A sermon on Luke 6:39 – 7:10 by Nathan Nettleton

It has become surprisingly common for Christians ignore much of what Jesus instructed his followers to do, and apparently to be quite unembarrassed about it. Christians across the spectrum accuse one another of picking and choosing what they will obey, but the only real difference seems to be over which bits to pick and choose. Pretty much everybody seems intent on ignoring big slabs of what Jesus said and did. There seems to be two major versions of this phenomena. On the one hand, there are Christians who put a great deal of emphasis on being “born again” or being “saved”, and who understand this primarily as being saved from the eternal punishment of being sent to hell by an angry God. And because these people understand God as being so angry that he is incapable of forgiving us unless he gets to take it out on someone, their understanding of Jesus is often reduced to him being little more than the sacrifice who dies horribly to absorb God’s anger and so wins for us a get-out-of-hell-free card. So once you reduce Jesus to that, the things he taught while waiting to be sacrificed become little more than interesting opinions, or perhaps idealised principles for those who are called to some special role in God’s purposes. Obeying them now becomes very much an optional extra, and hey, we’ve got forgiveness stitched up anyway, so what does it matter?

On the other hand, there are Christians who, often in reaction against the first group, portray God as entirely benign and friendly and us just wanting to baptise the best intentions and aspirations of each generation, and so Jesus comes to be seen as simply the revelation of the benign friendliness of God as it might look in that particular generation. His teachings are seen as a bit of a wish list, and those aspects of it that conflict with behaviours we have grown fond of are regarded as specific to the culture of his day. And very often in this group, there is a significant downplaying of the whole idea of authority, because authority figures are seen as unreconstructed relics of a past patriarchal and oppressive era, and so Jesus becomes a partner who we consult with and negotiate some agreed outcomes with rather than one whose authority is bowed down to.

Many of the parts of Jesus’s teaching which are most routinely ignored are contained in what is usually called the sermon on the mount. We heard the conclusion of Luke’s version of it tonight. Luke’s version doesn’t take place on a mountain, and it is a bit shorter than Matthew’s, but if anything, it is even more radical and uncomfortable. For example, in Matthew’s account, Jesus says “blessed are the poor in spirit” which leaves a lot more wriggle room than in Luke’s account where he just says, “Blessed are the poor” and then for good measure adds, “and woe to you who are rich.” Both versions of the sermon contain not only the beatitudes but also Jesus’s core teaching on loving your enemies, turning the other cheek, forgiving those who wrong you without seeking revenge or retaliation, and refraining from judging others. All of which, of course, are among the most routinely ignored teachings. In a devastatingly accurate critique a couple of years ago, American satirist Bill Maher said that “for almost 2000 years Christians have been ‘lawyering’ the Bible to try to figure out how love thy neighbour can mean hate thy neighbour and how turn the other cheek can mean ‘screw you, I’m buying space lasers.’” And he’s right. We have a long and sorry history of trying to get these challenging teachings to mean something different from what they obviously mean.

But actually, for some comic commentary on this, we don’t need to go any further than Jesus himself. Right here at the end of his sermon, he begins to kid around and take the mickey out of those who are always saying “Lord, Lord” and prattling on about what a high view they have of his authority while simultaneously ignoring pretty much everything that he ever told them to do and everything on which he asked them to follow his example. He compares such people to someone who builds a fancy mansion straight onto the sand on a flood plain by a river without laying any sort of proper foundations. Their whole life is going to come crashing down in a minute the first time the river breaks its banks, he says. And those who are so fond of pointing out how other people are ignoring bits of his teaching are, he says, like those who are all concerned about the tiny splinter in someone else’s eye without noticing that they’ve got a fence post stuck in their own. Or like someone who tut-tuts over the speck of dirt on someone else’s lapel without noticing that they’ve got a dirty big vomit stain right down their own front. Jesus was quite the comedian when he got going!

Immediately after this comic conclusion to the sermon, Luke tells us the story of the healing of the centurion’s slave, and he makes it clear that this story should be understood in light of what went before it by saying, “when Jesus had finished saying all these things to the people, he went into Capernaum, and…”, and he launches into the story of the healing of the slave. So what’s it got to do with the teaching that came before it? Well, the emphasis of this story doesn’t actually fall on the healing of the slave at all. The healing is almost incidental, mere background to the main point. The main emphasis of the story is on the authority of Jesus and on our ability to recognise and trust in that authority. Did you notice that the centurion in the story never even meets Jesus. He sends one lot of messengers to ask Jesus for help, and then when he realises that Jesus is on his way, he sends a second lot to say “don’t go to any trouble, just give the order from where you are.”

Now this is a man who understands authority, and that’s why his military rank and worldview are emphasised. He is used to the way authority works in the army. When a superior officer gives an order, you don’t have a study session over asparagus rolls to discuss whether it is an aspirational vision of a future world or perhaps just a suggestion for those with a special vocation. You simply jump to your feet with a salute and carry out the order as promptly as you can. And this centurion, who is used to both giving and taking orders, recognises Jesus as someone with the authority to get things done. He reckons that if Jesus gives the order for a life-threatening illness to be gone from the slave, then it will be gone, and it will click its heels and salute on its way out. And Jesus commends him. Even among good religious Jews with a long tradition of obedience to God’s law, he says, I haven’t found anyone with this sort of trust in my authority, with this sort of willingness to accept that what I say goes, and that’s final.

