Edgewood United Church

United Church of Christ

February 18, 2007  Edgewood United Church UCC Rev. Karen E. Gale

Holy Hilarity
Luke 6:17-26

Woe to you who are rich!

Woe to you who are rich, woe to you who are full, woe to you who are laughing… Well, that sounds like a cheerful way to begin a sermon on Holy Hilarity Sunday.

Did you hear about the rich man who wanted badly to take some of his fortune with him when he died? He prayed and finally God said, "Okay, you can bring some." So he found a large suitcase and packed it with gold bars, and soon afterward he died and showed up at the pearly gates. St. Peter said, "Hey, you can't bring that in here!" The man explained that God had allowed him one carry-on and St. Peter opened the suitcase and said, "You brought pavement?"

Ah, woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.

Today’s scripture is from Luke’s version of the beatitudes. Found in Matthew and Luke, these short pithy sayings of Jesus grab our attention although Luke’s version has more punch. Whereas Matthew’s text says “blessed are poor in spirit,” Luke does not make it a spiritual assessment. “Blessed are the poor.” And moreover, “woe to the rich.” Matthew’s text doesn’t have any “woes.”   Cause really, they are such a downer. Who wants to think of what’s going to happen “later” the afterlife or whatever?

Three buddies die in a car crash, and they go to heaven to an orientation. They are all asked, "When you are in your casket and friends and family are mourning you, what would you like to hear them say about you? The first guy says, "I would like to hear them say that I was a great doctor of my time, and a great family man."

The second guy says, "I would like to hear that I was a wonderful husband and school teacher which made a huge difference in our children of tomorrow."

The last guy replies, "I would like to hear them say, "Look! He's moving!"

Who wants to think about the end of life? Let’s think about right now and pretend the rest won’t happen.

But with today’s text, what does Jesus mean by blessed are poor. Do the poor feel blessed, especially the ones Jesus was preaching to that day? Do the hungry feel blessed? Do the oppressed feel blessed? I certainly don’t when I am hungry or oppressed.

A man meets St. Peter at the Pearly Gates. St. Peter says: "Tell me an heroic deed you did on earth and you may enter." The man thinks for a moment and says: "One time I was driving down the interstate, looked across the way and saw a biker gang harassing a woman. I swerved across four lanes of traffic, across the median across four more lanes of traffic, up into the rest area parking lot, went up to the biggest, ugliest biker of them all and punched him right in the nose." "Wow," said St. Peter, "Very Impressive! When did this happen?" The man (looking at watch) says: "About five minutes ago."

Impressive yes, but the man ended up with a one way ticket to heaven. A blessing?

It might help us to understand “blessing” a little better to hear how the word blessed would have been heard by Jesus’ audience.

“In ancient Greek times, the word blessed, makarios, referred to the gods. The blessed ones were the gods. They had achieved a state of happiness and contentment in life that was beyond all cares, labors, and even death. The blessed ones were beings who lived way up there in some other world. To be blessed, you had to be a god.

“That word took on a second meaning. It referred to the "dead". The blessed ones were humans, who, through death, had reached the other world of the gods. They were now beyond the cares of earthly life. To be blessed, you had to be dead.

“Finally, the word came to refer to the elite, the upper crust of society, the wealthy people. It referred to people whose riches and power put them above the normal cares and worries of the lesser folk -- the peons, who constantly struggle and worry and labor in life. To be blessed, you had to be very rich and powerful.

“When this word, makarios was used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, it took on another meaning. It referred to the results of right living or righteousness. If you lived right, you were blessed. Being blessed meant you received earthly, material things: a good wife, many children, abundant crops, riches, honor, wisdom, beauty, good health, etc. A blessed person had more things and better things than an ordinary person. To be blessed, you had to have big and beautiful things.

“In all of these meanings, the "blessed" ones existed on a higher plane than the rest of the people. They were gods. They were humans who had gone to that other world of the gods. They were the wealthy, upper crust. They were those with many possessions.

“Jesus uses this word in a totally different way. It is not the elite who are blessed. It is not the rich and powerful who are blessed. It is not the high and mighty who are blessed. It is not the people living in huge mansions or expensive penthouses who are blessed. Rather, Jesus pronounces God's blessings on the lowly: the poor, the hungry, the crying, and the hated.

“Throughout the history of this word, it had always been the other people who were considered blessed: the rich, the filled up, the laughing. Jesus turns it all upside-down. The elite in God's kingdom, the blessed ones in God's kingdom, are those who are at the bottom of the heap of humanity.” (Brian Stoffregen, Crossmarks.com)

In God’s eyes, the blessed are the very least. The poor, the homeless, the helpless, the imprisoned, the discriminated against. Which is a great improvement. God is on the side of the poor. However, it can still be used for pie in the sky theology. Don’t worry about being poor now, in heaven you’ll be blessed. Is being blessed really good news for the poor? Great, we’ll be ok in heaven but what about now?

