I want to start by having you think about what it means to be blessed.

If someone asked you to say who is blessed or to name someone that you think is blessed, who would that be for you? Do you follow the same definition that our society does? I mean, many of us do.

Our society teaches that you’re blessed if you have financial means. Maybe it’s a nice house or it’s nice cars. There’s this image that our society says is what we’re to all strive for. I remember the catchphrase from quite a few years ago that said, the one who dies with the most toys wins. So that’s the one who’s blessed.

But that’s not the way it is in the Bible. That’s not what the Bible tells us. It is the way the Empire, Romans, and the Greeks looked at life. I mean it’s been around for a while. It’s not a new concept. But the word that is used in the scripture today, the Greek word is makarios. It does mean happy, but it truly means favored. It means it’s you’re blessed because you are favored by God. You may not necessarily be happy about your situation, but you can be happy because you’re favored by God.

Think of the story of the rich man that came to Jesus looking for eternal life. Jesus says, if you want to find eternal life, go and sell off everything, give away everything you have. Because it’s all of our stuff, and caring for all of our stuff, that gets in the way of our relationship with God, Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit, whatever name you want to use. We end up focusing on our stuff and ourselves rather than on who God’s calling us to be and how we are to be in this world.

There’s a saying that when you have nothing else, all you have is God. So it makes it a little bit easier to focus your attention on Christ.

Our scripture today is Luke’s version of the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes are in both Matthew and Luke.

Scholars believe that they came from a source that we call Q. It’s a source that we’ve never found. But there’s a whole set of stories that are in both Matthew and Luke, but not in Mark.

We have to remember that one of Matthew’s goals is to make sure that everybody understands that Jesus is the Messiah. Matthew has Jesus on the top of a mountain preaching down to all those who are beneath him. That’s not the way Luke does. Luke has Jesus on a level place. He’s accessible. In fact, the people have come to him, they’ve touched him and have been healed. He’s accessible, relatable, literally touchable. Not up on the mountaintop. He is equal with them in that moment.

There’s also a difference in the way they read. Matthews is a bit more obscure because it’s blessed are the poor in spirit. Where’s Luke? Blessed are you who are poor. It’s direct. It’s very tangible. Matthew, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Those are the ones where we can say, that means me, Jesus means me. Luke says, Blessed are you who are hungry today. Who didn’t have food today. Blessed are you who are grieving. Blessed are you who are excluded, reviled, and defamed.

And we want to say, isn’t one of those us? But, Luke has a different message for us. Because Luke goes on then to say, And woe to you who are rich. Woe to you who have enough, or more than enough. Because you will have a time when you won’t. And woe to you who are laughing because you will experience hardship. Not his words, my words.

Matthew and Luke are very different messages. We hear them very differently. In Matthew’s we can almost feel like it applies to us and we want it to apply to us. Luke is very clear. I don’t think it means us. At least not most of us. For most of us, we’re in the woe category. Whether we feel like we’re in the woe category, or not, we don’t want to be there. But it goes back to Luke 4, where Jesus read the scripture that’s very similar, except he put in sight for the blind.

And here is Jesus proclaiming it. This is who I’m going to be about. This should not be a surprise to us. Because from the very beginning, God has given preference to the poor, to the orphan, and to the widow. The one who is unclean and not welcome in society. The stranger. It’s amazing when you read Leviticus we get hung up on a few of those rules and ignore the rest. Like the one that says you don’t harvest the edge of your field because that is for the poor. You allow the poor to glean your field, so that they have food. That’s not a popular concept anymore. We call that stealing. But that’s in there. That’s one of those laws we’re supposed to be following. Because we’re supposed to take care of the poor.

This hits hard this week. Because this week, in the news, the Presidential administration called the poor, the parasite class.

One member of the administration team suggested that they be melted down for biodiesel.

We need to think about who we are, what we’re doing, and how we’re living in this world. Because we, too, are to bring good news to the poor, release for the captives, sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed.

This week is also about vision. The theme is fill our cup up with vision. I see that in two ways. Vision is our purpose and it’s our ability to see.

“Inclusive Refuge – Compassionate Justice – Environmental Advocacy”

That is our current vision that we have agreed on. I want you to read it. Think about what we need to be involved in right now based on our vision. Because this is the work that our board is doing. Our board is saying this is our vision and we need to be about this. If we’re not, if what we’re doing is not taking us to this, then we shouldn’t be doing it. This is our focus and when I look at that, I think that we need to do more work around being a safe space for those who feel afraid or powerless.

When I think about what’s going on in our country and community right now, I think those people are people of color, they are people of different faiths, they are the LGBTQ community, they are the immigrant community. I did say immigrant, and I know some of you want me to clarify that as an illegal immigrant. But I want to say that ICE arrests people first, and then they get to show their papers. It’s not they come to your door and you show them your papers and they walk away. Those are different.

So what are we to do now? Today? Tomorrow?

We’re in this season of light. We are to be light for the world.

I think we go back to that beginning and we say, so it’s about being in right relationship with God. That has to be our first and primary focus. But we don’t get off the hook. We don’t get to let ourselves off the hook there. It’s not just about being faithful to God and listening to Christ. We also need to be the light. We need to be about Love and grace. We need to be looking and seeing what’s going on. We need to see when our neighbor is uncomfortable.

Rabbi Jack Paskoff was at a meeting with me this week and I asked how he was doing. He said, “I’ve been better” because even he is feeling the pressure of being Jewish in Lancaster County.

It’s our neighbors who aren’t white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. We need to check on them. We need to check on our LGBTQ friends. Because they’re telling me they’re terrified. Those are the people who need safe space. Those are the people who need to know where the advocates are and where their allies are.

I stopped preaching about the kingdom of God and started using the words beloved community of God. Because there’s a section of Christianity that uses the kingdom language. They have a very different outcome. They are about power. They are about military might. They believe in the sword. And they’re looking to hurt people. Because they think they want to be on top.

This message from Jesus is not about being on top. It’s about standing with people and equality and love and grace.

So what is the next most loving thing you’re going to do? That’s what I want you to think about this day.

May it be so. Amen.

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