So the gospel writer’s placement of this story is very deliberate. Right after the biggest slab of Jesus’s most challenging teaching, and after a few jokes about the hypocrisy of people who rabbit on about their faith in him while ignoring his teachings, we have this story where an outsider, one who might be written off as a pagan, becomes the model disciple, the one who without question accepts that if Jesus tells you to do something, you just do it, whether you like it or not, whether it makes sense to you or not, whether it seems effective or not. You follow it simply because you recognise and trust in the authority of the one who told you. So the gospel writer is very clear about what we are expected to do with these difficult teachings from Jesus. Just obey them. It doesn’t matter whether it seems that obeying Jesus might not be very effective, or might not achieve anything. When he was hanging on the cross, it certainly didn’t look like his approach had been an instant success. Jesus calls you to take up your cross and follow him, not to analyse the merits of his strategy and see if you could improve on it. As Bill Maher put it in the same satirical spiel, when Jesus “said ‘love your enemies and do good to those who hate you’, the next line wasn’t ‘and if that doesn’t work send a titanium fanged dog to rip his nuts off.’”

Bill Maher’s critique came in response to the way so many so-called evangelical Christians were rejoicing over the targeted assassination of Osama Bin Laden. Maher was quite happy about it himself, but as he said, he’s not a Christian so he is not expected to be following the example of one who taught his followers to love their enemies and do good to those who hate you, and who laid down his life doing exactly that. What bit of Jesus’s teachings or example could we possibly be following if we advocate shooting our enemies, or sending the drones in to bomb the villages they might be hiding in, or even advocating the use of the death penalty when we manage to capture them and bring them before the courts?

We evangelical Christians have been very fond of the slogan “What Would Jesus Do?”, sometimes even turning it into an acronym and wearing it as jewellery or the like. I think it is a really good question to keep before us, but I worry that sometimes having reduced it to a jewel encrusted slogan, we’ve forgotten to apply it to the real situations and difficult dilemmas where our willingness to trust Jesus and follow what he says and does is really tested.

We need to take “what would Jesus do?” and make it more specific to each situation. So when the politicians and a fearful public are calling for war and for targeted assassinations of our enemies, let’s ask “Who Would Jesus Kill?” and “What villages would Jesus order a drone attack on?” And if the answers are no one and none, then how does Jesus ask us to treat our enemies?

Or when the debate about asylum seekers rages, and people wrap themselves in flags and demand that our borders be kept secure against people who want a cut of the privileges we enjoy, what would Jesus do? Who would Jesus refuse to welcome? Whose privileges would Jesus think should be beyond the claim of the poor? Which desperate people would Jesus lock in outback detention centres? And what would Jesus say in the face of such policies?

Or when people are thumping on about defending traditional family values, what would Jesus do? Which sector of society would he blame for undermining marriage and demand the legislative right to discriminate against in employment and family law? Did he encourage hostile vilification of prostitutes or adulterers or Ethiopian eunuchs or homosexuals? In fact, did Jesus have anything to say about homosexuals at all? Did he stop for a moment to ask how come this centurion was so in love with his slave and was that all above board? I’m not suggesting that we can know one way or the other, but the language is quite suggestive and Jesus doesn’t show the slightest concern about it, so are we are ready to trust his authority and follow his example, even if it will get us into trouble with the religious thought-police.

Even in our personal dealings with one another in a church like this, how often do insults or offences or rivalries cause us to abandon our following of Jesus and start making up our own rules to deal with these things and make sure our rights and our status are protected. What would Jesus do? And are we willing to stand with this centurion and say, “I myself am under authority, and if my commanding officer, Jesus, says ‘do this’, then I do it. No questions asked and regardless of the consequences.

Now, in closing, let me make it clear that I am not, even for a moment, suggesting that this call to radical obedience is some sort of new law code which you must rigorously adhere to in order to earn your way into the kingdom of God. It’s not. Your salvation, your acceptance into the life and love of God, is a freely given gift. You can’t earn it, and the only way to miss out on it is to turn your back on it and refuse it, and God’s love is so persistent that very very few people are likely to manage to do that forever, no matter how hard they try. So obedience is not about qualifying for salvation. It is, rather, a grateful response of those who have been saved, and the natural expression of the same trust that enabled us to accept the gift in the first place. If we really trust Jesus, as we say we do, then of course we will trust what he says enough to do it. If we don’t, then the question that Jesus himself put is vey pertinent: if we say ‘Lord, Lord”, but do not do what he says or follow the example he set, then have we really put our trust in him at all.

As Bill Maher put it in that satire, and as Brian McLaren put it in his latest book, Jesus seems to have an awful lot of fans, but very few followers. Jesus did not come inviting us to follow him on Twitter, or like him on Facebook, or join his fan club, even if it is a venerable old church. He called us to follow him, to put our trust in what he says and in how he acts and to follow him and do likewise.