Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

All Sermons are © Copyrighted and may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the express permission of the author.

Some years ago a cartoon appeared in the Roman Catholic magazine, Commonweal. It showed two men running in a squirrel cage. One is running with every ounce of effort, sweating profusely, full speed ahead, but the other, as he runs, is looking up curiously at the mechanism -- obviously just beginning to realize how pointless it all is. The first man turns to him and says, "If you question the system, you'll never get ahead." Jesus questioned the system and made a lot of enemies because he did. Never is this clearer than here, in Luke's hard-nosed version of the Beatitudes. (Luke doesn't say, as Matthew does, "Blessed are the poor in spirit" He says, "Blessed are the poor " -- period! He doesn't say, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness" He says, "Blessed are the hungry." Christians have always preferred Matthew's softer, gentler version. It doesn't make us squirm as much.

Jesus Had Special Love for Outcasts

"The teachings of Jesus are scandalous," writes one Bible scholar, "-- scandalous because they overturn every conventional expectation." That is exactly what they do. And because they change our expectations, the change the way we live. The world confidently expects that the rich will get richer and the poor will get children. But Jesus says the poor will prosper, when all is said and done, and the rich will end up broke. You would feel differently about the poor, and live differently in regard to them, if you believed that. In this world, the smart money goes with those who are full, who are laughing and enjoying life, but Jesus says, "Don't bet on it. He who laughs last laughs best. Put your money on the hungry and on those who weep." The world says good people shouldn't associate with bad, but everywhere he went Jesus walked with outcasts. He got winners and losers mixed up. This was his effrontery; this is what led him to the cross -- not simply that he pointed out people's sins, but that he said people were navigating with a broken compass. Not that he insulted hoi-polloi, but that he reversed the very fundamentals, proclaiming a Kingdom where the poor and the meek would prevail. He said not that people should fine tune their lives, but that they should turn around (which is what "repent" means) -- turn around and walk the other way. Here, for instance, in these tough beatitudes, he teaches that God has a preferential love for the poor and the downtrodden. "Who ever heard of such a thing? The poor are poor because they are in God's disfavor." Everybody knows that.

Envy the Saints as Winners in Another Kingdom

Now and then someone hears this radical message of Jesus and takes it seriously. Someone catches the vision. St. Francis of Assisi, rejecting his father's wealth, stripping off his fine clothing and going out into the world in rags, as if the poor were actually going to win. (His family never understood, by the way. They went to their graves dumbfounded at what their son and brother had done. They were of this world, he was of another.) Father Damian going to live with the lepers in Hawaii. Mother Theresa, leaving a comfortable middle-class family, to live penniless in Calcutta's slums, among the "poorest of the poor" as she called them. Don't pity these saints. They weren't choosing to be losers; they were choosing to be winners in another kingdom. And so many others, in less spectacular ways, going against the expectations of this world, living the unexpected: loving when the world would advise hating, caring when the world would advise walking away, speaking out when the world would advise keeping silent. If our expectation is that the rich and powerful will win, forever, then we live one way. But if we think Jesus was right, that there is another kingdom, God's Kingdom, where success and failure are reversed, we live another.

Following Jesus May be Very Difficult

Finally (and this brings us to the communion table), we know that living with our eyes on that kingdom, living the unexpected, doing the different thing, ridiculing this world's affections -- will lead to great resistance, may cause others to hate us, maybe even to kill us. (It has happened.) For the very existence of one who knows the Kingdom of God is a threat to those who know only the kingdom of this world. It just is. That's what got Jesus crucified.

Dr. Laura Sleshinger took a sad phone call this week. It was from a young mother whose own mother, in her late fifties, was living with a man to whom she was not married. The caller said, I can't control what she does with her own life, but now they want to come and visit the grand children for a few days, and I told her that while they were here they would have to sleep separately, because I didn't want to appear, in front of my children, to be approving that kind of relationship. (Of course, the call was amusing on its face, because usually it's the mother who is dealing with a daughter about such things.) But what was most interesting, I thought, was the young woman's account of how her entire family and most of her friends, and even her husband, had turned against her. They were calling her "dogmatic," hopelessly old-fashioned, and insensitive to other people's needs and feelings. Dr. Laura supported her, as I knew she would, but I thought of Jesus' clear warning that, if we followed him, we would find ourselves at odds with our mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. The beatitudes here, and in Matthew's Gospel, end with words of encouragement for the persecuted: "Blessed are you ("Oh, how fortunate are you.") when people hate you, exclude you, revile you, and defame you  falsely on my account." Jesus knew what was coming, for himself and for his followers, for anyone who would adopt the Kingdom of God, with its topsy-turvy values.

I  told Jesus it would be alright if he changed my name.
Jesus told me that the world would hate me if he changed my name.
I  told  Jesus it would be alright if he changed my name. It is Time to Rebel Against Stone-Age Morals

Ours is an time of stone age morals. That's not going to change until some traumatic event shakes us to our senses, or until men and women of faith screw up their courage, face the inevitable condemnation, and proclaim that other kingdom with its higher, better way to live. I hope that today's bread and wine (this covenant meal of ours, this delicious reminder of Christ's pure love), will help us find our courage. For we have the truth on our side. In truth, it is not scandalous to obey God, it is scandalous to do otherwise. It is not shameful to tell the truth honestly, but it is shameful to lie. It is not old-fashioned to live by God's rules. What is really old-fashioned (primitive in fact) is to live by the rules of paganism, or by the even older rules of the jungle. As if Christ had never come. I hope this Eucharist, this holy communion, will give us courage to live expecting the unexpected, knowing that (in fact and in truth) the tables will be turned, the poor will be rich, and those who weep will laugh. Nothing is what it seems. This is a dramatic reversal, a turning around. This is heavy. This is cleaning out the basement. This changes people's names. This, when they see it right, makes men and women new.