Hilton Head Island, SC – June 23, 2019
The Chapel Without Walls
Isaiah 5:18-23; Luke 6:24-26
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – “Woe to you that are rich, for you have received your consolation.” – Luke 6:24 (RSV)
It seems so out of character! Jesus had just given a series of four beautiful and encouraging Beatitudes: Blessed are you poor, blessed are you who hunger now, blessed are you who weep, blessed are you when men hate you. And then, with no segue or warning, four stinging woes: “Woe to you who are rich, woe to you who are full now, woe to you who laugh now, woe to you when everyone speaks well of you.” Where in the world did that come from?
To understand how and why Jesus made such a jarring transition, we must first understand how he was perceived in his own time by those who heard him. During Jesus’ three-year ministry, it is unlikely that many or any thought of him as the Messiah or the Son of God, and certainly not as God Incarnate. Those concepts came decades after the crucifixion and resurrection, when Jesus’ followers had had time thoroughly to contemplate and debate who he was.
During his lifetime, Jesus’ followers saw him primarily, and perhaps exclusively, as a prophet. Jesus no doubt perceived himself in that way. Bu what, exactly, is a prophet? There is a widespread misperception that a prophet’s main task is to predict the future. That’s what most people think the word “prophecy” means. It is true that many of the Old Testament prophets did make predictions of events they thought would happen. Often they were right, but sometimes they were wrong. And in any case, that is not the primary role of a prophet.
The word “prophet” comes from Greek, and it literally means “to speak bubbling over” or to speak with unusual excitement and enthusiasm. The word “enthusiasm” itself also comes from Greek, and it means to be “in God,” or to “have God within” you when you speak. The prophets believed they were speaking on behalf of God when they talked to the people. They might object to being called to that heavy responsibility, but they all felt called to it nonetheless. A prophet is a spokesman for God, or a “spokesperson” as we now say.
When people heard the voice of Jesus, many of them believed they were hearing the voice of God through Jesus. Jesus proclaimed great consolation and hope to people who felt mistreated, poor, sad, hungry, and oppressed. Those kinds of people were most of the people to whom Jesus spoke, because there so many of them and so few people in a higher social status.
As soon as Jesus finished his list of four blessings to the little folks who always seemed to get the short end of the stick, he immediately launched into a list of woes for the big people whom Jesus believed kept the poor impoverished and downtrodden. “Woe to you who are rich now, for you have received your consolation!” You have already been blessed, and there will be no more blessings coming for you, he seemed to imply.
“Woe to you that are full now, for you shall hunger!” The day is coming, said Jesus, when the poor shall be well fed and the overfed shall experience hunger. That is a very common prophetic theme. “Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn.” Your day is coming, said Jesus, and you’d better be prepared, because it won’t be pretty. “Woe to you , when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.”
If Jesus were alive today, would he say, “Woe to you, David and Charles Koch, and to you, Tom Steyer, you excessively wealthy mis-appropriators of filthy lucre! Woe to you, Rush Limbaugh, you overfed bloviator! Woe to you, Grover Norquist, you smirking no-tax licentious libertarian! Woe to you, Franklin Graham, you duplicitous sell-out!” I don’t know if Jesus would ever say things like that. I rather doubt it. But perversely I also think he might think it.
Jesus and the Old Testament prophets talked fairly frequently about false prophets. They were the kind of people who got under their skin, but to my knowledge they never named names. However, everyone knew who they were. From that we may conclude that there was a fierce inherent prophetic rivalry.
It is not easy to identify a false prophet. He may be a man preaching to thousands with a shiny Rolex watch, wearing a thousand-dollar suit and gold cufflinks, but he also could be a man in blue jeans and a scruffy open-necked shirt speaking to thousands or hundreds or dozens. You have to listen closely to determine who are the genuine and who are the false prophets. And public opinion is not necessarily a good indicator either. Frauds can seem genuine, and those who are genuine may seem fraudulent. Politicians on both sides, for example.
Isaiah: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight!” (5:20-21) Does that remind you of anyone? If you pay close attention, have you noticed any of that happening?
Listen carefully. Most true prophets are usually more concerned for the poor and dispossessed than for any other single factor. It has always been, and I trust it shall always be. And that is why Jesus immediately followed his four beatitudes in Luke’s Gospel with a list of four woes. True prophets often castigate the wealthy, and that means us, more of less, because they think the wealthy are the main reason the poor are poor. There is often far more to the story than just that, but “woe to you” is how the prophets chose to pinpoint this subject. Jesus of Nazareth was a prophet. He is often referred to as a prophet in the Gospels.
