to be blessed
Poverty, Blessings, Afterlife
Notes, Outline, Sketch
Outline 3
- Blessing as bodily requirements, from Creation onward
- God created, provided blessing upon blessing: clean air, clean water, food aplenty, clothing as needed, shelter sufficient,
- In many and various ways through the generations, people of God understood that these necessities of life were blessings from God.
- Mistakenly turned blessings from gifts into evidence, that only those with abundance are blessed, others not.
- Justified injustices, ignoring suffering, entitlement
- Luke: Blessing to the common people:
- poor, hungry, weep, reviled on J account
- This is the corrective that Liberation Theology brought/brings to any theology, entitlement theology, prosperity theology … which claims that abundance in this life is a sign of blessing and lack is a curse.
- The poor, hungry, mourning, reviled will receive all they need.
- We make another Mistake: turned on it’s head:
- that only those who lack are blessed and
- either that the rich are completely lost and unwelcomed in the KoG or
- that nothing in this world matters
- This last leads off again to
- God will provide, rich need only enjoy for they are obviously blessed
- poor, hungry, homeless, mourning, reviled deserve their circumstance,
- others need do nothing to provide for their want.
- Luke woes:
- should keep prosperity gospel for persisting or the rich finding an excuse not to share their blessings with those in need:
- Woes: rich, full, laughing, spoken well of
- Afterlife: eternity
- those without will be provided for in abundance
- those with over abundance now, will have nothing
- Corrective of Liberation Theology, God has a preferential option for the poor
- Then a further mistake we too often make:
- Since again all on this earth is nothing, everything that counts will be in life after death.
- We can either suffer injustice quietly
- or We can allow others to suffer injustices quietly
- Rather for Jesus, No excuse for injustices, for not sharing what we have with those in need
- God created, said it was good.
- Good includes air, water, food, clothing, shelter
- God intends for all people to enjoy the basic necessities of life
- those with over abundance: an extra responsibility to provide for those without.
- Luke: ‘Or else, woe to them’ very real!
- What then is the blessing that Jesus provides to the common, poor, hungry, mourning, reviled people gathered on the plain?
- Dorothy Soelle provides an addition to the necessities of life:
- meaningful labour
- love: an ability to love and the opportunity to be loved.
- Jesus’s blessings, for those without air, water, food, clothing, shelter, is for the afterlife:
- More pointedly Jesus does not just promise that they will receive abundance, their fill, and laughter in the afterlife: they will receive it here in this life.
- Theirs is the KoG, here and now
- They are blessed in ways beyond the physical necessities of life:
- They are blessed perhaps with meaningful labour
- They are blessed perhaps with the ability to love and to be loved, and to know it
- People do not live by bread alone, but by the Word of God
- That Word: calls us to a vocation: a meaningful work for our lives
- That Word calls us to a love: a love as God gives to us: a love for neighbour, self, and all others: especially our enemies; and to love God with all our heart mind and strength.
- Common, Poor people on the plain are blessed, not just with the physical necessities of life, but the living water of life, water that never runs dry:
- which is to love God with all our hearts, minds and strength, ourselves, our neighbours, and especially our enemies
- What does this mean for us?
- Promise: God is for us: poor or rich, hungry or fed, mourning or joyful, reviled or spoken well of
- A Call to rich, fed, joyful, well-spoken of:
- to be good stewards of blessings given us, they are for us to be able to share them with others
- to provide care for the hungry, mourning, reviled
- warning: that being rich can bring us to reject God’s claim on us.
- As always: God claims us as God’s children, not based on the abundance of our blessings, gifts given by God to us;
- God claims us, poor or rich, hungry or fed, just or unjust, loving or not,
- God claims us by Grace
- Question is how can we respond:
- Wise to know the water that we are planted into: the living water of Jesus, that Jesus gave the Samaritan woman at the well
- While other waters can dry up, and we are drying up qualifiers the world over with our over consumption, Jesus’s love, grace, and wisdom never run dry.
- And it always keeps surprising us: with change we do not welcome, with challenges we may not want
- but also with rewards we could not imagine were possible
- For with God all things are possible.