Luke 6: 17-26

Who Am I? 

Last Sunday, America watched the Super Bowl. In fact, you don’t even have to be a football fan to have watched the big game. Some people watch it for the mere sake of the commercials.
 
The ads during the game have been a big draw over the years. Companies pay millions of dollars for a 30-second spot during the game, giving viewers some of most entertaining, creative, and memorable ads of the year.
 
Indeed, for some viewers these commercials are just as exciting as the game itself—maybe even more so.
 
There was a commercial several years ago. I think it was for the Volkswagen Beetle. The ad featured a young girl growing up into adulthood, following her as she went through the different phases of life.
 
It starts with her as a young girl in the car with her parents as chauffeurs.
 
Then she is rocker, having transitioned into her rebellious teenage years, complete with the rock and roll look.
 
Next she is a flower child, having embraced a bohemian lifestyle with flowers in her hair.
 
In the next scene, she is the young coed, off to college to enjoy the freedom of young adulthood.
 
Then she is a business woman, a college graduate starting her career and navigating the corporate world.
 
Finally, she is a mom, with the car now a safe and reliable means of transport for her own family.
 
Throughout the ad, the Volkswagen Beetle is portrayed as this constant, reliable companion, adapting itself to her needs and supporting her through all these changes.
 
The emotional appeal lies in the sense of the continuity and the stability the car provides, making it an integral part of her life’s journey.
 
Now I have to be honest here. The commercial didn’t persuade me to go out and buy a Volkswagen Beetle. In fact, it did not even prompt me to think about cars at all.
 
But obviously it did make an impression on me. It impressed on me how, from our earliest years, we are all trying to figure ourselves out.
 
“Who am I?” We first begin to ask this question in early adolescence.
 
But truthfully, we never cease asking the “who am I” question.
 
It’s a question that accompanies us throughout our lives.
 
Insightful commentators on the human condition have noted that we tend to answer the “who am I” question in one of three ways:
 
“I am what I do”; “I am what I have”; and “I am what other people say about me.”
 
But is any one of these answers really adequate to the “who am I” question?
 
Will these answers finally be able to still the restlessness with which we incessantly ask this question?
 
Let us be clear at the outset that what we have in our Gospel lesson has very much to do with the “who am I” question.
 
We refer here to the familiar “blessing” and “woe” sayings that Jesus addresses to his disciples.
 
Now we probably associate these with the Beatitudes, with which Jesus opens the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel.
 
If you made this association, you have sound biblical instincts. For there are striking similarities between them. And yet there are also significant differences.
 
Most basic is that this is not a sermon on a mount. Luke locates the sermon on a plain or plateau, for he has Jesus coming down from a mountainside after a night spent in prayer.
 
There to greet him down below is a great crowd of disciples, together with people representing all Israel, who are all waiting to be taught and healed.
 
Incidentally, it is worth noting that Jesus spent as much time healing as he did preaching.
 
Jesus cared for the whole person. He cared for people physically by healing them.
 
He cared for them socially by restoring them to their communities and embracing those on the margins, welcoming sinners, women, and foreigners into the kingdom of God.
 
He cared for them spiritually by teaching them about God and the kingdom of God he was sent to establish.
 
How often do we take the time to see the whole person? Physicians tend to emphasize the physical, pastors tend to emphasize the spiritual.
 
But Jesus sees them as whole persons, and so should we, his followers, today. 
 
Well, Jesus has a captive audience. He turns to his disciples and begins to teach them.
 
What he has to say concerns them above all. He has called them and they have responded.
 
They have left their professions, their former way of life, and followed him.
 
This was a radical commitment for each of them. Indeed, if each of them were to put to himself the “Who am I?” question, no doubt he would say: “I am Jesus’ disciple.”
 
It is worth noting that some of the answers we might give to the “who am I” question are implied in the “blessings” and “woes” that form the content of Jesus’ teaching.
 
“Who am I?” “I am poor, a wage slave, in a dead end job, with hardly enough to provide for myself, let alone a wife and a family.”
 
“Who am I?” “I am one who cries myself to sleep. I am a divorcee. I am a trauma survivor. I am clinically depressed. I am diagnosed with this condition or illness.”
 
“Who am I?” I am excluded and despised. I am identified with one of those marginalized and socially-stigmatized groups, rejected and shunned by society.”
 
But, of course, to this question very different answers can be given:
 
“Who am I?” “I am rich. I have more than enough to make a good living for myself, as well as for my wife and family.”
 
“Who am I?” I am someone of high status. Important people admire me and speak well of me.”
 
Of course, before meeting Jesus, the disciples could have given variations of any and all of these answers in response to the “who am I?” question.
 
But now the most important answer is: “I am Jesus’ disciple,” as we have already said. 
 
The “blessings” and “woes” sayings invite us to reconsider our thoughts about our identities, to rethink our answer to the “who am I?” question.
 
Today we need to do this more than ever before.
 
Think about how fond we are of labels. We have a label for everyone.
 
“She is bipolar.” Or “He has an attachment disorder.”
 
This is not to deny that there are legitimate medical conditions. Nor should we ever discourage research into disorders or frustrate the attempts to find newer and more effective interventions to treat them.
 
I am not anti-science.
 
But labels work on us. They form what psychologist Mark Mayfield calls a “story cycle.”
 
