February 13, 2022
I am someone who should probably not be trusted with expensive electronic devices, at least those you carry around with you in everyday life, like a smartphone. I have lost or damaged a number of phones in ways both mundane and quite dramatic. To give just two examples: I once pulled out of my driveway with my phone on top of my car, only to have it catapult off the roof and into the street the first time I stopped at an intersection; another time, my family and I were on a float trip in Missouri when our canoe capsized and my phone, which was not encased in a protective floaty device as it should have been, ended up somewhere on the murky bottom of the Huzzah River.
The thing I hate about losing a phone is that it inevitably leads to hours at the electronics store, usually a soul-crushing blend of tedium and stress, while we try to get all of my data, my beloved pictures and important contacts and so on, transitioned onto the new device. Murphy’s Law rules my every encounter at an electronics store—anything that can go wrong, does go wrong. Sometimes twice.
So, when I realized recently that my iPhone was approximately six generations out of date, and that was probably why I was having trouble with storage and messaging and the like, I girded myself for battle before my expedition to the T-Mobile store. Somehow, I had kept this phone alive and working for years without a serious incident. I was so proud! On the other hand, I was ready for them to tell me that I had waited too long, that they couldn’t even work with this old dinosaur of a phone. I was so prepared for there to be “some issues” or, even worse, “Problems” with a capital P.
Imagine my surprise when it all went fairly smoothly. After a brief consultation, I dropped off my phone with a delightful young female technician, went and ran errands, and when I returned I had a fully-functioning new phone. It was a miracle! I excitedly texted my family from my shiny new device to tell them it was working and that I felt “hashtag blessed!”
I was using this term ironically, of course. I do not think that divine blessings come to me, or anyone else, in the form of an expensive electronic device. Nor do I think that I have so much trouble with my phones and other devices because I am cursed. I do think I am easily distracted, a little careless about stuff sometimes, and definitely far too emotionally invested in my gadgets. I’ve even been known to refer to my phone as my security blanket!
Pronouncements about what it means to be blessed or cursed run through our lectionary readings for today. In the passage from Jeremiah and in Psalm 1, we get a clear distinction between the godly and the ungodly, those who trust in the Lord and those who turn away from him. Luke’s Gospel has Jesus continuing this theme in the Sermon on the Plain, putting some more meat on the bone of what it looks like in practice to be someone who is blessed.
Unlike the megachurch pastors and Instagram influencers who use the hashtag “blessed” to mean they have achieved some new professional height, bought their dream home, or are feeling an elevated sense of connection with the universe from their beachside bungalow in Bali, the people that Jesus describes as blessed are a motley crew who would have had little to brag about on social media—people who are poor, hungry, distressed, reviled, and ostracized.
When you look at this list in Luke’s Gospel, even more than its parallel in Matthew, you quickly realize that translating “blessed” as “happy” just doesn’t get us very far. The state of being blessed described here by the Greek word “makarioi” seems to have no easy equivalent in the English language, so perhaps we need to look at the context, including the list of “woes” that follows the list of blesseds.
When Jesus says “woe to” those who are rich, satisfied, and celebrated, we need to be clear that he’s not condemning them, so much as he is warning them about the perilous position they’re in. In fact, both blessings and woes are probably more descriptive than proscriptive—Jesus is telling us something essential about the nature of reality, not trying to sort out the winners from the loser or the good guys from the bad guys.
One commentary, noting how important honor and shame were to the culture of the time, suggests that we might hear Jesus as saying “How honorable!” when speaking to the poor and hungry and “How shameless!” when speaking to the satisfied and well fed. This seems closer to the mark, but perhaps a little hard for us to relate to in our own context, when behaving shamelessly can be a pathway to status, instead of an impediment to it.
The point that Jesus is making ought to have a deeper resonance for us than a simple checklist, a quiz that helps us decide whether we’re in one column or the other, whether we’re “hashtag blessed” or “hashtag cursed.” What helps us take the leap from that checklist mentality to something deeper, more searching, and more all-encompassing? I think it comes down to trust, a word that is not in today’s Gospel but is pivotal in both the Jeremiah reading and the Psalm. It is people who put their trust in God who are like “a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream.”
Note that it is not because people trust in God that God rewards them with good fruit and safety from drought. Jeremiah is not saying that if things are going well in your life you should assume that you’re being rewarded by God. Rather, people who trust in God are blessed because God is trustworthy. The rootedness and fruitfulness and resilience that mark the lives of those who trust in God are not rewards, but are simply the consequences of putting their faith in a relationship with the source of all goodness and love, the eternal Creator rather than something created, fallible, and temporary.
Likewise, people who put their trust elsewhere, who trust in riches or fame or achievement (or even, dare I say, in technology and convenience) are not bad or about to be punished; it’s just that their roots have nowhere nourishing to go. They’re trusting in things or people that can’t ultimately sustain them, especially when drought or adversity strikes. Wealth and fame and achievement can be taken away; they can be lost as easily as an iPhone that slips out of your hand and winds up useless on the bottom of the Huzzah River. God’s love and faithfulness are of a different order of a reality; they can never be tarnished, never be lost, never need rebooting.
Blessings are not rewards. When Jesus warns those who are rich and satisfied to watch out, it’s not because God is mad at them and wants to take away their happiness. God loves them, loves us, and wants us to be satisfied and rich and accepted, but satisfied by the right things, rich with true and lasting gifts, and accepted for who we really are—beloved children of God—not for anything we have done or achieved.
I think of the two sides of the Sermon on the Plain almost like having bumpers put up in a bowling alley, so that your ball doesn’t end up in the gutter.
On the one hand, the blessings remind us that when things are hard, when we’re hurting, we are not lost or forgotten, but are still being held tenderly in God’s loving embrace.
On the other hand, when things are going great, when we seem to have it all together, we should be careful not to become too reliant on those nice things, those shiny toys and warm fuzzies that will desert us at the first sign of adversity. We should also be working to make the world a place where no one is hungry, no one weeps alone and without solace, nobody is reviled or ostracized for being themselves or doing the right thing. In such a world we will all be blessed, and we will be blessings to one another and all creation. Amen.
