The Gospel reading for today is a section from the beginning of
Luke’s “Sermon on the Plain,”
a comparative parallel to Matthew’s “Sermon on the Mount.”
And a reminder of what I said last week about how each chapter in Luke
gives the context for the passage selected from it for the day’s Gospel,
so here too in Luke, chapter 6.
I need to back up 5 verses so that you can get the impact of what Jesus is saying.
Jesus went out into the hills to pray, and he prayed all night.
What was he praying all night?
The translation in your Bible is not accurate,
that he was in prayer to God.
The Greek says that it was the prayer of God.
This was a prayer of surrendered self-awareness in God.
It was a prayer of being in full communion with God.
God was praying in him.
And from that time of prayer Jesus comes down out of the hills
and he does three things described as dunamis in Greek, power, or actions of God.
dunamis – think of the English cognates from the same root:
dynamic, dynamite.
Three things: 1. Discernment: out of a large number of disciples
Jesus selects 12 who will receive his intensive discipleship course,
so as to be sent out as apostles later.
2. Healing: power dunamis was coming out from him
and it was healing all – everyone, everybody
so the crowd was seeking to touch him
3. Teaching: Jesus gave them this teaching.
Now this teaching, the Sermon on the Plain, was a not a morality,
This is important to note: it was not a set of moral rules to follow,
but a pattern of discipleship.
Jesus described a way to live as the Teacher lived, as he himself lived.
And the process of teaching itself
would be a way to transmit the energy of his power, his dunamis,
to those who were listening to Jesus.
The portion of the sermon or teaching that we get this morning
is the Luke version of the Beatitudes.
This version is much more literal and direct
in comparison with Matthew’s more spiritualized Beatitudes.
Blessed are you poor,
you who hunger,
you that weep,
you who are persecuted.
Jesus is speaking to those who are without, the poor, those victimized.
He was speaking to a large crowd of people
who all could relate to that,
given the location, date, and political realities of the time.
But he is also saying to his chosen disciples
that this is their reality too, and would be even more so.
The people Jesus calls blessed are those the world calls wretched.
And those “woe to you” statements that follow
are to those whom the world view, the prevailing culture,
would call blessed:
the rich, the well-fed, the happy,
those without an anxious or sad thought
those with status and a good reputation in the community.
But Jesus is teaching the crowd,
Blessed are you poor, you hungry, you that weep, you that are persecuted.
This is what you are going to get, what you are going to learn.
And with each of these comes
the reason why Jesus could call these wretched conditions blessed:
You who are poor, yours is the kingdom of God,
your hunger will be satisfied,
you who weep will laugh,
you who are persecuted, your reward will be great in heaven.
Each cause of suffering will be accompanied by an abundance of love,
a generosity.
True, rather than an abundance of material possessions,
this is not the same thing.
But this is to bring about in the disciples an attitude of abundance
that comes through the power, the dunamis, of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus is talking about a spiritual process of transformation
that will take place in the disciples.
This spiritual process of transformation
is at work in all of us who are disciples,
who follow Jesus, who are attracted to him,
whether we recognize this spiritual process taking place in us or not.
It is, of course, helpful to be able to recognize what is going on,
so that we can cooperate with the work of the Holy Spirit taking place within us.
The Old Testament reading gives a practical example or metaphor
for recognizing this spiritual process.
Jeremiah 17:5f
“Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals
and make mere flesh their strength,
whose hearts turn away from the Lord.”
This describes the attitude prevailing in the culture in which we live, does it not?
People pretty much focus on relying on their own strength, ability.
Jeremiah says, “They shall be like a shrub in the desert,
and shall not see when relief comes.”
A shrub is low to the ground,
a perspective from which view is limited, it can’t see very far,
so as to know that it is in a desert, an arid place.
In contrast Jeremiah says, “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord…
They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots…”
The tree being much taller than a shrub
has a much greater perspective, view, ability to see beyond limits.
And the roots go deeper.
Play along with me: Imagine yourself to be an acorn.
What are you destined to grow up into? An oak tree.
Within the acorn the full grown tree exists already in potential.
That’s not just a scientific discovery; Aristotle pointed that out.
Imagine that you are planted in the ground,
that you sprout and begin to grow.
At first you are very small, no taller than the shrubs around you.
There you are in the midst of the limited perspective of the shrubs.
You can’t help but have that same limited awareness,
as you struggle along with the shrubs for water.
But then the tree grows taller, above the shrubs,
and what do you discover? The sun, your source of energy.
And your roots go deeper.
You discover a much larger space, the whole expanse of the sky, limitless.
Now you may be bigger than the shrubs,
but in comparison with the vastness of the whole sky
you are still very small indeed.
In the spiritual process
when we grow beyond the limited mindset and perspective
that we commonly live in,
and we come into an awareness of a much vaster space of being,
an encounter with the limitless divine,
then we experience true humility
and when we do, then we become truly useful as disciples.
This is what Jesus is up to in each of us,
growing us taller spiritually.
So we are being called to be trees, not shrubs,
to become what has been there in potentiality from the beginning,
just as the oak tree is there in its fullness in the acorn.
Jesus provides the dunamis, the power, and the love and the strength that’s needed.
Poor, hungry, weeping, wretched and oppressed?
Come be fed, fertilized, and nurtured at Jesus’ Table.
Grow taller to see beyond the limits of your horizon.
That’s why we are here – so that we can be changed.
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