Have you ever found a DIAMOND in the ROUGH??
Maybe not a literal diamond unless you’ve got a metal detector, or you’ve stumbled across someone’s diamond ring walking in the sand at the beach, or if you’re a jeweller or a geologist maybe…
That’s literal DIAMONDS in ROUGH there, but what about other ways this happens, what about DIAMONDS in the ROUGH as in GOOD in the BAD, or as in BLESSINGS in the WOE as we hear in our gospel reading today…
What’s it like to find a DIAMOND in the ROUGH, to find something GOOD in the BAD, to know about God’s BLESSINGS even in times of WOE…
It’s a good feeling isn’t it? Is there some relief, some joy even when we find DIAMONDS in the ROUGH? When we find God’s blessings in the midst of life’s challenges…
So a question for you to think about today: what’s a DIAMOND in the ROUGH for you?? Have a think about that.
For me > I think of 3 DIAMONDS, I’m a very lucky man there, 3 people who are DIAMONDS in the ROUGH for me, 3 people who know me and who I know intimately, sometimes there are ROUGH patches when there’s a lack of sleep or a challenging moment to deal with, but these three people are DIAMONDS, they are BLESSINGS, I would even say they are gifts from God > you can probably guess who I’m talking about!
I hope there are DIAMONDS that come to mind for you there, BLESSINGS that go with us through thick and thin and everything in between, ways God reveals his goodness to us.
Jumping over to our gospel reading today, there are FOUR BLESSINGS Jesus has for us today, four blessings in the midst of woes here I want to pull out for us today (Luke 6:20-31):
1)
‘BLESSED are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.’
What’s the blessing? ‘Yours in the kingdom of God.’
What’s the woe? Being poor.
Nobody wants to be poor, the church does a lot to help people in need in this way.
But even in that, even when paying the bills is stressful and uncertain, even if worse case than that, what does Jesus say here? Yours is the kingdom of God.
NOT you who are rich and have it all sorted, you who are POOR and who don’t have it sorted.
This is not limited to financially-speaking, but this is spiritually-speaking, as we see in Matthew’s gospel (Matthew 5).
Jesus is always putting the emphasis on our hearts and our soul > NOT on our stuff or how comfortable we are or how much money we have, because that’s all earthly kingdom stuff. What Jesus is talking about is heavenly kingdom stuff, the real good stuff that goes beyond all those things that come and go in our life on earth.
Very similar with the next one >
2)
‘BLESSED are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.’
What’s the blessing? ‘You will be satisfied.’
What’s the woe? Being hungry.
Again there’s literal hunger, needing food and water for our bodies, but we can think of other types of hunger here > searching, seeking, trying to find something we need or want, being dis-satisfied with life. Jesus wants to take out the ‘dis’ part, so we go from dis-satisfied to satisfied in him.
In the last one Jesus says the kingdom of God is already upon the poor, the poor in spirit. But for the hungry – and for the ‘weeping’ and the ‘hated’ too as we’ll see – the WOE is happening now but the BLESSING is yet to come.
To be ‘poor in spirit’ is the entry point to knowing the love of God, the love Jesus has for us, what Jesus has already achieved for us to make access to the kingdom of God possible for you and me.
I think there’s actually something good in being hungry, in terms of the searching for more… ‘Staying hungry’ is a term that can be used for people trying to build their fitness, athletes trying to achieve more than they have before. One example could be the young Gout Gout, the sprinter who has the athletic world before him and is hungry to keep getting faster, to keep getting better.
For us we already have access to heaven, access to the Father through the Son and the Holy Spirit working in and through us, but to continue to grow and to learn and know him more is the ongoing journey of the Christian walk of faith – without growth, learning and searching for more of God, we become stagnant, we lose the fire in our bellies, we can find ourselves stuck and going nowhere. So let Jesus take you to where he wants you to be! Trust in him and his call and receive his BLESSINGS!
We are BLESSED in the searching, in the low places of this life because in God’s kingdom we will be lifted high, we will be with him and he will be with us.
3)
‘BLESSED are you weep now, for you will laugh.’
What’s the blessing? ‘You will laugh.’
What’s the woe? Weeping.
This one can be a bit hard to handle > Very hard to see how we could possibly be laughing when all we are doing in the moment is weeping…
This makes me think of what happens when a good joke lands at a funeral. That kind of joke that makes you remember the person with a smile, or you remember the moment you shared with them. This is part of our humanity, that when we’re feeling sad we don’t want to hear any jokes but when one cuts through we can go from weeping to laughing pretty quickly, I wonder when you’ve experienced that one, BLESSING in the midst of WOE there.
4)
‘BLESSED are you when people hate you… REJOICE in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven.’
What’s the blessing? A great reward in heaven that will cause you to LEAP FOR JOY!
What’s the woe? Being hated, not only disliked but hated. Heavy stuff there.
Our final BLESSING here, again how could we be ‘leaping for joy’ if people are hating us? These things don’t go together!
We don’t leap for joy because people hate us, but we can leap for joy in the midst of that because there is one who leaps for joy over us…
I’ll go back to last week here, the famous quote we had from Luther: ‘Here I stand, I can do no other.’ How can he say that, how can he be standing firm in the midst of intense pressure and even life-threatening circumstances? Because he knows who stands firm for him.
He knows who stood firm for him, who didn’t back down for him.
And we get to know this same Jesus, this Jesus who was sent to us from a loving Father who loves us enough to do so. A Father who leaps for joy over his children, that’s how big and how wide God’s love is. Jesus knew the love his Father had for him, and he knew we needed to hear it. We need to continue to hear it.
Even when we’re up against it, when we have differences with other people, when things go wrong in life and in our relationships and our circumstances, even then there is still hope, hope in the BLESSINGS God has for his people.
Today on All Saints Day we remember those who have gone before us in the faith.
Now when we reflect on lives of those we know who have passed on in the faith, there may be some good stuff, some DIAMOND-stuff we remember. There may also be some ROUGH-stuff, some times when things were challenging or difficult. These things are part of life, part of relationships with each other aren’t they. We know that, but what does God say here, what’s God’s word for his faithful people, for those who have passed on and those who remain?
BLESSINGS, even in the midst of WOE.
That’s what our God has for us, the BLESSING that we are his, that he is with us, that he loves each of us enough to send his son to die for us.
The blessing that those who have passed on and us as those who remain get the same blessings, blessings like the forgiveness of sins and eternal life with our heavenly Father.
The ultimate DIAMOND, even in the ultimate ROUGH, that’s who Jesus is for us.
He’s the DIAMOND who defeated the ROUGH, who makes all things new, who loves us and treats us NOT how we deserve – we deserve to be treated as ROUGH, as BAD, as WOEFUL – but we are treated as DIAMONDS, we are called GOOD in the Lord’s eyes, we are BLESSED, we are like precious DIAMONDS to him.
So we can be thankful for the faith that has been lived out and passed on to us, the faith that means we know we have hope in this life, we will meet again, when the time comes we will be with Jesus face to face, our ultimate DIAMOND who calls us his, who we can LEAP FOR JOY over because he LEAPS FOR JOY over us //
Tom Kitson 