Jer 17:5-8; I Cor 15:12,16-20; St. Luke 6:17,20-26
Where, or in what, or in whom do we place our trust?
We hear a lot about trust in our readings today, and in our Gospel today I think that Our Lord calls us to think about this question - where do we place our trust?
Today we see Jesus standing in the open air and preaching to His disciples and to a large crowd of people - it’s sometimes called ‘the sermon on the plain’, or ‘the sermon on the mount’ in Matthew’s Gospel - it’s a famous sermon if you like where we hear Jesus preaching the ‘beatitudes’ - those statements which start with ‘blessed (happy) are you …’
The beatitudes - these short statements which we heard in the Gospel declaring that an individual or a group of people are especially blessed, were a standard teaching device which were used by rabbis -
and Jesus uses the beatitudes today in his sermon.
He calls his listeners to think about where they place their trust -
and we too, this morning, stand with the disciples and with the crowd, and hear this same challenge.
It’s one of Our Lord’s best-known moments of preaching - short and direct statements - words of comfort, but also words of instruction and command and challenge.
He says to the crowds and He continues to say to each of us here, “Blessed (happy) are you who are poor … Blessed (happy) are you who are hungry … Blessed (happy) are you who weep … Blessed (happy) are you when people reject you” -
What He does is He focuses on 4 different situations - He focuses on poverty, hunger, weeping, and rejection - 4 areas which we (quite rightly) think of as negative - 4 situations which bring suffering, misery, and unhappiness.
Each of us here - without exception - find ourselves in one of these situations at least once in our lives and more likely more regularly - weeping, rejection, poverty, hunger;
And it’s been the same for all humanity since the beginning of time.
But now, something happens; now, on this hillside, Jesus comes to these situations - He comes to humanity’s poverty, to humanity’s hunger, to humanity’s weeping, and to humanity’s rejection - and what He gives us is a new perspective on each of these situations.
He uses the word ‘blessed’, or ‘happy’ - blessed are you who are poor, blessed are you who are hungry, blessed are you who weep, blessed are you who are rejected -
what our Lord is telling us here is that He is the One who has the power to transform each one of these situations of negativity and suffering into sources of blessing - He doesn’t tell us that He makes them go away - but that He can transform them to sources of blessing.
Sometimes in times of difficulty we can come to realise very profoundly our utter dependence on God, the God who came to earth;
in contrast, in times of plenty, when we have everything that we need around us, we can all-too easily come to see our happiness and our security as coming from those things around us, maybe without even realising it - I sometimes find myself falling into this trap.
But Jesus wants us all to realise and to grasp and to accept the fact that God Himself is the only guarantee of our happiness and our security. God is the One in whom we are to place out trust - not in our riches, or our status.
Poverty, hunger, weeping, and rejection are 4 negative things - so at this point we may (quite rightly) think to ourselves “let’s try and avoid them in our lives as much as we can” - and of course we try to, it’s human nature -
But Jesus warns us that each of these 4 things also has an opposite - an opposite which can make us go too far the other way and lead to our ruin;
We have the ‘blessings’: ‘Blessed (happy) are you who are poor … Blessed (happy) are you who are hungry … Blessed (happy) are you who weep … Blessed (happy) are you when people reject you” but there are the four opposites which He declares later on in the Gospel, sometimes called the ‘woes’:
‘alas for you who are rich … alas for you who have your fill … alas for you who laugh now … alas for you when the world speaks well of you.’
What I think it can mean is that if we try hard to avoid poverty, we may end up trying to amass a huge fortune, things we will never need; if we try to avoid hunger, we may end up becoming gluttonous and greedy; if we try to avoid weeping, we may end up gloating - smugly dwelling on our own good fortune; and if we try to avoid rejection, we may end up being overly proud of our ‘good’ reputation in other’s eyes.
I’m reminded in a sense of some of the work I do in psychotherapy:
how we all build up defences - ways of being in the world, ways that we use to protect ourselves, helping us to negotiate life - these defences can become like an armour, an armour which protects our fragile self; and defences which in some ways can become part of our personality.
Some of these defences are unconscious, but there other things which we can take on which can be more overt - things we adopt, things we take on - and things in which we come to trust, because we think that they will make us somehow better in the eyes of others, or bring us more success, or protect us from the experiences around us. We can take on a false self - and this false self can at times then let us down.
Of course there is some security to be found in trusting in some things like wealth and food, but the point is that if we rely solely on them - and not on God - then they can let us down. We may trust in how much we earn, or our qualifications, or our property or our family reputation or the praise we’ve received or the way that we think people see us. But they are things which on their own can let us down; Our Lord calls us to trust in Him.
But despite all of this, I don’t think that God necessarily wants us to be miserable on purpose; He doesn’t want us to feel guilty if we’re happy, or if we have food to eat and things that we enjoy; Our Lord isn’t saying that these things are bad, but what He is saying is that we should not rely on them for our happiness, for our security; our calling rather is to develop sight which goes beyond these things, developing sight that looks beyond this world to God.
In our first reading from the prophet Jeremiah we hear him warning the people not to trust in man, not to rely on the things of the flesh; again these things aren’t necessarily bad, but it’s when we rely solely on these things(and not on God) that the problem comes.
I was thinking recently about when I used to volunteer as a student at church winter night shelters for the homeless in London, and hearing people’s stories - it was certainly eye opening how some of the guests we had in the shelters had had in some cases a lot of ealth, or qualifications, or good jobs - but then through an unfortunate series of events they had ended up being homeless, which then at times led to a further spiral. It brought into focus for me how material things can fail us.
This trusting in God first can be a lifetime process and struggle for us all - following our natural instincts and trusting in ourselves more than God, but then coming back again -
but the important thing is that we keep coming back to God, we keep realising and accepting our dependence on Him for our happiness and for our security - that it’s through viewing all of life through Jesus that our lives have meaning and purpose and dignity - each one of us.
And if we do put our trust in God, and rely on Him, (as Jeremiah puts it in our first reading) we will become like trees that grow by the waterside, trees that can grow and can thrust their roots to the stream - the tree is sustained by its roots which are fed by the life-giving water; when the heat then comes, when problems occur, the tree stands firm, its foliage remains green - it still has a source of life.
And so our source of life is Our Lord - we are sustained and fed by Jesus Himself, as we come to Him, as we come to Him in the Mass and receive His Body and Blood, as we place our trust in Him, as we receive Him - we place our trust in Him, as He is our ultimate security - not our riches or our food or our laughter or our good reputation - but Our Lord, the the One who feeds us so that we can stand firm.
- Fr Nick Archer -