Blessed are....

"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down to us from the Father of Lights...." (James 1:17)

I hear people talking about how God has blessed America all the time. We feel richly blessed--we live in a "land of plenty" in which certain freedoms are guaranteed. There's nothing wrong with being thankful for the "good gifts" God gives, of course, nor is there anything wrong with desiring God's blessing. Christians are told that "we are given every spiritual blessing in Christ" and we often remind each other that our God is the "fount of every blessing." But just what are the "good gifts" that God gives?

Israel always perceived that God had blessed the rich. So ingrained in Israelite culture was this idea that the common, poor, landless Jew of Jesus' day was completely oppressed: being poor and uneducated, he was completely dependent upon the Temple system for the blessing of God--and much of the Temple system was nothing but a forum for spiritual abuse.

Jesus saw the sickness. In his Sermon he turned the world of the Israelites on its head:

"Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you hungry, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep, for you shall laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, and ostracize you, and insult you, and scorn your name as evil, for the sake of the Son of Man. ...But woe to you rich, for you are receiving your comfort in full. Woe to you who are well-fed, for you shall be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way." (Luke 6:20-22, 24-26)

Our Lord and his disciples never speak of wealth as though it were a blessing--they seemed instead to think it perilous. This is hard teaching for us, who are rich. We think ourselves blessed with our riches and our freedoms--things our Lord never spoke of by way of blessing. Christ's message is consistently one of surprising grief for those who are wealthy and comfortable; he always seems to shock the poor and persecuted with hope, with a message of God's favor. It is precisely the people who are in the most dire of straits, whose backs are hardest against the wall, that our Lord calls "blessed."

Does Jesus overturn any of our tables when he pronounces as woes the very things we consider blessings? What does it say about who we are and what we value when we call our rich and free land "blessed"--though Jesus often seems to say the exact opposite? Perhaps God's "good gifts" are not what we thought, after all?

Behold; he turns the world upside-down!