Spiritual Hiccups - Woe Is Me

Most of us are probably more familiar with the Beatitudes from Matthew's Sermon on the Mount than we are with the Sermon on the Plain in Luke.  The blessings are so similar that both seem to be rooted in the same teaching of Jesus.  But Luke's account contains something not found in Matthew, a corresponding list of woes, and so we see both sides, the blessed and the cursed.

The final woe or curse hits me a little hard.  "Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets."  Different things motivate different people, but one of the things I crave is the approval of others.  Nothing strokes my ego like a "Good sermon," or receiving a number of positive comments on a blog post.  So should I be glad when no one says anything, and should I  worry when I receive a few extra pats on the back?

If you read through the list of woes, you'll probably find one or two that gore your favorites, but what does this mean?  If would be fairly simple to get people to speak badly of me.  I could preach sermons that condemned my congregation for its failures.  But would that mean God was happy with me, that I was blessed.

At the risk of spiritualizing Jesus' words, I wonder if both the Sermon on the Plain and the Sermon on the Mount aren't about aligning ourselves with the Kingdom, with the new order of things that will exist when God's will is done on earth as well as in heaven.  In our world, being rich generally requires others to be poor. And having people speak well of me often requires me to assure people that the way we live and the things we chase after are perfectly compatible with God's coming reign.

It seems to me that one of the most difficult things about following Jesus is genuinely receiving God's love while at the same time hearing God's call to become something we are not.  How do we live in ways that reflect God's Beloved Community while being honest about the ways in which we fall horribly short?  It is easy to live at either pole.  It is easy to be a community of affirmation where God blesses every conventional aspect of every member's life.  And it is easy (if less popular) to be a "prophetic" community that calls down God's wrath on every conventional aspect of society.  More difficult, it seems to me, is genuinely to embody God's love while also embodying a call to repent, to turn and become more and more like Christ, agents of God's dream for Creation.

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