William H. Willimon - "Being Blessed and Cursed by Jesus" (February 11, 2001)
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| - | The anthem we have just heard is written | 0:11 |
| by choir member Craig Almeda, | 0:13 | |
| who has been an undergraduate | 0:17 | |
| and graduate student in our chapel choir. | 0:19 | |
| After the Martin Luther King service in January, | 0:26 | |
| a person was being interviewed by a reporter | 0:32 | |
| out in front of the chapel. | 0:35 | |
| And the person, explaining her presence at the service | 0:37 | |
| said,"Dr. King taught us just | 0:42 | |
| "to love everybody impartially, | 0:46 | |
| "without regard to who they are, | 0:50 | |
| "the color of their skin or anything else, | 0:52 | |
| "just to love and accept them, embrace, affirm them. | 0:56 | |
| "He was just like Jesus in that." | 1:02 | |
| Well, I don't know that that was really fair to Dr. King. | 1:08 | |
| Dr. King certainly had some choice words | 1:11 | |
| of condemnation for Southern segregationists. | 1:15 | |
| And whether or not that's true of Dr. King, | 1:20 | |
| it's certainly true of Jesus. | 1:25 | |
| We must not get Jesus confused | 1:29 | |
| with the university registrar. | 1:32 | |
| When some little bureaucratic toady is dealing with you, | 1:35 | |
| he is supposed to treat you | 1:40 | |
| just as if you were anybody else, impartially, | 1:43 | |
| disinterestedly, without prejudice. | 1:48 | |
| That's generally what we call justice, | 1:50 | |
| when everybody is treated exactly the same | 1:53 | |
| without regard to who they are | 1:56 | |
| or how they act. | 1:58 | |
| When we say we want a more just society, | 2:01 | |
| I think that's usually what we're talking about. | 2:05 | |
| For us, justice is that place | 2:10 | |
| where everybody is nobody in particular, | 2:12 | |
| where nobody's got a face | 2:16 | |
| or a particular history. | 2:18 | |
| The Department of Motor Vehicles. | 2:21 | |
| Well, that may be what we want | 2:26 | |
| but what does God want? | 2:27 | |
| Well, Jesus, in today's gospel comes down | 2:32 | |
| and stands on a level place. | 2:35 | |
| Matthew has Jesus do this sermon up on a mountain | 2:39 | |
| but in Luke he gets down on our level | 2:43 | |
| and he preaches. | 2:47 | |
| Now, you students know that around here, | 2:50 | |
| you can tell a lot about a professor, | 2:52 | |
| what that professor cares about | 2:54 | |
| by reading between the lines, | 2:57 | |
| listening carefully to the professor's lecture, | 2:59 | |
| analyzing what the professor says, | 3:01 | |
| that's what I want you to do this morning with Jesus. | 3:04 | |
| What do you think that Jesus thinks | 3:09 | |
| from what Jesus teaches? | 3:13 | |
| Hear today's scripture. | 3:17 | |
| "He looked up at his disciples and said, | 3:22 | |
| "blessed are you who are poor, | 3:24 | |
| "yours is the kingdom of God. | 3:27 | |
| "Blessed are you who are hungry now, | 3:30 | |
| "you will be filled. | 3:33 | |
| ""Blessed are you who weep now, | 3:35 | |
| "you will laugh. | 3:38 | |
| "Blessed are you when people hate you | 3:41 | |
| "and exclude you, revile you, defame you | 3:44 | |
| "on account of the son of man. | 3:47 | |
| "Rejoice in that day, leap for joy | 3:50 | |
| "for surely your reward is great in Heaven | 3:54 | |
| "for that's what their ancestors did to the prophets. | 3:57 | |
| "But woe to you who are rich | 4:03 | |
| "for you have received your consolation. | 4:06 | |
| "Woe to you who are a fool now, | 4:09 | |
| "you will be hungry. | 4:11 | |
| "Woe to you who are laughing now, | 4:13 | |
| "you will mourn and weep. | 4:16 | |
| "Woe to you when all speak well of you | 4:19 | |
| "for that is what their ancestors did | 4:23 | |
| "to the false prophets." | 4:25 | |
| This is the word of the Lord. | 4:28 | |
| Thanks be to God. | 4:31 | |
| All right, Jesus's lecture consists of two parts. | 4:34 | |
| Part one, a series of blessings. | 4:37 | |
| "Blessed are you poor, | 4:41 | |
| "yours is the kingdom of God." | 4:46 | |
| Oh how blessed or we might say how happy, | 4:49 | |
| how, in the Greek (speaking in foreign language) | 4:53 | |
| are those whom the world curses, people like the poor | 4:56 | |
| or the sick or the unemployed, | 5:02 | |
| the grieving, the dispossessed. | 5:03 | |
| "Blessed are you who are hungry, you'll be filled. | 5:07 | |
