A sermon on Luke 6:17-26 by Nathan Nettleton

I don’t usually make much of a deal about my sermon titles, but I want to explain this one. I called this sermon “Getting the sermon off the Mount,” for two reasons. First the lighthearted one. Every body has heard of the Sermon on the Mount, although not so many could tell you what’s in it. Not many people, however, have heard of the sermon on the plain, or the sermon off the mount, the beginning of which we just heard read. Some of you are looking a little bewildered already. You see in Matthew’s gospel it says Jesus went up the mountain and began to teach, and that is the line from which the Sermon on the Mount takes its name. But in Luke’s gospel, as those who listened carefully will have noted, it said Jesus came down from the mountain and stood on a level place and began to teach. Believe it or not there is a good reason for this. You see Matthew, in his portrayal of Jesus, consistently parallels him with Moses. He is writing to a Jewish church, for whom Moses had been the primary hero of the faith, and he is seeking to portray Jesus as the new Moses. And as you may remember all Moses’ big moments of revelation, especially the Ten Commandments, occurred on the mountain. So when Matthew tells of Jesus’ number one sermon, Jesus’ equivalent of the ten commandments, it has to happen on a mountain. Luke on the other hand is not writing to a Jewish church and is not portraying Jesus as the new Moses. Luke is more concerned to portray Jesus as one who gets down among the people and identifies with their situations. So Luke has Jesus come down from the mountain to the people to deliver his major sermon. So that’s my first reason for calling my sermon “Getting the sermon off the mount,” because that’s what Luke does with it.

The second reason is rather more important. I reckon most people prefer to leave the sermon on the mount, or the sermon on the plain, right there. Most people tend to read it and think “that’s nice” and then totally ignore it. Even most bible believing Christians spend more time working out why it shouldn’t be taken too literally, or why it doesn’t apply to them, than they do working out how to live it and take it seriously. Which is rather disturbing since it is the most comprehensive bit of Jesus teaching that we have. It is the guts of Jesus’ teaching on the values of the kingdom and how his followers should live. We’ve got to get the sermon off the mount and into our lives. We’ve got to have a good hard look at what it has got to say to us. So this week and next week we are looking at extracts from it.

This week’s bit is the best known bit of the world’s best known sermon, the bit called the beatitudes. Matthew’s version is better known because Matthew softens them a bit and makes them a bit easier for people to wriggle their way around. Luke not only puts them bluntly, he gives a reverse as well to ram home the point. So where Matthew says “Blessed are the poor in spirit” which has had people ever since saying things like “Well I might be taking home a million dollars a year and have a Porsche and a Rolls Royce, but I’m poor in spirit,” Luke says “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God, and Woe to you who are rich, because you’ve had all the goodies you’re going to get.” Now it is quite clear that neither Jesus or Luke are saying that poverty is a good thing in itself. Or that hunger, grief or being hated are good things either. There is no question that God would much prefer that we all had adequate resources, and that life was full of laughter and joy and that all people spoke well of each other.

So what is Jesus is saying? Luke doesn’t allow us the easy Matthew answer of spiritualising it all. So what do you think? If God doesn’t want us to suffer, why does Jesus say here that the poor, hungry and grief stricken are blessed and the rich, well fed and happy are condemned???
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Jesus is certainly not saying that poverty and suffering are blessings, or that hunger and rejection are evidence of God’s favour, and that they will ever more be so. He is not saying that the further you push on in your spiritual journey, the poorer and more miserable you will be. He’s also not saying you’ll be wealthier and more popular.

Jesus is not talking about the ideal state of the world as God intends it and as it will one day be. He’s is talking about the tough realities of living in this world now. He’s saying that as things stand at the moment, if your life is all wealth and happiness, then there is something badly wrong with you. If you are living in happy pampered luxury while people just outside your two metre high wall and elaborate security system are selling their daughters into prostitution to avoid starvation, then you are a very sick person, you are a person who survives by disconnecting yourself from reality and living in a fantasy world, an sooner or later all that denial is going to catch up with you and ruin you. Woe to you who are happily affluent, who maintain your frivolous affluence by closing your eyes and ears to the pain and suffering of the poor. When the final day comes and you cannot take with you the possessions you have acquired, you will find that you hadn’t acquired anything that lasts. Your good times will all be in the past, while those whose cries you blocked out will inherit the Kingdom of God.

