Blessings and woes

Sixth Sunday after Epiphany RCL C - Jeremiah 17:5-10, 1 Corinthians 15:12-20, Luke 6:17-26

This week I read Walter Brueggemann’s book, The Prophetic Imagination. I’m glad I did. It is about the work of the biblical prophets.

The prophets did more than offer social comment or critique. They tried to repair the damage which oppression had done to hearts and minds. They gave those treated as non-persons the assurance that God had a meaningful future for them.

The prophet’s task varied according to his or her audience. Moses spoke to people who were enslaved and feeling powerless. He needed to show them that Pharaoh was not invincible and that their enslavement was not inevitable. They had a future and their freedom was a possibility.

Jeremiah spoke to the powerful. His was an unwilling audience. They found their nation’s failure unimaginable. After it failed, Second Isaiah¹ spoke to the powerless — those who had been carried away from the nation into exile. He assured them that they had a future: that God had not abandoned them and would bring them home.

In this Sunday’s gospel, Jesus spoke to both the powerful and the powerless.

Blessings

To the powerless Jesus offered compassion. Others might treat them as non-persons, but Jesus affirmed their humanity. He took their pain and hunger seriously and not as inevitable. He said there was a future in which they mattered — a future that came into being as he healed and fed them.²

Woes

To the powerful — those who were comfortable and well-served by the dominant culture — Jesus said “woe.” Brueggemann says that the powerful cannot listen to a prophet’s warnings. Not even when their safety and security is about to fail. The failure of what they have trusted is just unimaginable.

I hesitate to differ with Professor Brueggemann, but . . .

I think we are listening to Jesus. I think we do know that the woes are meant for us. We see the breakdown and failure of structures and institutions on the horizon and what’s more, I think we know that we are implicated in those failures. We are not “cynical and calloused and self-deceiving enough to rejoice in the present ordering…”³

That’s good.

That means that we may have some share in the blessings, if we are prepared to stand with and for those to whom they were promised.

Peace.

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Wondering where the Episcopal Church stands? Read here.

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Photos: Clockwise from top left - Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash, Photo by Saif71.com on Unsplash, Photo by Nadine E on Unsplash, Photo by Nadine E on Unsplash.

1. “Second Isaiah” denotes the prophetic voice speaking in Isaiah 40-55.

2. For Brueggemann, Jesus’ death and resurrection was the “ultimate act of prophetic energizing.” In the face of death, it made space for life and newness, wonder and possibility.

3. The Prophetic Imagination, 40th Anniversary Edition, (Fortress Press, Minneapolis, MN) 2018 at Kindle edition location 2368.