3rd Sunday before Lent/Epiphany 6, Year C, 2019
St. Mary’s & St. Peter’s, Bagillt
May the words I speak and the words you hear be God’s alone. Amen.
There’s a history of movement throughout the Bible. Think about some of the most familiar stories: Abram leaving his home and traveling to a foreign land in obedience to God. The dramatic escape of the Israelites from the hands of the Egyptian pharaoh followed by their wandering in the desert for forty years. Joseph and a very pregnant Mary traveling to Bethlehem to be registered for the census only to turn around and flee to Egypt to escape persecution. For a people rooted in the importance of the land because it was given to them by God, there’s an awful lot of movement happening.
Today’s reading highlights movement, as well. We are in the early stages of Jesus’ ministry. He has just spent time praying to God on the mountaintop. He then calls his disciples to him and selects 12 of them to be his closest followers. They journey down the mountain until they come to a level place, where they find a crowd who have traveled from all over to hear Jesus preach and find healing for various ailments. This is when Jesus gives his famous sermon called the Beatitudes. In Matthew’s Gospel, this is called the sermon on the mount. Matthew writes to a Jewish audience, and so he wants to emphasise that Jesus receives this message from God, a throwback to Moses receiving the 10 Commandments on Mount Sinai. But Luke’s Gospel is written to a non-Jewish audience and lifts up the poor and oppressed, those on the margins of society. And so in Luke’s version we have Jesus, the Son of God, coming down from the mountain, this high place close to God, and moving to be with the masses. The level place is to be understood as a metaphor for suffering, misery, mourning, idolatry, and disgrace. Jesus moves to be where people need him the most, and everyone there reaches out to touch him and to listen to his message.
And what a message! I’m sure many of you, like me, have listened to it so many times that you kind of glaze over when you hear it now. Luke’s version differs yet again from Matthew’s in that there are fewer blessings, but corresponding woes. Blessed are you who are poor, but woe to you who are rich. Blessed are you who are hungry, but woe to you who are full. Blessed are you who weep, but woe to you who are laughing. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man, but woe to you when all speak well of you.
This isn’t literally saying that people who are wealthy, popular, happy, and satisfied are unable to get into heaven but the poor, unpopular, weeping, and hungry are able; the beatitudes are not really about how to live so you can get into heaven but rather about how the kingdom of God is realised on earth. It’s about movement, or being moved. Poor, here, refers to people who know that they depend on God, while the rich have no use for God because all of their needs are met; they remain unmoved. We empathise and identify with the poor, because like them we know we rely on God. The hungry hunger for the Good News of the Gospel, while the full are content with their own news. We empathise and identify with the hungry, because like them we are hungry for the Good News in Jesus Christ. I do want to add a disclaimer: to be blessed does not mean that there won’t be challenging times ahead, it simply means that God is happy with you because you are prioritising the right things.
The crux of Jesus’ sermon on the plain is about movement—internal movement. Jesus came to earth that our hearts would be moved. In his preaching as well as by his actions we see that he constantly focuses on people ignored or rejected by society: the poor. The sick. The lonely. The outcasts. The sinful. He calls his 12 closest followers to be his apostles, a word meaning “those who are sent.” In response to our hearts being moved, we get moving. We work, every day, to refocus on what God would have us do, to bend our “unruly wills and passions” to conform to God’s will (from today's collect).
And how do we do that? Well, we find our answer in today’s Gospel. Henry Nouwen, a Dutch Catholic priest, remarked that so often we try to navigate this world on our own. When we get stuck on a task or a problem, we go to our friends, and if/when that doesn’t work, out of desperation we finally turn to God. But in the Gospel Jesus begins with prayer, then calls his apostles, and then they do the work of mission together. We are to follow his lead. We go first to God, then we bring along our friends, then we go together into the world to help bring about God’s kingdom on earth.
