When Life Isn’t As It Appears
Luke 6: 12-26
Gettysburg Presbyterian Church
Daniel T. Hans
November 11, 2007

Appearances are deceptive.  We have all heard the warnings: Beauty is only skin deep. Don’t judge a book by its cover. All is not as it seems.  What would have happened had Jesus chosen his disciples on the basis of appearance only?  The following is a professional assessment of the 12 disciples provided by a management consulting firm.
To: Jesus, Son of Joseph at the Woodcrafters Carpenter Shop
From: Jordan Management Consultants

Dear Sir:
Thank you for submitting the resumes of the twelve men you have picked for positions on your new team.  All of them have now taken a battery of tests and have undergone personal interviews with our staff.  It is our opinion that most of your selections are lacking in background, education, and vocational aptitude for the type of enterprise you are undertaking.  They do not have a team concept. We recommend that you continue your search. Allow us to be specific. Peter is emotionally unstable and given to fits of temper.  The brothers, James and John, place personal interest above team loyalty.  Thomas demonstrates a questioning attitude that would tend to undermine morale.  We feel it is our duty to inform you that Levi, who goes by the alias of Matthew, has been blacklisted by the Greater Jerusalem Better Business Bureau.  One of your recruits, however, shows great potential.  He is a man of ability and resourcefulness, meets people well, has a keen business mind and has contacts in high places.  He is highly motivated and ambitious.  We recommend as your team captain, Judas Iscariot.

(Engineering Management Society Newsletter Nov/Dec, 1982)

I

Part of the problem with appearances is that we see things not as they are but as we want them to be.  Historians say this about Oliver Stone’s movies that portray historical events in a way that arrives at the desired conclusion. The same holds true for our perception of people.  We tend to view others not as they are but as we want them to be.  Fans of actress Audrey Hepburn had a Hepburn-look-alike contest. Entered was a photo of the actress herself. It took fourth place! Appearances are deceptive.

Later versions can become so popular that the original is all but forgotten. This holds true for part of Jesus’ teaching called the Beatitudes.  We know well Matthew’s “Sermon on the Mount” version.  Less familiar and almost forgotten is Luke’s “Sermon on the Plain” version of those same statements. Scholars believe Matthew’s Gospel was written before Luke.  Yet, in all probability, Luke used a purer, unedited version of Jesus’ words while Matthew revised them.  Although Luke was a physician by profession and Matthew a tax collector, Matthew seems to be the one who doctored up the words

Our immediate reaction to Luke’s blunt, in-your-face presentation of Jesus’ teaching is to protest: If Jesus came to call us to poverty, hunger, grief and exclusion; I want to reconsider my faith! Did Jesus advocate hermit-like asceticism (denial of all pleasure)? No!  As a matter of fact, earlier in Luke’s Gospel we heard Jesus being accused of not being ascetic enough. In a condemning tone, Jesus was asked, “Why do you and your disciples eat, drink and have a good time?”

What motive might lie behind Jesus’ “blessings” upon hardships and his “woes” upon pleasures?  Matthew must have wrestled with that very question.  The original harshness of Jesus’ statements proved too direct for Matthew’s pen. So Matthew presented his version all in the positive – all “blessings” and no “woes”. In addition, Matthew spiritualized his Beatitudes, having Jesus say: Blessed are the poor – in spirit…
Blessed are those who hunger – for righteousness…

II

Again I raise the query – what motive might lie behind Jesus’ bluntness in his blessings and harshness in his woes? Here’s a possible answer that goes back to my opening comment – appearances are deceptive. We have been conditioned to believe that: What you see is what you get; the way things are is the way things always will be; and you can’t fight city hall.  However, Jesus’ message and his life offer a different picture. Jesus’ ministry repeatedly raises the question: Are things only as they appear? Or might there be another way to look at life? The pieces of Jesus’ life, as Luke presents it, fit together like a puzzle, a three-dimensional puzzle with a depth beyond the visible.

Think about it!
An ordinary baby born in a stable is the Son of the Eternal God.
During her pregnancy, the baby’s mother envisions a new world standing on its head where: the mighty are dethroned and the lowly exalted, the hungry filled with good things and the rich sent away empty. (Luke 1: 52-53) The news of the child’s birth goes out, not to the movers and shakers and insiders, but a band of outcast shepherds.

As a boy, he sits in church, not bored to tears like other kids, but on the edge of his seat like a kid before a video game. (2: 41-51)
He inaugurates his ministry with a sermon on God’s reversal: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor…to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty the oppressed…” (4:18)
He tells a fishing partnership to think about their life’s work in a new way, offering them a new paradigm: Instead of throwing nets into the water, why not troll the roads and towns for human lives in need of being caught by God’s love?
Up to this point in Luke’s Gospel, everything Jesus says and does suggests that life is not as it appears.

Luke carries this theme into our passage this morning. The crowds of diseased and disturbed people seek Jesus. Previously, they thought they were doomed to their circumstances: once blind, always blind; one epileptic seizure and you are labeled demon possessed; one rejection and you are defined as a loser; and one tragedy and everyone concludes you are God-forsaken.  Yet, with Jesus’ presence, a presence that is with us even now, people discover just how deceptive appearances can be. God’s touch of grace through Jesus gives them: new life regardless of how others still view them and new hope regardless of scarred pasts and shattered dreams. And if they don’t get that message from Jesus’ actions, his words leave no doubt that life is not as it appears.

III

In his blessings and woes statements, Jesus declares that conditions are not set in stone: The moment has not fatalistically determined one’s destiny; and Lives presently marred by poverty, hunger, pain and exclusion need not remain permanently scarred by such. With Jesus there is always hope that God is doing something new.

