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Good morning, church!

Grace and peace to you from your ecumenical siblings. I bring you greetings from the twenty-three member denominations of the Wisconsin Council of Churches.  The Council’s members include two thousand congregations in Wisconsin – nearly one million Christians – and faith-based organizations. For eighty years, we have been gathering for the sake of the unity of the church and the most vulnerable among us.

Beloveds, it is good to be here. Will you pray with me?

May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

A bit of scene-setting: If you’re not familiar with Newsies, it’s a musical about the children who sold newspapers on the street in the year 1899, barely making a living. When the prices they pay for the newspapers are hiked, they try to organize a strike against Joseph Pulitzer, the publisher of the New York World. The newspaper publishers play hardball. It turns out the city can’t do without child labor. How they manage to get their story of exploitation and political corruption out to the world requires a bit of heroism, an attempted jailbreak, and a guest appearance by Governor Roosevelt.

The text from Broadway gives us weapons wielded against the young and seemingly powerless; and vows made by the marginalized to hold titans of industry accountable. The two sides are at war.

In the Gospel, Jesus issues curses we want to duck and blessings we want to catch: blessings and woes.

 

As he offers the teaching to a crowd, blessed are the poor is not metaphorical. “Creator’s blessing rests on you who hunger now…the ones who weep now…when you are…looked down on and treated as worthless.” You, he says, looking them in the eyes.

Jesus says this is where the blessing sits. Don’t look for it anywhere else, because we will not find it anywhere else. Only on the road with those who are rejected will we find it.  Blessed are the poor, the ones looked down on, the ones treated as worthless.

This is a dangerous word.

This word tells me that God is speaking up for my neighbor who finds shelter under the awning of the Wisconsin Veteran’s Museum, blasted 24 hours a day with patriotic marches. God is speaking up for your neighbor who was just told they were no longer welcome in this country and they have days to pack up their lives and leave. God is speaking up for our neighbor who was injured working in the cannery and doesn’t have any way to get the treatment they need to get back to work, to provide for their family, and the food pantry is out of groceries. Proverbs 22:23 – For Grandfather will speak up for them, and he will stomp the life out of the ones who trample on the poor.

The word is also dangerous for us if we think our work is to issue decrees of blessing to the powerless. Remember that issuing empty statements of blessing – “don’t you see how lucky you are?” is the work of abusers. Titans. People “who have great possessions,” rich in the things of this world, who can look from a dispassionate distance and announce what a gift they are offering these small creatures by letting them earn a coin or two.

Here, in holy text, we are reminded that when it is God doing the blessing, the blessing is fraught with meaning. It is invitation, call, lesson, transformation. We are being educated by this blessing. The work is to be on the road with the powerless, with those who harvest the crops, with those who are being trampled.

And just in case we don’t quite get it, Jesus moves on from the blessings and continues with woes.

Curses are the counterpoint to blessings. They are goodness turned sour. If you have the temerity to store things up, to withhold them from others, treasuring them at your neighbor’s expense, sorrow and trouble will be your end. You have done this to yourself, the Bible tells us. Hear this from the letter of James:  You have fattened yourselves like an animal prepared for a day of slaughter.

My God.

Do we believe this? From Holy Scripture.

Do we believe these words are aimed at Pulitzer? At Rockefeller? At Bezos? At Musk? At those who want to turn back child labor laws and are gutting OSHA as we speak? At more local employers?

At shoppers who buy casually, not attending to who may be injured and maimed in the course of their consumer habits?

Prepared for the day of slaughter.

These words are sometimes aimed at us. At times we are just as distanced from the daily reality of people who make our clothes, harvest our food, clean and care for the sick and elderly as the publishing titans were from the newsies on the street. If we do not attend to right relationship, holy scripture tells us in so many ways, the day of violence will come.

We may not expect it when we step into the theater for entertainment, or open our Bible for a word of Good News, but what our texts have given us today is war. Flat out, direct talk, can’t avoid it. Sharp cutting words.

Your treasured possessions will eat at your flesh like fire.

The end of all of this is sorrow and trouble, a reckoning. You may know the story: full stomachs are emptied, the storehouses rot, it all becomes dust and ashes, the self-satisfied and comfortable are forced into exile. Life is stomped out.

Beloveds, let me be clear: we are not wishing for war.

We are not wishing for things to become so unbalanced that God must rebalance them.

We are not wishing ill for any child of God.

We followers of Creator-Sets-Free are trying to learn from the teachings, walking on the good road together with more and more people until there is no other, there is no one excluded or treated as worthless.

The good road is the road of solidarity. Of binding up our well-being with the well-being of our neighbors, of all of creation. What is good for creation, is good for our neighbor, is good for us. And before you get to asking, “who is my neighbor, and how do I meet them?” Jesus spent a lot of time teaching on that one. It’s a whole other sermon.

Here’s a thing I know: when we seek after justice – any kind of justice – we find that it requires gritty, beautiful, despair-filled, hope-filled companionship. And it drives us to change. Right relationship is essential to any justice project. Worker justice is no different.

We speak up with our neighbors, we walk the road with them, we share what we have.

We seek each other’s well-being, we honor the Spirit of God at work among us, in the work we exchange between us, and in the work being done in us.

God’s blessing is justice.

That is the banner ahead of us on the Good Road.

Amen.