So You Want to be Blessed
Luke 6: 17-26 February 15, 2004
He went down with them and stood on a level place. A large crowd of his disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coast of Tyre and Sidon, who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by evil spirits were cured, and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all.
Looking at his disciples, he said:
"Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who hunger now,
for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
Blessed are you when men hate you,
when they exclude you and insult you
and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man.
"Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets.
"But woe to you who are rich,
for you have already received your comfort.
Woe to you who are well fed now,
for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will mourn and weep.
Woe to you when all men speak well of you,
for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets.
CCI: God’s blessing relates to our being, not our belongings.
Intro: “Oh Lord, bless us!” How many of us have offered that prayer? And what do we mean when we say that?
I wanted to discover what was being taught about God’s blessing, so I went to the world wide library and looked for pages on blessing. I learned that Lillian Irving Jones McDow on her 100th birthday said, ''I was so good to everybody, God has blessed me.” So for Lillian, God’s blessing was reward for being kind.
Rose Mudock said, “When [God] blesses you with His blessing it makes you rich. The word ‘rich’ means ‘rich’. The blessing of the Lord makes you wealthy.” (http://www.bibleseed.org/teachings/The%20Blessing%20of%20the%20Lord.htm). God’s blessing makes us rich.
And as I surveyed studies on blessing, this message kept coming through loud and clear. God does good things for you if you do can make God happy with you.
However, not one of these studies deals with the passage of scripture we just read. This passage is Luke’s version of the beatitudes. In Matthew’s version, we read, blessed are the poor in spirit; and blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness. In that passage Jesus is speaking of spiritual conditions. However, here, Jesus simply says, blessed are the poor; blessed are the hungry. He is not speaking about a spiritual condition, he is speaking to people who are struggling for daily sustenance.
This passage is an exposition on the mission that Jesus presented to his home town crowd in Luke 4. Here Jesus declared that he came to preach good news to the poor, release to the captive, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed and the year of God’s favor. Now, in this sermon, Jesus is expanding on that theme. Blessed is the description Jesus gives to these people. The amplified Bible says blessed means “happy– with life-joy and satisfaction in God's favor and salvation, apart from your outward condition--and to be envied.”
Now, with that definition in mind, listen again, Blessed are the poor! for yours is the kingdom of God. In other words, God’s favor rests on the poor! That is a hard one to get our minds around, isn’t it? We have been trained to believe what Rose Murdock said, “When [God] blesses you with His blessing it makes you rich. The word ‘rich’ means ‘rich’.” Is it any wonder that some translations write, “God will bless you people who are poor.” Even the translators don’t like the idea of God’s blessing and physical poverty. But that is what Jesus says.
And he goes on and extends that blessing to the hungry and the hated and the rejected. The very people we see as outside the circle of God’s love, Jesus said are blessed. Why?
It is very tempting to try to explain away these beatitudes. We could suggest that the poor need to rely on God for everything, so they see God’s blessing more quickly. Or maybe the promise of heaven means more to them because they are poor, so they will one day be blessed.
But instead of trying to explain away Jesus words, perhaps we can embrace them. You see it is in poverty that Jesus is found. Mother Teresa when asked why she worked with the poor of Calcutta said, "The dying, the cripple, the mental, the unwanted, the unloved-- they are Jesus in disguise." Poverty, hunger and rejection are those places where God can meet us. They are a path to receiving God’s grace. When we recognize our poverty, and stop trying to deny it, God blesses us with the Kingdom itself.
Henri Nouwen, the great devotional writer who spent the last years of his life caring for one man who was incapacitated by his mental retardation, wrote: "How can we embrace poverty as a way to God when everyone around us wants to become rich? Poverty has many forms. We have to ask ourselves, "What is my poverty?" Is it lack of money, lack of emotional security, lack of a loving partner, lack of security, lack of safety, lack of self-confidence? Each human being has a place of poverty. That's the place where God wants to dwell! "How blessed are the poor," Jesus says (Matthew 5:3). This means that our blessing is hidden in our poverty. We are so inclined to cover up our poverty and ignore it that we often miss the opportunity to discover God, who dwells in it. Let's dare to see our poverty as the land in which our treasure is hidden."
Where is your poverty? Paul said, “[Jesus] has said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. [10] Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Cor. 12:9-10) That point of poverty and weakness is the place where God will show himself most clearly. As you embrace your poverty, acknowledge your weakness, become to content with your distress, God will reveal himself to you in new and exciting ways. And so I challenge you to embrace your poverty and hunger, give it to God as a gift, you have nothing to lose.
I want to go a little farther with this today. As a church, our poverty right now, is our conflict and disunity. This is our point of weakness. And I believe this is where God longs to show his strength. Jesus told a story of a family whose poverty was their disunity. There were two sons, and one day the younger son left home to pursue his own way. It broke the heart of the loving father. But he did not pursue him. He love him. He waited for him, he prayed for him, he longed to be restored to him. And when the son returned, they celebrated their new unity.
We are being challenged today to embrace our poverty. This is not easy. But only when we embrace it, only when we accept the reality of our poverty, will we see God. Blessed are the poor, theirs is the kingdom of God. They have stopped trying to deny their poverty and pretend they have a kingdom of their own. Now they have discovered that God can bless them in their poverty.
In a few minutes those who were elected one month ago will be installed as leaders of this congregation. Leaders, as you come, I urge you to come in humility and come in unity, and come seeking only God’s kingdom. Then we will see God act. Then we will see God move. And we will experience His strength in our weakness in ways we can not even imagine.
Where is your place of poverty? May you find Jesus in that place today.
