Life turned upside down (by love?)

Thursday Midweek Communion 8 September 2011

First Reading Colossians 3

¹² Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.

¹³ Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

¹⁴ And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

¹⁵ Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.

¹⁶ Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.

¹⁷ And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Gospel Luke 6

Hear the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to N. All Glory to you, O Lord.

Blessings and Woes

¹⁷ He went down with them and stood on a level place. A large crowd of his disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coast of Tyre and Sidon,

¹⁸ who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by evil spirits were cured,

¹⁹ and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all.

²⁰ Looking at his disciples, he said: Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

²¹ Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

²² Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man.

²³Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets.   

²⁴But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.    ²⁵ Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.

²⁶ Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets.

This is the Gospel of the Lord.
All Praise to you, O Christ.

Sermon

The reading from Colossians has been hijacked for use at weddings. Like 1 Corinthians 13, very often chosen by marriage couples, it’s about love. At least that reading is about love in general. It is worth re reading at a quieter and more reflective service such as this:

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. ⁸ Love never fails.

Of course we know love does fail in one sense. Couples fall out of love. According to the Times:

Nearly half the happy couples you see walking down the aisle will divorce before they reach their 10th wedding anniversary.

One in ten of the marriages will not make it past five years and 45 per cent will, ultimately, end in divorce, if the current rate of breakdowns continue.

The United Kingdom now has the highest rate of divorce since records began, with the rate rising from 37 per cent two decades ago to a new high of 45 per cent in 2005, according to figures released from the Office of National Statistics.

Colossians on the other hand is about New Life in Christ. Clothe yourselves in love. Bear with one another. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. Love binds everything together in perfect harmony. Just like the C of E you may say.

This is what the followers of Jesus in the early church were like. Or that was Paul’s desire. In reality, being only human they probably weren’t, or not for long.

Jesus himself was more realistic than Paul. The gospel reading is not headed Blessings, but Woes too. You are blessed if you are poor and hungry, hated, insulted and rejected, he says. It’s not easy to love when the whole world seems to turn against you.

But that’s the true gospel. All conventional wisdom turned upside down. Blessings become woes and woes blessings. Sounds like doublespeak from Orwell’s 1984. Not that these woes are desirable, but that those who are comfortable in this world already have their reward, and to be mistreated is to be like Christ.

All of us, in this sense are comfortable. All of us by comparison are rich. So we have to work out for ourselves what this gospel reading means, and how it turns our own approach to our faith upside down. Amen.