Amanda McMillen, “A Lavish Feast of Humble Pie”

Happy All Saints Day! On this day each year, we remember those in our lives we have lost in the previous year, and we celebrate their resurrection in Christ while we mourn their new absence in our lives. It’s a poignant time of year, especially coming up on the holiday season, where we acknowledge the reality of death and proclaim our shared hope in resurrected life.

In our Gospel reading today that we just heard, we have what is commonly called “The Beatitudes” - this series of “blessed are you” statements that Jesus makes during his Sermon on the Mount. And the reason, traditionally, that the beatitudes are read on All Saints Day is that they’ve been understood over time as the way to characterize the saints - those who have gone before us - those to whom the kingdom of heaven belongs - and they are often treated as a model for the rest of us Christians to follow in order to also be blessed by God. 

Now I don’t love this interpretation of the beatitudes, because it assumes that blessedness is about what we do to make ourselves blessed. They become prescriptive - if you are xyz, then you will be blessed. But I don’t think that this passage was meant to be understood as an instructional manual for receiving God’s blessing. Instead, I want us to think about it as a description of the way that God works through suffering.

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled”. “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven”. The message is clear - now, you suffer, but that will not always be the case. Those of you who suffer, will find relief; those of you who are in want, will find satisfaction; those of you who are humbled by this world, will find yourselves exalted. Now, you experience deep need, but that will not last forever.

And the reverse, Jesus says, is true too - “woe to you who are rich, for you’ve received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”

We find the beatitudes both in Matthew and in Luke - but in Luke’s version, we have our same list of blessings from Matthew, and additionally, we have these four “woe” statements - and, you know, I always read this part and think - did you really have to add in those “woes”, Luke? Couldn’t you have just stopped at the blessings - give us the nice stuff and tell us how blessings work through suffering, and there’s something better around the corner, and just don’t even get into that negative “woe” nonsense? That’s what I’m thinking at least when I read this passage.

Here’s why those “woes” are there: because the theme of these beatitudes is the inverse relationship between humility and exaltation. Those who are humbled now will be exalted, and those who are exalted now will be humbled. So if the beatitudes were meant to be read as a checklist of “how to be blessed” - then the overarching goal to receive blessing would be to achieve peak humility.

Of course, this is an oxymoron, absolute nonsense! This is “jumbo shrimp”, or “foolish wisdom”. If we set out to be humble, then we find ourselves immediately failing. When humility becomes something to achieve, it is actually pride in disguise. And in that way, humility is never something that’s in our control. Instead, humility is a fruit of the spirit, born from suffering. And if you are rich now, if you are full now, if you are laughing now, if you are miles away from humility now, well, time will eventually have its way, and you too will find yourself blessed by the fruit that suffering brings.

There’s a very human instinct to read Scripture, or really to read much of anything I think, and categorize people into one section or another. It’s how we make sense of the world. And so the instinct in these beatitudes, is to assume that the “Blessing” statements refer to one group of people, and the “Woe” statements refer to another group. But we know from experience, that blessing and woe belong to all of us in our lives. Now, we may be laughing, but in the future, we know we will mourn. Now we may be hungry, but in the future, we know we will be filled. These states of blessing and woe exist in the same person, in each of us. At some moments, we find ourselves full of blessings, and at others we are in states of woe. This is the paradox of the Christian life - while we cling to faith in resurrection, for now, we live in the shadow of the valley of death. 

So how is it that those who are poor, those who weep now, those who are hated, are blessed? Blessed are you who are in the dumps now, for you have been humbled, and our faith, the cross of Christ, tells us that God does not desert us when we are humbled. In each of your specific and unique sufferings, at the heart of your pain, God is present and at work - that’s what the cross means - on the cross, Jesus enters into our darkest places and brings there himself, his blessing.

Think about it in the reverse, too - Where are you most confident in your life? In what ways do you feel rich and full? It is often in these places where we feel most in control, where our assumptions of autonomy take over, that actually feel the most Godless. Those are the places where the pressure is on, where it’s all up to us.

But in the end, no matter what successes and failures your life consists of, blessings and woes, all of us are humbled, finally, in death, when our bodies fail us and our names are read on All Saints Day.

The 1987 film Babette’s Feast - which, if you haven’t watched it, please do yourself a favor and go do so as soon as possible. I’m going to spoil the plot (I feel like that’s ok since it’s from the 80’s) but I promise you it won’t spoil the movie - it’s incredible. This Danish film tells the story of two Christian sisters, daughters of a preacher, who live in a small humble village in Denmark. They’ve denied suitors in favor of living this austere life of ministry to the poor in their village, and they battle daily loneliness and depression. Out of nowhere, a French woman named Babette, fleeing civil war in France, shows up in their isolated village. A humble widow in need, after both her husband and son were shot and killed in the war, Babette shows up completely destitute to the home of these two sisters and begs for work in exchange for a place to live. So Babette stays, and finds in this village a refuge from war and grief. It turns out she cooks quite well, and does so for the sisters and their parishioners, and makes due with whatever is available - usually a very humble stew they make of stale bread soaked in water. At this point, the villagers are really feeling the pain of their poverty, and the church community is in a state of real discord with one another.

One day, Babette receives word that she has quite unexpectedly won the lottery back in France from an old lottery ticket to the tune of 10,000 francs, something like $150,000 today. Overnight, she goes from woe to blessing.

What happens next is pretty unbelievable. Babette decides to use her new fortune to put on a dinner party of French food for this village - she imports lavish ingredients like quail, an enormous tortoise for turtle soup, the finest vintage wine, caviar, exotic fruits and an array of cheeses.

The villagers, in their best Puritan fashion, are completely scandalized by the extravagance and agree not to say anything positive about the food or wine for fear of giving in to gluttony. But finally, by the second course, they can’t help themselves. They eat every last bite and they begin to swap stories of their shared life together, the divisions between them crumble, and laughter fills the dining room.

As it turns out, Babette was a famous french chef in Paris, well-known for “turning a dinner into a love affair, one which sees no difference between a person’s bodily hunger and spiritual hunger”. The sisters learn at the end that Babette spent her entire lottery winnings on this one meal - as one dinner party guest exclaims at the end of the meal, overcome by the attention to detail in every lavish offering - the grace is infinite.

Despite her life of suffering, of grief, of loss, Babette lets go of the blessing of her good fortune for the sake of this meal, and the villagers find their own woes have turned to blessing. Their humble lives are blessed by an unlikely meal of extravagance, and those who hunger are filled, body and spirit.

Jesus let go of his blessing too - on the cross he was humbled, humiliated in front of crowds of people that reviled him, his body broken, his hands outstretched in generous offering of an extravagant feast - so that where you and I hunger, we might be filled, body and spirit.

We who hunger, like Babette’s friends, are filled too, right here each week at the altar. What is it you hunger for? Why do you weep? Where do you seek relief? Where do you seek blessing? Where do you long for laughter? Come to the altar with both your woes and your blessings, your weeping and your laughter, your actual self in whatever bit of humility the Lord and your suffering has given you, and eat - for the meal is extravagant, the humble pie is actually pretty tasty, and the grace infinite.

Amen.