Last week, I celebrated Thanksgiving Day. On this day, we express thankfulness for the many blessings in our life…but I have been pondering these blessings. Are they truly blessings or are they really expressions of privilege? Three years ago Valerie and I went on an Alaska cruise with two other couples who were friends of ours. This was our first cruise. While on that cruise, we had lunch with another older couple who had been on many such cruises. As they talked about the different cruises they had experienced, they shared about how God had blessed them financially, and they were so thankful for it made it possible for them to go on these cruises. Personally, I was taken back by their talk of blessing for I had never associated God’s blessing with my wealth…or the choices that I made because of my wealth. Somehow that way of understanding God’s blessing felt very wrong to me. I have never forgotten that table conversation. Was this couple on the cruise truly blessed by God through their wealth or was the couple confusing God’s blessing with the reality of privilege, something that has little to do with God? Were the couple’s feelings of thanksgiving based on privilege or the experience of God blessing them? There are many churches in North America that preach the prosperity gospel, that is, a gospel message that teaches that prosperity and good health are blessings from God. Kate Bowler, assistant professor at Duke Divinity School in the US, authored the book “Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel.” Two years ago, Kate Bowler, had a rude awakening when she discovered that she had stage 4 cancer. Here she was: in her mid-thirties, a mother of a young child, a loving husband, just published her first academic book on the prosperity gospel, the beginning of a promising academic career. How could this happen? How could this be? Due to her research and book, she had many connections to these prosperity gospel churches. When these Christian found out that she had cancer, they treated her like a project that God would heal and bless. When healing did not happen, many of these Christians blamed her for her lack of healing. They believed that God wanted to bless her but there was something within her or life that was getting in the way of this blessing. Kate Bowler found herself in the place of Job in the Bible; everybody telling her what she needed to do to get better, but it was only making her more depressed. Her painful experience became the basis of her entertaining second book, “Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved” that was published this year. This book became a New York Times best seller. Her book is a strong critique of the Prosperity Gospel. She no longer sees good health as necessarily a blessing from God, but more as a privilege that people hold onto and claim is a blessing from God. Privilege. Blessing. Are they the same or are they different, and if they are different, how are they different? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “privilege” in this way: “ a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor”, often “attached to a position or an office.” When we say we are privileged, or someone says we are privileged, this means that I, or the community I am part of us, have been given a right that we are using for our benefit, our advantage, our favour. When we think we are privileged, we often see our wealth, our good health, our intelligence, our beauty, our strength, our career, the ability to have children, and our position in life as being given to us for our benefit. There is often a self-entitlement that goes with our sense of privilege. We come to believe we deserve this privilege, that we have totally earned it or that God have given us this privilege which is why people often use the word “blessing.” We may believe that God has blessed them with wealth and health or whatever privilege they believe they have, and that this privilege is a sign of God’s favour. A sense of thanksgiving and thankfulness often arises out of this place of privilege. That is the meaning of privilege and how it plays out in our world. When I looked up the meaning of "bless" the Merriam-Webster dictionary, I found something very different. When someone is blessed religiously or by God, it means that a person or thing has been “hallowed or consecrate”, that is, “set apart for a holy purpose.” Bless also means “to confer prosperity or happiness upon” or to “endow or favour.” This sense of blessing has a very different sense then the meaning of privilege. When we say we are blessed, we are saying that God has set us apart by blessing us with certain gifts, favours, experiences, etc. to be used for the purposes of others, not for ourselves but for the welfare of others. With the focus on the individual, our Western culture is really shaped by the dynamics of privilege. And as we will see now, the reign of God or Divine Reality is shaped by the dynamics of blessing. To gain a vision of how the reign of God is different, let us read our first text from the Bible, one of Apostle Paul’s letters to the Jesus followers in the city of Corinth. Apostle Paul is describing how the body of Christ functions when it is free from the limitations of the fallen world. Often, these teachings are used to describe how the church’s community should work, but really, this description outlines what God’s reign looks like, whether it is within a congregation or a community or organization out in the external world. Do you see any notion of privilege in this scripture? If there is any sense of privilege, it is tied to those people who don’t have privilege: the weakest people instead of the strongest people, the less honorable people rather than the honorable people, the least respected people rather than the respected people. There is a teaching in this text that I want to highlight: every part of the body is essential for it to function in a healthy way. Every part is needed. This means that the weakest parts, the less honorable parts, and least respected parts are just as essential to the body of Christ as those judged by our culture as strong, honorable, or respected. In fact, not only are they essential, but these “unprivelged” parts bring a healing gift to those who judge themselves as strong, honourable, and respected, that is privileged. What are the gifts that relationships with people, who are often judged as unprivileged, bring to the Body of Christ or God’s community, especially to those who often see themselves as “privileged”? Here is what came to me when I reflected over my lifetime visiting people who find themselves in this place of “unprivileged.” They have been my greatest teachers. They taught me:
