Curing
(based on Luke 6:17-26)
This passage from Luke is known as "The
Sermon on the Plain"
and
is parallel to Matthew’s "The Sermon on the Mount" from chapters 5-7,
which is probably the teaching sermon with which we are more familiar. This sermon in Luke is known as the Sermon on
the Plain because Luke writes in 6:17 "Jesus came down with them and stood
on a level place". Matthew’s gospel
in 5:1 says that Jesus “went up the mountain, and after he sat down…he began to
speak.”
Rev. Sarah Shelton writes that, “the night that
followed my mother's funeral, I was seated with my siblings and their families
in our parents' den. Our conversation was a little bit unusual in that we found
that each of us, even the in-laws and the grandchildren, began to say, "I
know that I was her favorite because."
My brother was the first to remember how she
would look at his art work and declare, "The world is just waiting for
you, Jim." I remembered how no
matter what I had done, she would remark, "Sarah, you are as good as
gold!" On and on we went until we
had each shared how we were treasured in her sight. It was a wonderful celebration of my mother's
ability to take each of us, our frailties and our strengths, and to find ways
to interact with us so that we felt her unconditional acceptance. And it was true, not a one of us was her
favorite, for we were all her favorite. Or another way to say it: Individually and
collectively, we felt her personal blessing.”
Having also grown up with this sense of being
blessed by my own family, I am particularly sensitive to the many who have
never received a vote of confidence or heard an encouraging word or have ever
experienced an overriding sense of well-being from their families. I am heart-broken when I hear of parents who have
said to their own children that they were "abominations to the Lord,"
or where total neglect or physical abuse occurred.
This is one of the reasons why I have loved the
church and being part of the church for so many years; for the church, at least
to me, is the one place that was set apart to be redemptive – to be a place
where all are welcomed, accepted and loved, especially to any of us who were
wounded in some way. Now admittedly,
some congregations do better with this than others, but the church's original
challenge and charter was to be the place where we would not just acknowledge
God's working in our lives and God’s imprint on our souls but where we could
also celebrate God’s divine image within us. The church should be the place where spiritual
parents could step in when earthly parents had failed and therefore bridge the
gap for healing and restoration of wholeness.
The Old Testament is full of stories where the
search for blessing is the focus of an epic tale. There is the story of Jacob stealing his
birthright blessing from his brother Esau. There is the continued story of Jacob when he refused
to stop wrestling with an angel until he could receive a blessing. There is the
story of Joseph and his brothers' jealousy that Joseph was given their father's
blessing. These stories, and others like
them, continue on until we reach the time of the New Testament in which we meet
Jesus and he imparts blessing not just to one random character here and there,
but rather to everyone.
In our text for today, we find that Jesus has
been up on the mountain to pray. It was
a time of discernment for him. For on
the mountain, at prayer with God his Father, he selects his twelve named disciples
and then comes down to be with the multitudes that have gathered. Luke clearly states specific geographic
regions that are represented in this gathering of people in the crowd. They are from Judea, Jerusalem, Tyre and
Sidon. It is a clear message to us that
whatever Jesus is prepared to teach is for all people, the Jews – those from Judea
and Jerusalem as well as for all the Gentiles for they came from the Tyre and
Sidon.
The audience includes the sick, the troubled
and other persons of special concerns. As
is usual in Luke's Gospel, Jesus' healing actions and his words are closely
interrelated. It is a reminder to us
that the good news, the gospel message, Jesus’s teachings wraps words and
actions together. One cannot just speak truth
and live differently. And we cannot
simply act, but must say what we believe, as well. Doing only one of them is not
sufficient. While Jesus does not know
these people intimately, he does recognize their personal condition in life and
the deep expectations that they bring with them. Luke also tells us that they come hoping to be
touched by Jesus - to receive just a little bit of his power so that they might
be healed. They come, it seems to me,
looking for a blessing. The crowd waits
for Jesus to speak. They wait in
anticipation of being told good news for themselves.
So, Jesus begins with a short list of ways the people
in the crowds are already blessed. He does
not, however, include anything within the list that we would normally think of
that would bring joy or happiness. In fact, he completely contradicts the ideas
and values of a materialistic, sensual society which equates happiness with
house, car, and bank account. It is our
introduction to the upside-down, topsy-turvy world that Christ presents as an
alternative to the status quo.
He carefully constructs four symmetrical
comparisons of blessings and woes in his Sermon on the Plain, and they are the
opposite of what we would anticipate. For he says:
Blessed
are the poor...but woe to the rich.
Blessed
are the hungry...but woe to those who are full.
Blessed
are the weeping...but woe to those that are laughing.
Blessed
are the rejected...but woe to those who are accepted.
As Jesus presents these blessings to those that
are gathered, it becomes apparent that he is not interested in keeping things
the same. The people in the crowd were
used to the money-hungry rich taking all for themselves and leaving nothing for
the poor. The people in the crowd were
used to those who had the means to be healed by the best physicians, their
hunger for whatever they wanted assuaged, their sorrows placated with more
baubles and beads, and their infractions against the law thrown out.
But Christ’s purpose was to usher in a world
that would literally be reversed. Theologians, Stanley Hauerwas and William
Willimon wrote about this Sermon on the Plain and have said this:
“Christians
begin our ethics not with anxious, self-serving questions about what we ought
to do as individuals to make history come out right, because in Christ, God has
already made history come out right. The "sermon on the plain" is the
inauguration manifesto of how the world looks now that God in Christ has taken
matters in hand.”
In other words, these blessings and woes
announce that God, in Jesus Christ, already sees the world in a strikingly
different way than we do. The "real
world," for all those who are in Christ, is one in which most of the major
status roles in life are utterly reversed.
Christ makes no urging or exhortation to those
in the crows to behave in certain ways so they could earn these blessings and
avoid the curses. In fact, there is no
call to action at all. Rather, Jesus is
just pronouncing the facts. He is
painting for us a picture of what the Kingdom of God is. He is not making suggestions about how to be
happy or giving warnings on how to keep from being miserable. Jesus is making defining statements of the way
life is inside and outside the reign of God. It is a reversal of fortunes for the rich and
the poor, the powerful and the powerless, the full and the empty.
Jesus showers blessings upon those in attendance
that day. For they are the poor, the hungry,
the weeping, and the rejected. They have
come in need of healing. The cure for
them was for Christ to simply give them a blessing; just like Rev. Sharon said
of her family, being blessed by her mother.
Each of them knew that they were special and a favorite because her
mother both showed them and told them how wonderful they were. Knowing that you are special, unique, and
wonderful in the eyes of those you love is sometimes cure enough for all the
evils in this world.
Go and be someone’s blessing today.
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