On Thursday night, I found myself on a raised diaz, behind a podium, staring out at 600 people during an awards banquet at the annual Minnesota Newspaper Association Convention in the Twin Cities.
It was in a ballroom at a fancy convention center, and the room itself was larger than the square footage of our entire church. … The ballroom alone.
If you’ve ever been to such a convention, I’m sure you can picture the scene.
There before me was laid out a sea of tables, full of very handsome people, dressed in their finest suits and dresses.
And the atmosphere was festive, as the people in the audience were about to find out the winners of the state newspaper association’s annual “Better Newspaper Awards” contest, an annual contest in which the state’s newspaper folks vote on whose stories and whose ads and whose special sections and websites are the very best in the state.
So, as you can imagine, the room was electric! … Filled with energy and everyone’s spirits were high!
And there I was, on a raised platform, at the head of the room, feeling the heat emanating from the very warm spotlights shining right at me. And they were blinding me from seeing all of those faces out there staring back at me!
To make matters more intimidating, many of these people are folks that I’ve worked with in one capacity or another over the past 25 years in newspapers. … They either worked in a newsroom with me, or maybe sold ads at a paper I worked at. … Or in a lot of cases, I may have even been their boss. Or they were mine.
But you get the idea: It was a pressure-packed moment.
And all that was running through my head at that moment was: How did I get here?
And by here, I meant standing in front of a crowd of 600 newspaper professionals, getting ready to say the opening invocation to the convention’s awards banquet.
You see, a friend of mine, happens to be the newspaper association’s president this year, and one of their privileges as president is they get to pick who presides over the banquet invocation, and she chose me. … A gracious nod to our friendship and my work over these past four years in seminary and here at Faith Lutheran.
And so when she asked me to do the invocation earlier in the day, I first got chills … and then I got to work furiously scribbling away at what would become my invocation.
I took a deep breath, sighed and then trusted in the Spirit, calling on her to help me write the words she wished spoken.
Once the invocation was penned though, and I was standing up there on the platform, about to share the gospel with 600 people, I couldn’t help but reflect on this topsy-turvy development.
Just a short four years ago, I hadn’t even shared with my immediate colleagues that I was going to seminary, let alone let the rest of the newspaper world know that I was destined to be a pastor.
Because, as you may know, newspaper folks tend to have a reputation for skepticism, and I was a touch afraid of what might happen if my professional peers knew I was a pastor.
And then ... BOOM! … after a lightning-quick four years, there I was, getting the opportunity to let my full pastor persona shine, at the biggest moment in the Minnesota newspaper year.
Right then, I was afforded an opportunity to let THE light shine … His light. … It was a moment in which, as my friend Ross often says, I got to let the rest of the world know, that being a pastor is not just about Sundays from 10 to 11 a.m. at Faith Lutheran Church. … Rather being a pastor is an all-in, all of the time, everywhere gig ... even when I’m at a statewide newspaper convention.
I describe this situation as topsy-turvey, because it reminds me of today’s gospel. … I’m sure I don’t have to read it again to you. In fact, many of you are probably very familiar with the gospel because it describes the beatitudes in full detail. … And the beatitudes are a pretty common scripture in our greater church.
Blessed are the poor, those who mourn, the meek, the merciful, etc. … I’m sure that you are familiar.
Topsy-turvey. … In this message, Jesus is describing to his disciples the very human characteristics that define what the kingdom of God is. … What it looks like when it is acted out. ... The characteristics God seeks for us to display in our everyday lives here, not just dream for in our life hereafter.
Topsy-turvey. … Because, as you well know, we don’t celebrate these characteristics very often here in this earthly life.
No … What we celebrate is the best! … The biggest! … The strongest! … The smartest! … The richest! … The most handsome.
We live in a world in which celebrities and models and athletes make millions … in some cases hundreds of millions … of dollars. … While teachers and police officers and military professionals often can’t make their mortgages.
The other day, after the tragic news of the helicopter that crashed, killing nine people on their way to a teenage girls basketball tournament, who did we hear about? … We heard about NBA legend Kobe Bryant and his teenage daughter, and scant little about the other seven people in the helicopter.
Now, I’m not downplaying the tragedy to the Bryan family. Not in the least. … But after the crash, it wasn’t just the fact that the news reports focused on Kobe Bryan, but how they focused on him. … What did they say?
He was one of the greatest players of all time. … Competitive. … Fierce. … Clutch. … Intimidating.
But very few of the news reports I heard celebrated his philanthropy or the fact that after some trouble in his younger years he had grown into a caring man, a good neighbor … a good father and eventually a good husband.
No, those were not the things we heard about. … Because as much lip service as we pay to the beatitudes, they aren’t really what we revere here in this world.
But Jesus does. … In today’s gospel, look what Jesus does when he has the ears of all of his followers up there on that mountain.
He used his soap box to tell his disciples:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
And on and on, all the way through to the final beatitude: “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.”
And it's that particular beatitude that really grabbed a hold of my heart this week as I wrote this sermon. … Because now I’ll tell you the rest of the story from my big opportunity to share the invocation with 600 newspaper people on Thursday night.
After I had finished, I stepped off the platform, took a big breath of relief, and on shaky legs wound my way around the outside of the ballroom to where my team was sitting, all the way in the back.
But a funny thing happened on the way there. Friends and strangers alike in this room full of newspaper folks stood as I walked by their tables, stretched out their hands to give me a high five, or reached out for a hug, and said, “Thank you.”
Some even went so far as to whisper to me that it was the best invocation they’d ever heard at the convention.
It was a very humbling walk back to the table, indeed.
By the end of the night here must have been a couple of dozen people who complimented me on the prayer.
And Jesus’s words kept ringing in my head: “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.”
Just four years earlier I worked very hard to hide my identity as a seminarian and later a pastor. … But not any more. … And you know what, in that very public moment, not one person publicly reviled me. … Praise God!
And so why do I share this story. … Well, the point isn’t about me. … The point is that with some work and self introspection and some courage, there are times that we can live into Jesus’s beatitudes.
We can let his light shine regardless of what the people around us think.
We can be merciful and pure in heart and boldly care for the hungry, thirsty and those who are righteous without paying any mind to what the world thinks about those actions.
Jesus’s lecture here, the opening to his famed “Sermon on the Mount,” teaches us that the kingdom really is a topsy-turvy world. It holds up values that this world doesn’t. … And he calls us and welcomes us into that life.
And while living the life of the kingdom here is never easy, Jesus’s promise to us is that he is always with us, every step of the way, to help us.
And that is the good news on this Fourth Sunday of Epiphany. … Amen.
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