February 15, 2004 - Woe to Me?

This text probably seems familiar to many of you, but it may not be exactly how you remember it. In the Gospel of Matthew, we find the well-known Beatitudes. There are more of them there, and none of this "woe" business. It's an easier version to acknowledge for us.

Scholars think that the beatitudes found in Matthew's Gospel feature a softening of this passage. For example, the "poor" found here are the "poor in spirit" in Matthew and those who "hunger" find themselves hungering "for righteousness." It is not as challenging for those of us who do not find ourselves truly poor or ever hungry beyond a few hours.

Another difference between the more well-known Beatitudes of Matthew and the passage here in Luke is Luke's use of "you." There is not a sense of otherness to this, but direct address. "You" are the blessed ones who are listening; however, "you" also are the ones addressed by the woes.

Now that I have found myself face to face with this passage, what am I to do, other than feel guilty and sulk away? Well, the message is calling for us to change our ways.

As I discussed this text with a friend of mine, she had the idea to rewrite the blessings and woes in my own words. This seemed to make sense. I had to ask myself, "What do Jesus' words say to me, today?" Besides, that is what we're here for, isn't it?

Well, what came of this exercise surprised me. Looking at the finished product, I see a lot of myself in the "woes" and not so much in the "blessings." Jesus has a way of doing this: his teachings often turned the world upside down and then shook it, as if it were a giant snow globe and our lives were the little flakes of snow, now spinning out of control.

Here's my revisioning of the blessings and woes found in today's Scripture reading:

Blessed are you who don't have the world in your way,
          For God can be experienced then.
Blessed are you who have real needs,
          For you are not caught up in unimportant wants.
Blessed are you who are lonely,
          For you know true togetherness when it is there.
Blessed are you who are yourselves,
          For that is one of the hardest things to be.

Woe to you who follow the desires of consumerism,
          For it will be your god.
Woe to you, slaves to technology and stuff-junkies,
          For one day, you will need real substance.
Woe to you who climbed to the top of the capitalist pyramid at the expense of others,
          For it is a long way to fall back down with no one left to catch you.
Woe to you who forget who you are for the sake of being the "you" of others' views,
          For losing yourself means losing it all.

The text itself and my rephrasing of it left me asking, "Woe to me?" How can this be? I'm a seminary student; I go to church regularly, even when I'm not getting paid to, I try to be a good person! But still, I saw a lot of myself being chastened here. There is no sugar-coating the message. No matter how many commentaries I read on the text or how I tried to rework my version of them, I could not escape the fact that we are being called to an extreme change in worldly outlook. Remember my little image of the snow globe? Well, consider me whirling out of control, around and around.

The Western world, and the United States especially, place a huge amount of importance on the material world. From what we know of Jesus' ministry, he did not. He was, in effect, an itinerant preacher who traveled from place to place living off of the charity of others. He is never presented to us as owning anything except for the clothes that he wore.

We sit here now, and on each of us is probably more than Jesus ever owned. Personally, I know I have a few pieces of jewelry on, my watch, a cell phone in my pocket, a wallet with, if not actual cash, then a check card and a Visa that allows me to buy quite a lot, both within my economic means and outside of those means if I chose to. Not to mention the keys to my truck.

I don't think that this is in and of itself bad, but I do think, with the amount of wealth that we individually and as a culture find ourselves, we are called to be socially responsible to those who are not as materialistically "blessed" as we are. And I use that term blessed sparingly, for the words here are that we are not blessed because of our privilege.

The first two of my "blessings and woes" have to deal with the fact that what we own soon becomes the things of value in our lives and this inhibits our experience of God and our ability to see the needs of others around us.

Think of children around Christmas when they begin to need all of the toys they have asked for. They don't just want them, but need them. Now think of times in your life where you have said or thought that you really needed something, when in actuality it was a want. We begin to overvalue the wrong things and soon lose sight of what is truly important.

It is when we really see needs and wants for what they are that we can really see the world as God wants us to, and therefore see God more clearly.

The third and fourth "blessings and woes" stem from this same mentality. When we lose our sense of what's of true importance, we will start to lose sight of the importance of others and of ourselves. Those that are lonely know the value of relationships with other people and will not take advantage of them or take them for granted.

One thing that I have learned the hard way in my short life thus far is to "know yourself." Was it Socrates that first said that? Whoever it was, it has been repeated many times by learned women and men throughout the ages. It is so easy to lose who we truly are when we are bombarded with the consumerism of today and with the expectations of others weighing us down.

All of these blessings and woes, both the first century ones in Luke and the twenty-first century ones imitated by Bear, point us to act in a way contrary to our culture. I hear a lot about the church being counter-cultural and often wonder about this. But when words like this come up, it is abundantly clear that it's true.

We are to be more than our culture. God is calling us to meet not our own needs, but the needs of others. As Jesus proclaims the poor and the hungry as blessed, we are called to make it happen. It is our duty as a community of faith, as people claiming to be the children of God, to help all of God?s children. I close with a quote from the US Bishops of the Catholic Church from a document entitled "Economic Justice for All," written in 1986:

"All of us must examine our way of living in light of the needs of the poor. Christian faith and the norms of justice impose distinct limits on what we consume and how we view material goods. The great wealth of the United States can easily blind us to the poverty that exists in this nation and the destitution of hundreds of millions of people in other parts of the world. Americans are challenged today as never before to develop the inner freedom to resist the temptation constantly to seek more."

Look again at the gathering words in the bulletin and reflect that "the life you save may be someone else's."