In last Sunday’s gospel, Jesus proclaimed the Good News to the crowd at the Sea of Galilee. After experiencing for themselves God’s extravagant grace in the form of fish, Peter, James and John followed Jesus because they trusted him.
These three fishermen and the crowd around them who had come to hear Jesus proclaim the Good News that day had seen that God’s reign coming into reality on the earth was not just some distant, someday promise. Instead, whenever Jesus was with them, the Good News was immediate and tangible. The Good News could be felt in the healing touch of Jesus. The Good News could be held and shared.
In today’s gospel, another vast crowd from everywhere has gathered around Jesus. The people in this crowd, like that earlier crowd by the Sea of Galilee, are also hoping and trusting that Jesus will bring God’s reign into reality.
The confused and disheartened people in this crowd have come all this way trusting that their trip will not have been in vain and that they will hear good news. Those who are sick trust that Jesus will heal them of their diseases. Those with unclean spirits trust that Jesus will cast those spirits out.
They all trust that Jesus will put God’s power to work for each one of them, which Jesus does, because Luke reports that Jesus healed all of them.
Now, Jesus speaks specifically to the disciples.
He wants the disciples to understand why he has spent so much time and energy on this crowd, most of whom are poor, hungry and beat up by their very difficult lives. He wants the disciples to know why these people are blessed.
They are blessed because they trust that God will use God’s power, love and mercy to care for them and to make their lives come round right.
Jesus knows that these are the people who have been exploited financially, the ones who haven’t been able to overcome financial challenges. These people are the ones who are hungry, and the ones who just can’t help feeling sad and depressed most of the time.
But when these down and out people decide to trust in Jesus, they are blessed beyond imagining.
They have turned to Jesus because they believe that Jesus will bring the healing to them that they haven’t found anywhere else. They trust the good news that God’s power, through Jesus, will take their upside down world and turn it right side up again. They will no longer be poor, they will no longer be hungry, and they will no longer be in a constant state of sadness and frustration. Even now, they are blessed, because they trust that the good news that Jesus is proclaiming is actually true.
Jesus also tells the disciples that those who have been outspoken about the Good News being the truth, and getting ridiculed in the process, will be the ones whom God will honor as prophets, and that their reward in God’s reign, though not immediate, will be forthcoming.
Jesus says that these people in the crowd who have turned to him to receive God’s healing power are the ones who already have the kingdom of God. They will be filled, and they will laugh, rejoice, and leap for joy.
These are the people who are blessed.
As the psalmist puts it, by staying focused on Jesus and his goodness, these people will be like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither.
Then Jesus explains to the disciples that when the world is once more right side up by God’s standards, those who seem to be the most successful now will be the ones who find themselves full of woes.
The people who have felt no need for God, and have trusted only in themselves, the ones who have cruelly amassed their wealth at the expense of the poor, and have ridiculed the poor in the process, will find that their “reward” of material wealth and worldly success will be fleeting, and that their memories of those times will be their only comfort. Instead of being filled, they will be hungry. Instead of laughing, they will weep. And they will discover that all the support that they thought they enjoyed from the crowds around them was empty as a dried up creek bed, and as fleeting as a shadow.
Maybe Jesus, a prophet himself, was thinking of the prophet Jeremiah, who shared God’s woe list with the people so long ago.
The Prophet Jeremiah said, “Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals, whose hearts turn away from the Lord.” Instead of trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, the people who have turned their backs on God will be like shrubs in the desert who will die in a drought, because they have turned away from the source of life itself, the Lord of creation.
The disciples listening to these teachings of Jesus had turned away from their former lives and were following Jesus. Maybe some of them felt like, “Yep, I am that tree planted by streams of water.” Maybe that group of disciples looked askance at the ones who had made it onto the woe list of Jesus. But others of them must have squirmed a bit, itchy with the dryness of a shrub in the desert, second guessing themselves, hoping that the shallow roots of their trust in this man they had chosen to follow would reach down deeper to the living water that they still hadn’t really tapped.
Perhaps all of them realized that, as I like to say, the blessings and woes weren’t either/or categories, but that we followers of Jesus are a both/and group.
As Christians, we are always trying to turn more and more completely toward Jesus. As we promise in our baptismal vows, we renounce all sinful desires that draw us from the love of God, we turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as our Savior and we try our best to put our whole trust in his grace and love and to follow and obey him as our Lord. We are blessed when we turn to Jesus.
But because we are flawed human beings and our trust in God sometimes becomes tattered, we can get off track and quit trusting at all, or we can begin to trust in something or someone besides God. Then we find that we feel cursed, because we have trusted only in ourselves, re-establishing our trust in him.
That’s why we promise in the Baptismal Covenant that we will persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever we fall into those inevitable sins that we will surely commit, we will repent and return to the Lord.
The people in that crowd that day, full of woes of their own making and the woes that had been laid on them, had trusted Jesus enough to take the first step and come to him for help and for healing. The disciples trusted Jesus enough to just pick up and to follow him.
They trusted Jesus because they could hear with their own ears that Jesus was proclaiming the Good News of God’s reign of love. And they could see for themselves that the power of God was real, because through Jesus, God was healing them all.
They were starting to realize that Jesus himself, the one talking with them, the one touching them, the one loving them, the one leading them was the Good News itself.
No wonder they wanted to trust in him with all their hearts.
We disciples want to trust in Jesus with all our hearts as well, even though our trust can wax and wane through the years and be challenged in the circumstances of our lives. But we know that when we trust in God, that trust keeps us close to God, the source of all goodness and our healing love.
Still, we have trouble trusting because we are both/and, a mixed bag of blessings from God and curses of our own creation. We need God’s strength simply to trust, and we need God’s help to live into that trust.
Today’s collect provides a helpful summary of what we’ve talked about today. So let us pray.
“O God, the strength of all who put their trust in you: Mercifully accept our prayers; and because in our weakness we can do nothing good without you, give us the help of your grace, that in keeping your commandments we may please you both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, on God, for ever an ever. Amen.”