Sermon: February 16, 2025
Reading: Luke 6: 17-26
In today’s reading of the Beatitudes, Jesus is not telling us what we should do or giving guidance. But he certainly gives us a choice by contrasting the difference between the haves and the have-nots. He clearly states that those who seek a right relationship with God also seek a right relationship with the rest of humanity. Jesus’ cautionary words in the Beatitudes require us to take a hard look at ourselves and the structure of social institutions in which we participate, which helps create and support institutional bias.
Institutional biases are procedures and practices that operate in ways that result in certain racial or ethnic groups receiving privileges that are favorable and allow them to benefit while others are taken advantage of and devalued. These practices are what Jesus spoke out against when he walked the earth, and they are the practices that oppose His teachings in the world today.
Sometimes, these rules and practices are a conscious act, such as racism, nationalism, or homophobia. But quite often, it’s people simply following along with existing rules or norms that promote inequalities, creating a considerable number of divisive gaps including wealth, education, and healthcare. They create divisions with gender and racial equality. These gaps create food deserts where people have limited access to affordable, healthy food. These humanitarian failures mark the two sides of Jesus’ blessings and woes and demonstrate how hungry and in need the world is of a deeper connection and a deeper relationship with our loving God.
Today’s gospel reading isn’t about God choosing poor over rich or preferring someone who is hungry to someone who is full, or God wanting someone to be sorrowful rather than laughing. This passage is about our choice to work to correct these humanitarian failures or not. The reading is about choosing a right relationship with God by inviting God into our daily lives, embodying and demonstrating God’s all-inclusive love to the world, and not dividing ourselves into groups or categories.
Jesus invites us and all humanity to draw closer in our relationship with God and blesses us with a sense of inner peace and spiritual well-being as we trust in the love of our Lord and Savior with the desperation and passion of someone who knows that in God and through God is our only source of hope and nourishment that we need to flourish as God’s beloved children.
