Rev. Debbie Cato
Jeremiah
17:5-10 and Luke 6:17-26
Fairfield Community
Church
February 13, 2022
Let us Pray: Almighty God, by your Holy
Spirit, illumine the sacred page, we pray, that our minds may be open to
receive your Word, our hearts taught to love it, and our wills strengthened to
obey it; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
God’s
Upside-Down Kingdom
Whew! This is hard to hear. Jesus does not mince
words. David L. Ostendorf, a United
Church of Christ minister, says, “This is the raw, unvarnished, faith-rattling
declaration of the realm of God.”[1] That’s a good description.
The raw, unvarnished, faith-rattling declaration of the realm of God.
At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus stood up in a synagogue in Nazareth, and read from the prophet Isaiah, announcing that he had been sent by God to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, and bring sight to the blind. Here, Jesus lays out what the fulfillment of that prophecy means in a tone that is direct and terse, pointed and searing. The God of the prophets is speaking and creating a new, unsettling, upsetting order.[2]
Luke’s sermon is given on a level place, not on a mountain like Matthew’s Sermon on a Mount. In fact, Luke’s sermon is referred to the Sermon on the Plain. Jesus moves to a plain below to be with the people, with whom He identifies. The crowd on the plain is made up of three groups: the apostles, the disciples, and the people. By saying that the people came from as far as Jerusalem and Judea to the south and Tyre and Sidon to the north, Luke is implying that Jesus’ ministry and message is for all. In fact, the mention of Tyre and Sidon implies a Gentile as well as a Jewish audience. Certainly, the audience includes the sick and the distressed, persons of special concern to Luke’s Jesus.[3]
In Luke’s version of the famous Beatitudes story, Jesus has just spent the night on a mountainside praying before he choose his twelve apostles. As morning dawns, he and the newly called twelve descend from the mountain to find a crowd waiting. People in need of help have come from everywhere, and Jesus — in his element, with power literally pouring off of his garments — heals them all.
Then, standing “on a level place” with the crowd, he tells his
would-be followers what life in God’s upside-down kingdom looks like.
Those who are destitute, unfed, grieving, and marginalized can “leap for joy,”
because they have God’s ear and God’s blessing. But those who are
wealthy, full-bellied, carefree, and well-liked should watch out, because their
condition is precarious. The material “blessings” they cherish most, the
very possessions and attributes they consider signs of God’s favor, are in fact
liabilities that might do them spiritual harm.
Unlike Matthew, who softens the Beatitudes with
phrases like “poor in spirit,” instead of “poor,” and “those who hunger and
thirst for righteousness,” instead of plain old “hungry,” Luke keeps Jesus’s
“Sermon on the Plain” raw and close to the bone. There’s no way around it; as
far as Luke’s Jesus is concerned, God’s preferential option for the poor is
crystal clear. God’s blessing rests on those who have absolutely nothing
to fall back on in this world. If we want to know where God’s heart is, we must
look to the world’s most reviled, wretched, shamed, and desperate people. They
are the fortunate ones.
So, what should we do with this Gospel? Wallow in guilt? Romanticize poverty? Avoid happiness? I don’t think so. The very fact that Jesus prefaces this hard teaching by alleviating suffering in every way possible suggests that he doesn’t value misery for its own sake. Pain in and of itself is neither holy nor redemptive in the Christian story, and in fact, Jesus’s ministry is all about healing, abundance, liberation, and joy.
Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain is not prescriptive. Nowhere in his litany of blessings and woes does Jesus tell his listeners how to behave. As Barbara Brown Taylor puts it, the sermon “is not advice at all. It is not even judgment. It is simply the truth about the way things work.”
Blogger Debi Thomas says, “Notice also that Jesus doesn’t offer four blessings to one audience, and four woes to another. His sermon is not a sorting exercise between the good folks and the bad folks; he addresses every blessing and every woe to every person. As if to say: this is the human pattern. This is where all of us live. We move from blessing to woe over and over again in the course of our lives. We invite blessing every time we find ourselves empty and yearning for God, and we invite woe every time we retreat into smug and thoughtless self-satisfaction. When I am “full” of anything but God, God “empties” me. Not as punishment, but as grace. Not as condemnation, but as loving reorientation. When I am bereft, vulnerable, and empty in the world’s eyes, God blesses me with the fullness of divine mercy and kindness. In other words, our God is a God of both comfort and challenge, and in the divine economy, we are, all of us, on one level. Blessed and woeful. Saint and sinner. We occupy “the plain” of this beautiful and broken world together.”[4]
So, what should we do? Well, we should probably start by admitting that Jesus is right. We should probably admit that most of the time, we are not desperate for God. I for one, am not keenly aware of God’s active, daily intervention in my life. I am not on my knees with need, either in deep longing, incredible gratitude, or overwhelming love on a daily basis. After all, why would I be? I have plenty to eat. I live in a comfortable home. My family is safe. I'm not in desperate need of anything.
In short, there isn’t much in my circumstances that leads me to a sense of urgency. If I’m not careful, I can go for days without talking to God. It’s easy for all things deep and divine to become afterthoughts in my life, not because I’m callous, but because — as Jesus puts it so wisely in his sermon — I am already “full.” I have already “received my consolation.”
I laugh more than I cry. Because of all the comforts in my life,
I’m able to live in the shallows, unaware of the treasures that wait in the
depths. Most of the time, it just plain doesn’t occur to me that I would be
lost — utterly and wholly lost — without the grace that sustains me.
You see, I think what Jesus is saying in this Gospel is that I
have something to learn about discipleship that my life circumstances will not
teach me. Something to grasp about the beauty, glory, and freedom of the
Christian life that I will never grasp until God becomes my everything, my all,
my starting place, and my ending place. Something to humbly admit about the
limitations of my privilege. Something to recognize about the radical
counter-intuitiveness of God’s priorities and promises. Something to
notice about the confusing power of plenty to blind me to my own
emptiness. Something to gain from the humility that says, "Those
people I think I'm superior to? They have everything to teach me.
Maybe it's time to pay attention.[5]
Blessed are you who are poor, hungry, sad, and expendable. Why?
Because they have everything to look forward to. Because the Kingdom of God is theirs.
Because Jesus came, and comes still, to fill the empty-handed with good things.
May the God who gives and takes away, offers comfort and challenge,
grant us the grace to sit with woe, and learn the meaning of blessing. Amen.
[1] Fasting on the Word, Year C,
Volume 1.Sixth Sunday After Epiphany. Theological Perspective. David L.
Ostendorf. P.356.
[2]
Ibid.
[3]
Luke. Interpretation. A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. Fred B. Craddock. P.86
[4] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=3319. Leveled.
February 6 2022. Debi Thomas.
[5]
https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=3319. Leveled.
February 6 2022. Debi Thomas.
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