And then there are Jesus’ words for us, those of us who are rich, and, let’s face we are rich. With the world’s average income at around $1000 per year, with about 18% percent of children in Michigan below the poverty line, we are rich. Rich. And Jesus says to us this morning: “Woe to you who are rich.” How do we hear that? What does that mean to us?

I bet we don’t feel rich. How many of you out there really feel rich? There is always more to have, to buy, to want. More, more, more. Never enough. “Woe to you who are rich.” Sometimes it is a woe. We feel trapped by materialism, consumerism, all we are told that we should want, all that we worry we won’t be able to afford. What if we lose our wealth? What if we can’t travel when we retire? What if we can’t afford health insurance? Some of these are real worries, but they are worries of the rich which can leave us crammed into a pretty small box.

There was a woman who was very faithful in her church attendance. She was also extremely wealthy with millions to her name. Every week when the offering plate came by she put in a dollar, which is what she felt the church needed. Eventually she died and went to heaven. St. Peter greeted her at the gate and said he would take her to her new home. Along the way they passed beautiful mansions until they finally reached the end of the road and got to this tiny shack. “This is your new home,” said Saint Peter. “Wait,” said the woman, “wait, where is my mansion?” “Well,” said Saint Peter, “we did the best we could with what you sent.”

Ouch! Now I don’t believe that we are sent to hell or spend eternity in a tiny shack because of our giving patterns on earth or what we put in the offering plate. But Jesus was very clear about economics:
Sell what you have and give it to the poor.
Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 
Woe to you who are rich for you have received your consolation.

Sometimes I think the afterlife will be more like the movie It’s a Wonderful Life where Jimmy Stewart sees all the good he has done in his life. And so I’ll see all that I’ve done in my life, and more pointedly, all that I haven’t done. Woe to you who are rich for you shall see what your taking of disproportionate wealth has wrought amongst the people of the world. Woe to you when you see what consequences there are in a world where we would need five earths if everyone consumed as much as we do.

Funny, we’re not laughing so much anymore. Perhaps money just isn’t a laughing matter. Or perhaps it is how we look at our money that makes the difference.

A very rich man parked his brand-new Lexus in front of his office, ready to show it off to his colleagues. As he got out, a truck passed too close and completely tore off the door on the driver's side. The man immediately grabbed his cell phone, dialed 911, and within minutes a policeman pulled up.

Before the officer had a chance to ask any questions, the man started screaming hysterically. His Lexus, which he had just picked up the day before, was now completely ruined and would never be the same, no matter what the body shop did to it.

The policeman shook his head at the man and said, “I can’t believe it. You are so focused on your possessions that you don't notice anything else."

"How can you say such a thing?" asked the man.

The policeman replied, "do you know that your left arm is missing from the elbow down? It must have been torn off when the truck hit you."

"My God!" screamed the man. “My Rolex!"

Woe to you who are rich.

So, how can we deal with our money, address our wealth, admit that we are rich, and move forward faithfully. How do we take today’s biblical message seriously?
How do we address our wealth so that we hear Jesus’ words for us and act on them?

There is this possibility. Two men were shipwrecked and stranded on a desert island. One of them was voicing his displeasure rather loudly, kicking the sand, etc. "How could this happen?!"  The other man curled up underneath the one palm tree and fell asleep. This just angered the other castaway even more.

Waking him up, he said, "How can you sleep at a time like this???" To which the sleeper replied, "It's okay, man. I make $10,000 a week." Well, as you can imagine, this angered the man even more and he replied "And what good is that going to do you out here?"
The relaxed man continued, "You didn't let me finish. I make $10,000 per week, I am a regular church goer, and a faithful tither. When Sunday rolls around, one way or another, my pastor WILL find me!"

Well, that is one solution. See me after service if you’d like to arrange it…

But really, how do we take “woe to you who are rich” seriously, faithfully?

We can give our money away. To our church, to charities, to those who ask us for it, to foundations. But which ones? What is difficult even when we are moved to give is that we don’t know which way to go: to help the present need, the starving in Darfur, the homeless in our city, or the building up of capacity for the future, lobbying our government and funding agencies that demand global accountability or create food sustainability.

We live in that tension. The ever present tension between meeting the present needs and advocating for social change. Feeding the hungry, tending the homeless, and calling our government to accountability to address the problem in a real and sustainable way. Both and. Not either or.

I think we can look at today’s psalm to understand blessing and woe differently.

