St Mary's

Gospel Reading Luke 6, 17. 20-26

HOMILY NOTES SAT- SUN FEB 12-13-2011.

I want to make four or five points about this week’s Gospel reading – an exceptionally powerful and confronting one, or at least it is to me. These points are simply reflections, and some of them come up with questions that I don’t know the answer to.

The Depth of the Christian Revolution

This reading is a good example of the extent to which Jesus overturned conventional values – of his time and ours.

It’s easy for us to underestimare the depth of the revolution in values that Jesus proclaimed and called for and lived.

Christianity has come to be seen as a comfortable middle class religion that urges people to be nice to each other  and promising that if we do,  we’ll all go to heaven when we die.

But there’s nothing comfortable or nice about today’s gospel.  It’s uncompromisingly radical and I certainly find it very confronting.

To say “How happy are you who are poor!” or “How happy are you who are hungry!” is a shocking thing to say, then and now.  And it’s a reminder to us of what we get ourselves into when we commit ourselves to following Jesus.

The late Fr Ted Kennedy, my old PP from St Vincent’s in Redfern in Sydney used to say, “They crucified Jesus for living a Christian life, and if they’re not crucifying you too, you’re probably doing it wrong.”

Even to say “Our Father” – as we will in a minute – and be prepared to live it -  ie to accept all people as our brothers and sisters – is a big challenge. Bishop Tutu used to say about one of the great architects and promoters of apartheid – “whether he likes it or not, whether I like it or not, P W Botha is my brother!”

Christianity is not for wimps!

The Very Words of Jesus

As you are aware, there’s a lot of discussion about which of the words in the gospels which are attributed to Jesus, are actually his words, and which were put in his mouth by  the gospels writers, 30,40,50 years or more after Jesus’ death.

But the first three verses of this gospel are generally regarded by scholars as being absolutely authentic.

This doesn’t mean that the rest are less significant, but that their significance is a bit different, giving expression to the needs and beliefs of early Christan communities.

But “Blessed are you poor”, “Blessed are you who are hungry” and “Blessed are you who mourn” are the very words of Jesus.

Solidarity with the Poor

The emphasis on the poor is right through the gospels.  Early in Luke’s Gospel is the episode where Jesus goes into the synagogue at Nazareth, his home town, and in a very solemn formal way, Jesus says of himself the words of the prophet Isaiah:  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to bring good news to the poor” It’s not  “good news to everyone”.  Right through his life, Jesus associates himself with marginalized people – the poor, lepers, prostitutes, tax collectors, people who were ritually unclean for various reasons.  He goes out of his way to do this.  In the great Last Judgement scene in Matthew’s Gospel, the one criterion by which people are judged is about their response to those who are poor – I was hungry and you gave me to eat.  Jesus not just associating with the poor, but identifying himself with them.

Most religions, as far as I know, urge or require their followers to care for the poor, to be compassionate.  But, again as far as I know, only Jesus requires that the poor have pride of place in our society.  We’re very good at saying “the last shall be looked after”.  But what Jesus said was “The last shall be first”.

What would our world look like if even we Christians took that seriously.  If we insisted, for example that in framing the national Budget, the fist question we ask is, how do we meet the needs of the poor? How do we eliminate poverty?

“Happy are you who are poor”

So we come back to this saying and the others in this reading.  What can they possibly mean?

In the past, we didn’t have much of a problem with the.  We used to say, or I used to at least – it means that the poor are blessed because if they patiently put up with their lot in this life, they’ll be greatly rewarded in the next.

These words were evidently found to be very confronting even by the early Christians.  Already in Matthews Gospel, the actual words of Jesus have been softened to “Blessed are the poor in spirit”, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after justice”.

Those softened versions are also valuable and important sayings.  But they can’t be used to  explain the meaning of Luke’s text.

And what is that?  Well, I don’t know for sure, but I think that part of the meaning might be that Jesus believed that the good news could only be heard in its fullness by those who are poor. And that there are dimensions of the Good News, that we who are not poor simply don’t have access to.  We can only gain that access by being close to those who are poor.

I’m sure that’s not all the answer, but I’m sure it’s part of it.

The scariest saying

The challenge presented by Jesus’ emphasis on the centrality of the poor is underlined even further in the last words of the reading.  For me these are possibly the scariest words in the whole of the  New Testament – possibly the whole Bible.  “Alas for you when all people think well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets”  The false prophets were those old testament figures who called themselves prophets but only spoke the sort of words they knew their rulers wanted to hear.

And we spend so much of our time – or at least I have, worrying about what people think of me, and working to ensure that they think and speak well of me!  Our good name is important to us, and when we have gained it, it’s a source of comfort.  Not in the eyes of Jesus

A bunch of losers

And so, in the light of all this, we gather together this evening, as we do each week, to celebrate the eucharist.  And we gather, not as people who are secure in the awareness of our own righteousness.  We come together rather in the knowledge and awareness of the extent to which we fail to measure up to the challenge of the Christian Life.

What unites us, in fact, is the realization that, from a Gospel perspective, we are all a bunch of losers.

The only consolation in all this – and it’s a considerable consolation – is that in typical Christian paradoxical fashion, it is the losers who are the winners.

Remember the two men who went into the synagogue to pray – also in Luke’s Gospel.  And one stands up at the front and says he fasts twice a week and gives a tenth of his earnings to the poor, and thanks God he’s not like the loser at the back.  And the loser can only acknowledge his “losership” and ask to be accepted anyway.

And that’s the model for us – we come together knowing we fall short but knowing that in this community we will be accepted anyway, as we in turn accept others who fall short.