Margie Quinn
I was in seminary when my parents got divorced. Soon after, my sister got divorced, too. And as it happens, it was around this time that I got in a bike accident and suffered a bad concussion. Sometimes, when it rains, it pours. It was just one of those “seasons of suck,” as I call it.
At that same time, my best friend's life felt like it was receiving blessing after blessing. She got engaged to her high school sweetheart, trained for and ran a marathon, and got a promotion at work.
When she called me, it felt like she kept sharing blessings with me. When I called her, it was mostly tearful woes.
To borrow a metaphor from Episcopal Priest Barbara Brown Taylor, it felt like I was at the bottom of the ferris wheel, with the candy wrappers and the sawdust, and she was at the top, swaying with the wind in her hair and all the world’s light at her feet, feeling close enough to touch the stars.
As the hits kept coming in my own life, I grew increasingly more resentful and jealous of her. Why did she receive so many blessings while I was experiencing the woes and lows of life? How could she possibly show up for me and understand what I was going through when she had never experienced a season of profound suffering? I would never intentionally want her to experience pain, but it felt unfair that she never had.
I was reminded of this as I read about Jesus giving the “Sermon on the Plain.” That’s what this passage is called. Jesus has just done some miraculous healing, climbed up a mountain to pray, chosen his twelve disciples and in our passage this morning, he comes down the mountain to a plain or, as scriptures puts it, to “a level place” to do some teaching. Most of the people who gathered there wanted to be healed of their diseases, or cured of their mental illness. They were there to touch him and receive relief. They didn’t really come to hear him talk.
But, Jesus has something to say. He stands on this “level place” with the disciples and the multitude, not on a mountain above them, and speaks plainly. His words are directed at the disciples, but we can imagine that everyone was eavesdropping.
“Blessed are you who are poor,” he begins, “for yours is the kingdom of God.” “Blessed are you who are hungry, who weep, who are hated and excluded–you will be filled, you will laugh, you will leap for joy.”
It’s difficult to convey just how radical these words were for the disciples and the crowd. This would leave people stunned, most of whom had never received a divine blessing or any attention at all.
This is the first chat Jesus gives his crew after he picks them. He introduces them to what life looks like in the kingdom of God. They may have grown up in a world where the hungry and the hated never feel blessed. But Jesus isn’t of that world. He’s a part of a new way of life that flips the world upside down; a way of life where those on the bottom of the ferris wheel don’t stay there, but will experience the wind in their hair at some point.
The chat doesn’t end there, though. Jesus is a truth-teller and doesn’t shy away from the hard hitting stuff, too. In the same breath that he comforts those on the bottom, he climbs in the seat next to those of us on the top and levels with us:
Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full, for you will be hungry. If you’re laughing now, you will weep. Woe to you when people speak well of you, for that’s what they said about false prophets, too.
Again, I can’t overstate how shocking his words would have been for these people. They would have expected him to offer a blessing to the rich, the well-fed, the higher ups, and woes to the poor, the hated, the hungry. But this is who our God is. Someone unafraid to offer hard truths to those in power.
One theologian interprets these woes as more of a “yikes” or “be careful!” For those of you at the top of the ride, be careful, a life following me means you don’t stay up there.
A life with me means you get both: the blessings and the woes.
In God’s kingdom, there is equity of blessedness and hardship, abundance and suffering; which is honestly freeing to me. It means that in the midst of hurt, when all we can do is weep, Jesus assures us that there will come that day when, perhaps unexpectedly, something will make us laugh. And for those of us who feel an abundance of joy, he promises that we will know pain, too, pain that allows us to embody compassion for others, pain that invites us to experience the full range of human emotion. Maybe that’s why Jesus picked an even number for his disciples: for every man who felt hated one day, there was a man to speak kind words to him.
There are those of us who hear this passage and don’t trust it. We look around and see more and more people living in poverty, who don’t seem to be getting full. We see more and more of the rich, who don’t take heed of the woes and hoard their wealth. But, “if we take these beatitudes seriously,” Howard Gregory writes, “we go against the grain of the world, and ride against the tide.” When we do our best to trust Jesus’ words, there is a life of gospel freedom waiting for us in which we take care of each other and share what blessings we have. We don’t give into total despair, and we don’t leave our siblings behind who desperately want to be fed.
Knowing that we will receive both the blessing and the woe doesn’t mean that we get to develop a complacency in our respective seats on the ferris wheel. It means that we do our best to remember that in God’s kingdom, the call to discipleship means taking care of each other. We reach out from our seats and yell from the top, “I have wept, too. I have hungered, too. I have been excluded, too. Let me climb down there and sit with you in the sawdust.” And for those near ground level with our feet stuck in gum, we can look up, remembering that the kingdom promises seasons in our life and the life to come where we will leap for joy.
My best friend was let go from her job last year. Then, she suffered a miscarriage. She is still dealing with infertility complications and she probably will not carry a baby again. She is at the bottom of the ferris wheel. Someone hit the button on the ferris wheel and we’ve switched places. While she grieves what her life could have been, I celebrate what my life has become.
So, it can be tempting when I see her in so much pain to reframe her situation, offer empty advice or ignore a phone call because I don’t want to hear her hurt. Then I remember: I worship a God who doesn’t leave anyone behind, but takes the time to meet us in a level place and speak plainly. God rides the ferris wheel with us, in all of our blessings and woes, sawdust and stars. May we do the same for each other.
Amen.