Luke 6:17-26
February 16
David A. Davis
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Tradition calls it “The Sermon on the Plain”. This teaching from Jesus is here in Luke. “He came down with them and stood on a level place.” The Sermon on the Plain. If you keep reading the Sermon on the Plain beyond where I stopped this morning, you will come upon “love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return”. And “do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.” As you heard, it all starts with the blessings and the woes. Jesus stood on a level place surrounded by a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people and began to teach with….these blessings and woes.
Blessed are you who are poor….Blessed are you who are hungry now….Blessed are you who weep now…Blessed are you when people hate on account of me. Woe to you who are rich…Woe to you who are full….Woe to you who are laughing…Woe to you when all speak well of you. Jesus starts with the blessings and the woes. Then goes on to love your enemies and turn the other cheek. Give to anyone who begs. Do to others as you would have them do unto you. Jesus and the plain sense of the Sermon on the Plain.
In the first few weeks after I was ordained as a minister of Word and Sacrament, a retired pastor in the presbytery named Ed Shalk came to visit me. In that conversation of welcome, he gave me plenty of advice, most of it very helpful to me over the years. One thing he suggested to me was to make sure I understand the church budget and the monthly financials better than the church treasurer. It didn’t take me long to live into his advice. That church budget in the late 1980s was well under $75,000. There was very little in the line item for what we call around Nassau Church “Mission and Outreach”. Very little. I observed early on that the members of the Session sort of just took the church treasurer at his word and didn’t pay much attention. Of course, his word was that the church was barely getting by. One afternoon prior to a Session meeting I went back and read ten years of annual financial reports. I noticed that the balance in the church operating fund had grown every year. Even after a year of paying me as a full-time pastor.
As I prepared to take to session my rationale for increasing the congregation’s mission giving, I knew those financials front and back. I graphed the increasing balance of the operating fund with a pencil on graph paper. The treasurer was not a member of the Session. The Trustees were a separate board, and he reported to them monthly. I invited him to come to the Session meeting and told him we would be discussing the mission budget (or lack of it). That night I shared my research with the 9 members of the Session, including copies of my carefully prepared graph showing the increasing balance. Mind you I was 25 years old, and most the elders were my parents’ age or older. The discussion was not tense. It wasn’t an argument. But at one point, the treasurer said to me and the rest of the Session that the bible says “charity begins at home.”
No, that is not a verse from the bible. I hope I responded pastorally, but I don’t really remember. As Pope Francis reiterated this week a position he has offered in the past, “charity isn’t just a series of concentric circles extending from the individual to family, friends and fellow citizens and ultimately the world, but it is centered on human dignity with a special concern for the poorest.” Or as Jesus said, “blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” No conditional clauses when it comes to the plain sense of the Sermon on the Plain.
“Jesus came down with them and stood on a level place,” and he started with blessings and woes. We all know that in the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew there are no woes. Comparing and contrasting the Sermon on the Plain in Luke with the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew is more than just content. In Matthew, “when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain.” He sat down and began to speak. Matthew’s Jesus is the Teacher, the Rabbi, the one who embodies the tradition of Moses and Mt. Sinai and the Law. There is a sense in which Jesus went up the mountain as Moses went up Mt. Sinai. Instead of two tables with the Ten Commandments, Jesus offers to the disciples and the crowd listening his list of blessings and then a whole lot more. The beatitudes are from above, from on high, from the Great Teacher. Like a burning bush and a voice calling, pillar of fire by night, cloud by day. A theophany, a divine appearance there on the Mount of Beatitudes. According to Matthew, after Jesus calls the disciples, after he goes throughout Galilee proclaiming good news and healing the sick, with the great crowds now following him, Jesu goes up the mountain and begins to teach. He says, “blessed….blessed…blessed…blessed.”
It is different in Luke when it comes to the gospel from a level place. Very different. In Luke, Jesus had gone out and up the mountain to pray. He prayed up there all night long. The next day he called his disciples, choosing the twelve of them. It was then that “he came down with them and stood on a level place.” As you heard and read, Jesus was surrounded by a great crowd of disciples and multitudes from all around. “They had come to hear him and to be healed by their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him for power came out from him and healed all of them.”
