When he was a young adult Peter Kitundu met the missionary doctor in Kiomboi, TZ. With the help of that doctor Peter later travelled to MN for college and medical school. Peter met and married Mary and together they returned to Tanzania so Peter could fulfill his calling to serve as a medical doctor in his home country. Peter died a very old man having served his people ravaged by population explosion, droughts, famines, curable diseases and AIDS. Life expectancy in TZ was 46 years when Peter met the medical missionary. Now it is 67.

Today Paul reminds us that in Jesus’ resurrection God makes obvious that God loves us enough to give his only son, and that death does not have the last word. God’s Word is first and last.

With the first Word God created the world. God provided the necessities of life for all: clean air, clean fresh water, plenty of food, clothing as needed, shelter sufficient … and God said it all is good.

For generations we have perverted our unequal gifts from God into a measure of God’s blessing. We turned our having more than enough into an entitlement and a proof that God favours us and does not favour other people who do not have enough in order to survive.

While we can be that evil, God also provides for us the great wisdom that Jeremiah points us to. Like trees planted next to streams of flowing water God’s wisdom gives us endurance even through times of drought, times when around us all wisdom and truth evaporate.

In today’s Gospel Jesus provides some of this wisdom for us, a corrective to our perversion that our abundance is proof that we are blessed and the poor are not. Jesus proclaims that the poor are the ones who are blessed, that those who hunger are blessed, that those who mourn are blessed, that those who others revile are blessed.

Brian Rude receives guests in Central America, introducing them to Christians caught in desperate poverty. Even as the people who live there fear that they or their family members or their friends will be ‘disappeared’, these poor people worship with gratitude, these people celebrate exuberantly. Like the people in TZ, these Christians know how to love: more proof that God indeed blesses people who are poor, who are hungry, who mourn, who are reviled.

Still there are many times in history when we stubbornly refuse to accept what the Gospel teaches and Liberation Theology reminds us of: that God has a preferential option for the poor, that God blesses the poor more than the wealthy, who today are among the richest people ever to walk the face of the earth.

Instead we have turned Jesus’ blessing of the poor into an excuse not to work to provide justice also for them. We have said, mistakenly so, that the poor have earned their poverty and we have earned our wealth. That’s how God created us: we are privileged and they are lazy and deserve what they get, or rather they deserve that they do not get what they need to survive.

We have mistakenly said it in many and various ways: The poor will always be with us. Poverty and homelessness cannot be ended. There is not enough for everyone so some people will always go without. Life is a zero sum game.

We end it all by saying: we do not need to change how it is for them because God blesses them in their poverty, hunger, grief, and ruin.

As if knowing we would turn their blessings into our excuses not to love them Jesus adds a series of warnings for the rich people.

Woe to the rich, to the well fed, to the joyful, to those spoken well of, for they have received blessings, but in eternity God will not provide for them at all.

We like to forget these passages, or pretend that they do not apply to us. Yet in many and various ways there are those among us in every generation who remind us that our blessings are not ours to keep. They are meant to be shared with those who do not have enough.

Last week an amber alert garnered over 300 responses as they looked for a missing 11 year old girl. The calls were not about the girl. They were from people who felt entitled to use 911 to complain that the amber alert had been sent out after 11 pm and disturbed their sleep. These complaints almost kept the lines too busy for the helpful responses to get through; still the help was too late.

Dorothy Soelle, theologian d.2003 added 2 items to the list of the necessities of life. She added: meaningful labour, and love (both to be loved and the opportunity to love others.) We know that the poor, the hungry, those who mourn, and those reviled often have great capacity to love; to love their neighbours as themselves, and to love even their enemies; and to love God with all their hearts, minds and strength. Jesus pronounced this blessing for the common people on the plain.

By comparison this is what most rich, well fed, joyful, those spoken well of are missing. They seem too often incapable of accepting God’s gift’s as blessings to share. Something obstructs their knowing how to love their neighbours or themselves, and especially how to love their enemies. They love the security their abundance provides so much that they have no room left to love God with all their hearts, minds, and strength … and that is the greatest curse of all. Without love, we are nothing.

Love, so profound that one loves one’s enemies, is only possible when we recognize that God first loves us, though we do not deserve it.

When we accept God’s undeserved love and blessings with gratitude, then we are able to graciously love others with this same unbounded love. We are able to share not only the over-abundance we have. By God’s Grace and equipped by the Holy Spirit, we are able to share the necessities of life with others even when that means we will share in their poverty, hunger, grief, and ruin of reputation.