Psalm 1 talks about being like a tree planted by the water. What makes us rich is God. Understanding the blessings of God and through God being a blessing to others. To be blessed to be actively engaged in bringing about God’s kingdom. That means connected to God and giving of what we have. We will become poorer. We will mourn more as we take on the burdens of the needy, the lonely, the hurt and give away that which has made us rich in the eyes of the world, our money. We may be scorned. But we will enter the place of the blessed: those who are poor, those who mourn, those who are ridiculed.

“Blessed are you when people hate you and exclude you and defame you on account of the Son of Man for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.” We’ll be in good company.

To be engaged in the ministry of God that Jesus lived out and that taught to his disciples means relinquishing our wealth. It is a hard path that we struggle to follow even when it doesn’t make sense to others. Even when the costs are high. Even when it seems like everyone else is on a different path.

An elderly lady was well-known for her faith and for her boldness in talking about it. She would stand on her front porch and shout "PRAISE THE LORD!"

Next door to her lived an atheist who would get so angry at her proclamations he would shout, "There ain't no Lord!!"

Hard times set in on the elderly lady, and she prayed for GOD to send her some assistance. She stood on her porch and shouted "PRAISE THE LORD. GOD I NEED FOOD!! I AM HAVING A HARD TIME. PLEASE LORD, SEND ME SOME GROCERIES!!"

The next morning the lady went out on her porch and noted a large bag of groceries and shouted, "PRAISE THE LORD."

The neighbor jumped from behind a bush and said, "Aha! I told you there was no Lord. I bought those groceries, God didn't."

The lady started jumping up and down and clapping her hands and said, "PRAISE THE LORD. God not only sent me groceries, but God made the devil pay for them. Praise the Lord!"

I love that joke. Who is truly engaged in the kingdom of God? The one proclaiming from her porch or the one who brings groceries and meets a need. The one who thanks and relies on God or the one who denies God yet lives out the ministry of God. How is God working through these two people? And which one would Jesus say is blessed poor and which one is woeful rich?

“Woe to you who are rich for you have received your consolation.” I would say that once we take Jesus seriously, once we have our eyes opened to the needs of the world, perhaps being rich isn’t so much of a consolation but a responsibility. We become engaged rather than seeing the problem as one that we must ponder as in the accountant and the beggar:

An accountant was passing a beggar in the street, and the man said "I have not eaten for three days" The accountant replied "How does that compare with the same period last year"?

That is not a faithful response. We need to instead ask, what do we do with our wealth?

There is a group of Americans called Responsible Wealth. The group is made up of wealthy citizens who recognize that they have become wealthy for many reasons, not just their own hard work. That “other factors such as societal investment, privilege, historical timing and luck had a role in their success.” These folks have been advocating for change within our tax system. They are upset by the continued cutting of taxes for the rich. Instead they are demanding better social justice spending, tax increases for the rich and fewer tax breaks. Many signed a letter to protest the repeal of estate tax. (responsiblewealth.org)

These are rich who understand Jesus’ words “woe to you who are rich” and are instead drawing on their roots, their understanding of what is right, to bring about change. They are demanding real change that will cost them real money in higher taxes

Fine for them, you might say. They have a lot of money. Well, some members have a household income of $150,000, not exactly the mega-millionaires we might think. In fact a bit closer to our own reality than we might think.

For we are the rich.

“Woe to you who are rich for you have received your consolation.”

We become trapped by being rich when we believe that what we have is ours. Our money, our car, our house, our things. These are not ours. They are God’s. Everything. We are not actually rich, but stewards for a wealthy God, a God who made creation and all things in it. How might it change our understanding of what we think we own if we attached God’s name to it all?

I invite you to try this exercise this week. When you leave to go home today think, I’m getting in God’s car. When you open the front door to where you live, think I am entering God’s house. When you go to the bank, this is God’s money. Try it for a whole week and then reflect on whether or not it changed you. Do you drive the speed limit in God’s car (or not assuming if its God’s car you won’t get a ticket)? Do you use less energy in God’s house?

And, most pointedly, how do you view money, God’s money, that is entrusted to you to use for the people of God?

To be rich in a world of need is a huge responsibility. Woe to you who are rich. And it is our great challenge to use these riches for the benefit of all. Because, ultimately, you can’t take it with you.

A stingy old man who had been diagnosed with a terminal illness was determined to prove wrong the saying, "You can't take it with you."

After much thought and consideration, the man finally figured out how to take at least some of his money with him when he died. He instructed his wife to go to the bank and withdraw enough money to fill two pillow cases. He then directed her to take the bags of money to the attic and leave them directly above his bed. His plan: When he passed away, he would reach out and grab the bags on his way to heaven.

Several weeks after the funeral, the deceased man wife was up in the attic cleaning and came upon the two pillow cases stuffed with cash.

"Oh, that darned old fool," she exclaimed, I knew I should have put the money in the basement.

Woe to you who are rich. Let us all find ways to give up our wealth in the service of God’s people, the blessed of the earth.

Amen.