Woe Unto You

Propers: The Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, A.D. 2019 C

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Folks who know their way around a Bible are likely familiar with Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew’s Gospel this is the public inauguration of His ministry, a sort of statement of first principles, in which He presents the Eight Beatitudes: blessed are the poor, the mourning, the meek, the hungry; blessed are the merciful, the pure, the peacemakers, the persecuted.

These beatitudes have reverberated down throughout the centuries to the point that they seem banal precisely because of their success. Today we might hear them as lofty sentiment, but in Jesus’ day—in the time of the Roman Empire—these were radical, scandalous propositions. Think about it: How are the poor blessed? How are the meek virtuous? Jesus here turns the entire Greco-Roman social order upside-down, flipping the table, as it were: telling the people on the bottom that they are the closest to God because God has now drawn near to them. And this would still ruffle feathers today, if we truly dared to believe it.

This morning, however, we read not from Matthew’s Gospel but from Luke’s. And in the holy Gospel according to St Luke, Jesus doesn’t preach the Sermon on the Mount. He preaches the Sermon on the Plain. He does so surrounded by a chaotic mass of Jew and Gentile, urban and rural, all seeking to be cured, to be healed, to be blessed. And He says to them: blessed are the poor, the hungry, the weeping, the hated.

But woe—woe unto you who are rich!—for you have received your comfort. Woe unto you who are well fed, for you will go hungry. Woe unto you who laugh, for you will mourn and you will weep. And woe unto you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated false prophets.

Instead of Matthew’s Eight Beatitudes, Luke gives to us four blessings and four woes. Thus for as scandalous as the Sermon on the Mount may be, when properly understood, it has still proven much more popular over time than this morning’s Sermon on the Plain. I think perhaps this is because it’s easy to sentimentalize or abstract a blessing, to make it into something fuzzy and ephemeral, convicting none. But it’s much harder to explain away a woe. One has to squirm out from underneath.

So what are we to make of this? Well, for starters, I don’t want us to jump too quickly to eschatology. I don’t want us to equate blessing with salvation, and woe with damnation. That’s not what Jesus is saying here, at least not the whole of it. Moreover, I don’t want us to immediately try to categorize who’s who. Because that’s our first impulse, isn’t it? We want to know which team we’re on:

“Woe to the rich? Am I rich? Well, I’m richer than this guy over here. But it’s not like I’m Elon Musk. I haven’t shot a sports car into space. We’re all poor compared to somebody, right?”

Rather, let’s assume for the moment that the blessings and the woes apply to everyone equally; and that they have at least as much to do with this life here and now as they do with the life of the Age to come.

To be blessed, then, in the Bible, does not mean to be happy—at least not as we understand happiness today. Happiness for us is such a silly thing, derived from the same root as happenstance. It’s just something that “happens” to us, we think, like pleasant weather or good digestion. That wasn’t happiness in the ancient world, and it certainly wasn’t blessing.

Rather, to be blessed here means something like satisfied, unburdened, at peace. It doesn’t mean that we will prosper materially. It means that we will be liberated spiritually. For the ancient Greeks, in whose language the New Testament is written, happiness meant to be virtuous, to do the right thing, to be morally good. And it was assumed that this would entail suffering, because it is not easy to be good, not in this fallen world. A happy Greek is a suffering Greek, who knows that he or she suffers for doing what is right, for struggling in a just and a good cause.

How many people today, do you suppose, would equate happiness with strife and struggle, with suffering for a good cause? How many people today could discern any sort of blessing whatsoever in bearing up a rough-hewn, bloody Cross? How strange it must seem for us to point to the Crucified Christ and to say, “There hangs the world’s only perfectly happy Man.”

Kind of hard to market that, isn’t it? Kind of hard to put a price tag on a lifetime’s worth of struggle and to sell it. Christianity isn’t about avoiding suffering, which is frankly impossible, but about redeeming it, finding meaning in it: drawing closer in our suffering to the God who suffers with and for and through us all. And that’s a hard sell in an age when happiness is defined as whatever you can order from the Holy River Amazon.

It’s not that God causes suffering, of course, but that He meets us in it, and sees us through it. We must have faith that all things tragic pass away, as Christ shall have the final say. That’s what matters. That’s what’s real.

So much for the blessings. What then of the woes? Jesus’ woes, here, are a warning, a call to action. Woe to us when we put our faith in riches, for the consolation of riches is poor. Woe to us when we live for the belly, as though these delights will not pass away, leaving us all the hungrier for things more filling than food. Woe to us when we place our faith in ease and in pleasure, for hardship comes to all, and how shall we make ready? Woe to us when all speak well of us, for that’s a mighty strong indication that we’re living life all wrong.

Taken together, the woes and the blessings of the Sermon on the Plain boil down to one very frightening, very important question: What if all of this unprecedented material and physical prosperity isn’t as great as we think it is? What if it’s an illusion? What if it’s a trap? What if the things that we think make us free, that we think make us blessed, are the very things that blind us—both to spiritual reality and to our neighbor in his need?

Because if we put our trust in our health, we will all someday lose our health. If we put our trust in our money, we will all someday lose our money. If we put our trust in our family, our friends, our community, these things too shall one day pass away. And every serious religious tradition has pointed out that there is no use putting our faith in temporary, fleeting things, because that way leads only to suffering and disappointment.

Woe unto you when you’re rich and you’re full and you’re laughing and you’re popular and you think that it’s all going to last. As if the praise of this world meant something. As if money were the god who would not fail. Such houses are built upon sand, Jesus says. And when the storm comes, it will all wash away. Woe unto you. Beware. Be warned.

Jesus is not saying that health is bad, that wealth is bad. Otherwise He wouldn’t be giving these people health and wholeness and healing and blessing. Of course these are good things! But they are not first things. We cannot place our faith in them as if they will not fail us, because they will. Rather, seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and the rest shall be added unto you. Build your house on the rock.

Have faith in the One who does not pass away, who is not fickle, who will never fail you. And that is the eternal love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Keep your eyes open to that which truly is a blessing: selfless love, open mercy, a strong, daring, and dauntless faith. And woe be unto us when we look at riches and opulence and ease and fame—and pretend as though they meant anything at all.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.