February 17, 2019 “Good News, Bad News” – Luke 6:17-26

Luke 6:17-26
“Good News, Bad News”
February 17, 2019 – Sixth Sunday after Epiphany

“I have some good news and some bad news,” says the first mate to the poor souls being whipped as they drag on huge oars to row the galley, “First the good news: You all get a break this morning.” Cheers erupt up and down the line, but then he says, “The bad news is that this afternoon the captain wants to water ski.”

In the opposite order, the defense attorney says to his client, “I have good news and bad news. First the bad news: The blood test came back and your DNA exactly matches the blood samples from the scene of the crime.” “Oh no!” cries the client. “What’s the good news?” “Your cholesterol is down to 140.”

Three of our scripture texts this morning read like good news, bad news stories. But there is no joke. In Jeremiah 17:5-8, the prophet tells the bad news first: Those who trust only in human strength and who turn from the Lord are cursed. Such a person is like a scraggly bush turning brown and dry in the desert. The good news is that the one who trusts in God and places confidence in Him is blessed. That person is like a tree planted by a stream, always green and full of life.

In Psalm 1, the good news arrives first: The one who delights in God’s law is blessed. He will prosper, again like a well-watered tree by flowing streams. The bad news is that the wicked will not fare so well. They will be blown away like dry husks of grain which no one wants. God will not abide them among His people.

Those Old Testament texts present a fairly plain message. The good news is for those who live good and righteous lives. Bad news comes to the people who live evil and lawless lives. God dispenses bad or good news according to our relationship with Him and His Law.

We may take away a simplistic view of God’s justice: Good people receive good news and bad people receive bad news. If you live right, things will turn out well for you. If you do wrong, you will suffer for it. Be honest, hard-working, and kind, and you will be popular, happy, and prosperous. Be mean, lazy, and a liar, and you will end up poor, sad, and lonely. In the end, bad people go to hell. Good people go to heaven.

We may even look at people as though that simple view is true in reverse. If someone is blessed with good news, then she must be a good person. If someone is having lots of troubles, then he must have done something to deserve them. If she’s rich, she must be living right. If he is poor, then he is failing somehow. If he is happy, it is a sign of his good character. If she is depressed, her life is out of whack. If everyone likes you, you must be a nice person. If they all hate you, then you are a bum. The good news and bad news of life is based on how good or bad we are.

Here in Luke, though, what we usually call the beatitudes are transformed into a very strange sort of good news and bad news story. In Matthew 5, Jesus preached the “Sermon on the Mount.” Here in Luke 6 it’s the “Sermon on the Plain.” Verse 17 says a crowd came to hear Jesus as He stood on a level place. It is probably the same sermon. The level place was still on the mountainside. Luke just had shorter notes and remembers it in different words. And Luke remembers the bad news as well as the good news in what we often call the “Beatitudes,” which one of our Sunday School classes has been studying.

In good news, bad news jokes, the question is often asked, “Do you want to hear the good news or the bad news first?” The punchline depends on the choice. The pope gathers his cardinals and says, “I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?” “The good news,” they say. So the pope tells them, “O.K., the good news is that Jesus has returned.” As they all shout hallelujah and praise God, one of them thinks to ask, “What’s the bad news then?” The pope quietly replies, “He just called me from Salt Lake City.”

Jesus often offered the good news first. He does that at the beginning of our reading, reversing what people expected. In verse 18 it says, “They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases.” But in verse 19, it is healing that Jesus offers first, “for power came out from him and healed all of them.” Then comes the sermon that we are focusing on this morning.

We might want to remember that order as we do ministry together. Here Jesus brought the good news of help and healing before He challenged the way some of them were living. Some of us who are comfortable may need to hear bad news before the good news makes sense, but many hurting people need gentle, kind good news before they can listen to the bad news about themselves. Guests at the mission and in our warming center need a meal and a warm place to sleep before hearing a sermon. Children in places like Haiti and Yemen and Sudan need to receive the love of Jesus in a cup of milk or a bowl of rice before we can tell them very much about how Jesus offers them eternal life.

