2/17/19 “Caution: Sharp Turn Ahead” by Nancy Petty

Text: Luke 6:17-26

The headline caught my attention. It read: Iceland Mandates Mental Health Warnings On All Bibles. The article states: “The government of the small island country voted unanimously to place warning labels on every Bible. Not only will the cover of each and every tome have a warning, but there will be reminders placed throughout the so-called holy book to remind readers they are putting their hearts and minds at risk.” The article continued: “The new warnings include but are not limited to:

• Taking the Bible literally can lead to irrational decision making.
• Reading the Bible to young children is shown to cause nightmares.
• The Bible contains God approved genocide, misogyny, and a serious lack of humor.
• Reading the Bible has been shown to cause an outbreak of Donald Trump.

It concluded: “Ever since Iceland declared Christianity a public health hazard the situation on the ground evolved quickly. Fearing for its safety in the age of resurgent toxic Christianity in the United States, the small nation issued a travel ban against American televangelists as well as white Southern Baptists.”

Now, if I hadn’t known the source of this article I might have believed it. (And if you fall asleep at this point in the sermon you are going to run the risk of being embarrassed by your friends when you try and pass this story off as true. So stay awake.) The story was published on one of my favorite non-religious sites called Laughing in Disbelief – a site I often go to when life gets too heavy and I need a good laugh. “Laughing in Disbelief” is part of the Patheos network of religion-themed blogs. The majority of blogs in the network focus on spirituality. But there is also a “non-religious” section that publishes humorous content. “Laughing in Disbelief,” which resides in the non-religious section of Patheos, includes a disclaimer page that explains its content is satirical in nature. And this is where I found the story of Iceland mandating mental health warnings on all Bibles.

I thought of this satirical article this week when I read our gospel text, Luke’s version of Jesus’ most famous sermon. I also thought of those signs along the North Carolina mountain roads that gave me the opportunity as a young child to practice my reading skills. All along the curvy roads were signs that would read: Caution: Falling Rocks. Caution: Steep Grades Ahead. Caution: Drive Slowly. Caution: Watch for these signs of life (and on those signs would be pictures of cows, bears, and deer). And one of my favorite ones: Caution: Primitive Road – Use At Your Own Risk. And then the one I thought of when I read Luke’s Beatitudes: Caution: Sharp Turn Ahead.

Most of us are more familiar with Matthew’s beatitudes, better known as the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew’s story takes place “up the mountain” where Jesus sits with his disciples, teaching them a set of eight teachings, each beginning with “Blessed are…” Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed are those who mourn; blessed are the meek; blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness; blessed are the merciful; blessed are the pure in heart; blessed are the peacemakers, and blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake.

Luke’s beatitudes are shorter than Matthew’s and instead of taking place “up the mountain,” Luke’s setting is in on a “level place.” You see, in Luke, mountains are places of prayer for Jesus. And it is down the mountain, on level places, where Jesus heals and teaches – among the people that Luke has his setting for Jesus’ famous sermon. In Luke, it’s known as the “Sermon on the Plain.” But the place – mountaintop or level ground –is not the most significant difference in Matthew and Luke’s account of this famous “sermon” of Jesus. A sermon about how things are ordered in God’s world.

You may remember that Matthew follows his beatitudes with those familiar passages about being the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Luke, however, follows the famous sermon/teachings with another set of teachings – the woes. Luke takes us from a happy and blessed place to a place of trouble, a place of woes. It struck me that somewhere in between Luke 6 verse 22: “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven…” and Luke 6 verse 24: “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.” somewhere, between these two sets of teachings, Luke or someone needed to post a sign that read: Caution: Sharp Turn Ahead.

We like the blessed parts, especially when we read them from Matthew. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Surely we have all felt poor in spirit at one time or another. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. We’ve all mourned. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Now those might seem a little further out of reach for some of us so we won’t tarry there long. And the next one, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Well, we’ll just skip over that one all together unless someone wants to stand up and testify to it. But we are eager to jump back in on the next one, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Surely that is us, we say – peacemakers.

We even like the blessed parts when we read them in Luke, although it is harder for those of us sitting here in this place to identify with them. Luke speaks plainly. There is no pastoral framing or psychologizing in Luke. He simply says: Blessed are the poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you on my account. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven. Even if we can’t see ourselves in Luke’s beatitudes we hear a sense of justice in them. God will remember the poor, the hungry, those who are crying out from pain and displacement. And we care for the poor and the hungry and we hear the cries of those who are continually beaten down. If nothing else Luke’s beatitudes connect us to our sense of doing justice and loving kindness; and that we can feel good about.