| "Blessed are who weep, you'll laugh. | 5:10 | |
| "Blessed are you when you're hated because of me." | 5:15 | |
| Now, in the kingdoms in which we live, | 5:21 | |
| such people are cursed or at least pushed down | 5:23 | |
| to the bottom. | 5:26 | |
| It's a curse to have to put your children | 5:28 | |
| to bed hungry at night, | 5:32 | |
| to have to come home and tell your family no, | 5:36 | |
| there was nobody who needed me today, | 5:38 | |
| I didn't find any work today. | 5:40 | |
| That's a damning experience for sure. | 5:43 | |
| Somebody was telling me the other day | 5:49 | |
| who has been struck down by a terrible illness, | 5:51 | |
| when I was commenting on how bad her illness was, | 5:55 | |
| she said, "You know, | 5:58 | |
| "the illness is bad | 6:00 | |
| "but worse is the way that people avoid you | 6:01 | |
| "when you're ill." | 6:10 | |
| It's like when you're sick in this society, | 6:11 | |
| you must have done something wrong, | 6:14 | |
| you must not have exercised | 6:15 | |
| or watched your diet. | 6:17 | |
| People don't wanna catch what you've got | 6:19 | |
| and it's no fun to be around people in pain. | 6:21 | |
| She said, "The sickness is bad | 6:27 | |
| "but the loneliness is worse." | 6:29 | |
| That's how we deal with those whom Jesus blesses. | 6:37 | |
| Jesus tells people that in God's kingdom, | 6:44 | |
| those who we put on the bottom are blessed. | 6:46 | |
| The poor, the hungry, | 6:52 | |
| the weeping, the hated. | 6:54 | |
| Clearly, Jesus takes sides. | 6:59 | |
| He is partial to the poor, | 7:02 | |
| he is prejudiced toward those | 7:04 | |
| whom we are prejudiced against. | 7:07 | |
| Blessed are you who hunger, we poor, | 7:10 | |
| and if that were all there were to Jesus's lecture | 7:15 | |
| that day, I suppose that this sermon | 7:17 | |
| would be remembered as one | 7:19 | |
| of the sweetest things Jesus ever said | 7:20 | |
| because we all do respond positively | 7:23 | |
| to anybody's gotta a good word | 7:26 | |
| to say for the less fortunate. | 7:27 | |
| If you'll notice in Matthew, | 7:29 | |
| that's how the sermon ends, | 7:31 | |
| with this series of beatitudes, | 7:33 | |
| this series of blessings. | 7:36 | |
| And today though we've walked away | 7:39 | |
| from that kinder, gentler Matthew's account of this sermon | 7:44 | |
| to what Luke remembers. | 7:48 | |
| For the sermon goes on from a series | 7:50 | |
| of blesseds to an exact mirror image | 7:52 | |
| of Jesus moves on to curses. | 7:59 | |
| Curses? | 8:05 | |
| I suppose Jesus is known not only | 8:08 | |
| by what he affirms | 8:10 | |
| but also by what he rejects. | 8:12 | |
| After blessing those whom we curse, | 8:15 | |
| the hungry, the poor, the sorrowful, | 8:18 | |
| Jesus, well, there's no other way to put it, | 8:21 | |
| curses those whom we bless, | 8:25 | |
| the rich, the content, the happy. | 8:29 | |
| As I talk to Duke students | 8:34 | |
| and we talk about their parents | 8:36 | |
| and the guidance their parents have given them | 8:39 | |
| and what they ought to do with their lives, | 8:41 | |
| this is primarily what students say | 8:43 | |
| their parents want for them. | 8:46 | |
| "Dear, whatever you do, | 8:48 | |
| "I just want you to be happy." | 8:50 | |
| It's a great blessing if your children grow up | 8:54 | |
| and they're happy. | 8:56 | |
| And yet, Jesus curses the happy. | 8:59 | |
| Toward the end of December, | 9:06 | |
| Barbara Walters had her 10 Most Influential Americans | 9:07 | |
| of the Year Special | 9:13 | |
| and it was Ms. Walters' way | 9:15 | |
| of honoring those who have, in her words, | 9:16 | |
| "contributed the most to America, | 9:19 | |
| "the most admired." | 9:22 | |
| And I can tell you, there wasn't a hungry, | 9:23 | |
| weeping, grieving empty one among them. | 9:25 | |
| They were all people of great power | 9:29 | |
| and prestige and possessions. | 9:31 | |
| People who'd made the big impact on America. | 9:33 | |
| Well, Jesus had some choice words | 9:38 | |
| for people like that. | 9:40 | |
| Those of you are rich, damn you. | 9:43 | |
| You've already received your consolation. | 9:47 | |
| You've already had the best that this world has to offer. | 9:50 | |
| What could God give you? | 9:53 | |
| You were so good at working the kingdoms of this world | 9:56 | |
