Level Playing Field - February 11, 2007
If a woman from the Deep South says to you, “Well, bless your heart.” you have probably just been insulted. You may, in fact, have just been called an unseemly name. I learned this from my Arkansas-born grandmother. When I was little I used to stay with her occasionally, and when she had something sharp to say about someone, she always followed up with “Bless her heart.” While riding in the car with grandma if somebody ran a stop sign, for example, she might say “Well, that young man certainly was in a hurry, bless his heart.” Now, that was certainly code for “Did you get his license plate number, sweetie?”
When I sign off on an e-mail or a letter “Blessings” or on the answering machine I wish callers to “have a blessed day”, I remember my southern grandma, and remember that sometimes, to bless someone—or have someone bless you—is not all it’s cracked up to be. I have learned—when someone calls you blessed, listen carefully for the subtext.
Today’s gospel lesson probably sounded familiar—kind of. Luke’s version of the beatitudes is decidedly shorter than Matthew’s. And, it is important to note—it takes place in a different location. Matthew’s version has Jesus on a mountain. In Luke he has come down to where a crowd has already gathered, and all of the disciples are there by name.
But those are not the only differences are they? Oh it starts out well enough—“Bless you, and you, and you!” And lets face it—who doesn’t really want the poor to have their basic needs met, the hungry to be full, the tearful to have some joy in life. We even are willing to stand by those who are being persecuted for their faith—really persecuted. We can all get behind Jesus when he blesses those. It’s what any decent Christian wants, prays for, raises money for. Its part of the reason the church exists in its modern context. It’s a good, solid missional sermon—so far. It’s the kind of sermon that justifies food baskets, Undies Sunday, bake sales, and visitation ministries. It’s how we reach out to those less fortunate than we are, bringing a touch of grace to the suffering.
It makes us feel good—and rightfully so—to reach out and do something, for Christ’s sake!
If only Jesus knew when to keep his mouth shut. But, unlike Jesus in Matthew’s account, he keeps on going. The next thing we hear, Jesus is pronouncing woes. I like the Jesus in Matthew better. Don’t you? Jesus in Mathew seems much more focused on looking at things from a positive point of view. He tells us how to treat those in life who are disadvantaged, disenfranchised, discarded. But Luke is definitely a glass-half empty kind of writer:
Hear Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of the woes in Luke 6:
But it's trouble ahead if you think you have it made.
What you have is all you'll ever get.
And it's trouble ahead if you're satisfied with yourself.
Your self will not satisfy you for long.
And it's trouble ahead if you think life's all fun and games.
There's suffering to be met, and you're going to meet it.
"There's trouble ahead when you live only for the approval of others, saying what flatters them, doing what indulges them. Popularity contests are not truth contests—look how many scoundrel preachers were approved by your ancestors! Your task is to be true, not popular. (The Message)
I think the only people who really like popularity contest are people who are really popular. It’s depressing for somebody like me to think that life is one big long episode of American Idol. (As soon as the public gets a say-so on who wins, the whole competition is kind of ruined for me.) But I understand that some people really like competition—people who were raised to play sports, for example Me? I tried my hand at softball—if by trying my hand at soft ball you understand that I mean that I stood out in right field on a few dusty Saturday mornings holding my gloved hand up to shield my eyes and praying the ball wouldn’t come to me. Rainouts were my favorite kind of weather the summer I turned eleven.
I think the thing that soured me on softball in the first place was how the teams were chosen. The year I turned out to play, there about ten other little girls who were coming out to play for the first time as well. Unfortunately there was another team from our elementary school, comprised of girls who had played already one or two seasons. A very competitive mother, whose daughter was on that other team convinced the coaches that it would be unfair to stick inexperienced players on the team which had a decent chance of making the playoffs. Instead, all of us who didn’t even know the most basic of rules were on a team together. Those first few practices must have been like herding cats for those poor parent volunteers.
Even at age eleven, it was apparent to me what was going on. I longed for a level playing field , for a team on which to play that had some girls who at least knew what a ground double was, and how to make one. Instead I was getting smacked in the face with reality: there are winners and there are losers. Winners are better. How then are we to reconcile this:
"Count yourself blessed every time someone cuts you down or throws you out, every time someone smears or blackens your name to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and that that person is uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens—skip like a lamb, if you like!—for even though they don't like it, I do . . . and all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company; my preachers and witnesses have always been treated like this. (The Message)
With a philosophy like that, no wonder they wanted to throw him off a cliff. It is important to note that in Luke, Jesus is specifically talking to his disciples. In Matthew, all those comforting things—those blessings without woes—are for the large crowd that had gathered up on a mountain top. Jesus saves the harder words for his friends, and he says them down back on earth, on a level plain. Luke’s beatitudes are no mountaintop experience; they are plain talk for those who are committed to truly following Jesus all the way.
