February 16 Epiphany 6

Jeremiah 17.5-10    Psalm 1    1 Corinthians 15.12-20    Luke 6.17-26

Today’s gospel, may be familiar to many of us, but it still talks about concepts that run contrary to how most of us think of things.  Those who are destitute, unfed, grieving, and marginalised can leap for joy because they have God’s blessing and those who are wealthy, full-bellied, carefree, and well-liked should ‘run for cover’ because their situation in life is precarious and not enviable.  All those things they have always thought were indications of God’s blessing are actually liabilities and might hurt them spiritually.

So the question is, what do we do with this.  Most of us, I suspect, would fall into the second category, so what does that mean for you and I?  It would be nice if we could just ‘modify’ the words, even slightly, like Jesus really didn’t mean them to sound they way they do, surely he was speaking figuratively, or exaggerating slightly for effect.  Right?

I mean Luke doesn’t even soften the words like Matthew did, poor in spirit, hunger and thirst for righteousness.  And Luke keeps Jesus on the flat ground, in the middle of the ‘nitty gritty’, not on a lofty mountain.  As far as Luke’s Jesus is concerned, God’s preference is for those who have no ‘back-up’, no ‘fall-back position’, no friendship circle, no nest egg.  If we really want to know where God’s heart is, we have to look at the world’s most reviled, wretched, shamed, and desperate people.  We are told they are the fortunate ones.

So does that mean we are supposed to wallow in guilt, avoid happiness, romanticise poverty?  No.  As we saw at the beginning of this passage, before Jesus gives this ‘sermon on the plain’, he heals all who came to him, he cast out the demons, he alleviated the pain of all who came to him, so it is clear that Jesus does not uphold misery for its own sake.  There is nothing redemptive or holy for the Christian story in pain; Jesus’ ministry is full of healing, abundance, liberation and joy.

And if we take careful notice of what Jesus is saying, he is not telling us how to behave, there is nothing prescriptive in this sermon, there is no judgement or even advice in this. Jesus is simply telling the crowd, and us, ‘what life is like’, ‘how things work’.  And Jesus does not give the blessings to ‘some’ and the woes to ‘others’, Jesus addresses all the blessings and all the woes to everyone there.   He is, effectively, telling us ‘this is the pattern of life’, ‘this is where you live’.  We invite blessing every time we find ourselves empty and yearning for God, and we invite woes every time we ‘pat ourselves on the back’ and settle into smug self-satisfaction.  When I am ‘full’ of everything but God, then God ‘empties’ me.  Not in punishment, but as grace.  Not as condemnation, but as loving reorientation.  When I am empty, vulnerable, alone as far as the world sees, then God blesses me with fullness of divine mercy and kindness.  Jesus is telling us, our God is a God of comfort and challenge, and in the divine economy, all of us are on the one level.  Life is a level playing field.  Blessed and woeful; saint and sinner; we all live in the plain of this broken and beautiful world together.

Maybe this passage is calling us to accept the tensions and complexities of this ‘both-and’.  Maybe our task is to resist our defensiveness; overcome our fear of leaning into God’s blessings, and humble ourselves beneath God’s woes.  How do we do this?

Well we might start by admitting that Jesus is right.  We might admit that, most of the time, we are not desperate for God.  We are usually not particularly aware of God’s active, daily intervention into our lives.  We are not ‘on our knees’ with need, ache, sorrow, longing, gratitude or love.  Why?  Because we are well-fed, we are comfortably housed, our families are safe, and we are not in desperate need of anything.  To put is simply, our life circumstances do not give us any sense of urgency about ultimate things.  We might not ‘talk’ with God for days, we often do not give much thought to ‘deep’ or ‘divine’ things.  Not because we are callous but because – as Jesus says – we are already ‘full’, we have already ‘received our consolation’.  Most of the time it probably does not enter our heads that we would be ‘lost’, ‘truly and utterly lost’, without the grace that sustains us.

Jesus is highlighting, in this sermon on the plain, that we all have many things to learn about discipleship that our life circumstances will not teach us.  Until God becomes our absolute everything, our starting and finishing point, we will not understand the beauty, glory and freedom of the Christian life.  This passage invites us to humbly admit the limitations of our privilege; recognise the counter-intuitiveness of God’s priorities and promises; notice the obscure power of plenty to blind us to our own emptiness.  This passage will show us there is something to gain from the humility that says, ‘those people I have always considered myself superior to, have much to teach me, so maybe it is time I kept quiet and paid attention’.  It is not comfortable to sit in the ‘woes’ of this passage, but being willing to do so may just save our lives.

This passage contains teaching that is so costly that our first instinct is to ‘domesticate’ it.  Blessed are all who are poor, hungry, sad, and expendable.  Why?  Because they have everything to look forward to; the Kingdom of God is theirs; Jesus came and continues to come to fill the empty-handed with good things.  May the God who gives and takes away, who offers comfort and challenge, grant us the grace to sit with woe, and learn the meaning of blessing.