| to your advantage, | 10:00 | |
| well, now in God's kingdom, curse you. | 10:01 | |
| If you've had your fill, | 10:09 | |
| if you were stuffed | 10:11 | |
| with all that can be consumed here, | 10:12 | |
| well, to hell with you. | 10:16 | |
| By the way, | 10:21 | |
| I teach preaching in a nearby seminary | 10:22 | |
| and I don't think I would bless a student | 10:26 | |
| who preached a sermon like this | 10:28 | |
| be he on a mountain or in the plain | 10:30 | |
| or in a university chapel. | 10:32 | |
| (congregation chuckling) | 10:34 | |
| Where's the grace, | 10:35 | |
| all of that warm-hearted, all-embracing acceptance | 10:39 | |
| that we've come to expect from a fair-minded God? | 10:42 | |
| I also find it curious, | 10:46 | |
| don't you find it curious when Jesus really unloads | 10:48 | |
| and he begins cursing people. | 10:51 | |
| He doesn't say like his, I might have said, | 10:55 | |
| curse you, fornicators and adulterers | 10:59 | |
| and sodomites and thieves and cheats, | 11:02 | |
| he says, curse you, successful and happy | 11:06 | |
| and full and well fixed. | 11:11 | |
| Jesus doesn't say God is gonna punish these people, | 11:15 | |
| Jesus doesn't say, all right, | 11:21 | |
| you ought to go out and try to act more poor | 11:24 | |
| or you ought to go out | 11:26 | |
| and try to be more grieving each day. | 11:28 | |
| The whole thing is in the indicative | 11:31 | |
| rather than the imperative mood. | 11:33 | |
| This sermon is not urging us to do anything, | 11:36 | |
| it's just an announcement. | 11:39 | |
| God's kingdom is coming | 11:43 | |
| and here is the way God's kingdom looks. | 11:44 | |
| This is the way the universe, | 11:49 | |
| this is the bias on which the universe | 11:52 | |
| has been cut, says Jesus. | 11:54 | |
| This is more real than that false front you call reality. | 11:57 | |
| He's just announcing this as this is where God is. | 12:03 | |
| This is where God is not. | 12:08 | |
| When the chapel choir went | 12:12 | |
| to Poland a few years ago to sing, | 12:13 | |
| we were just stunned by the remarkable piety | 12:18 | |
| of the people in Poland. | 12:23 | |
| Standing for three hours in these worship services | 12:26 | |
| in these big, cold churches. | 12:29 | |
| And yet, as we crossed over the line | 12:32 | |
| into the Czech Republic, more democratic, | 12:35 | |
| more economically prosperous, | 12:37 | |
| some noted you could almost feel the piety grow limp. | 12:41 | |
| It was quite a difference there | 12:47 | |
| from the poverty and the misery | 12:50 | |
| and the piety of Poland | 12:52 | |
| to the sort of carefree, casual quality | 12:54 | |
| in the Czech Republic. | 13:00 | |
| Somebody said, "It's kind of embarrassing, | 13:02 | |
| "it's almost like the Christian faith | 13:04 | |
| "is sort of prejudiced towards the poverty." | 13:08 | |
| We had a man through here from Africa, | 13:17 | |
| a pastor in Africa. | 13:20 | |
| He was talking about the remarkable growth | 13:22 | |
| of the church in Africa. | 13:24 | |
| The church in Africa just booming | 13:27 | |
| in so many places | 13:29 | |
| and I lamented the state of the mainline church | 13:31 | |
| in North America | 13:36 | |
| and he said to me, | 13:39 | |
| "Oh, well, here, there is just so much. | 13:40 | |
| "You have so much freedom and so much free time | 13:44 | |
| "and so many things | 13:46 | |
| "and they did so much | 13:48 | |
| "and the Christian faith just doesn't seem | 13:50 | |
| "to do that well in that environment." | 13:54 | |
| We're talking about the peculiar shape | 14:00 | |
| of the kingdom of God. | 14:05 | |
| We're talking about the grain | 14:07 | |
| at which this is cut. | 14:10 | |
| Well, what do you think about the sermon in Luke? | 14:15 | |
| Matthew forgot about the curses | 14:20 | |
| and just remembered that Jesus blessed a lot | 14:22 | |
| of people that day. | 14:25 | |
| Luke has Jesus turn from blessing | 14:28 | |
| to cursing and whether this is good news or bad, | 14:33 | |
| the grace or judgment, | 14:38 | |
| I suppose depends on where you're seated | 14:39 | |
| when you get the news. | 14:42 | |
| A person was telling me the other day, | 14:46 | |
| she said, six months of cancer treatments, | 14:48 | |
| she hadn't responded well to the therapy, | 14:53 | |