The message Jesus sends is clear. The mixed messages we are given are not from him, but from the world; we in turn share those mixed messages with each other. At the same time I was trying very hard to be some sort of athlete—and coming to terms with the truth that I was not one—and learning the hard lessons of winner and losers and the unfairness of that competitive world, I was also learning that some people besides me really longed for some fairness in life.
Although it was deemed perfectly acceptable to crush the athletic hopes of ten little girls on the soft ball field, surprisingly there were other aspects of childhood where we were taught to be absolutely fair and even with one another. Or at east to pretend that we were.
You know what I’m taking about—Valentine’s Day. Now, Valentine’s, day, sixth-grade style is my kind of day. In late January the note went home—“Make sure your child brings a shoe box to school. We are making Valentines mailboxes. Enclosed you will find a list of classmates. If you child wishes to give Valentines, make sure that there is one card for every child in the class.” The message in that short note was clear: Valentines was an all-or-nothing proposition. The choice was to give Valentines to everybody, or nobody. And nobody in sixth grade would be caught dead not passing out Valentines, so everybody went out to the variety store in town—or, you were fancy, to Hook’s drug store where the cards were Hallmark and more expensive. The teacher told us that homemade valentines were perfectly acceptable, but nobody listened to that. It was as if the teacher had never been a child herself.
Charlie Brown and gang, Batman, Wonder woman, Bugs Bunny—those were the choices in 1974. In every home with an elementary school aged child there was at least one of those boxes. Twenty-eight small cards, and one embarrassingly larger one for the teacher. Even back then those envelopes were so thin that you could read the card right through them. Painstakingly I sat at the kitchen table choosing the best cards for the kids I liked first, then the odd leftovers, those even less funny sentiments were be pawned off on the schoolyard bully, the kid who smelled like tuna, and the shy girl who ate paste. All kids might be equal, but some kids were clearly more equal than others.
The next day at school—the ritual delivery. One card in each red and pink construction paper heart and doily covered shoe box, lined up on a table. One could not just drop cards in willy-nilly. I carefully read the name on the card, made sure it matched up with the name on the box and stuffed it in. After the last child had filed along the table, we were allowed to take our boxes back to our desks and open the cards. And every time, I swear I was surprised that every child had given me a valentine. Even the girl who ate paste. And every year I would feel just the tiniest bit guilty for giving the schoolyard bully the card with PigPen on it. After all, he gave me a Valentine! A token of his affection! It seemed like for one afternoon, in one classroom in Sandusky Elementary, the playing field was about as level as it can get in sixth grade. The kids who didn’t have many friends still got 28 cards, and one from the teacher.
The gospel is a story of reversal of fortune. It is a story of a valentine in every box for a world where the winners appear to be all on one team. It is recognition and affirmation that we all will be at one time or another the hungry and the filled, the weeping and the laughing, those who are hated and those who are exalted, those who are left wanting, and those who have enough. It is two sides of the same coin. It is not fair.
Fairness is a world where everyone gets what they deserve, people know their station in life—and stay there— and the future looks pretty much just like the present. The good news of the gospel is not fair. It is instead a story of grace, a world where God’s reign is present in the here and now, where God determines that those who are suffering will be filled with good things, and those who are self-satisfied always get another chance to find out what true satisfaction is and where it comes from.
The call to Christian life is no “pie in the sky in the sweet by and by” philosophy for marking time until God rewards us for all our good deeds. It is instead a call to greater attentiveness to the needs of others, and a call to look deep within ourselves to see where our deep longing to serve and the world’s hunger for righteousness and for bread intersect. It is a call to demonstrate for the world that it is not in fact Truth that the rich get richer and the poor go away.
Hear these reassuring words from Luke:
“You're blessed when you've lost it all.
God's kingdom is there for the finding.
You're blessed when you're ravenously hungry.
Then you're ready for the Messianic meal.
You're blessed when the tears flow freely.
Joy comes with the morning.”
Bless our hearts!
Thanks be to God!