Here Jesus paired up four sets of good news and bad news. In them He turns our expectations all around. Jesus’ good news is not for the people you might imagine. It is not for nice people of the world, those who are successful or popular or always cheerful. Instead, His good news in verses 20-23 is for the poor, the hungry, the sad, and the hated.

His bad news in verses 24-26 it is not for those you and I might pick out to deserve it. It not bad news for liars and losers and low-lifes. No, Jesus has woes for the rich, for the well-fed, for the folks with smiles on their faces, for the person that everybody likes.

Our problem is that Jesus’ good news, bad news joke is on you and me. We need to be honest. Most of us have bank accounts and paychecks. We are not poor. Many of us had breakfast this morning, and there are snacks after worship. We are not hungry. A good number of us are generally pretty cheerful. We are not weeping. The majority of us are well-liked by those who know us. We are not hated. It sounds like Jesus’ joke is on us.

Don’t get it wrong. It’s not pious to be poor or commendable to cry. It’s not wrong to be rich or loathsome to laugh. Jesus gladly went to dinner with the wealthy. Jesus told His share of jokes that must have made people laugh. He had both poor fishermen and well-healed tax collectors among His disciples. His followers included the over-exuberant, ever-optimistic Peter and also the down-in-the-mouth, always-glum Thomas. He always had blessing people and woe people around Him.

The good news here is that there is good news for everyone. He has good news for anyone willing to listen to it, good news in the most unlikely circumstances. God does not intend to leave anyone out of His blessing. The poor are not poor because they have failed God. A man is not hungry because he is a sinner. A teenager is not unpopular because God doesn’t like her. No, no one is beyond Jesus’ blessing, beyond His love and grace. You are not beyond His blessing. You are included in these beatitudes.

The bad news is that there is also bad news for everyone. Being able to pay our bills does not make us right with God. Putting food on the table does not feed our souls. A good laugh makes us feel better, but may not build our character. Many people praising us, doesn’t mean God thinks we are praiseworthy. The fact is, it is very dangerous to be wealthy or well-fed or cheerful or popular. Those conditions can all lead us away from the Lord. We are not beyond being led astray. You and I are included in the woes.

Is it all just a joke, then? What can we take away from these blessings and woes that will help us follow Jesus, help us be people who really are blessed, and who really can escape the woes He warns us about? For many of us, the answer has to be to let the woes do their work. It’s sometimes said that the business of preaching is “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” That’s exactly what Jesus was up to here, and we need to let Him do it to us. If life is fairly comfortable, let us let Him make us a bit uncomfortable.

Part of letting Jesus make us uncomfortable is remembering those who are always uncomfortable. If we have children we cherish or parents who took good care of us, let’s bring to mind all those children in our community trying to find love and care in a foster home. As we line up for snacks at the window there after worship, let us consider those who line up in refugee camps for a dole of thin soup. As we smile and shake hands with friendly people around us, let’s not forget those who are ignored or mistreated because of the color of their skin. Let’s be willing to hear our Lord’s “woe” on our own well-being.

Letting ourselves be uncomfortable for Jesus might include coming to one or both talks hosted here next month: Kay Strom speaking about immigration and Carolyn’s friend Cara Meredith talk about racial injustice. At the very least we can hear what is said about how our own blessing and privilege relates to justice for others.

I recently got an opportunity to think about my own blessed place in this world. As our daughter Susan came home to be with us last week, she expressed interest in my father’s background in Ukraine. She made some Ukrainian friends in Toronto and their curiosity about her maiden name made her curious. In the process of trying to answer Susan’s questions, I looked again at a fact I knew but hadn’t really thought about.

My father always said the official records stated he was younger than he actually was. His papers said he was born in 1932, when it was actually 1927 or 1928. Just a couple weeks ago I realized why. Just after WWII, my father waited three years with his younger brother and their father in a refugee camp in Germany for permission to immigrate to the United States. He arrived here around 1948 and went to high school. But if he was born in 1928, he was too old for high school. He was an adult. It suddenly dawned on me that my father’s birth date was falsified so that he could enter this country as a minor child of my grandfather rather than as an adult needing his own immigration clearance. I’m the child of a man who entered this country illegally with false documents. I have an undeserved blessing. I got to be born in this country under my father’s false pretenses.

