom makes another way. When Jesus says blessed are the poor for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven he wants the poor to know that God doesn't end
where man's reach ends. God's circle of service reaches beyond man-made
distinctions and borders. Jesus is proclaiming that in today's world, where 1.3
billion people live in absolute poverty, that this is not God's doing but our
doing. Jesus wants the poor to know, when he calls them blessed, that just
because we haven't figured a way to care for our sick, to feed our hungry
children, to educate our young minds, even though there is an overflowing
abundance of medicine, food, and knowledge, it doesn't mean God's will has been
defeated. No, indeed, even if we still push millions out of our sights and deny
service to billions in our system of the ways things are, Jesus declares that
God doesn't follow our ways of doing things. God will not be limited by our
flawed system. The way we do things is not God's way of doing things. As
scripture says, "'For
my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways,' says the
Lord.
'For
as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.'"
Isaiah
55:10-11
We need to build a better system and dream bigger dreams--something more in God's size would be nice.
For most, God's way doesn't really seem possible. But to others, it does. When an ice cream sundae cost much less, a boy entered a coffee shop and sat at a table. A waitress put a glass of water in front of him. "How much is an ice cream sundae?" "Fifty cents," replied the waitress. The little boy pulled his hand out of his pocket and studied a number of coins in it. "How much is a dish of plain ice cream?" he inquired. Some people were now waiting for a table, and the waitress was impatient. "Thirty-five cents," she snapped. The little boy again counted the coins. "I'll have the plain ice cream." The waitress brought the ice cream and walked away. The boy finished, paid the cashier, and departed. When the waitress came back, she swallowed hard at what she saw. There, placed neatly beside the empty dish, were two nickels and five pennies, her tip.
Dream that bigger dream, and follow it. Believe in a better life, and live it. Find a higher purpose, and be it. Share with others and care for others.
Return to Sermons (table of contents)
Return to Homepage of the Congregational Church of Boca Raton