“Haunted by the Words”

Luke 6:17-26

February 11, 2007

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John A. Fleming

I have a relationship with the beatitudes, the famous first teaching of Jesus found both in Matthew’s gospel and in Luke’s. To tell you the truth, I am haunted by them. Let me tell you why.

Way back when I was in my third year of seminary, I left Southern Methodist University for my intern year. For two semesters, from August until May, I served as the intern at the First United Methodist Church in Fordyce. I learned a lot in those nine and a half months. I learned how to do hospital calls while I was there. There are some dos and don’t’s to hospital calls. I learned how to do homebound visits and how to visit those in nursing homes. I did my first funeral while I was there. The funeral was a graveside service in a cemetery about twenty miles outside of Fordyce. The cemetery was behind the Holly Springs United Methodist Church. If it hadn’t been for the folks at the funeral home letting me follow them to the cemetery, I might still be looking for the gravesite. I learned how to be a better preacher by preaching and I learned how to raise a budget and all those administrative things us preachers love. I learned a lot about how to do things. But I learned a little more about who I was.

The first four months went fine. There were few problems, if any. I took my turn visiting the hospitals, doing youth lessons, and preaching sermons.

I want to tell you that your life can change in less than a day! One Sunday morning, it was announced that I had passed the first semester of my internship. The Fordyce Church took seriously it’s ministry with the interns. That Sunday I was on top of the world. That Sunday I had all the self-esteem I needed. That Sunday I was successful. I had made it. I was sure of my calling. I was on my way.

Then came Monday morning. My turn to preach was the following Sunday. The lesson was the beatitudes, Matthew’s version of them. I did all of the things that I always did to prepare for preaching. I read the lesson over and over again. I looked at the commentaries. I prayed. Nothing seemed to happen. None of the normal things were working. So I said to John Christie, the pastor, who had something to say about my future, “I’m going to preach something else. I just can’t seem to get a hold of this.” He wouldn’t let me do that. He insisted that I preach from the beatitudes. So I went back to the drawing board and studied and studied and prayed and prayed. Finally I decided that it would be easier to quit than to preach. I had an escape plan.

John and I lived in the same house, Fordyce’s parsonage. I lived on the opposite side of the parsonage than John did. I could gather a few of my things, go out the front door, push my car down the driveway, start it at the bottom, and sneak off into the night. Never to be seen or heard of again!

One Sunday I knew what I was doing. The next Sunday I stood up and admitted that I had no idea what I was doing and it was the fault of these beatitudes. I am haunted by the words. The beatitudes showed up again on a cold day in December, the twelfth day of December to be precise, the day of my sister’s memorial service. One of her pastors, Rev. Charles Murry, used the words to describe how my sister lived.. So I have a relationship with the beatitudes. They’ve been around at a couple of very important times in my life. And, as I said, I am also haunted by them.

So when I thought about what I was going to preach this morning, when I looked at the prescribed scripture lessons for this morning and saw Luke’s version of the beatitudes, understandably I flinched. I didn’t panic. I just flinched. I asked myself, “What makes these words so hard and yet so important to me?”

Well, let me remind you of where we are. Let me set the scene for you. Both Matthew and Luke have Jesus preaching a powerful sermon at the beginning of His ministry. We’ve come to call Matthew’s version, the Sermon on the Mount. We do that, in part, because Jesus preached this sermon to only his disciples, up on a mountain. The sermon begins with the beatitudes. Matthew includes nine beatitudes. From there Jesus tackles tough subjects. He talks about everything from divorce to forgiveness.

Luke’s version has Jesus coming down from the mountain, with his newly chosen disciples to what most versions of the Bible call a level place. It is there, says Luke, that people everywhere from Judea to Sidon came to hear his words and to be healed by Him. My guess is that most of them came for healing.

The rumor was that if you got near Jesus, demons would run for cover. The rumor was that if had the chance to touch even the hem of Jesus’ cloak, then you would be healed. Fevers fled. Ailments ran for cover. One preacher wrote this, “To make contact with Jesus was the equivalent of winning the lottery.” Jesus stood there and preached a silent sermon to anyone who was sick. Luke tells us that everyone was healed. All of them were healed. No one was left out.

And when the healings were finished, Jesus looked up at the disciples and His followers and said, “Bless you…” In Matthew’s gospel, there are nine beatitudes. In Luke’s gospel, there are four. Luke adds woes to these blessings of Jesus. Matthew does that too, but only at the end of his gospel. Luke putting the woes with the blessings, of course, makes Matthew’s version the preferable one. Any preacher in his right mind would choose Matthew over Luke any day of the week.