Had I not seen examples of this hope lived out I would be a skeptic about promises of blessing for the have-nots and downtrodden. I’ve seen desperate situations not produce desperate people. While in college, I spent a month in rural Tennessee setting up adult literacy night schools in what, at the time, was our nation’s third poorest county.  We worked with the black community as the white community saw us as outside agitators.  Some of the families with whom I lived were among the poorest I have ever seen.  I was in homes in Tennessee in the early 1970s that had no running water, no indoor toilets and only dirt floors. Yet, time and again, among these poorest of the poor, I found a vibrant, joyful and hopeful faith in Christ. 
They weren’t happy to be poor.

Those of us who are well-off financially want to think that the poor are content with their poverty, that they are just as happy to go without as to go with. They are not. They are like us, wanting and needing more for their families. Yet, the poor with whom I lived were joyful despite their poverty. From all appearances, they had nothing, but I learned from them what they learned from Jesus: appearances are deceptive.

Similarly, I think about a small group discussion at a men’s retreat.  A fellow at our table made this comment: “Sometimes, I think blind people are richer than those of us with sight. The blind evaluate the inner person, not just the superficial characteristics.” Having grown up in a family with two ophthalmologists I thought: “How crass for one with vision to talk of the blessing of blindness!  It’s like the rich talking about the blessing of poverty while still clutching tightly to their wealth.”
But then, I remembered Jeff, a blind student I was privileged to know when I did campus ministry.  Jeff had lost his vision in high school to a virus that attacked his retinas.  Having every reason to mourn his blindness and be bitter he did not do so. He possessed a generous and genuine laugh. He had a vision from his heart that could see into other’s hearts.  From Jeff I learned that appearances are deceptive.

Jesus said: Blessed are the poor, hungry, mournful and outcast. The idea of “happiness” is too trite and superficial to capture the essence of the word “blessed”. “Blessed” conveys the idea of grace – a gift from God, a gift whereby one experiences God’s presence and power in spite of and beyond the humbling and crumbling circumstances.

In his four pronouncements of blessedness, Jesus declares that for those who participate in God’s Kingdom of faith, there is more to life than what meets the eye. There is more to people’s lives than what is visibly apparent. The poor will discover one’s personal worth is not determined by one’s net worth. The hungry will find something that fills more than stomachs. The sorrowful will laugh again until their sides ache. The hated and excluded will be first in line in God’s kingdom.

Appearances are never more deceptive than when we compare the treasures of this life to the promises of God’s kingdom, a kingdom that is both now and then, both present and future. This is good news to all of us – whatever our life circumstances.

IV

Alas, if only Luke had followed Matthew’s lead and stopped here, putting down his pen after listing the blessings. But, Luke included the other half of Jesus’ teaching. On the heels of the four claims: “Blessed are you…”  stand the four antithetical claims: “Woe to you”. The “woes” are directed to those who appear to be life’s success stories – the rich, the satisfied, the happy and the popular.

They are the ones who enjoy pleasure and power now: they think ultimate security lies in net worth and personal power; they advocate the naïve philosophy: Don’t worry be happy; and they believe popularity is more important than truthfulness. We read their biographies with envy; we listen to their advice on talk shows; we elect them to public office; and we put them in the pulpit!  Yet, in them, we see that what Daniel Webster said about 175 years ago still holds true today: “The world is governed more by appearances than by realities.” On the surface they have everything going for them. But deeper within, they lack something of lasting value and virtue. Of them it can be said: “An impoverished heart can lie beneath any diamond brooch.”

To such persons, Jesus said: “Woe to you…”  There can be something missing in people’s present life that bankrupts their future destiny. Whereas “blessed” means more than happiness, “woe” means more than sadness.
“Woe” signifies the absence of God in a life and the absence of the concerns of God in the heart. Woe to those who fail to recognize human needs beyond their own. Woe to those who take blessings for granted, claiming entitlement and rejecting responsibility. Woe to those who stop striving for God’s kingdom convinced they have already arrived. Woe to those who sacrifice tomorrow to today.  Woe to those who concentrate solely on life’s outer appearance at the expense of life’s deeper meaning.

As the story goes, a teenager and an old man were crossing a wide river in a small boat.  As the boy rowed, the man plucked a leaf from a branch overhead.  “Son, do you know botany?” he asked. “No, sir,” said the boy.  “Then, son, you have missed 25% of life!” As they crossed a shallow sand bar, the man leaned over and scooped a stone from the bottom.  “Son, do you know geology?” Again, “No, sir.”  “My boy, you have missed 50% of life!” Looking at the evening sky, the man saw a star, “Son, do you know astronomy?”  “No, sir.”  “Then you have missed 75% of life!” Just then, the boy saw that the dam upstream had broken and a wall of crashing water was about to hit them. “Sir,” asked the boy, “Do you know how to swim?”  “No, son,” answered the man.  “Then, sir, you have lost all of life?”

(Bruce Thieleman, There Is a Way Out, p. 24-25)

There are countless nice things that contribute to happiness and success in life.  But life is more than outer pleasure and momentary gain.

V

Several years ago, former New York Governor Mario Cuomo paid tribute to Jewish Rabbi Israel Mowshowitz of Queens on the occasion of the rabbi’s 50th anniversary of ordination.  The Governor said of the rabbi:  “A man of God too sensible to ignore the world and too wise to embrace it as the only reality.” The same could be said of another rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth. Can the same be said of us? Are we too sensible to ignore the world’s needs around us and

too wise to embrace this world as the only reality? Blessed are those who are like that; But woe to those who are not!

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