“Plainly Speaking”
Rev. James Rausch
You’ve heard of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount from the Gospel of Matthew. But have you heard of Luke’s presentation of Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Plain? This is our Gospel lesson for today, and the location of a plain is especially fitting, because there Jesus spoke plainly to his disciples about the kingdom of heaven and its great contrast to the world and its values.
It was near the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, and he had many disciples following him. They had left behind the life they had known to answer the call. After a night in prayer on a mountaintop, Jesus chose 12 apostles from among the many disciples and came down to a level place to minister to a great multitude of people. They had come from North and South and even from the Gentile lands of Tyre and Sidon to listen to Jesus and to be healed from all kinds of physical and spiritual maladies.
No doubt the healings were awe-inspiring and uplifting to Jesus’ apostles, disciples, and to the people in general. Jesus’ abilities to teach and heal were in large part the reason so many left their worlds behind to follow him. Occupations, homes, family and communities were given up by those who would become disciples.
And Jesus addressed them plainly on the plain that day, recognizing their circumstances and their commitment. Blessed are you who are poor, hungry, weeping, and outcast. These were the values of the kingdom they were embracing, the kingdom they had recognized in Jesus himself. As they left their worlds behind to follow, so were they leaving the values of the world behind as well. They had come to place their dependence on Jesus, and in so doing on God, instead of continuing in dependence on the world and on themselves.
And unlike the Beatitudes we read in Matthew’s sermon on the Mount, Luke here includes Jesus’ stark contrast to the world’s values with a matching series of woes to those who are rich, full, laughing, and approved of. It says that Jesus’ audience that day was his disciples. It may have been that there wasn’t a rich person among them. But in Luke’s audience, the case may have been different. Luke wrote his Gospel and Acts to “Theophilus,” which translates to “lover of God.” So, we don’t know if Luke was writing to a particular individual or to all lovers of God. I tend to favor the latter. And most certainly there were and are rich people in Luke’s audience.
Jesus’ words, plainly spoken, are challenging to receive for many of us, and indeed they are meant to be. For in life, we are forced to recognize our ultimate dependence and our need to choose on whom we will depend. To rely on oneself or the world will ultimately prove to be futile and hopeless. Instead, dependence on God alone leads to blessedness. That this blessedness often includes worldly suffering is a reality about which Jesus is plainly honest.
In Bible Study, we have talked about our main goal in studying Scripture and pursuing a life of faith. Does anyone remember how we have stated that basic goal? To know God and God’s will. The Gospel writer John defines eternal life this way: To know God and God’s Son, Jesus Christ. It’s important then, that we take seriously what Jesus is telling us about God and God’s will in our lesson today. Our dependence on and allegiance to God supersedes our dependence on and allegiance to anything of this world, whether it be our wealth and possessions, our health and strength, or our status and connections.
Now I don’t know about you, but I have been known to take a lot of comfort in all of those things, and I often find it difficult to avoid clinging to them at the expense of my ultimate dependence on God. Luke recognizes struggles like mine with a story told in chapter 18.
A certain ruler asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; Honor your father and mother.'” He replied, “I have kept all these since my youth.”
When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”
But when he heard this, he became sad; for he was very rich.
Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!
Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” Those who heard it said, “Then who can be saved?”
He replied, “What is impossible for mortals is possible for God.”
I am grateful for a God who can make such impossibilities possible. As I struggle then, with Jesus’ plain-spoken teachings, it reminds me of other situations in life where hard, plain-spoken truths are confronted. One of them that I have experienced is in a 12-step program. I am an adult-child of an alcoholic. To say that is not to place blame on my parent, but instead it is to acknowledge that I now have acquired patterns of behavior that are often manipulative and detrimental to relationships. I have developed dependence in unhealthy ways and need to give up those dependencies in favor of dependence on God alone.
If you’ve ever been exposed to a well-run 12-step meeting, you have encountered plain-spoken truth. It’s one of the reasons that the meetings are anonymous, so there is no obstacle to stating the realities of one’s struggle. If a recovering alcoholic plainly states his or her struggles with temptations in a meeting, so too in church we can state our struggles with the temptations of living according to the world’s values instead of God’s. As a person of relative wealth, I struggle with the temptation of allowing myself to become dependent on my lifestyle and situation in ways that would obscure my ultimate dependence and allegiance to God.
As I speak these struggles aloud, perhaps some of you can relate to them. You, as believers and followers of Jesus, are surely all on various places on the journey of maturity of faith. In that way I again compare the church family to a 12-step meeting in that I hear those of you who are farther along on the journey as well as those of you who may not be quite as far along say, without judgment, “Keep coming back.”
I want to mention our reading of Psalm 1 as it relates to our theme today. It serves as an introduction to the entire collection of Psalms, or “The Psalter,” if you’d like to use the fancy church word. In plain-spoken terms, it speaks to self-admitted sinners like me the pathway to healthy dependence on God as opposed to self-dependence and reliance on the world.
Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; but their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law they meditate day and night.
They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper.
The word for law in this passage is Torah, which can mean law, of course, but it also refers to the first five books of the Bible and in general means, “teachings.” And to meditate on God’s teachings day and night means to constantly remind yourself of them. The image of a tree planted by the river is easy to understand. One’s roots, when nourished by God’s teachings, allows one to live and endure and bear fruit in season regardless of the hardships that may occur on the surface.
When the Psalm says, “In all they do, they prosper,” it tends to lead us to think in black and white terms theologically, but the book of Job will have a lot to say about that. We don’t read that in a naïve way, then.
The psalm goes on to say, “The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.” Again, this plain-spoken language may strike us as very stark. I don’t even like the word wicked. It sounds so harsh and judgmental. The wicked sound so bad, like they’re even worse than Larry!
But when you contrast the wicked to those in the first part of the psalm, you see that they are those who refuse to place their dependence and focus on God. Instead, they are about themselves. I learned something this week about the word autonomous. If you look at the root languages that gave us that word, you find that nomos means law. I should have known that because Deuteronomy from the Bible means second law. Auto means about or to oneself. Think of auto-biography. So, autonomous means “a law unto oneself.” So, you can see why it is so frightening to parents when teenagers are gaining autonomy. In our culture, autonomy is held up a goal, an admirable state. Jesus’ plainly spoken words point in the opposite direction.
Our texts for today essentially make the same affirmation: Blessed are those who live in dependence on God rather than in dependence on self. Blessed are those who live under God’s reign.