The form of these sayings of Jesus were known to just about everyone. Beatitudes were common. Jesus wasn’t the first one to utter such wise sayings. When the disciples and the ones who had suddenly become followers heard them, they were expecting nuggets of wisdom. What they were not expecting were who Jesus said were blessed and who would have trouble down the road.

Now, since I have a relationship with these words, let me tell you what I understand about them. Your reaction to them has everything to do with who you are. If you are hungry, if you are poor, if you cry a lot, and if people tend to talk bad about you, then you hear these words with a certain sense of satisfaction. If you happen to be rich (according to today’s standards), full, happy, and if people speak well of you, then these words seem like bad news! Here is what I think we do with the beatitudes. I think we hear them, walk up the steps to the high diving board, and jump off into a swimming pool of guilt.

Jesus was not trying to make anyone feel guilty when he uttered these words. He was talking about the way the world was. He was speaking of the way the world could be. Jesus was turning the world upside down. That is what Jesus did. Let me tell you what he did not do. He did not give advice and counsel. Jesus is not telling us to become poor. Jesus isn’t telling us to be hungry. Jesus isn’t telling us to start crying or to do everything in our power to be disrespected by everyone we know.

Jesus’ advice or counsel about moral things comes later. Just after this lesson, Jesus says, “But I say to you who listen, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” That is advice. Love. Do good. Bless. Pray. It is the same advice no matter what your circumstances are.

The beatitudes cannot fall into that category. Jesus is not telling anyone to do anything. Here Jesus is describing different kinds of people. He is hoping that those who are listening will recognize themselves as one or the other. Jesus makes a promise to all of them. It is this promise, “The way things are is not the way they always will be.”

I think Jesus is describing the way the world can be, not the way it is. I think Jesus is flipping the world upside down. I think he is saying that the things we think are important and significant may not be. I think Jesus is saying that success is measured a different way. I think the language of the beatitudes trips us up. Whenever we hear the words blessing and woe, we think of reward and punishment. The beatitudes do not tell us that. The beatitudes tell us who we are. But more importantly, they tell us who Jesus is. Jesus looked into the eyes of those that he healed. Then he looked into the souls of his disciples and said, “We must pay attention to these people. We must help one another along, no matter what it costs us.

Let me close with a story. It is the story of a teacher who asked her students to list their classmates on two sheets of paper. Her instructions were to leave a space between the names. Then she gave her instructions. They were to write down the nicest thing they could say about their classmates. As the class ended, the students handed in those pieces of paper. Over the weekend, the teacher compiled the things that were written about each. Monday morning she handed out the pieces of paper. Soon everyone was smiling. She heard a few of the students say, “Really?” A few others said, “I never knew she felt that way about me!” After that Monday, the papers were never mentioned again. The students grew up and graduated from high school. Some went off to college. Others served in the armed forces. Some just worked.

Several years later, one of the students was killed in Vietnam. The teacher attended his funeral. Her former student looked handsome in his uniform. As she was leaving the casket, a solider said, “You must have been his teacher. He talked about you all the time.” It was hard for the teacher to believe that.

After the funeral, the teacher went to the home of her former student. Several of his classmates were there. It was like a reunion of sorts. The parents of the solider came up to the teacher and said, “We want to show you something.” They reached for their son’s wallet. The boy’s father said, “They found this on him when he died.” He carefully removed a piece of paper. It was a little tattered. The soldier’s mom said, “We thought you would recognize this.” The assignment of long ago, brought back to life. The soldier’s mom said, “As you can see, he treasured this.”

By this time classmates were gathered around. Each of them smiled. One of them said, “I keep my copy in my dresser at home.” Another said, “I keep my copy in my diary.” The wife of one of the students said, “My husband insists that he keep his in our wedding album.” Another said, “I keep my copy with me wherever I go.”

And the teacher left the house with the thought in her heart that the one assignment, near the end of the day, made a difference. It brought rich and poor, hungry and well fed, weepy and happy, well thought of and never trusted students together. And Jesus must have been happy and said, “Now that’s what I’m talking about.”

The question remains. What difference will you make in someone’s life? Let us pray.

(Special thanks to Rev. John Christie for making me preach this lesson the first time. I may have never tackled it without him. Thanks for Rev. Charles Murry for recognizing Emily in these words. And special thanks to Susie Fleming, who shared the story of the teacher that closes our sermon this morning. The story came to her by way of electronic mail).