There, among the press of humanity near and far, Jesus looks to his disciples and says, “blessed…blessed…blessed…blessed” and “woe….woe….woe…..woe.” Not up on the mountain, not from on high, not like tablets of sone, but there smack in the middle of the crowd on a level place. Right there among the rich and the poor, among the hungry and the full, with the weepers and the laughers, surrounded by some who were hated and some who were praised. Jesus came down and stood among them. He stood on a level place surrounded by the disciples and a crowd from all around. Jesus stood on a level place surrounded by everyone then and ever since. Jesus looks at his disciples and offers the gospel from a level place.
The plain sense of the gospel from a level place. Jesus teaches the gospel, fully immersed in all that is human. A plain sense from a Jesus surrounded by the extremes of our experience: poor-rich, hungry-full, sorry-joy, hatred-praise. Here, so early in the Gospel of Luke, listeners of Jesus and John the Baptist before him have already heard him proclaim the kingdom: Every valley being filled. Every mountain and hill made low. The crooked made straight. The rough places smooth. All flesh seeing the salvation of God. The kingdom come. The reign of God. Good news to the poor. Release to the captives. The blind seeing. The oppressed going free. The year of the Lord’s favor. And surrounded by everything that it means to be human in the world, it is as if Jesus turns to his disciples and says, “This just isn’t it”. He stood there up to the eyeballs in the human condition, surrounded by the rich and the poor, the hungry and the poor. He saw the joy and the sorrow, the hatred and the praise. He looked over to his disciples, and with those blessings and woes, he was saying, “Yeah, this isn’t it.”
Blessings and woes. One really can’t avoid that for many of us, it is more the woes that apply. But maybe with Jesus’ rhetorical flare, it is more than promise and threat. Jesus is trying to communicate how the ways of this world will be so turned upside down when the simplest parts of the gospel prevail and the level-headed faithful let their light shine. How the first will be last and the last first, how the valleys will be lifted and the mountains made low. Blessings and woes. It is a way for Jesus to proclaim that the kingdom of God is something other than getting all the praise while some are so hated. The kingdom of God is something other than some dancing with joy as others live like the psalmist describes “my tears have been my food day and night.” In the reign of God, you can’t have it where some are so rich and others so poor. Jesus looked at the disciples and the crowds and the multitude and the world and said, “This isn’t it!”
To those who listen, those that ears to hear, that see, that look around and yearn to live the level-headed plain sense of the gospel, Jesus says “Turn the other check. Give to anyone who begs. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Give. Do good. Be merciful. Forgive. Don’t be judgey. Don’t condemn. Love”. So when we find ourselves confronted, surrounded, up to our eyeballs in something other than the kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven, when we know “this isn’t it”, then as followers of Jesus there ought to be certain plain sense of the gospel that kicks in; that takes over, that guides, that inspires, that defines us.
My father-in-law, Hank Cook, lived at Stonebridge during the last years of his life. One afternoon, a few weeks before he died, he and my wife Cathy were remembering Friday night pizza in the Cook house. Apparently, up in Millburn, NJ, there were two pizza shops side by side owned by feuding brothers. In the clouds of his faded memory, Hank knew the name of the favored pizza shop. It wasn’t an every Friday night thing, Cathy said. More like once a month. Cathy, her older brother, her younger sister, and her parents. Five eaters. One pie. That didn’t sound like enough pizza for five people. So I said, “Hank, didn’t you ever consider getting two pizzas?” He looked at me rather incredulously, shook his head, and said, “Dave, Dave, Dave”.
That’s sort of how I hear the blessings and woes from Jesus’ sermon from the level place of our humanity. Jesus looking around at the timeless tableau of humanity and then turning to the disciples, the church, you and me and saying all our names all at once. “Dave, Dave, Dave… this isn’t it.” His call, his invitation, his plea to you and to me for this time and place, is to lean into the plain sense of his gospel. As I said in a sermon a few weeks ago, in the most challenging of seasons, the simplest parts of the gospel become all the more compelling. Inspired by the he level-headed faithful let their light shine. “Turn the other cheek. Give to anyone who begs. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Give. Do good. Be merciful. Forgive. Don’t be judgey. Don’t condemn. Love”.
Jesus and his gospel from a level place inspiring level-headed followers of the Savior to so let their light shine.