Peter Kitundu’s legacy did not end with his death in 2011. His widow, Mary, and that medical missionary and numerous other people joined together to rebuild some of the basics of health care in TZ. Peter’s brother eventually convinced this group, who call themselves IHP-TZ (ihptz.org), to take 30 acres he had north of Dar es Salaam and build the first hospital for children in TZ. With funds raised by that medical missionary now in his 90’s, the local crew and visiting medical, construction, and all kinds of volunteers from around the world make the next part of the hospital a reality.

There is another true story, originally about an Appalachian family in the US. It is perhaps truer for us if told set in the north of AB.

A social worker is assigned a family that she finally finds in the wilderness far from any other people or road. When she arrives on snowmobile they treat her with great respect and honour offering her tea from the wood stove in the two room drafty log cabin. The father arrives home with a freshly shot moose while she assesses whether the young children ought to be in school. It is obvious to her that they are on the edge of survival. Satisfied that these people are providing a good education for their children she prepares to leave. The father wraps up a piece of moose meat as a gift for her. She starts to refuse it, appalled that she would take anything away from the little they have. Seeing her resistance the father with wisdom, welling up from ancient streams of truth, insists she accept their gift saying, “I know it looks like we are poor, but we are not poor. You are only poor if you cannot give something to others.”

Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.

Having received so much, we each have so much to give, or not! Amen

Peter Kitundu was a young adult when I first met him. A young child, living in Tanganyika, I met him because he was interested in medicine and my father, a medical missionary, was the only doctor around for days of travel. Peter later travelled to MN for college and medical school. Peter met and married Mary and together they returned to Tanzania so Peter could fulfill his calling to serve as a medical doctor in his home country. Peter died a very old man having served his people ravaged by population explosion, droughts, famines, curable diseases and AIDS.

Today Paul reminds us that as Christians we must believe in the resurrection, for this is central to God’s story made obvious for us in the life of Jesus, the Christ. Jesus died, tortured to death on a cross; but three days later he rose from the dead. In Jesus’ resurrection God makes obvious that God loves us enough to give his only son, and that death does not have the last word. God’s Word is the first and the last.

With the first Word God created the world. God provided the necessities of life for us: clean air, clean fresh water, plenty food, clothing as needed, shelter sufficient … and God said it all is good.

God blessed us with the necessities of life. God blesses us so that we can be a blessing to others, sharing all the gifts we receive.

For generation upon generation we have turned our unequal gifts into a measure of God’s unequal blessing. In an evil perversion that only humans are capable of, we turned our having more than enough into an entitlement and a proof that God favours us and does not favour people who do not have enough in order to live well or even to survive.

While we can be evil, God also provides for us great wisdom that Jeremiah points us to: God provides wisdom for us like trees planted next to streams of flowing water. This wisdom gives us endurance even through times of drought, times when around us all wisdom and truth seem to evaporate in the heat of the time.

In today’s Gospel Jesus provides some of this wisdom for us, a corrective to our perversion of God’s gifts, our abundance, as proof that we are blessed and the poor are not. Jesus proclaims that the poor are the ones who are blessed, that those who hunger are the blessed, that those who mourn are blessed, that those who others revile are blessed.

Travelling decades ago to Central America, with a group visiting Christians caught in desperate poverty, I came to know that even in these desperate circumstances, many caused by my home country’s CIA’s interference, even as they feared that they or their family members or their friends would be ‘disappeared’ without cause, these people knew how to worship gratefully, these people knew how to celebrate exuberantly. These people were as profoundly joyful, despite everything else, as those around me as I grew up in Kiomboi TZ. These people taught me again that those who are poor, those who are hungry, those who mourn, those who are reviled are indeed blessed by God; blessed in ways I did not encounter at home in MN, or in CT and DE where I had studied.

Still there are many times in history, even in the present, when we stubbornly refuse to accept what the Gospel for today teaches us, what Liberation Theology teaches us, that God has a preferential option for the poor, that God blesses the poor more than us, we who (by all standards in today’s world and even more so compared to all people through history) are among the richest people ever to walk the face of the earth.

Instead we have turned the blessing of the poor, the hungry, those who mourn, those who are reviled, into an excuse not to work to provide justice also for them. We have said, mistakenly so, that the poor have earned their poverty and we have earned our wealth. That’s how God created us: we are privileged and they are lazy and deserve what they get, or rather they deserve that they do not get what they need to survive.

We have said it in many and various ways: The poor will always be with us. Poverty and homelessness cannot be ended. There is not enough for everyone so some people will always go without. Life is a zero sum game.

And on top of all that, we do not need to change how it is for them because God blesses them in their poverty, hunger, grief, and ruin.

As if knowing we would turn their blessings into our excuses not to love them Jesus adds a series of warnings for us rich people.

Woe to the rich, to the well fed, to the joyful, to those spoken well of, for they have received blessings, but in eternity God will not provide for them at all.