But Luke doesn’t let us stop there. Luke doesn’t let us rest in that feel good place. He doesn’t want us to get caught in the nuances of Matthew’s “poor in spirit.” And I get the feeling that Luke isn’t very concern about being pastoral or interpreting Jesus sermon through a psychological or even dare I say spiritual lens. No, without warning, without any caution sign planted by the roadside, Luke veers off “Blessed Boulevard” to “Woe Way.” Woe to you who are rich. Woe to you who are full now. Woe to you who are laughing. Woe to you when people speak well of you. It’s a sharp turn – not one that most of us sitting here today are really prepared for. Because something inside us tells us those woes are for us.

I don’t want this to be a sermon that beats us down further than religion and the institutional church has already done to so many of us. I don’t want to dampen our joyful hymns or those good feeling of connection that we feel when we gather in this space to worship. I want us to feel blessed today – to feel that blessedness that comes when we pray together and sing together, when we worship together. I want what I say to bless you today.

AND, I want us to understand – because I want to understand – what Jesus meant when he said, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” I want us to understand what Jesus meant when he said the kingdom of God is within you. I want us to understand what Jesus was saying when he said “love your neighbor as yourself.” When he said, “pray for your enemies.” When he said, “feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick, welcome the stranger.” And what he meant when he said, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” I want us to understand that when he said, “if you have two coats give one to our brother/sister who doesn’t have one” he meant it. I want us to understand that he meant it when he said sell what you have and give to the poor. No, he didn’t mean for you to go without nothing. But he did mean to go with less so that others might have. The woes I guess can be seen as a warning to those of us who are rich and full and laughing now and who have nice things said about us. But this morning I’m seeing them less as a warning and more as an invitation – an invitation to be a part of the sacred work of establishing God’s kingdom come here on this earth, now.

Whether you read it in Matthew or Luke, whether you call it the Sermon on the Mount or the Sermon on the Plain, whether you focus on the blessed part or the woe part, this sermon that Jesus gave is an invitation to re-order our lives in such a way that brings this world closer to the vision God had, and still has, for humanity and all of creation. Unlike Matthew, Luke simply wants to caution us that if we decline the invitation there will be trouble for our world. And as I see it, not only has our nation, but the Christian church more often declined this invitation for an invitation that invites us to a troubled party.

Here’s how I interpret Luke’s woes:
• If we don’t risk sharing our money and our building and our resources and our very lives with the poor and the hungry, there will be trouble.
• If we don’t risk looking foolish for the immigrant child and her family at the border, there will be trouble.
• If we don’t commit ourselves to understanding and caring about the struggles our own children and youth are facing, there will be trouble.
• If we don’t start taking less and if we don’t sacrifice more when it comes to saving our planet, there will be trouble.
• If we don’t do more to acknowledge our white privilege and work to change the powerful systems of inequality, there will be more trouble.

It’s easy to hear Jesus’ woes as that of a parent saying, “You’ve done it now. Now you’re going to get it.” We’ve been conditioned to hear Jesus and the Bible that way. But I’m choosing to hear Jesus’ sermon not as a reprimand from a parent but as an invitation from a friend, a brother saying, hey, listen up, I know a better way of living – a more loving and meaningful way of living. It’s not always an easy way, and you have to set some different priorities, but it is the way to bring about more love, more compassion, more equality, more justice here and now.

Several weeks back I was meeting with the Rev. David Forbes. I greeted him with a hug and the question, “David tell me how you are doing?” Having already sat down, he stood up positioned himself as a warrior with one foot in front of the other, knees bent and with his arm outstretched in front of him with his palm turn outward. He said, “Nancy, I’m so blessed that when asked that question I have to put my hand out and say God has blessed me so much that God needs to go on to the next person and bless them. I can’t take any more.” I have seen David in that pose, saying those words, every day since he said them to me. I am so blessed that God needs to go on to the next person. We live in a world that teaches us to keep taking and keep taking and keep taking, even when we already have an abundance. When we will stop, when we hear the woes Jesus tried to teach us and make that sharp turn toward being the meek, merciful, and righteous – all meaning that we live to restore the world to the way God envisioned it for us.

Which road will we choose? Blessed Boulevard or Woes Way? Whichever way we choose, we need to be on the lookout for that caution sign because on this journey, there will always be sharp turns ahead.