Today’s passage is St Luke’s version of Jesus’ great sermon which we
normally know as the Sermon on the Mount. In St Luke, however, Jesus is
preaching it on a plain not a mount. The sermon is addressed to his disciples,
not a large crowd, and it tells them, and us, about what it is like to live a
Christian life. It is full of the topsy-turvy values of the Kingdom and it makes
interesting, challenging, comforting and disturbing reading.
Blessings
The sermon starts off with Jesus saying that certain people are blessed. Those who are poor are blessed because, Jesus says, theirs is the kingdom of God. Those who are hungry now are blessed as they will be satisfied. Those who weep now will one day laugh and those who are persecuted for Jesus are blessed as they are in the company of the prophets and will have a great reward in heaven.
These are words of comfort to anyone who is an outsider, to anyone who is not rich. Jesus is especially concerned with the plight of the poor and a major concern of the Church has always been to help the poor, the widowed, the orphaned – those who had no one else to turn to. At the end of the 20th Century passages like this encouraged the Church to work for social reform, even social revolution, so that the poor got a better deal. In Nicaragua the Church helped transform society. Many of us try to buy Fair Trade goods so that the poor get a better deal from the goods we buy from them.
These are words of comfort to those who have known hunger. I don’t know how many of us have truly known hunger, I suspect more of us that we at first realise. Some of us have known hunger because we are not able to manage our money – I remember when I first qualified as a teacher my wage was only £50 a month more than my bills before food. At that time I had a cat. Because of some student debts I was really struggling and some days I went without food – I made sure, however, that the cat never went hungry! I know that some of us here have gone hungry because we don’t have enough to live on. However, our own experiences of hunger are nothing compared to the hunger of the poor in Africa where drought, famine and civil war seem to mean that the poor there get poorer. Jesus promises a different age when the hungry will be filled.
Jesus promises that those who weep now will one day be comforted. Those who mourn will experience joy again. We all know the pain of mourning, to acutely miss someone or something we have dearly loved, someone or something that has touched us and forever changed us. When we are first bereaved the pain is almost physical in its intensity and no matter what anyone says, it won’t go away – part of us doesn’t want it to go away as it is a link with the person or the thing we are mourning. But Jesus promises laughter to those who mourn.
And then Jesus says we are blessed when people persecute us for our faith. I don’t know if we feel blessed when we are laughed at because we are Christian, but Jesus tells us that our reward will be in heaven.
All these sayings are words of comfort to a persecuted group of disciples who came, mainly, from the poor and worked with the poor. They are comforting for us. When we experience forms of persecution because of our faith or because we dare to say that we, even we, are Christian, then passages like this give us comfort.
Woes
But the next passage makes harder reading for us. Jesus goes on to reverse everything he has been saying. He says to those of us who are rich that we have already received our comfort, that those of us who are well fed will go hungry, that those of us who are laughing will mourn and that we should not be too pleased when everyone speaks well of us.
How do we understand these sets of blessings and woes so they make sense for us now? I know some Christians who love it when they are criticised by others as they assume they are doing what Jesus wants based on the blessing saying of Jesus – in fact they are just being objectionable and rude! Most of us are rich compared to the majority of people who share this planet with us, most of us are well fed too – some of us a little too well fed. How can we make sense of this?
The Kingdom
This sermon of Jesus’ makes sense only when we set it in the context of the values of the Kingdom of God. The Jewish people were expecting a Messiah who would come and re-establish the Kingdom of Israel. He would lead a revolt against the Romans and they would be an independent nation again that could pursue its faith and culture without oppression. This was a worthy goal and they looked back to the Kingdom under David as an example of all they wanted to be.
Jesus’ kingdom however, isn’t like that. It’s a kingdom first of all without a physical boundary. We live in the United Kingdom and we sort of know where the borders are – it helps because we live on a large island and the borders are generally indicated by large chunks of water. The kingdom of God, however, isn’t a geographical entity, but a place where the rule of God is observed.
In the Kingdom things are done differently. In the Kingdom those lists of blessings and woes make more sense. Those who have been persecuted here and accounted as nothing will be considered important in the Kingdom. Those who are poor here will be rich in the Kingdom of God, those who are rich here will have very little. This is not because riches are wrong, but because the love of things poisons our souls and makes it harder for us to hear the call of God on our lives.
This theme of Kingdom Values continues in the rest of our reading. We are told to love those who are our enemies. Well this is fine until we think about this. Who are our enemies? Well for a start who are the Christians who would see themselves as our enemies? Our friends in the Christian Institute or the Evangelical Alliance perhaps? Clergy in the Church of England who were all over the media this week saying they would never officiate at the marriage of a transsexual? Those in the House of Lords who would deny us civil liberties. Yes, these are our enemies and Jesus tells us to love them and pray for them. In a wider sense our enemies are those in terrorist groups that seek to destroy the values upon which Western society is based on. Now there is nothing divinely given about our culture, but there is much about it that is good and wonderful and to try and destroy a culture through violence or force or killing is always wrong. So Jesus tells us to pray for people like Bin Laden.
In the Kingdom of God the value of love is the highest of all the values and we need to practise here on earth, where we live in the shadow of the Kingdom, the values we will need for eternity.
Judging Others
The end of the reading reminds us of more kingdom values. Jesus appears to contradict himself. He says “do not judge and you will not be judged” but then goes on to realise that we all do judge others and he says “for the measure you use, it will be measured for you”. This is sobering. We all need to come to judgements about other people. Sometimes we do this naturally and quickly, other times we take a long time to form a judgement, an opinion about someone. The key kingdom value here is how do we do it. What criteria do we use?
Sometimes we judge people on how they look. This is especially prevalent in our 'body beautiful' culture. I have been in MCCs – not this one of course – where a new person who is good looking gets lots of attention and something tells me this is more than simple Christian hospitality! Sometimes we judge people on how they dress, or where they live, or what their job is, or if they have a job. Sometimes we form judgements about people from what we read in the papers or see on the television. Part of this is natural and normal, but as we form our judgements we need to remember that the same way in which we judge others will be used to judge us! That is quite a sobering thought!
Show Me Your Ways
Jesus' sermon is given to his disciples, then and now, and is designed to show us the cost of discipleship. It shows us how we are to live if we are to truly call ourselves Christians. It is about accepting that the values we live by as Christians are totally different from the values of the society and cultures from which we come. It is a reminder that our true home is not here, but the Kingdom. As we mature as Christians we learn more and more about the values of the Kingdom, the ways of God.
Amen
This sermon was first preached in the Metropolitan Community Church
of Manchester. Click here for further information.