Sunday, February 16, 2025 - The ultimate goal

This sermon was preached for the sixth Sunday after Epiphany, Sunday, February 16, 2025. The texts for this sermon were: Jeremiah 17:5-10, 1 Corinthians 15:12-20, Luke 6:17-26, and Psalm 1.

I’m not ashamed to say that my husband and I checked off all the first-time parent stereotypes quite admirably at my eldest’s first pediatric appointment. We came with a whole long list of anxious questions that all boiled down to - are we doing this wrong? Now our pediatrician was one of those wise practitioners who had seen it all and he had seen my anxious perfectionism coming from a mile away. 

Dr. Blumenthal told us something at that first appointment when my son was barely a week old that I still think about a lot - the goal, he said, is not that your child never cries. In fact, if your child never cries you are doing it wrong. The goal is to raise a resilient human adult. Sometimes that’ll mean tears. What, am I supposed to force them down into their carseat? Other parents had apparently asked him. Yes, he told us he told them. Sometimes it’ll mean holding them down while you buckle them in. 

Now, this isn’t a new or original piece of advice to give parents. But in that most vulnerable time, in the early days of parenting, drowning in the sleep deprivation and anxiety and hours of wailing, I needed an authority figure to say to me - don’t forget what the goal really is here. If you parent by doing everything to avoid your child ever experiencing pain, you’re actually doing them a huge disservice. Constant comfort and ease is not the goal. The goal is resilience.

“Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water sending out its roots by the stream.” Jeremiah proclaims. “They are like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither; everything they do shall prosper.” Echoes the psalm. And that, that is my prayer for my children. But not just for them, for myself, for all of you. I pray that we are like trees planted by streams of water. I pray that our roots are sunk deep, deep into the well-spring of living water that is God’s love. So that when drought comes, when heat and wind bear down, when the chaos and grief of the world come barreling in, we stand tall, leaves green, with fruit to offer when it is our turn.

The tree backsplash in my kitchen that reminds me of my prayer for my family: "They shall be like trees planted by streams of water"

Reflecting back I realized that what the pediatrician did in calling us back to our purpose as parents - that’s basically my job as a preacher, isn’t it? Well, really my job is to point to Jesus saying over and over, don’t forget what the ultimate goal is. So listen up: Jesus here in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus pushes us even further, beyond the goal of resilience and survival. Resilience for what purpose? Survival to do what with our lives? 

Deliver us, Lord, from the presumption of coming to this thy table for solace only and not for strength, for pardon only and not for renewal. 

Jesus has just gone up to a mountain to choose twelve of his many disciples to be apostles. This passage begins when he comes down from the mount to a level place to be amongst the rest of the crowd of his disciples, as well as a great multitude of people from all over. They’ve come to hear his teaching and they’ve come to be healed. When he says these words, “Blessed are you,” Jesus is in the midst of the people, many of them desperate, wretched. “He looked up at his disciples and said,” the text says. Not down from the high and holy mountain, but up from the midst. I can imagine that Jesus has just bent down to touch a person’s wound, or crouched down to comfort a child. Jesus speaks to his disciples here but he is also speaking to the ones most in need of God’s reassurance; you, the poor and hungry, the mourning and the outcast, you are at the center of God’s kingdom, God’s vision for the world. 

Receiving Jesus’ words as a poor, hungry, grieving, or excluded person, it’s pure hope. Jesus says directly: your desperation and misery is not forever, and it is not what God wants for you. But even when we aren’t currently hard up, hangry, or hated, Jesus’ words here are still a message for all of us because they tell us where to find God. God is crouched beside the wounded, God’s arms are around the weeping, God is in handcuffs being led away from the protest march. When we are in the midst of the poor - when we put their needs, their experiences at the center of our faith - when we feed the hungry, when we weep with those who weep - we become part of God’s blessing in the world. 

That, that is our ultimate goal. Resilience for purpose? For love. To be God’s blessing in the world. The ultimate goal is not to be wealthy or successful, famous and acclaimed, or to live a life of pleasure and plenty. It is not even personal fulfillment. Nor is it to merely survive. The true, ultimate goal is to be God’s love to all people, no matter the cost.

So the Gospel of Luke Jesus, the sermon on the plain Jesus, doesn’t stop at the blessings, Jesus pushes further so that we do not mistake what the goal is here. It’s important here to note that the next list are not curses. It’s an easy assumption to make because blessing and curse go together and because that’s what we read in Jeremiah. But the "woe" here in Greek is a warning. The Greek word is actually really similar to the sound of the English word, “woe,” because both are a sort of onomatopoeia, a crying out: "WHOA!" The Hebrew prophets use “הוֹי” (hoy) or “אוֹי” (oy), literally "OY!" for the same meaning, which is also a sort of onomatopoeia. It’s certainly the sound my mouth makes whenever my toddlers are about to make a bad choice - “Whoa!” 

Woe, Jesus says. Whoa! Wealth, pleasure, prestige will draw you away from where God is. You may not realize it yet, when your mouths are full of mirth, your bellies are full of food, and your ears are full of others’ praise. But watch out, be careful. Those goals - success, pleasure, praise - they are not just distracting - they are spiritually corroding. They will force you to choose between your desires and others’ needs again and again. Live your life to avoid grief and pain  and you will never fully know compassion and love. Live your life never risking being a burden on others, never giving so much that you threaten your own sense of security and you will never fully know connection and gratitude. Live your life without taking stances that might cause conflict or anger others and you will leave behind conviction, justice, and truth. Live your life hoarding wealth, power, and praise and you will isolate yourself from God and from the very people God is in the midst of. You will distance yourself from the people God places at the center of God’s kingdom. 

Whoa, Jesus warns. You’ll be rewarded in this life, sure. But there’s a spiritual cost you need to be aware of. But you’ll be missing the point. 

It is precisely when things are at their most chaotic, when we are the most stressed and full of doubt, when we are in survival mode like Aaron and I with our newborn, that’s when we most need to tune in to hear Jesus say - don't lose sight of the ultimate goal. When the world feels upside down and torn apart, that we should ask what's it all for? These taxes we pay, these institutions we sustain, these ministries we create? What's it all for if not to be God's blessing on the poor, wherever they are in the world, to comfort the suffering, whatever the cause, to bring in the excluded, whoever they are? If not for love, then what's the point? 

Do we make ourselves strong only so that we'll never be made to feel weak again? Renewed only so that we might stave off death another day?

That is not how Jesus loves, or bids us to love.

Jesus, whose healing power goes out from him whenever he is touched. Jesus, who stretched out his arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of his saving embrace. 

There’s a poem by William Martin called Do not ask your children to strive that’s a reminder of the true goals of parenting. It goes like this:

Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.

This poem argues that spiritual depth, meaning-making, the stuff of resilience are the true goals of parenting. But there’s another layer here, too, when we place it beside Jesus’ sermon on the plain. When we read it from God’s perspective, with us as the children. 

God does not ask us to strive for what this world considers extraordinary: wealth, success, even happiness and praise. That is the way of foolishness. 

No, God shows us how to cry when pets and people die and what it means to reach out to touch another. And when we love - sacrificially, whole-heartedly, vulnerably - when we break open our hearts and give of ourselves, the extraordinary comes: God’s blessing onto the world, through us.