Blessings and Woes

The Message
 
Today, I want to share with you one of the hardest lessons I’ve learned so far in my life.
 
And that lesson is this:
 
Life is like a ladder. We can move up or down – sometimes very slowly, and sometimes quite quickly.
 
When I was running my dog daycare and training facility, I learned not to allow myself to get too self-confident.
 
Inevitably, every time I would feel like life moved me up a rung or two on the ladder, something would happen that would knock me down three or four rungs.
 
For example, I might come in to work one morning and see that we had three days in a row of excellent sales. Hooray! Maybe we can post a profit this month!
 
And then, next thing you know, the grooming tub is leaking and I need to call the plumber.
 
Or, I might start to feel like my staff are working well together and I’m so lucky to have them, and then two of them quit, leaving me short-handed.
 
Or maybe, it’s been two months straight of no significant issues and I accidentally think to myself “wow, it’s been two months and things are running smoothly” and all the sudden a dog fight happens with injuries, an owner leaves us a bad review, and my groomer cuts her hand and needs stitches.
 
One rung up, two or three rungs back down.
 
The point is, I learned that no matter how well things were going, it was always possible that things could turn downhill just as easily.
 
And, actually, it was often the case that if I even allowed myself to think for a minute that nothing bad had happened recently, before I knew it, something bad would happen.
 
It was a strange dynamic. And I don’t say this to sound negative. I say it because it is the reality of life.
 
It’s the reality of everyday life, but in that industry, particularly bad things could happen that would make my life as an owner extremely difficult.
 
And it’s an important lesson to learn in life because it keeps us humble. Everyday life isn’t always puppies and rainbows and sunshine.
 
Sometimes, it rains, or thunder snows, or worse. Sometimes it can feel like life is just beating you down.
 
So, when I read the Luke passage for today, I thought of this lesson because Jesus is reminding us that life has ups and downs.
 
Luke’s Gospel contains three beatitudes, compared to Matthew’s eight. These three beatitudes are accompanied by three woes.
 
The woes are here to remind us that God’s justice is not all loveliness and light. The lowly are raised up, and the mighty are brought down.
 
Up a rung, down a rung.
 
And most of us can spend time both as “lowly” and “mighty.”
 
When I was running my business, I wouldn’t have ever considered myself “mighty,” but those times when I started to feel a little arrogant that I was really getting the hang of “this whole running a business thing” are the times when I would suddenly be humbled.
 
That’s when I realized how lowly I actually was. I might have thought I was becoming mighty, but God just chuckled and reminded me I had more to learn.
 
The woes that Jesus mentions are not curses or punishments from God.
 
They are not retribution for the “sins of the mighty.”
 
These woes are merely observations about the way that life works.
 
Woe to the rich, not because they are evil but because they have spent their lives seeking riches and attempting to move up the ladder.
 
When life gets tough for those who have sought only riches, they will have the money that they built up, but they won’t necessarily be aware of God’s love.
 
Not because they aren’t deserving of God’s love, but because they have chosen to seek money rather than seeking God’s love.
 
Jesus isn’t saying that the rich can’t access God’s love, but in order to do so, they must humble themselves and begin to seek something beyond riches – something beyond themselves.
 
It’s also a woe because the nature of life is that it can turn around in an instant, as I learned when I was running my business. Woe to you who are rich, because tomorrow you may find yourself poor.
 
Woe to you who laugh or are full, not because it’s bad to be happy but because, again, life will turn.
 
It always does at some point, and we’d be lying to ourselves if we didn’t acknowledge that fact.
 
Up a rung, down a rung.
 
The important thing to remember in Jesus’s words is that when life does inevitably knock us down a rung or two or three, we will all need to know and trust that those who weep, or who are hungry, or who are poor are blessed.
 
So when Jesus offers these woes, it’s not a judgment. It’s an observation.
 
It’s great that life is great right now – we can be rich, or full, or laughing. But we also need to remember who we belong to when things change.
 
God knows us and loves us on our best days and our worst days.
 
These beatitudes could easily say “blessed are you who are grumpy,” “blessed are you who are anxious and depressed,” “blessed are you who struggle with addiction,” or “blessed are you who feel unworthy and unloved.”
 
And, likewise, woe to you who are happy, or mentally well, or free of addiction, or fully aware of how loved you are.
 
Woe, not because you aren’t deserving of feeling happy, mentally well, or fully loved, but because we all have good days and tough days.
 
And God loves us through all of them.
 
God doesn’t withhold love, even when we have allowed ourselves to get overly confident. And, God continues to love us when we are discouraged or feeling like we’ve been knocked down a few rungs on the ladder.
 
Jesus spends time on the blessings and the woes, and then he drops an even bigger truth: love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you.

This often gets preached as the golden rule, but I think on a much deeper level, this is a reminder that we all go through periods in our lives when we are among the “mighty,” and periods when we are among the “lowly.”
 
And, so does everyone else. Including our enemies.
 
We have good days and bad, and God loves us on our best and worst days.
 
But if that is true for us, it’s also true for our enemies.
 
And this is the difficult truth that Jesus is trying to convey. As difficult as it may be to take the higher road, we are called to do so to the best of our ability.
 
At the end of the day, we have good and bad days. We have rich days and poor days. Full days and hungry days. Days filled with laughter and with tears.
 
And our enemies experience similar ups and downs. They move up and down their ladder just like we do on our ladder.
 
We are all just living out our human existence, doing the best we can with a life that is uncertain.
 
So, in the uncertainty of life, remember that life can change in an instant.
 
And when it does, God is right there with you, and you are loved and blessed in the hard moments just as much as you are loved in the easy moments.
 
God gives love freely, whether we feel deserving of that love or not. God is not a fair-weather lover – only extending love on our best days when everything is going well for us. God is a “die-hard fan,” loving us each and every day.
 
And we are called to share that love that is given to us so freely.
 
Jesus is calling us to extend that love to everyone – even our enemies.
 
He knows it isn’t easy, but he also knows we can do it.
 
So, let us leave here receiving God’s love, and readying ourselves to give the love that we receive freely to our friends, family, neighbours, and yes, even our enemies. Amen.

Let us pray:

Eternal God, hope of all who trust in you, in Christ you weep with those who mourn even as you cry out in triumph over the grave. Unbind us from sin, release us from captivity, and raise us from death to life, so that we may join that great crowd of saints who forever sing praise to your holy name; through Christ, the resurrection and the life. Amen.

~ Prayer modified from the PCUSA website. https://www.pcusa.org/site_media/media/uploads/theologyandworship/pdfs/prayers_for_all_saints_day.pdf

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