February 13, 2022

A good theme or focus today is balance. Luke’s gospel is often trying to rebalance extremes like rich and poor, joy and sorrow and so on. Balance applies to various aspects of life, like a balanced diet or balancing your cheque book or learning to balance on ice skates or bicycles as children. As we get older our sense of balance may become weaker; and then we can more easily fall and break our hipbones or knee bones – which may greatly reduce our independence. Because of such concerns I bought a thick oval foam balance pad – attracted to the picture of how this item would make it easier to stand on one leg. So far, all I can do with it is put both hands on it for the ‘Downward Facing Dog’ yoga pose.

Again, this week our Bible study group enjoyed William Barclay’s comments on our gospel, especially regarding the blessings and woes in Luke’s version of the Beatitudes https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/eng/dsb/luke-6.html. Barclay sees these as ‘the end of the world’s values’ since they say things like – Blessed are the poor and woe to the rich. Luke is known as the social justice gospel, among other things; and he speaks of the actual poor and rich, not just the ‘poor in spirit’ like Matthew. Barclay cites F. R. Maltby who wrote that: “Jesus promised his disciples three things – that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy and in constant trouble.” And he also cites G. K. Chesterton whose principles constantly got him into trouble, but he said: “I like getting into hot water. It keeps you clean.” I wish I could have such a positive attitude about troublesome people or times. That’s one of the lessons in the Harry Potter books as well, with poor Harry getting into ongoing trouble. As I finished Volume 4 last week – Goblet of Fire, I felt angry at Dumbledore for the first time -- as he put Harry through so much more ‘work’ to do -- immediately after he’d been so brutally treated and almost killed by Lord Voldemort himself. So, if being a true disciple of Christ means being in constant trouble, we can feel better about the struggles in our own lives – which are likely far fewer than those faced by Jesus and his disciples, or even by Harry Potter!

Sarah Heinrich from the Working Preacher website https://www.workingpreacher.org/.../commentary-on-luke... points out that Luke’s blessings and woes describe a world that reverses almost everything we know about how things are supposed to work – which was also the theme of Mary’s Magnificat when she was pregnant with Jesus – a theme of how in God’s reign the lowly are fed and uplifted, while the rich or mighty are cast down from their thrones. Of course, nowadays we have to be cautious about such language … because it can lend itself to the kind of uprisings as we’ve seen with those horrible truck blockades. The Internet and social media were hailed as great equalizers with everyone having a voice, and access to all the world’s information. What could go wrong, we thought. Turns out the answer is plenty!

Luke’s blessings and woes are perhaps meant to be seen as two ends of a seesaw – on which sit various opposites like poverty and wealth, joy and sorrow, hunger and excess, fame and infamy and so on.

God’s Creation continually rebalances itself as the seasons come and go. And we who care about the poor and oppressed -- want their situation to become more balanced. Many of the Hebrew Bible prophets have a similar message – that excess wealth causes brutal poverty, and God hears the cry of the poor. We often wish God would step in and rebalance things, but apparently that’s our job. Luke’s Beatitudes happen on a ‘level place’ (v 17) whereas Matthew’s are part of the Sermon on the Mount. It’s still early in our Luke year of the lectionary, but we can already see how strong this theme is. Luke’s version of the Beatitudes balances the Blessings of the Beatitudes with the Woes – a brilliant move since we know that the life of discipleship -- definitely has its woes.

How can we bring greater balance to our lives, and to our world? Looking to nature helps us to understand. We’re so fortunate here on Vancouver Island to generally never be too far away from the ocean, so we can see there every day the continual balancing back and forth between high tides and low tides. The ebb and flow of our lives pulls and pushes us in similar ways. John O’Donohue left us a lovely Celtic balancing prayer on Coming Home to Yourself: “May all that is unforgiven in you be released. May your fears yield their deepest tranquilities. May all that is unlived in you Blossom into a future Graced with love.” Seeking this greater balance in our spiritual and personal lives, may we gain new strength to help rebalance so many imbalances or injustices in our world, Amen.