We like to forget these passages, or pretend that they do not apply to us. Yet in many and various ways there are those among us in every generation who have reminded us that our blessings are not ours to keep. There are those among us today who remind us God blesses us so that we can be a blessing to others. We do not receive anything except what God graciously provides for us … and then this profound truth … God provides gifts of life to us only in order that we can share them equally with those who do not have the necessities of life.

There are those among us even today who remind us that our work is to provide justice, to provide care, to provide food, to end poverty. They remind us, with words and their actions, that God provides us with more than enough of the necessities of life only in order that we can and will share our abundance with those who do not have even the bare requirements to stay alive and live a full life.

Dorothy Soelle added to the list of the necessities of life. She added two things that everyone needs: meaningful labour, and love (both to be loved and the opportunity to love others.) We know that the poor, the hungry, those who mourn, and those reviled often have a wonderful capacity to love; to love their neighbours as themselves, and to love even their enemies; and to love God with all their hearts, minds and strength. This is part of the blessing that Jesus promised to the common people on the plain, which is recorded in today’s Gospel.

By comparison this is what most rich, well fed, joyful, those spoken well of are missing. They find it almost impossible to share their wealth with others equitably, to know how to love their neighbours or themselves, and especially to love their enemies. They love having the goodness of this world but seem incapable of accepting it as a gift from God for them to share. They love their abundance and the security it provides so much that they have no room left to love God with all their hearts, minds, and strength … and that is the greatest curse of all.

Without love, we are nothing.

This kind of love, so profound that one loves especially one’s enemies, is only possible when we recognize that God first loves us, even when we do not deserve it at all.

When we accept God’s undeserved love and blessings with gratitude, then we are able to graciously love others with this same unbounded love. We are able to share not only the over abundance we have. By God’s Grace and equipped by the Holy Spirit, we are able to share the necessities of life with others even when that means we will share in their poverty, hunger, grief, and ruin of reputation.

Peter Kitundu’s legacy did not end with his death. His widow, Mary, and my father and his wife, and numerous other people joined together to rebuild the basics of health care in TZ. Peter’s brother eventually convinced this group, who call themselves IHP-TZ to take 30 acres he had north of Dar es Salaam and build the first hospital for children in TZ. Six month of the year my father and Paula fund raise in the US. Six months they are in Zinga helping the crew there and the visiting volunteers from around the world make the next part of the hospital a reality. Life expectancy was 46 years when I met Peter. Now it is 67.

There is a true story, originally about a family in the mountains of the eastern US. It is perhaps truer for us if told set in the north of AB.

A social worker receives a file for a family that she finally finds in the wilderness far from any other people or road. When she arrives on snowmobile they treat her with great respect and honour offering her tea from the wood stove in the two room drafty log cabin. The father arrives home with a freshly shot moose while she assesses whether the young children ought to be in school. It is obvious to her that they are on the edge of survival. She becomes satisfied that though abjectly poor, these people are providing a good education for their children. As she prepares to leave, the father wraps up a piece of moose meat as a gift for her. She starts to refuse it, appalled that she would take anything away from the little they have. The father sees her resistance and with wisdom, welling up from ancient streams of truth, he insists she accept their gift to her, “I know it looks like we are poor, but we are not poor. You are only poor if you cannot give something to others.”

Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.

Having received so much, we each have so much to give!

Amen

to be blessed

Poverty, Blessings, Afterlife

Notes, Outline, Sketch

Outline 3

1. Blessing as bodily requirements, from Creation onward
   1. God created, provided blessing upon blessing: clean air, clean water, food aplenty, clothing as needed, shelter sufficient,
   2. In many and various ways through the generations, people of God understood that these necessities of life were blessings from God.
2. Mistakenly turned blessings from gifts into evidence, that only those with abundance are blessed, others not.
   1. Justified injustices, ignoring suffering, entitlement
3. Luke: Blessing to the common people:
   1. poor, hungry, weep, reviled on J account
   2. 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.
   3. The poor, hungry, mourning, reviled will receive all they need.
4. We make another Mistake: turned on it’s head:
   1. that only those who lack are blessed and
   2. either that the rich are completely lost and unwelcomed in the KoG or
   3. that nothing in this world matters
   4. 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.
5. Luke woes:
   1. should keep prosperity gospel for persisting or the rich finding an excuse not to share their blessings with those in need:
   2. Woes: rich, full, laughing, spoken well of
   3. 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
6. Then a further mistake we too often make:
   1. 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
7. Rather for Jesus, No excuse for injustices, for not sharing what we have with those in need
   1. God created, said it was good.
      • Good includes air, water, food, clothing, shelter
   2. 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!
8. What then is the blessing that Jesus provides to the common, poor, hungry, mourning, reviled people gathered on the plain?
9. Dorothy Soelle provides an addition to the necessities of life:
   1. meaningful labour
   2. love: an ability to love and the opportunity to be loved.
   3. Jesus’s blessings, for those without air, water, food, clothing, shelter, is for the afterlife:
10. 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.
    1. 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.
11. 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:
    1. which is to love God with all our hearts, minds and strength, ourselves, our neighbours, and especially our enemies
12. What does this mean for us?
    1. Promise: God is for us: poor or rich, hungry or fed, mourning or joyful, reviled or spoken well of
    2. 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.
13. As always: God claims us as God’s children, not based on the abundance of our blessings, gifts given by God to us;
    1. God claims us, poor or rich, hungry or fed, just or unjust, loving or not,
    2. God claims us by Grace
14. Question is how can we respond:
15. Wise to know the water that we are planted into: the living water of Jesus, that Jesus gave the Samaritan woman at the well
16. 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.
    1. And it always keeps surprising us: with change we do not welcome, with challenges we may not want
    2. but also with rewards we could not imagine were possible
    3. For with God all things are possible.