| things were not going well | 14:54 | |
| and my heart went out to her, she said to me, | 14:56 | |
| "You know, it's odd, | 14:59 | |
| "I feel closer to God now than I ever have | 15:02 | |
| "at any time in my life." | 15:06 | |
| There's a reason for that. | 15:12 | |
| It's as she's finally gotten on God's level. | 15:15 | |
| He was tops in his class at the law school | 15:22 | |
| and the firm flew him down for an interview | 15:24 | |
| and things went well. | 15:27 | |
| He liked the firm, the firm liked him | 15:28 | |
| until the second day of the interviews | 15:30 | |
| and somebody casually mentioned | 15:32 | |
| about one of their big clients of the firm | 15:34 | |
| and he, the law student, said, | 15:37 | |
| "Isn't that the company that's in charge | 15:42 | |
| "of the casinos and gambling in this state?" | 15:43 | |
| And they said, "Yeah, yeah and they pay well." | 15:46 | |
| And he said, | 15:50 | |
| "You know, it's legal but do you think that's moral? | 15:53 | |
| "I don't know that I could represent well somebody | 15:57 | |
| "that makes a living off the misery | 16:00 | |
| "and ignorance of others." | 16:02 | |
| And he said he never heard another word | 16:06 | |
| from the firm. | 16:10 | |
| (congregation laughing) | 16:11 | |
| But Jesus gave a word, | 16:13 | |
| "Blessed, blessed are you poor, | 16:16 | |
| "yours is the kingdom of God." | 16:18 | |
| She got out of college | 16:22 | |
| and she went to work at a center | 16:23 | |
| for the city's homeless in a great northeastern city. | 16:26 | |
| And every night there were just too many people | 16:30 | |
| and too few beds | 16:33 | |
| and the hours were long | 16:34 | |
| and they said that one morning in August, | 16:38 | |
| she woke up and she just collapsed. | 16:40 | |
| She began crying, she could not stop crying. | 16:44 | |
| It's just maybe | 16:48 | |
| over exposure to the raw edges of human need. | 16:53 | |
| She started weeping and she couldn't stop. | 16:59 | |
| Now, some professional called in | 17:03 | |
| said she was suffering from depression. | 17:04 | |
| Somebody else who knew her well said it's burnout. | 17:08 | |
| Jesus called her blessed. | 17:13 | |
| You heard the lecture. | 17:18 | |
| "Blessed are you who weep, | 17:21 | |
| "you will laugh." | 17:24 | |
| I had encouraged him to go out for rush, | 17:28 | |
| I thought, he'd grown up as an only child, | 17:30 | |
| I thought the incentive to get out, socialize would be good | 17:33 | |
| but that night there had been too much alcohol | 17:38 | |
| and you know when people over consume, | 17:41 | |
| they're not at their best | 17:43 | |
| and the incident involved a lot of people | 17:45 | |
| but a secret meeting was held | 17:48 | |
| and everybody agreed | 17:51 | |
| to just keep a lid on it | 17:52 | |
| and keep the whole thing quiet. | 17:54 | |
| Everybody agreed to keep it quiet but him. | 17:58 | |
| "It's not right," he said to them. | 18:02 | |
| "This is not what a fraternity is supposed to be about. | 18:04 | |
| "We're making one wrong even worse." | 18:10 | |
| And he said from that night on, | 18:16 | |
| nobody ever again referred to him as brother | 18:18 | |
| but Jesus called him blessed. | 18:24 | |
| "Blessed are you when people hate you | 18:30 | |
| "and exclude, revile, defame you on account | 18:32 | |
| "of the son of man. | 18:34 | |
| "That's the same way they treated the prophets | 18:35 | |
| "before you got here." | 18:37 | |
| I just hate to say it | 18:42 | |
| but Jesus appears to be taking sides, | 18:43 | |
| he appears to be prejudice, | 18:47 | |
| he appears to lean towards the world | 18:49 | |
| in a peculiar way | 18:53 | |
| and following Jesus means | 18:56 | |
| to have to confront | 18:59 | |
| the prejudices of Jesus. | 19:02 | |
| Carlyle Marney, a great Baptist prophet, my mentor | 19:08 | |
| when I was young, | 19:11 | |
| I remember him telling a group of us clergy, | 19:14 | |
| "You know, the trouble with you guys," Marney said, | 19:16 | |
| "is not what your little preachers manage to affirm | 19:19 | |
| "but what you fail to reject. | 19:23 | |
| "You go all about your ministry | 19:25 | |
| "and you're always saying blessed, blessed, blessed, | 19:27 | |
| "you ought to be saying damn, damn, damn." | 19:28 | |
| Amen. | 19:32 | |
| (congregation laughing) | 19:34 |