Milwaukee Synod (Domestic Companion Synod) – Feb. 15, 2025

Together in Mission 2025 event for lay and rostered leaders

Luke 6:17-26

Thanks to Bishop Erickson for the invitation to be with you all. This was a synod I thought I might be called to long ago when I included Region 5 on my first-call paperwork. Greater Milwaukee Synod—lots of Lutherans, a mix of congregations, bordering one of the Great Lakes, proximity to robust outdoor ministries (very important to me). I am a bit envious that you can all gather together in one day. In the Northwest Intermountain Synod it takes about 12 hours, when the passes are clear, to drive from Jackson, WY  to Chelan, WA. I love that I get to be here with you today to worship and learn and be church.

I will be honest and say that I never know if these blessings and woes in Luke Chapter 6 are good news for me or not so good news? When I consider our neighbors in our companion synods in Tanzania, the neighbors Bishop Erickson and I met in Puerto Rico, and my physical neighbors on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation (while growing up in Western SD), Jesus’ woes hit hard.

On the other hand, the wealth gap in this country is wider now than it ever has been in my lifetime. In the first quarter of 2024, 10% of workers in the United States owned 67% of its total wealth. In contrast, the lowest 50% of workers owned 2.5% of the wealth. Income inequality contributes significantly to the rapidly growing wealth inequality in the U.S. and, by some measures, is the largest since before the Great Depression. [University of Florida-Nov. 19, 2024].

How many of you know young people working two jobs to put bread on the table and with little hope of home ownership? How many of you have changed careers because of changing markets, your plans for retirement suddenly delayed? How many of you know people who must suddenly choose between a doctor’s appointment, a car repair, or a mortgage payment? In these ways, the power of empire is with us as starkly as it was for the peasants under the thumb of the Roman Empire who Jesus spoke to thousands of years ago. 

What I like about the Sermon on the Plain, is that it is very clear what God’s vision is. And, when this vision is realized fully, it truly will be liberating for everyone, hard as that may be to believe. It’s Jesus’ Mother Mary’s Song, but named by Jesus and aligned with his own actions.

Jesus wasn’t just describing the vision – he was making it tangible. Just before these familiar words, Luke describes how multitudes are gathered from near and far, representing many people. They recognized Jesus’ power: “All in the crowd were trying to touch him.” And, the author tells us, Jesus healed all of them. Only then does Jesus speak.

With his words, Jesus is redefining, both now and for the future, the way the world works. He is replacing common representations of the world with new ones. And his words are consistent with his actions of healing.

We might need to be reminded that Jesus’ claims clearly do not represent conventional wisdom. Is not wealth a sign of God’s blessing? How then can the poor be declared fortunate, and the wealthy be warned of God’s curse?

Jesus’ vision of the new world today is about all the final things. And yet, Jesus’ vision it is not relegated to the future. The end has already arrived, and the values Jesus asserts reflect this new era. In other words, Jesus’ teaching is meant to jolt his audience, including you and me, into new perceptions of God’s liberating goal. 

Jesus’ beatitudes and woes are words of hope and comfort to people like those who have already been the recipients of Jesus’ ministry: lepers, sinners, the demonized, tax collectors, women. Those people may be unacceptable in the world they live in, but they are embraced and restored in the new world Jesus proclaims and embodies. And with Jesus’ embrace and restoration, the world itself is transformed.    

Let me be clear, there is no idealization of poverty in our passage. Instead, Jesus describes the new world, the reign of God, as a place where poverty is quite simply absent. The new world and the values it embodies will catch unawares those who measure their lives by the old order. Those rooted in the old order will find their sense of well-being and self-assurance is grounded in false values. We see the results of these false values everywhere.

The “wealth gap,” “food deserts,” the “education gap,” the “health gap,” and other gaps and failures around the globe mark the two sides of the blessings and woes. It is the gap we are called to address by this passage for God’s sake and our own. It is what children of God do and what they repent of not having done. You who follow Jesus do so with confidence that God gives new opportunities to live with generosity and attention.

There remain plenty of roadblocks to our moving forward, as many today as in Jesus’ day. We idolize money. We spiritualize the poor and tell one another that something good coming for the poor….in heaven). We convince ourselves that someone else is fixing our economic system or helping those with less. Or we put our heads in the sand and believe that economic disparity is happening somewhere else, not in our community.

The Sermon on the Plain are promises to those who are suffering in this world that God still sees them, loves them, and is intent on their thriving. Jesus’ words are also warning calls to his hearers. They are called to live with attention and generosity toward their neighbors, even as God is attentive and generous. Jesus has already showed this with his life and ministry: rebuking deomons, healing the sick, cleansing the leper, healing the paralytic. Wholeness of each person and of the cosmos is paramount. 

Because we are not poor, the first beatitude either mystifies us or leaves us feeling guilt rather than joy. Our pride and our ability to provide for ourselves have blocked the channels of blessing. But we don’t have to stay there. After all, God has invited us into that work. Some days that is exhausting and overwhelming and other days it can only be described as, yes, a blessing, a real deep embodied blessing, not a hashtag blessed.

It seems that you all have caught a glimpse of Jesus’ vision. Why else give up a Saturday in February to sit in on workshops and conference gatherings? My assumption is that somewhere along the way you have yourselves experienced the new life that Jesus’ offers: forgiveness and mercy, reconciliation, an abundant and unexpected welcome, nourishment, a second chance. Whatever it was, you could not help but respond.

And so, 

Blessed are the poor, and blessed are those of you who will learn how to be better Church Treasurers, Administrators, Church Record Keepers, and Constitution gurus. Ministry is right in the word Administration and this work is crucial to bringing in the reign and economy of God.

Blessed are you who are hungry now, and blessed are those who are going to keep God’s people safe, those learning about walking alongside people with substance abuse, addiction, and related mental health issues.

Blessed are you who weep now, and blessed are you who will explore the art and practice of forgiveness, especially as it pertains to youth, those of you learning Bowen Family Systems theory as it relates to congregations, and those of you considering resiliency. 

Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you, and blessed are those who are going to learn more about being allies to immigrants and those who are diving into BIPOC and LGBTQ Advocacty and those who are connecting Worship (at the heart of who we are) with diversity!

And thank you for the blessing of being church together in this time and place.