Jeremiah 17:5-10

Psalm 1

I Corinthians 15:12-20

Luke 6:17-16

Notes, Outline, Sketch

1 Cor makes obvious that Christians believe in life after death, and the center of our faith depends on Christ being raised from the dead, raised to life eternal, which we all will follow.

So life after death is there, as an undeniable part of this Sunday’s preaching, if not in the use, then in the avoidance of it.

These lessons raise the age-old conundrum:

What do God’s blessings look like, and whether we need to care whether we have luxury while billions suffer in poverty each day.

This is even more pronounced when one compares

Jesus’ Beatitudes in Luke

“Blessed are the poor!”

with Matthew’s “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”

What is this Blessed?

What is this Woe?

A pronounced reversal of what one expects.

The prosperity Gospel, in it’s many variations, would hold that those who are able to enjoy the best the world has to provide are blessed by God. Their wealth is a clear sign that God blesses them.

Then those that have now, are not blessed, but rather warned of having nothing in the afterlife; and those who have nothing now, will have everything, for the Kingdom of God is theirs. [That is not completely accurate to the text, but rather a common misunderstanding of it.]

False Understandings/ Interpretations/ Applications

Justice is not needed now. Since everything really important is put off until after death then there is no need for justice now, since it all washes out in eternity: the people most disadvantaged will reap rewards in heaven and those who live well now will suffer in the afterlife.

Thus these aphorisms could be true :

(they are decidedly not true, not without a great deal of modifying
context at least)

and they would, if true, provide us justification for NOT making any fundamental changes that will put our lifestyles at risk:

The poor will always be with us.

The homeless will always be a problem to solve.

Poverty cannot be ended.

Being rich does not cut us off from God.

What is now in this world does matter.

Being poor is good. Being homeless is OK (except in the harsh winter.)

There will always be people who starve to death, even millions each year. It need not bother us.

To God it does not matter whether we or you or they are poor/rich, hungry/well-fed, homeless/ land&home renters or owners. What matters between us, you, or them and God is a spiritual matter which has nothing to do with wealth, luxury, or ownership.

Correct Understandings/ Interpretations/ Applications

Being poor still is unjust.

No one need go hungry. It’s not a matter of sufficient food, but of the will to distribute it equitably.

Homelessness can be ended, with dedicated, coordinated effort, at less cost than providing the very basics to homeless people.

And the real blessings are not what we typically chase, the chase often being what separates us from God.

Add the Jeremiah and Psalm about Wisdom

and now there is the possibility of a lively discussion.

Wisdom, real wisdom, is like a tree planted along side a river, that even in drought still draws water from the under-earth stream that still flows.

Well and good until today’s world. Today we’ve pumped qualifiers dry!

Huge rivers flow with greatly reduced flow, and still we squander water.

Hard to appreciate here in Canada where we have the most fresh water of anywhere in the world. We can squander it and not even notice. We do squander it regularly without noticiing.

Berlin: rinse dish, just so the suds flow (not off)because water is so precious … and expensive. They’ve learned to live using so little water that the sewer has problems flowing.

Other places in the world have not yet seen water systems, yet alone sufficient water for all the people.

In Canada, even, many first nation communities do not have water systems, or systems that provide clean water; and it has been known, denied, avoided, promised, and ignored for decades.

Consider the theme in Jeremiah and Psalm 1, that wisdom can guide us to understand that God and/or God’s law provide us blessing.

We need not trust in mere mortals, or flesh, or in our hearts turned our own way.

How does true wisdom help us understand God’s Blessings, Wealth and Poverty, and the churches’ commitment (or lack there of) to do justice!

There is no simple path through all this.

The questions raised are significant for any healthy faith community, to consider, to ponder, to use to adjust their perspective of God’s creation and as a guide for their own actions in this world.