That promise which Jesus makes is very important. They will inherit, they will be filled, they will laugh. Once again I emphasise, Jesus is not saying that it is so blessed to be poor and weeping that he’s going to ensure that you are poor and weeping for the rest of eternity. He’s saying poverty is the reality, but inheritance is what’s coming. Weeping is the reality, laughter comes next. Death is the reality, but the resurrection is coming. And it’s a really delicate balance here, and I hope I can make it clear. It is unhealthy to live as though there is no suffering now, but it is also unhealthy to live as though that is all there will ever be. It’s unhealthy to deny the reality of death, but it’s also unhealthy to live without hope in the resurrection.

Those who weep now are blessed because they are the ones who are in touch with the real world. They are the ones who feel the pain and who respond in the only appropriate way to it. Jesus wept. No doubt Jesus wept a lot more often than the gospels tell us. Jesus wept because weeping is the first appropriate response to grief, and grief is the most appropriate emotion when encountering the brokenness of our world. If you never feel like crying it may be that you are insulating yourself against reality, that you are living in denial.

Ambulance officers say that at an accident scene, it is the ones who aren’t crying who are the most seriously injured. I think that’s true of more than just physical injury. If I encounter a parent whose baby has recently died, I am far more worried if they don’t cry than if they do. It is those who can no longer feel the pain that are really in trouble.

And what Jesus seems to be saying here is consistent with basic principles of human psychology. Those who grieve properly recover properly. Those who suppress it and refuse to feel it, hold it all within them where it slowly poisons them. You don’t learn to cope with a problem if you are denying its existence. You can’t move to resurrection while you are refusing to acknowledge death. Those who deny their hunger will never be filled. Those who expend their energy trying not to weep will never laugh. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now for you will laugh.

Again, this delicate balance – weeping but hoping. Grieving for today but believing in tomorrow. Entering with God into the pain of a wounded and scarred creation, but hoping with the God who raises life from death, who makes all things new. Opening ourselves to the anguish but refusing to despair and allow it to have the final say. Because our God is a god who sends up green shoots of hope through the cold hard concrete of tragedy. Our God is a god who brings spring to every winter. Our God is the god who raised Jesus Christ from the agony of death to the joy of resurrection life. And as Paul said, in that resurrection is the guarantee of our own resurrections.

To be faithful to Christ, to the Christ who weeps, who dies and who is raised to life, we need to be a church that faces all those realities. In our meeting last week we discussed our mission to those in our midst, and part of our description of that was that we stand in solidarity with those who suffer, so that they might grow through it. We don’t do that by trying to rush them through it. We let them hurt and grieve and come through at their own pace. If you respond to someone’s tears by saying “Come on, its OK,” you’re probably the one with the problem. Because its not OK. Life can be horrible, and when someone plasters it over with cliches its even worse.

I remember when my first marriage had just broken up, and I was a mess. Every now and then I’d cop someone who say things like that. “Oh well, you’ll get over it, you’ll find someone else, maybe God’s teaching you something, pull yourself together, chin up.” I wanted to break their teeth. It’s not that what they said was wrong. I did get over it, I did find someone else, & God did teach me things. It’s not that it was wrong, its that it was so trite, so unwilling to accept or share the reality I was in. It probably felt even worse than the idiots who tried to tell me it was punishment for sin. Because although their concept of God was abhorrent, at least they were acknowledging the seriousness of what I was going through. Resurrection comes when we have experienced the fullness of death, and so if we are to be a community that helps those who suffer grow towards resurrection, we need to help them face the reality of their pain, not gloss over it. You can’t move from Good Friday to Resurrection Sunday before you have endured to anguish of Saturday. Blessed are you who weep on that Saturday, for only you will know the full joy of resurrection on Sunday. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Amen.