Sermon for February 16, 2025
Epiphany 6C
Luke 6:17-26; Jeremiah 17:5-10
Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
What does it mean to be blessed? It can be hard to pin down exactly what we mean when we use the word “blessed”. The meaning can be a bit fuzzy. You might mean “God is watching over you” or “God has given you a gift of grace.” You might mean “I feel spiritually fulfilled”. You might use “blessed” to mean “happy, or prosperous, or contented” or something like that. But what exactly you mean can be hard to sum up in one word.
This is true in the Bible, as well; so the writers of the Bible often turned to poetry. The prophet Jeremiah compares “being blessed” to being like “trees planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat, or worried by long months of drought.” You’ve probably seen trees like that if you’ve ever walked along a wooded riverbank. They grow strong, majestic, bigger than you could wrap your arms around. Their root structures are often visible, like a thick web that gives them a firm base to stand tall. They always have plenty of water to drink so they can keep growing and thriving, no matter the weather. This is what it’s like to be blessed, when you put your trust in the Lord.
Jeremiah contrasts these deep-rooted, well-positioned trees with stunted shrubs in the desert; they can’t grow tall or strong, and they whither away with no hope for the future. This is the example Jeremiah uses for being “cursed” and cut off from God’s blessings. It’s how we end up when we “put our trust in mere humans” no matter how great our powerful they appear. It’s how we end up when “turn our hearts away from the Lord” and simply muddle through life without tasting the sweetness of God’s presence and God’s grace.
Now consider, if you will, a kind of tree that Jeremiah doesn’t describe (and perhaps he never knew anything about). I’m thinking about the kind of trees known as “krummholz”. These are some of my favorite trees in the world. About 10 years ago I was hiking up Mt. Adams in New Hampshire. You start out at the base of the mountain in a mixed hardwood forest with fairly easy terrain. Then after a few miles the trail gets steep—like, climbing a staircase steep—but you’re still surrounded by tall trees, only the higher you climb, the more pine and fir trees start to appear among the hardwoods. The climb eases up as you get near tree-line, and they’re all pine and fir trees by now—until we finally came to a sign, posted by the U.S. Forest Service, warning us to “STOP. The area ahead has the worst weather in America. Many have died there from exposure even in the summer. Turn back now if the weather is bad.”
Luckily, we were blessed with a calm and sunny day, so we hiked ahead. And that’s where we encountered the “krummholz”. From a German word meaning “crooked wood”, these trees typically grow in the transition zone between the dense forests of lower elevations, and the tree-less mountaintops. Often they are balsam fir, like the kind you might have for your Christmas tree, but at their tallest krummholz never grow much taller than me. The higher we hiked, the shorter they got: chest high, waist high, knee high, ankle high—and some of these little trees were over 150 years old! They exist in a rugged yet fragile ecosystem, with thin soil nestled in the crags of the rocks providing just enough nutrients to stay alive; with wind and ice continually pruning them to keep them short; with thin roots clinging to whatever nooks and crannies they can find so they don’t blow away. Their stunted stature is a blessing, allowing them to live up to twice as long as the same species of tree growing in milder places. [https://northernwoodlands.org/outside_story/article/krummholz-wood]
The krummholz appear to our senses as “cursed”—small, crooked, living in inhospitable conditions. Yet despite all appearances to the contrary, they are blessed—long living, adaptable, enduring, resilient, with a rugged beauty all their own. These krummholz can open our minds beyond our usual ideas of what it means to be blessed. Kind of like Jesus does with his “sermon on the plain” in Luke’s gospel, when he tells the crowds who have gathered to be healed and to hear him teach: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, exclude you, revile you, defame you.”
And the word Jesus uses, which we translate as “blessed”, actually doesn’t have a good equivalent word in English. The word in Greek is “Makarios”. Makarios cuts a little deeper than happy, contented, or prosperous. It more of that feeling you get when you know all is right between you, the world, and God. It means that “you have God’s approval and favor—despite all appearances to the contrary!” [https://livingchurch.org/covenant/coming-to-terms-with-our-cultural-blinders-the-beatitudes-as-a-case-study/] If you are poor, hungry, weeping, hated, excluded—you’re kind of like those krummholz trees.
Most of us would probably be happy if Jesus just stopped there, but after Jesus talks about what it means to be blessed, he starts talking about “woes”. These “woes” are not curses—he’s not saying there’s no hope for you if you happen to fall into one of these categories. They are more like warnings, spoken to catch our attention so that we say “Yikes! Uh-oh!” But there is hope in these warnings—like the hope I found in the U.S. Forest Service Sign by the krummholz—because the warnings mean I still have time to evaluate what I’m doing, and go in a different direction if necessary.
“Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what they did to the false prophets.” Yikes! But, even so, God has blessed me with the chance to change not only my personal habits, but also to offer my energy to trying to make the world a more just and welcoming place for people who are vulnerable or suffering.
When Jesus speaks these “woes” he isn’t saying that we should aspire to be miserable just so we can get a taste of God’s blessings. Jesus isn’t saying we should make ourselves poor, hungry, weeping, hated, excluded, reviled, defamed, or marginalized—God doesn’t want that stuff for anybody! And God doesn’t love you any less if you happen to be rich, full, laughing, or well-spoken of. God already loves you so much that Jesus gave his precious and holy life on the cross for your forgiveness and salvation. But it’s kind of like if you have a child with special needs: You don’t love them more than you love any of your other children. But maybe you have a special place in your heart for them, because you know they will have more obstacles to overcome in life—so maybe you give them an extra measure of grace and compassion. I think this is what Jesus is saying when he preaches about blessings and woes. And he’s saying that as long as there are poor, hungry, mourning, excluded and the like, then no one can be truly rich, well-fed, laughing, or respected.
So, what does it mean to be blessed, at least from Jesus’ perspective? When you live with constant hardship, or are targeted with hate and exclusion, then know that God has a special place in his heart for you! You have God’s approval and favor, despite all appearances to the contrary. And if you’re not living with one of these difficult conditions, then every day, in ways great and small, Jesus is opening his heart to you, inviting you to live by faith in him and his way of life. Every day the Holy Spirit offers new opportunities to re-orient our lives around generosity and compassion, so that the values of God’s eternal kingdom seep into the struggles of the present day. Amen.