Consequences

Based on Readings: Jeremiah 17:5-10; Psalm 1; First Corinthians 15:12-20; Luke 6:17-26

Last week, the message from Father Samuel was about a call from God, the calls of the prophet Isaiah, of St. Paul, and of the Apostle Simon Peter. All three of
them were unqualified but willing. My takeaway can be summed up in an idiom
from Father Samuel, “he does not call the qualified but qualifies the called.”

Now, a calling can come in different forms. It can be something profound, but I usually think of it as directions through the Holy Spirit to do something or not to do something. Typically, these are baby steps to live more in alignment with what Jesus wants for me and those I come in contact with.

As we move into today’s lessons, we have essentially read about the consequences of following or not following God’s directions. From Jeremiah, “Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength,” and “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord”. From the Psalm, “Therefore, the wicked shall not stand upright when judgement comes, nor the sinner in the counsel of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous but the way of the wicked is doomed.” These poems from Jeremiah and the opening Psalm echo each other in that distinct way. They both address the way of the righteous and the way of the wicked, and the “consequences” of each.

Jeremiah was one of the great prophets. As with many of the prophets, he was not a highly regarded candidate, nor was his message well received. It is no wonder that was so because his central mission was to announce the destruction of Israel. How many times did God send a prophet to tell his people the consequences of rebelling and/or the blessings of faithfully following the covenant? How many times have I heard the Holy Spirit tell me the same thing? Even after sending his Son and then the Holy Spirit to give me strength and his love, I have needed to hear this message of consequence from time to time.

How about you? Have you received such a message of instruction and responded in a disobedient way? I am going to ask you to take that question home as I will, and think about it. And in so doing, be better prepared to respond the next time.

Despite Jeremiah’s exhortations to repent, despite the details of the benefits of trusting the Lord God, they did not. God’s anger was growing with each time they failed respond to Jeremiah. Now, earthly events of the time made is just too easy for God to respond this lack of faith. You see, Israel was and is located in the plains of the Central Middle East. During Jeremiah’s time, it was the worst of places to be. It set between 3 great powers. To its west was the Egyptian empire and to it’s east was a declining but still powerful Assyrian Empire as well as the ascending Babylonian empire. Now the Egyptians, an ally of the Assyrians, sent a great army to fight the Babylonians and were defeated. The star of Babylon was rising. In the midst of their ascension, they became an easy instrument for God’s use to teach Israel a lesson for their disobedience. Jerusalem was sacked, thousands of Jews were taken into captivity and Israel split in two. Consequences.

This period in Israel’s history was true punishment for not trusting in the Lord. First Corinthians is a bit of a roller coaster for me, so I have tried to break it down to its simplest terms for myself. My thinking is that Paul was telling his mostly Gentile audience in this Greek city, and he tells us now, that if we don’t believe in the resurrection, then we can’t truly believe in God and our faith has been in vain. Paul says this is so because we have testified of God that he raised Christ and if we deny that, we are to be pitied. Now, fortunately after Paul threw us all out on the street as unbelievers to be scorned and pitied in verse twenty, he dusted us off and brought us back inside with the reassurance that Christ was indeed resurrected, our faith is not futile, our sins are forgiven, and we will also be raised with the first fruits of his harvest. Consequences.

In this case the glorious consequence of believing in the resurrection paves the way for our forgiveness and our own resurrection to eternal life.

What does Luke have to say on this matter? Well, it is our good fortune that we start in Luke six with words from Jesus. If you want to take something from church to change your day, perhaps change your life, you start with words from Jesus. He is delivering what is sometimes referred to as the “sermon on the plain”. After praying on a mountain, he comes down to the plain along with many disciples from which he had chosen twelve apostles. They are joined by a multitude of people from Galilee and adjacent areas. He is teaching and healing.

We hear four Beatitudes, blessed are the poor, blessed are you who are hungry, blessed are you who weep, and blessed are you when people hate you because of me. This consequence of blessings is where Jesus basically turns upside down the assumptions of their time, and similar assumptions that we see in the world today. That thinking says that the poor, the hungry, those who suffer in this life, do so because of their own actions or lack of action. Or perhaps it’s just their bad luck to be born into less fortunate conditions. Or worse, they are in God’s disfavor. Yet, he is refuting that thought by saying you are “blessed” because regardless of those conditions, he wants us to play “the long game”.

In the long game our reward is great in heaven. Let me define blessed for you. It is “being endowed with divine favor and protection.” Conversely, woes are out there for the taking as well. If we play “the short game” without regard to that which secures our eternal life, then we have already received our reward. In other words, this life of happiness, of loving and being loved, of receiving accolades from our fellow man, of enjoying the beauty of creation, all the fruits of our labor, is the reward. These are wonderful, short term results to be sure but they co-exist with times of sadness, of loneliness, of lose, of seeing or perhaps enduring the tragedy of natural disasters or not having food on the table. This combination of short term circumstances is as good as it gets and we have had our reward. How sad is that?

Jesus doesn’t dwell on why these conditions exist. He is teaching us to focus on the long game, in the afterlife if you will. He wants the poor and downtrodden to take solace in the glory of a heavenly blessing. He wants the privileged to thank God for what we have, to give him the glory and to share our good fortune. If we accept him as God’s son and repent of our sins, and we live with the Holy Spirit as our guide . . . . the kingdom of God is ours . . . we will be filled . . . we will laugh . . . for our reward in heaven will be great. We will be blessed.

So, don’t dwell on what you do or don’t have today. Look at the long game with Jesus by your side. As we have taught our children, He is teaching us. There are consequences for what we do, what we say, how we live. For me, this is the lesson from today’s readings.

Let us pray. Lord, thank you for teaching us. Thank you for healing us. Thank you for your divine favor and protection. We pray you shower all your children with that same favor and protection. Amen