According to my 1300-page analytical concordance of the Bible, ten Old Testament prophets used the word “woe,” and they used it 56 times. A total of ten different prophets, out of as total of sixteen, used that woeful word. There are only sixteen prophetic books in the Old Testament. Jesus was the last in a long line of biblical prophets. The concordance says that he used the word “woe” 24 times.
There can be no honest religion or preaching or prophecy without woes. When we do wrong, we must be called to account for it. More than any other people in the Bible or in contemporary society, the prophets are the ones who remind us of that.
However, “woe to you” is never intended to connote eternal condemnation. Essentially it is not primarily a way of scolding someone. It is meant to be an antidote to bad behavior. Although we don’t use any of these remedies anymore, “woe to you” is like cod liver oil to a vitamin deficiency or castor oil to the lower end of the alimentary system. It identifies the problem and it suggests the solution, but it is pretty awful medicine anyway.
“Spare the rod and spoil the child” the old proverb says. The imposition of a switch or a hand to the backside or a stern “woe to you” is a corrective. It is not essentially punitive; its purpose is to engender repentance from bad behavior.
Repentance is one of the greatest words in scripture. It too comes from Greek, where the word is metanoia. To repent is literally to turn around, except that is not to be taken literally. When we repent, we turn around or turn away from what we have been doing that brings woe to others or to ourselves. We have been going in one direction, and we decide to follow a new course. The opioid addict gives up opioids, the physical abuser of others stops the abuse, the liar stops lying.
Repentance results in a profound transformation from negative habits. Hearing a loudly declared “Woe to you!” may be the only way fully to get our attention. Prophets may be the necessary spur in our side which can cause us to change the track upon which we have been running.
“Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice,” said Jeremiah (22:13). “Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing,” said Ezekiel (13:3). “Woe to those who desire the day of the Lord,” said Amos (5:18). “Woe to those who desire evil,” said Micah (2:1) Woe to you who are rich, who are full, who laugh, said Jesus, not realizing the harm we are doing to others by our thoughtless actions.
It all sounds so threatening, so ominous! But that is not its purpose! Its purpose is to stop wrongdoers in their tracks. It is to force people to come to grips with the nature of their behavior if it is mistaken or misapplied.
In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, some phenomenal fortunes have been made, especially in the area of technological innovation. People have started giant corporations in their garages or basements, little imagining how profitable their efforts would become. Some of these new billionaires have turned into some of the greatest philanthropists in the history of charitable giving. Did they hear a voice telling them that they had made too much too quickly for their own good, or anyone else’s? Did they hear a prophetic “woe to you” because of their desire to amass assets without considering all the good they might do by means of those assets? Bill and Melinda Gates, Warren Buffett and many other very wealthy people have resolved to put all of their assets to work philanthropically both while they are alive and after they are dead. I don’t know whether any of them heard either a faint or a loud “Woe,” but they turned around from merely making masses of money to making a massive difference in the world. The Gateses, almost by themselves, are almost eliminating many tropical diseases in parts of Africa and elsewhere in the world.
Everyone needs to turn away from old patterns and to learn new patterns that make the world around them more like the world God means it to be. Prophetically exclaimed “Woes!” are never meant solely to accuse people. They are meant to redeem people, to set them on new paths. True prophets never give up on anybody. They keep probing and prodding and pushing, hoping that something, in some way, will be the trigger that starts a whole new life for someone.
Sometimes the only way to overcome serious mistakes of judgment is loudly to call them what they are: woeful errors. When we do bad things, bad things happen. Unless and until we realize the errors of our ways, we may continue the same noxious behavior.
Prophets always differentiate between people and their behavior. We are much more than what we don’t do and the mistakes we do make. We are all children of God. He created us to be His own. We need to be reminded of that when we forget it. Therefore prophets are God’s prods.
Jesus was more than a prophet. When he erupted in his “Woe to you” explosions, he was trying to get the attention of people who were driven by alien voices to do alien things. He didn’t want to incinerate them, but he did want to captivate and motivate and elevate them. Jesus was more about the Lesson on Love we shall think about next Sunday, but for this Sunday he is speaking to people like us, most of whom live quite cushy lives in pretty plush circumstances.
“Woe to us?” If we need a dose of woe, a dose of woe is what we get. If we don’t need it, or we have convinced ourselves we don’t need it even if we do, Jesus has other things to say to us. But a little woe can go a long way for people who woe woe, don’t you know.