Sermon for 6 Epiphany C  (Feb. 15, 2004)

by The Rev. Susan Anslow Williams

Particular focus on Luke 6:17-26

 

REALITY’S BITE

 

 

Last Thursday, Feb. 12, I found myself at Rite Aid next to “President Lincoln” on his birthday. OK, it wasn’t the real Abe or his ghost, but our local, rather eccentric character who dresses like the famous President to amuse and instruct school children and adults alike.  We were both getting ready to celebrate the holiday – not Presidents’ Day, but Valentine’s Day.

 

Overwhelmed a bit by the variety of hearts and flowers, jokes, and sentiments sweet, risqué, or downright insulting, we perused the card aisle with raised eyebrows. Perhaps the prophet Jeremiah got it right in our first lesson, as he wondered: “The heart is devious above all else... who can understand it?”  (Jer. 17:9) Having picked out some non-offensive cards, and some light-up plastic jewelry for the girls and chocolates for Eric, I headed out into the grey, frozen wasteland that is Feb. in WNY. Perhaps those colorful hearts and cheery flower are mostly our own indulgence in wintertime wishful thinking, a needed break from everyday reality.

 

Perhaps you’re here this morning for a similar reason – to soak in a bit of holy ambience before returning to the “real world,” the Mon. – Sat. world of questionable motives, worrisome outcomes and complicated relationships. Maybe you have a hard time explaining to friends, family or colleagues why you do come here, waking up early and dragging sleepy heads out of bed...to what I suspect an awful lot of people think is a “Valentine land” of sweet thoughts and  spiritual candy, with a boost that lasts about as long as a chocolate heart. The world isn’t a pretty place, everyone knows that: It’s messy, full of pain and injustice, warfare and crime. As Fr. Ross challenged us last week at the Forum: “If Jesus really is the Messiah, where are the signs that we now live in a Messianic age?”

Shouldn’t things be a lot better than they are? Perhaps what we Christians need is a good dose of reality, a secular cold shower to snap us out of our romantic daydreams.

 

I’m sure there were a few such skeptics in the crowd 2,000 years ago as Jesus stood on a level place and began to tell his listeners about blessings.  “Blessed are you who are poor... blessed are you who are hungry today... blessed are you are weep and mourn... blessed are you who are persecuted for your faith. But woe to you who think that wealth and food and merrymaking are all you can hope for in this world. I’m here to tell you that God has other priorities.”

 

“Oh get real, rabbi,” more than one voice probably called out. From time to time, even his disciples tried to shake his message. “The world isn’t like that, and you need to play by its rules or it will crucify you.” Still, Jesus persisted in his preaching, his healing, his message of a new reality. Grammar buffs out there may notice that these familiar phrases – we know them as the “beatitudes,” the blessedness’es, are indicatives – statements; rather than imperatives – commands. Jesus isn’t telling us to do something – to be poor, to stay hungry, to cry daily or seek out persecution. Instead he is describing God’s opinions, God’s mercy.

 

God notices, values and blesses with his love all those types of persons deemed problematic or outcasts: the poor, even those who can’t seem to make it off of welfare; the hungry, even those we think are wasting their food stamps on junk food; the mournful, even the ones who seem to make a habit of whining, always seeing their glass as half empty; and the faithful, even the overly religious, whether “holier than thou” or “I’ll pray it my way.”  Here is God’s “valentine” to the world: a valuing of the downcast and cheerless, the perpetually struggling and the easily discouraged. To me, this sounds an awful lot like the valentine we need in WNY in February!

 

How then shall we live?  And how shall we address the skeptics who tell us “get real”? I think the key is to proclaim the new reality, the reality of beatitude. The wise teacher and writer William Willimon describes a conversation he had with a friend who is a nurse in a cardiac intensive care unit, seeing many patients who will never return to full activity and many who will never make it home at all. “How do you keep going?” he asked her.

 

“’Walks in the park,’ was her reply.  She explained, ‘I take and hour off for lunch and go to walk in the park. I see people who are happy, healthy. I see children playing and older people sitting on benches having a great time talking with one another. I am thereby reminded this is how things are meant to be. This is the real world. It helps me to keep going in very difficult situations.’”

 

Willimon goes on to reflect: “Are her walks in the park an escape from reality, a trip into never-never land?  No, they are for her, a realistic engagement with the way things really are and are meant to be that keeps her going in a shadowy world where it is easy for her to forget what’s what.” [1]

 

A movie a few years back was entitled “Reality Bites.”  I didn’t go to see it. I don’t need to be bitten by reality. Instead, I propose, it is we who bite into reality – at the altar each time we come forward and stretch out our hands for the gift of God-with-us. Like the nurse friend of Professor Willimon, many of us find God in nature, in walks in the woods, sunrises, cross-country skiing on a crisp afternoon; or in the fellowship of good friends or a caring listener. But also, week in and week out, we are offered the reality of Incarnation: God caring enough to become fully one of us, walking around in our dusty shoes, daring to challenge the priorities of his age and ours; and going all the way to the cross to prove his point, one that Easter Day would show to be true. Reality is the mercy of God that ignores the sting of death and reaches out to everyone, including all those we shake our heads and wonder about; including ourselves, in our most unworthy moments.

 

Real people have deep roots, like those trees planted by a stream, who don’t dry up and blow away in the first drought. Real people see blessings in small packages, and look for the presence of God in hard situations.

 

Blessed are you who get up on Sunday mornings, for you will get a reminder of reality.

 

Blessed are you who never quite make ends meet, for you realize that life requires more than a healthy checkbook, it requires faith in God’s presence.

 

Blessed are you who never quite snap out of the winter blues, because spring will bloom most beautifully for you.

 

Blessed are you who weep and mourn among friends, for the compassion of God is in their sympathy.

 

Blessed are we who gather at the altar, for when we take into ourselves the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, we are strengthened with a guaranteed dose of his real presence; and all the skeptics in the world cannot undue that gift.  Get real – and this is the place to be.

 

Amen.