I think that’s what Jesus wants us to see here with His blessings and woes, His good news and bad news. None of the blessings, none of the good news is because we deserve it. It’s all God’s grace on sinners who truly and only deserve woe, who have whatever blessings we have under the false pretense that we merit them somehow. Jesus wants that realization to change the way we look at ourselves and the way we look at others around us. He wants me to have my heart broken for all those trapped in refugee camps or trying to enter this country or some other country where they will be safer.

In a way there really is no bad news here, even in the woes. It is only bad news to those who in the end choose not to hear it. Even when He says “woe” Jesus is bringing good news. His “woe” is not just a judgment, not just a warning. The word is houai, a crying sound, a lament, a note of divine pity sounded for those who will not admit their need. God loves them, but they do not acknowledge they need to be loved. God wants to bless them, but they imagine that they can bless themselves. God wants, as Jesus said about Jerusalem, to gather them in His strong arms and carry them home, but they turn away and go somewhere else where they will never find rest.

The book of Genesis talks about Abraham being blessed to be a blessing. That’s the same message Jesus delivered there on that level spot on the mountain. We are all the same, level with each other in God’s eyes. If we are blessed, it is only so that we might be a blessing to others. If we are suffering, it makes us no less loved or blessed in God’s eyes. The world sees classes of people, those who belong and those who don’t, those who have privilege and those who suffer injustice, those who earn their living and those who look for handouts. But in Jesus’ sermon on the level place that’s all evened out. The blessings lift up those who are down, and the woes bring down those who are up there.

On my blog I posted a cartoon. A man is sitting in the veterinarian’s office and the vet comes out to talk to him. She says, “About your cat, Mr. Schrödinger—I have good news and bad news.” Schrödinger was the famous quantum physicist who posed a thought experiment about a cat locked in a box rigged so that if a random quantum event happens in an hour, the decay of a single atom, poison is released and the cat dies. If not, if the atom doesn’t decay, the cat lives. It’s uncertain which will happen, pure chance. Quantum mechanics suggests that at the end of the hour, until the box is actually opened and someone sees if the cat is dead or alive, it’s actually both. It’s a paradox.

That quantum paradox is like the joke Jesus tells us here. His blessings and woes mean that you and I are both dead and alive in Him. It’s good news and bad news both for us. Paul told us the same joke in Romans 6, that if we die with Christ we will be raised with Him. That’s why he insisted so strongly in our reading from I Corinthians 15 today that Christ has in fact been raised from the dead and is alive. It means that we too will be raised with Him. That’s what Lily’s baptism reminded us of last Sunday. We go down under the water, being buried like Jesus was, then we are raised up to a new life, just like Jesus was.

Yet right now, we’re a little like Schrödinger’s cat, both dead and alive. That old dead life of sin and all the woes that go with it are still with us. Yet the new life we have in Christ keeps calling us out into His love and blessing. How it’s all going to turn out hasn’t been quite determined yet. Jesus hasn’t yet completely opened the box, hasn’t quite put the punchline on His good news, bad news joke. Those blessings in the text are in the present, while the woes are in the future tense, still to come.

Let’s you and I seek with all our hearts and with everything we do to be on the right side of this joke when it’s all over. Let’s live in Christ and not die in sin. Let’s give away at least some of what we have to be poorer now and rich then. Let’s go hungry sometimes so that we can feast then. Let’s let our hearts be sad with the sorrows of this world so that we can laugh then. Let’s not worry what others think about us now so that we can hop out of the lonely boxes of our graves into His eternal kingdom then.

What Jesus said to those disciples in that level place, He says to us. We are blessed, blessed by a God who has a marvelous sense of humor. Let’s rejoice at the good news, weep at the bad news, and then laugh together at it all forever.

Amen.