A Sermon preached by the Rev. Michael Anderson Bullock
[Jeremiah 17:5-10; 1 Corinthians 15:12-20; Luke 6:17-26]
In this time of intensity, confusion, and polarization, it’s hard to talk to the issues among us without the threat of going to war -- figuratively and more frightfully, literally. Where debate at one time did more than attempt to win the conversation but also to provide some thoughtfulness and verifiable information, what now passes for public conversation frequently begins with rage and escalates from there. Too frequently, the result of this is that listening is overwhelmed by the screamed volume of proclamation; and unmoored from any verifiable notion of truth. Outrageous statements, meant to inflame and distract, pretentiously pose as reliable insight.
In all of this, I often think of the line from the Prayer Book collect for “The Human Family1”. It contains the prospect of redeeming hope as well as the freedom of new life. The line is: take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; [here is the crux of the matter] and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth.
As I try to live this prayerful petition, I have come to focus on a question that, I think, can begin to be a way to fulfill what the prayer requests. The question is: What is the source of your standards? Or a less formal way of putting the question is: where are you coming from? Can we talk about that and see to what extent the roots of our disagreement have common soil?
I find that keeping this question in mind and trying to live it is a discipline that guards against me simply putting my opinion or my experience as the source of truth. And asking that question of others is meant to provide them with the same opportunity for clarity and accountability. More to the point, I also think that following Jesus requires that we know what the source of our standards of faith are. Where does what we believe come from? What does it mean? How do we live the reality of the faith we see in Christ?
One of the real difficulties members of the church have had in the last fifty years is that the culture no longer subsidizes our life and activity. What was a matter of familiarity – something it seemed “everyone did” – now has to compete for attention. In this regard, the memory of being an eight-year-old-cub scout came back to me.
The pack had a fund-raising project in which American flags were sold for outside display – you know, on a fence or the side of a house. I went about our neighborhood in my blue, cub scout uni, knocking on doors and selling flags. As I recall, I sold nearly a dozen of them! But the thing I remember in the context of the culture subsidizing the faith was that in each flag box was a set of instructions on how the flag should be displayed and when it was most appropriate to do so.
On the list of display occasions, in addition to Independence Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Memorial Day were Christmas and Easter. A different but similar example is that what is now referred to as “spring break” in schools was then a holiday for “Good Friday” and “Easter Monday”. No need to mention the “blue laws” that supposedly allowed the population to go to church on Sunday without the distracting temptation of commercial activity. My point is that without the cultural subsidy of the Christian faith, many among us are adrift when it comes to knowing the standards that shape and form a faithful follower of Jesus.
So, back to the beginning: What are the sources of our faith’s standards? Or do we simply make them up or – more commonly – abandon the thought of even asking the question?
I raise this issue because one of the central expressions of our faith’s standards resides clearly in today’s gospel lesson from Luke. In Luke, it is known as Jesus’ “Sermon on the Plain”. We might be more familiar with this “sermon” as it is found in Matthew’s gospel, under the title of the “Sermon on the Mount”. The distinctions between Matthew’s and Luke’s depictions of the “blessed are’s” have some very different elements to them. Beyond the differences in topography, the most obvious variance is that in Luke’s version the “blessings” are contrasted by an equal number of “woe’s”, of calamities. This and the other variations between the two notwithstanding, the point I want to make is that what we have before us is one of the central sources of all that it means to follow Jesus and to live by the standard of the God-life he embodied.
Up to this point in the third gospel, Luke has portrayed Jesus teaching about the God-life and healing the people as a demonstration of what life on God’s terms is like. In his first sermon, the one he gave in his home synagogue in Nazareth, we noted his homiletical punchline: namely, that the ancient and uplifting promises captured in Isaiah’s prophecy were now being fulfilled in the very words of Jesus. And in the process of such teaching and as a deeper validation of his life and work, Jesus calls twelve men to be his “apostles” (his “eyewitnesses”), to follow him for the expressed purpose of gathering all people into a New Israel.
The reading from today’s gospel is Jesus’ “inaugural address” about the New Israel and the constitution that describes how God’s kingdom is breaking into the world. What both Luke’s and Matthew’s versions of the “Beatitudes” contain is the marching orders – the marching orders for the followers of Jesus. As such, these words, these teachings are one of the sources of what it means to live the God-life as Jesus did.
As I mentioned, Luke’s offering pairs four “beatitudes” with four “curses”; and it is in the juxtaposition of what brings “blessing” and what brings “woe” that a powerful distinction is made between of life on God’s terms and life as the world orders it. Allow me to read a quick summation of the distinction. To do so, I will be using the wording from the version of scripture, called The Message.
You’re blessed when you’ve lost it all.
God’s kingdom is there for the finding.
But it’s trouble ahead if you think you have it made.
What you have is all you’ll ever get.
You’re blessed when you’re ravenously hungry.
Then you’re ready for the Messianic meal.
…it’s trouble ahead if you’re satisfied with yourself.
Your self will not satisfy you for long.
You’re blessed when the tears flow freely.
Joy comes with the morning.
… it’s trouble ahead if you think life’s all fun and games.
There’s suffering to be met, and you’re going to meet it.
Count yourself blessed every time someone cuts you down or throws you out, every time someone smears or blackens your name to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and that that person is uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens…
[Yet,] There’s trouble ahead when you live only for the approval of others, saying what flatters them, doing what indulges them. Popularity contests are not truth contests – look how many scoundrel preachers were approved by your ancestors! Your task is to be true, not popular.
Be clear: What we have here is nothing short of Jesus’ putting religion with politics, putting spirituality with how we live our lives. This is Jesus distinguishing between life as the Creator of heaven and earth knows it and the life that the world manipulates and sells. The difference between the two offerings is a matter of what brings deep, lasting, and transformative life from life that we think we can manage or at the very least endure. In both cases, the central question remains: What is the source of your standards? Do we choose to belong to God or to some other force?
A closing question: What if…what if we worked at living (and dying) as if all that we say in church is true? Amen.
1. Book of Common Prayer. p. 815
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