A “story cycle” is a narrative we tell about ourselves, over and over, again and again.
 
The narrative shapes our basic beliefs about ourselves. And the more we inhabit those beliefs, the more our identity becomes bound to them. We become what we believe about ourselves.
 
As the Proverb says: “For as a man thinks within himself, so he is” (23:7).
 
That’s why we have to be very careful about labels—both the labels we give to ourselves and those we give to others.
 
Negative labels tell us that there’s something wrong with us. They limit us. They provide a ready-made excuse for our outlook on life, for our behavior. We say: “that’s just the way people with our condition are.” Our labels convince us that it cannot be otherwise.
 
But if we are disciples of Jesus, we are blessed. That’s what the disciple believes above all about himself, because his master tells him so. What Jesus tells us about ourselves is the most important thing we can believe about ourselves.
 
Now let’s be clear: Jesus is not saying that the disciple must choose to be poor or hungry or sorrowful in order to be blessed.
 
He is not saying that the disciple must choose to be rejected and despised in order to qualify for God’s blessing.
 
Do not see these “blessings” sayings as an invitation to a life of misery that you design for yourself by creating crosses that God never intended for you to carry.
 
Most of you have lived long enough to realize that life will bring you more than enough suffering and challenges without your needing to look for more.
 
On the other hand, neither is Jesus saying that the disciple is to look to be rich, to be insensitive to the needs of others while living the good life.
 
Nor is he saying that the disciple must strive to be well-liked by everyone at all costs.
 
On the contrary, it’s clear that the while the world calls you blessed when all this is true about you—and it will—you aren’t really blessed—at least according to the judgment of the One who sees what we cannot.
 
So what does the blessing consist in?
 
The blessing consists in the disciple’s relationship with Jesus.
 
It is this that gives the disciples an identity that will anchor them when the bad times come.
 
Even when they experience poverty, hunger, grief and rejection, as disciples who belong to Jesus their Rabbi, their Teacher, their Master, they are blessed.
 
Indeed, when they do experience rejection and persecution, they are confirmed in their identity as the ones blessed by God, because that is how this world has always treated God’s servants.
 
For example, when they were flogged by the authorities for preaching about Jesus, the disciples left the Sanhedrin rejoicing that God had counted them worthy to suffer disgrace for the name of Jesus (Acts 5:41).
 
Suffering disgrace for the name of Jesus? That is a badge of honor.
 
But this is not all that Jesus is teaching here.
 
The disciples are blessed not only because they belong to Jesus, but also because they will experience the “great reversal” when the kingdom of God is realized at the end of the age.
 
Those who are poor now will possess the treasures of the kingdom of God then. Those who hunger now will be full then. Those who weep now will laugh then. And those who suffer at the hands of others now because of their commitment to Christ will receive their reward, the fulfillment of their identity, then.
 
This is what Jesus meant when he announced at the synagogue in Nazareth three weeks ago: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor” (4:18).
 
The good news is this: When we belong to Jesus, God secures our future. Our future is safe in God’s hands. There’s no better place for it to be.
 
Do you know why “woes” instead of “blessings” await the rich? It’s because they don’t believe this.
 
They believe their future is in their own hands. They have to do all they can to secure their own future, even if that means the neglect or harm of others.
 
For in a “dog-eat-dog world,” of scarce resources, it’s every man for himself. It’s the survival of the fittest. 
 
That’s what they really believe deep down, because what you really believe always shows in your actions.
 
I hope you can see that there are many problems with this outlook. But probably the most obvious is that it is too short-sighted.
 
You can dedicate your life to accumulating wealth, but soon your life will end—sooner than you realize. Then what?
 
Your wealth cannot help you then.
 
This is the lesson of the parable of the rich fool that Jesus tells later in Luke’s Gospel.
 
His fields produced so much grain he doesn’t have enough room to store it. So he tears down his barns and builds bigger ones.
 
Then he says to himself: “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy. Eat, drink and be merry.”
 
“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have laid up for yourself?’
 
“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”
 
“Who am I?” The rich fool answers: “I am what I have.” But when what you have is pried from your lifeless fingers, then who are you?
 
This is why Jesus teaches elsewhere:
 
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19-21).
 
The rich do not live in view of God’s future. That is not on their horizon. They do not live in expectation of the kingdom of God.
 
They are interested in their comfort now. And Jesus assures them that comfort will be granted to them now, but it comes at a cost.
 
For when the great reversal happens at the arrival of God’s kingdom, they will be on the outside. They will have forfeited the blessings that are in store for the disciples of Jesus.
 
Do we really believe this? It is foolishness to a world that sees affluence as a sign of God’s favor and poverty as a sign of God’s disfavor.
 
But the Gospel today invites us to take the risk and believe in the paradox of the blessings and woes that Jesus pronounces, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
 
Jesus is speaking to us about identity.
 
How do you answer the question, “who am I?”
 
The Gospel today invites us to reconsider our thoughts about our identities, to rethink our answer to the “who am I?” question.
 
Let us anchor our identity in this: that we are disciples of Jesus. Then we will be rooted in the truth that is in Jesus, whatever our circumstances in this life, whether hungry or well-fed, whether in plenty or in want, whether well-liked or despised.
 
As his disciples, we are blessed. Amen.