Be Attitudes
To be disciples in such a time as this?
In the final book of Tolkien’s Ring Trilogy: The Fellowship of the Ring, the young dwarf, Frodo, who has set out on a journey that turns out to be much more difficult that he anticipated, says to Gandolf, the wise wizard and leader: “I wish it had not happened in my time”. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But it is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that has been given to us”.
We too are living in a turbulent time. There is no getting away from it now. Disturbing news comes hurtling at us on a daily, if not hourly basis, like a tsunami. Canada has been, for the most part a peaceful country, a good neighbor and trading partner: easy to get along with, and while we are concerned with the world’s problems, they have largely been at a distance, not affecting our Canadian way of life directly. We have concerned ourselves with our own internal issues, while reaching out to provide assistance for those farther afield as we can. That has all changed. The world’s problems have come to Canada. We are directly affected and we don’t know what the outcome will be.
Today’s readings speak directly to our current troubles. The prophet Jeremiah tells us that “those who trust in mere mortals whose hearts turn away from God. They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land”. Well, that’s pretty clear!
Then he goes on to say “Blessed are those who trust in God, whose trust is God. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit. The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse - who can understand it? I God tests the mind and searches the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings.
Psalm 1 reiterates this telling us that God knows the way of the righteous but the way of the wicked is doomed.
For God knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked is doomed. What we do matters; where we place
our trust matters.
In today’s Gospel, also known as the sermon on the plain, Jesus stands on a level place to speak to the disciples and the multitudes. He is not standing above them. And he is speaking to anyone who can hear that those who would be his disciples are called to live a life of radical commitment. The gospel was written for Christians living a generation or two after the first group of believers had gathered and it written for us today. In this teaching of Jesus, Luke reminds us that we are called to live lives that are turned towards God.
But in today’s Gospel, Jesus is also saying “WOE…….wait a minute. The other side of blessing is woe, and he is asking us, as his disciples to do whatever we can, individually and collectively, to address the woes of the world. The wealth gap, the education gap, the health gap, and the many other inequalities and failures around the globe, mark the two sides of blessing and woe. This passage calls us to address these gaps and to not be discouraged by the immensity of the task.
This is the raw, unvarnished, faith rattling declaration of the reign of God. To a great crowd and his disciples, Jesus speaks unequivocally of God’s blessing on the poor, the hungry, and the reviled and of God’s judgement on the rich, the sated and the comfortable. The poor are blessed because they have nowhere else to turn but to God. The wealthy (that is all of us who have enough, or more than we need…not just the super rich), have to be careful not to let our comfortable status isolate us from the rest of the human community. It is clear that Jesus is addressing his disciples, and not the rest of the world when he speaks these challenging words.
This is the God of Isaiah whom we heard Jesus proclaiming from the scroll in the temple, in the Gospel a few weeks ago, announcing that he came to bring good news to the poor, liberty to captives and sight to the blind. In today’s Gospel, Jesus is laying out what this means for those of us who call ourselves his disciples. It is a blueprint for our lives as Christians. How to live, how to respond to situations, how to BE. It’s about our identity…..what we do, and how we respond to situations flows from who we ARE.
The depth and impact of this has always been difficult for the church to understand and easier for the church to neutralize. The tendency is to domesticate the message, to make it more comfortable for us Christians to accept, but we don’t have that luxury anymore. If there is one message that is getting through to us Canadians at the moment, it is that every one of us has to stand up and be counted whether it’s to choose where our groceries come from, to affirm our national identity by flying the Canadian flag, by choosing to engage in difficult conversations, and especially to choose our sources of information carefully so that our vote in the next election may be wise and informed.
If Jesus was preaching today here at St. Matthias, he might also warn us about the dangers of Christian nationalism: a cult that describes itself as Christian while having nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus and everything to do with white supremacy, wealth, power and control. I think Jesus would be asking us to consider how we are living our Christianity, for people will be watching us. They will know we are followers of Jesus by the choices we make and who we care for.
The truth is that Jesus demands of his disciples everything we have: our time, our talent, our treasure, and also our weakness and our vulnerable humanity. As we consider the time in which we are living, and as we come together next week for our annual general meeting, this is a good time to consider what God is asking of us as members of this faith family. Our world is in dire need of healing, liberation and a perhaps especially a renewal of hope.
My parents lived through the second world war; their youth conscripted as they faced a world challenge, doing their part along with so many others. They didn’t choose to live during that time, but like Frodo, they developed qualities of compassion, courage, and inner resourcefulness that remained with them throughout their lives. I know too that the people of Britain came together in an unprecedented way as a community to fight against forces of evil, each one playing their part, however small. We will do the same. We did not choose to live during this time, but with the help of God, we will choose how we will respond to it.