It is important to remember that this teaching of Apostle Paul goes both ways. Forming relationships with the people judged as “privileged” are just as important to the Body of Christ as forming relationships with the people often judged as “unprivileged”. True, there is a push in this text to give preferential treatment to those judged as unprivileged. But those blessed with strength, honour, and respect also bring important gifts to God’s community. I have also learned lots from these people as well:
But these gifts arise through relationships, through the weak being in relationship with the strong, through those judged as “unprivileged” being in relationship with those judged as “privileged.” Now these types of relationships are often hard to nurture and work at for frequently walls form between the “privileged” and “unprivileged.” On the one side of the wall, the poor, the physically unwell, those struggling with mental issues, seniors, the weak, the uneducated, the "un-beautiful", the immigrant…all those who feel unprivileged in some way…often feel judged and victimized by the privileged and those on the other side of the wall. They see the privileged being very attached to their blessings, and not willing to share them. As a result, they often have a lot of judgement, even anger, towards the privileged. On the other side of the wall, the privileged often see the unprivileged as attached to their victim stories, and thus not willing to take responsibility for their part of the tough situations they find themselves in. As a result, there is sometimes a lot of judgment towards the unprivileged by the privileged. When we are locked in these positions, there is no hope for the blessings that can arise when the “unprivileged” and “privileged” are in relationship with each other, no way for both sides to realize that they are all created by the same God and thus are all part of the same community of God. If we are open to God’s spirit, we are guided by the same Divine spirit whether we are weak or strong, honoured or least honoured, respected or least respected, privileged or unprivileged. When we are being guided by God’s spirit, the privilege cannot say to the unprivileged, “I have no need for you.” Nor can the unprivileged say the same thing to the privileged, “I have no need for you.” Both are part of God’s community. So how can we move to this potential place of community when there is such a powerful wall between these two groups? To answer that question, I want to turn to a second scripture reading. Here, Apostle Paul shares the secret, I believe, to the issue of privilege. This text applies to all people who seek to follow Christ by putting on the mind or attitude of Christ. This text pushes us beyond the self-oriented categories of “privileged” and “unprivileged”. In this scripture, all people are invited to move from a self-oriented position into a place of humility, watching out for the good of others as much as themselves. For this to happen, Apostle Paul claims that we must empty ourselves of all our beliefs, attitudes, and practices that cause us to place ourselves at the centre of our lives instead of our relationship with God. When we do this, we will realize that we need let go or empty ourselves of all our attachments------our attachments to our judgments about others or ourselves, our attachments to our emotions, our attachments to our privileges, our attachments to our victim stories, our attachment to blaming the other, etc. If we hold onto these attachments, there will always be a wall between the weak and the strong, the honoured and the least honoured, the respected and the least respected, the privileged and the unprivileged, and no hope of relationship. But if we can empty ourselves of these judgments, the walls begin to come down and we find ourselves in a place where we can enter into relationship with those on the other side of the wall caused by the issue of privilege. When those relationships happen, something magical, mystical occurs. The privileged discover the gift of the unprivileged and the unprivileged discover the gift of the privileged. When these relationships happen, its a day of much blessing and thanksgiving. For we come to know in our hearts, not just in our heads, that all who seek God’s spirit are truly all part of one holy body.
We then will realize what Apostle Paul taught, that “If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it and when one part gets the glory, all the parts celebrate with it.” Why? Because we are all part of God’s family, whether we know it or not. Hallelujah. Questions to Ponder: 1. When you found yourselves in relationship with those who are "unprivileged", what blessings did you receive from them? Were they similar to what I have found? Would you add other blessings? 2. When you found yourselves in relationship with those who are "privileged", what blessings did you receive from them? Were they similar to what I have found ? Would you add other blessings? 3. What makes the wall so powerful for you between the privileged and unprivileged? Explore your feelings of discomfort and awkwardness when you seek to built relationships with those who are "unprivileged", and with those who are "privileged." What beliefs, judgments, attachments, etc. make up your wall? Here is the community prayer slide show that I used on Thanksgiving Day when I preach this sermon. Click on link.
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