The Ven. Richard I Cluett
February 11, 2007
Jeremiah 17:5-10 + 1Corinthian 15:12-20 + Luke 6:17-26
Well, here we go again with the hard sayings of Jesus. You’d think that the easy sayings of Jesus would pop up every now and then, maybe one Sunday out of the month. Of course, that is a big assumption that Jesus has easy sayings, that I am not sure we can make.
But here we have Jesus in Luke’s gospel fresh from his experience in Nazareth. After a couple of Sundays away, we have now come back to a time sequence, a time-line. Let me remind you that Jesus has been to synagogue in Nazareth, has read from the scroll of Isaiah, and has announced the beginning of the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy. He says he has been anointed to preach good news to the poor. And his opening words a few minutes later outside with the people are, “Blessed are you poor.” We are back with his central theme.
He unequivocally states that God’s kingdom is for the poor. Remember now that this is Jesus in Luke, not Matthew. Matthew quotes Jesus as saying “Blessed are the poor in spirit…” Not in Luke. It is literally the poor of this world who are destined for a complete reversal in the completion of God’s kingdom. And here the poor are those who are absolutely destitute, the kingdom of God is for them.
The poor are the hungry, the homeless, the captive, the grief stricken, and the oppressed. For them the kingdom of God means a complete reversal of their condition, of their situation, of their fortune. They will be filled. They will be protected from the elements. They will be freed. They will rejoice.
Well that’s great, isn’t it? Would you want anything less for people who are in those abject conditions? I wouldn’t. I would love for them to receive those blessings, and to be blessed in knowing that the kingdom is promised for them.
But, what about us? What about you? What about me? What about my household, and my kindred?
I don’t think it is off the mark to say that according to Jesus, we are not in, except as we help the kingdom be present for these poor now, in this life. Only as we care for, work on behalf of these poor now, in this life, will we get to share with them in the kingdom God has promised.
That is the hard saying of Jesus.
Jesus said, “Today this scripture is being fulfilled…” Well, is it? What are you and I doing to bring this scripture in fulfillment, in to the real lives of God’s people? It is not enough to pray, “Thy kingdom come” if we don’t show that its begun by what we do.
This week the church sets aside February 13th to remember Absalom Jones, in the Black History Month of February. I have posted his portrait on the bulletin board in Sayre Hall.
Absalom Jones, the first African American priest of the Episcopal Church, was born in slavery on November 6, 1746, in Sussex, Delaware. At the age of sixteen, he was moved to Philadelphia, where he worked in his slaveholder's store. In the evenings, he attended school and did independent work for hire. By 1784, he was able to purchase his freedom and enter business for himself.
Jones became a lay preacher for the African American members of St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church. One day in November 1787 Jones and other African American worshipers were pulled from their knees during prayers by a trustee of the church and were ordered to move to segregated pews in the balcony. Jones and the other black parishioners walked out of the church.
They began holding Sunday services. St. Thomas's Episcopal Church was accepted in the Pennsylvania Diocese of the Episcopal Church in 1794, with Absalom Jones as its licensed lay reader. He was ordained as deacon in 1794 and as priest in 1804.
In 1799, he drafted a petition, signed by seventy-three other African Americans, "to the President, Senate and House of Representatives" urging the immediate abolition of slavery.
In 1808 Absalom Jones preached on sermon on the occasion of the abolition of the Slave Trade in England and in the United States.
“The history of the world shows us that the deliverance of the children of Israel from their bondage is not the only instance in which it has pleased God to appear in behalf of oppressed and distressed nations, as the deliverer of the innocent, and of those who call upon his name. He is as unchangeable in his nature and character as he is in his wisdom and power. The great and blessed event, which we have this day met to celebrate, is a striking proof that the God of heaven and earth is the same, yesterday, and today, and forever. Yes, my brethren, the nations from which most of us have descended, and the country in which some of us were born, have been visited by the tender mercy of the Common Father of the human race. He has seen the affliction of our countrymen, with an eye of pity. He has seen the wicked arts, by which wars have been fomented among the different tribes of the Africans, in order to procure captives, for the purpose of selling them for slaves. He has seen ships fitted out from different ports in Europe and America, and freighted with trinkets to be exchanged for the bodies and souls of men. He has seen the anguish which has taken place when parents have been torn from their children, and children from their parents, and conveyed, with their hands and feet bound in fetters, on board of ships prepared to receive them.
“… Let the history of the sufferings of our brethren, and of their deliverance, descend …to our children to the remotest generations; and when they shall ask, in time to come, saying, What mean the lessons, the psalms, the prayers and the praises in the worship of this day? let us answer them, by saying, the Lord, on the day of which this is the anniversary, abolished the trade which dragged your fathers from their native country, and sold them as bondmen in the United States of America.”
“The God of heaven and earth is the same yesterday and today and forever.”
But today, children, women, and men are still sold into slavery today in every part of the world, including our own country. Today the average Anglican today is a 35-year-old black African woman living on $2 a day. Today millions are held in the bondage of poverty throughout the world and in this city of Bethlehem and it’s surroundings. The promise is for them. The blessing is for them.
Our blessedness and our release from woe – perhaps even our own entrance into heaven – come in our solidarity with the poor and the captive, our labor on their behalf, our being vessels which pour upon them God’s compassion and care.
One of the recent saints in this work is Mother Theresa. It is also the work of Joel Atkinson and Bob Wilkins and all the other New Bethany volunteers and so many others. It was the work of the cathedral youth last weekend in their retreat to learn about and do something about hunger. It is the work that God intends us all to engage.
The powers that be – those who are in power – often prefer an order that strengthens the status quo and their comfort, and leaves some things for the world to come.
Jesus has announced that the kingdom is now begun. Blessed are those who hear. Woe to those who don’t.
