February 16, 2025 First Congregational UCC, Brimfield MA
Luke 6:17-26
17 He came down with them and stood on a level place with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. 18 They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases, and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. 19 And everyone in the crowd was trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.20 Then he looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 21 “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. 22 “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. 23 Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets 24 “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. 25 “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. “Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. 26 “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
OK, here’s my question for you for today. Are we basically individuals, each our own person, separate from one another? Or are we basically a community, not just better together, but maybe not made to live completely separate lives?
And why does it matter?
Here’s the thing: in order to live in the way that makes the most sense to us, we need to understand what’s really important.
When I was little, my mother made all my clothes. She enjoyed it, did it well, made really nice things that I was proud to wear. And she was clear, she did it primarily not because it was a hobby, but because doing it saved money. She sewed with her best friend who had a daughter my age. Often they used the same patterns, but her friend used much better fabric. She wasn’t sewing to keep within a budget; she was sewing much better clothes than my mother was making. Neither one was better than the other, it’s just that they had different goals – one wanted to stay within a budget, the other wanted to make better clothes than she could afford to buy. It’s important to know why we’re making the choices we are.
In order to live in the way God is calling us to, we need to know what’s really important. Today’s lesson points us towards what God thinks is important. And what God thinks is important is that we live in community.
God thinks, Jesus says, that community is what matters.
The Croatian theologian Miroslav Volf, who teaches at the Yale Divinity School, has written: The singleness of this vision implies more than that everyone ought to live it out. All humans and all life on the planet are interdependent, an interconnected ecology of relatedness. The image of home expresses this vision, perhaps, better than any other in the Bible. For one person to truly flourish, the entire world must flourish; for the entire world to truly flourish, every person in it must flourish; and for every person and the entire world to truly flourish, each in their own way and all together must live in the presence of the life-giving God.
There’s a world out there where people think that what matters is “me first, my family second, my friends third, and maybe that person in need down on the corner, maybe I’ll help them later.” Those folks are even willing to try to pervert Christian theology to make it sound as tho God wants us to be “me first”, selfish, dismissive of anyone who gets in their way. That way will build a world of fractured relationships, hostilities, hatred and – eventually – war.
So, listen again to the words Jesus spoke:
“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
21 “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.
“Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.
22 “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man.
23 Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.
24 “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.
25 “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.
“Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.
26 “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.
Who matters? The poor matter. The hungry matter. Those who weep for our world matter. God rejoice when we stand up for the right.
But if you chose to do what was right and easy for you, well, you got your reward. That’s it.
And let’s make it clearer. The people who decided to wipe trans folks out of the history of the Stonewall National Monument Site, well, they’re wrong. People are people, just like love is love. You can’t pretend they don’t exist just by wiping them from the web site.
Any claim that some people matter more than others, or that some can simply be wiped out of existence, is a claim that will destroy community, turn us one against the other, and do exactly the opposite of what is described in this lesson.
We are being called to be people of love and grace. We are offered the opportunity to live together in community, caring for one another as we are, building a network of relationships within which we are one people.
Amen.
© 2025, Virginia H. Child
To Believe is to Care. . . To Care is to Do 