If Only Jesus Had Stopped Talking

Imagine the following scenario if you will. You are a seasoned senator in Washington known for your knowledge of foreign affairs and your smooth talking. You decide to run for President of the United States. It has been said that every senator looks in the mirror each morning and sees a potential president. On the very morning you announce your candidacy, you give an interview to lay out the reasons why you are running. Then just as the interview winds down you are asked your views of a potential rival. Your opponent is a much younger man who has been recently garnering the lion’s share of the public spotlight. The veteran senator says this: my colleague is "the first mainstream African American presidential candidate who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." You’re probably thinking that such a comment could never happen. Oh, it did alright!

When a person is in the midst of an interview, a speech, lecture, tirade, an embarrassing wedding toast, one of the greatest gifts one can give that person is a look, a gesture that conveys that they might just want to stop talking. Just stop talking! “Stop while you are ahead” as the expression goes. For others, sometimes it is “stop while you are behind.” For the speaker has made their point and the audience is paying attention: stop talking! This is good and sound advice for presidential candidates, anyone on a first date, rambling preachers, and occasionally apologetic husbands.

When I read the first part of Luke’s version of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, this advice is what came to mind. If only Jesus had just stopped with the blessings – the beatitudes at the beginning – people then and now would come away with a far different impression of what he said. They might not have tuned out or become discouraged or disconnected because there would have been little for anyone to take offense. After all, who can take offense at Jesus’ blessing and encouraging of the poor, the hungry, those who weep, those who are attacked, hated and excluded for the sake of the gospel? Who could argue with being charitable, compassionate, and rooting for the underdog and being kind to the less advantaged? Then, as now, on the surface the first part of Jesus’ sermon is pretty safe preaching territory. God hears the cries of the oppressed from the time of the Exodus to today. Christians are expected to care. The familiar grace before meals often includes: “make us mindful of the needs of others.”

But the thing is, Jesus kept talking and preaching on that day to a group of disciples and a great crowd of others from Judea, Jerusalem and the coast of Lebanon who had come to hear him preach and be healed. The text doesn’t note Peter interrupting him, as he did at other times in the gospels. There was no friend or aide to gesture to tell Jesus to stop while he was ahead. For every blessing he had just listed, Jesus added an opposing woe. Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, who are laughing now for you will mourn and weep. Woe to all who speak well of you.

Jesus held up for those who listened then and now two contrasting conditions of living in this world and he prepared us for the truth that how we live now has something to do with how we will live in the Kingdom, when God’s reign breaks into this world, when everything gets turned upside down and transforms all we’ve ever known.

One of the great hurdles of hearing this gospel account in its entirety – the blessings and the woes – is that many listeners can get caught up in a false choice. We can become anguished or distracted by worrying and wondering about what group might we fit in. Are we the haves or the have nots? Are these verses to be taken literally? Are we the poor or the rich, the hungry or the full, the weeping or the laughing? If we do not consider ourselves the Donald Trumps or Bill Gates or professional athletes of this world, where does that put us? We may earn an hourly wage, perhaps have health insurance, have little money in the bank and live paycheck to paycheck. When we ask ourselves if we have a warm bed in which to sleep at night, have access to clean water, are we rich or poor by the standards of this world? It all can seem a bit subjective.

A few weeks ago, before the recent frigid winter weather settled in, we realized that we had a problem with our exterior restoration. The work was proceeding on schedule -- that was not the problem. Rather, when the contractors came to work one morning to start their climb to the top of the scaffolding, they encountered men in sleeping bags. They discovered on the lower levels of our scaffolding homeless men had begun to sleep and eat their meals. And, by the way, these men were not so thrilled with being moved so early in the morning by the workers. Obviously, we had to do something. We could not turn the scaffolding into overflow beds for the homeless, so we put barriers up so that others would not climb up and potentially hurt themselves. The men were encouraged to go to one of the city’s shelters. The Cathedral is part of a larger social network of churches and other organizations in the city trying to meet the emergency needs of the poor, hungry and excluded. Our focus here has long been on feeding. Our kitchens are used seven days a week to prepare food for the hungry. We feed, while others provide shelter. But when it gets cold, there is never enough room. Imagine how bad it must get if opting to sleep on the outside of a church is preferred to checking into one of our city’s crowded shelters.

Christian charity is not enough, so there are times when we must organize and write letters, and vote and sometimes march to promote lasting changes to unjust systems.

What I take away from this gospel is this: in every generation, people who follow Christ should care deeply about who is hungry, who is crying, who is excluded, who is reviled. Christ also knew that the present mattered, for he knows of our pain in real time. Blessed are you who are hungry now, who weep now. That is what made his preaching different from all the others who hoped to settle scores in the next life. Jesus said: we don’t have to wait until the next life, for God is making things new right now, right here, and calls us into a new way of being.

As Jesus preached, we can only imagine that some people wandered away. Maybe there were some rich, full, laughing, lofty people in the crowd who took offense. The gospels report that not everyone who heard his teaching followed him. Some, I’m sure, were unconvinced.

So as we hear Jesus’ sermon filled with good and bad news, instead of worrying too much in which group we may fall, perhaps a better way to listen is to focus on which side God is on. I began this sermon with a gaff of a would-be president. I conclude with a quote from perhaps our greatest and at the same time our most Christian president.
As President Abraham Lincoln -- whose birthday is celebrated tomorrow -- once said “my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.”