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Sermon November 3, 2019
The Rev. Rebecca S. Myers,
The Church of the Nativity and St. Stephen’s
All Saints Observance Sunday Year C, Track 1
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/HolyDays/AllSaintsC_RCL.html
‘But woe to you who are rich,
for you have received your consolation.
‘Woe to you who are full now,
for you will be hungry.
‘Woe to you who are laughing now,
for you will mourn and weep.
‘Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets. Luke 6:24-26
Please be seated.
In the past couple of months, I have been working with family and friends who honestly live on the verge of being homeless. They are all people who work, but their jobs don’t pay enough to cover even basic expenses like food, housing and transportation. In some cases, being able to work more is not possible due to a variety of medical or mental health conditions or even lack of public transportation. Some are just over the income line to get even a small amount of “food stamps” for food.
In many cases, there’s been just one crisis, which then snowballs into disaster. Maybe it’s a health issue which means the person cannot work. Maybe it’s an hourly job and suddenly hours are cut. Maybe it’s a lease the landlord breaks because the landlord sold the property and the family has no savings for a deposit and 1st month’s rent for a new place.
In some cases, the people have amazing networks of friends who come together to get them through some of the hard time. In some cases the people have no family to rely upon for a variety of reasons.
And the waiting lists for public housing are long and affordable housing is scarce. Even homeless shelter space is scarce. There truly is very little place to go.
I am shocked by what’s happening to these people I love. I am shocked, too, by how hard it can be to help them because of a variety of hurdles, like not being able to easily pay for a hotel room for someone else or being charged for a hotel room that’s not used. I’ve felt so much stress in the back and forth of emergency phone calls and trying to make arrangements. It’s so time consuming and most times doesn’t go very smoothly. And imagine, if I’m stressed, what kind of stress must these people I love be under??
Today’s Gospel is known as The Sermon on the Plain. It somewhat corresponds to Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. These words from Jesus are considered core to following Jesus. Luke focuses on how people who are poor, hungry or suffering are loved by God. Then Luke follows with woes to those who are rich, not hungry, and laughing.
Why would people who are rich, not hungry, happy and whom others speak well of, face a “condition of deep suffering from misfortune, affliction or grief” as Webster’s defines woe? Why would these people face such horrible circumstances?
In my reading this week, John Shea in his commentary, helped me see that those of us who are rich, not hungry, happy and whom others speak well of, cannot really be those things while so many are poor, hungry, suffering, and being spoken of poorly.
We are responsible for addressing injustices that create poverty, homelessness, food insecurity, and denigration of God’s created human beings. The existence of people living in these conditions indicts us as inadequate followers of Jesus Christ.
And we have all kinds of excuses that absolve us from our inadequacy of faith. One of the biggest is to judge and blame people who are poor or suffering. That way it is the responsibility of the individual and we never have to look at ourselves or at the systems we have created to care for each other. Of course we can find places where people haven’t always made the best decisions and of course there are some whom we judge as “taking advantage.” Yet, as scripture says in Matthew 7:5
You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.
Once again, we see our sin. Once again we identify with the line from the fourth verse of our first hymn this morning: “We feebly struggle, they in Glory shine….”
We remember those saints, some of them surrounding us this morning. We remember their example of following Jesus and pray we can do just as much.
We also take some comfort in the ways we come together as a parish to feed those who are hungry through our garden and donations to the Perry County and Juniata County food Banks. We take some comfort in the ways we come together as a parish to support people who are poor through Join Hands, the Literacy Council, Christian Churches United and the libraries. We take some comfort in the ways we come together as a parish to provide safe, affordable and lovely housing for people who are poor through Episcopal Commons and Episcopal Gardens and our donations to Perry Housing Partnership.
And we need to continue to be provoked by this passage of woes to discover what else we need to be doing, because a community with Jesus as the head would not allow anyone to live in poverty, would not allow anyone to be homeless, would not allow anyone to be hungry and would relieve suffering.
Amen
