Jesus On The Level
“Jesus On The Level”
Sixth Sunday of Epiphany, Year C, February 17, 2019
Jeremiah 17:5-10 Psalm 1 Luke 6:17-26
First Presbyterian Church of Sandpoint, Idaho
Pastor Andy Kennaly
My in-laws have a car parked in their house. It’s actually a model, but it does run, though not exactly like a car. This model car is designed to fit a video cassette inside. Put the tape in, push the car roof down, the lights come on, and the tape rewinds. Some of you remember when VCR’s came out and movies could be viewed at home, whenever you wanted, rather than be at the mercy of theaters and the release-schedules of producers. Remember that saying? “Be Kind, Rewind.” It was good manners to have the VCR tape ready for next player, rather than make that next person have to wait while the tape rewound.
Now, we don’t really use VCR tapes, or audio cassettes anymore, and even CD’s and DVD’s aren’t needed because media is now digital and can be downloaded from the Cloud. As long as the Internet is accessible, information is available, even digitally stored on your phone. No need to rewind. No need for model cars in your house. Technology changes and evolves. What once required large machines and external, mechanical processes, is now done wirelessly, electronically, in more responsive ways.
A similar dynamic is at work in terms of religious growth, faith development, and Christian understanding and practice, all of which evolve. There are movements: from externalized faith structures to internalized experiences, from object-based perceptions to subject-grounded participation, from the illusion of separation to the deeper reality of unity. All of these involve maturing in faith, transitioning, for example, from being satisfied with knowledge to a hungering for wisdom. This morning’s scriptures show us these types of dynamics on many levels.
Jeremiah shares, “Thus says the LORD: Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the LORD.” On the one hand, Jeremiah’s dealing with tremendously uncertain and difficult times, with people who are full of themselves with little room for God, even though they go through the religious motions. He’s trying to wake them up. On the other hand, the Prophet is sharing timeless truths about shedding the ego’s grip, which limits our perceptions, as he invites a larger heart-awareness that plumbs the depths of the mysteries of God in ever more abundant and wonderful encounters of grace, peace, and provision. Using imagery, we can ask, would you rather live as a scrub bush in the dry desert or as a healthy tree along a lovely river? Through these images, we see self-imposed limitations leading to diminishment and lack. But when trust is grounded in the abundance of God’s Presence, the heart helps us receive, like roots for a tree, the goodness of God, which removes fear and anxiety, and leads to fruitful living in all conditions.
The Book of Psalms starts out contrasting the life of wickedness with the fruits of faithfulness, using that image of a tree, once again, planted by life-giving water with roots bathed in righteousness, blessed by God. Observing God’s law helps one give expression to what it’s like living into the fullness of right relationship. Commandments are results of hearts trusting the LORD, rather than external lists trying to legislate goodness.
In some church yards, and even down the street in Farmin Park, the Ten Commandments are etched in stone, put on display for the public to see and share. These commands from the Bible are put up for viewing as an expression of faithfulness and devotion: monuments which are spiritually and emotionally invested in, protected, and cherished by many.
However, you are not likely to see many monuments dedicated to the Beatitudes like we read in Jesus’ sermon on the plain in Luke, what’s called the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s version. A church yard display would be amazing, proclaiming, “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation,” or “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.” Also, “Woe to you who are laughing now,” or woe “when all speak well of you.” Wouldn’t that be an amazing display?
“Woe” is a noun and it means great sorrow or distress, anguish, sadness, grief, affliction. On one hand, Jesus is making socio-political statements: the rich enjoy concentrated wealth at the expense of the majority, yet will one day realize how they have negatively affected so many others. The full, who have excess while others experience deficiencies, will also be awakened to the injustice their lives are based on. That discovery will be painful.
Do you notice who he’s speaking to, as he’s on the plain, on the same level as everyone else? People from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. This is descriptive, meaning he’s speaking to the home crowd of Jewish people, yet ethnically and religiously, culturally he’s also including those who are despised. The Jewish people had a dispute with those from the more urban coastline cities of Tyre and Sidon, where non-Jews engaged in global trade from their ports, made lots of money, then short changed Jewish farmers who sold them food, farmers who often went hungry themselves. There’s an economic and agricultural imbalance at work in the background, as urban and rural collide.
That Jesus and this strange mix of people are all on the same level is a very dramatic visual. It’s erasing boundaries, and he heals everyone. All the people are trying to touch him and his power is going out from him to include, to heal, to love, regardless of whatever labels are at work. He’s not holding back. There are social justice, religious, economic, agricultural, and political layer upon layer as Jesus shares blessings and woes, all for the larger purpose of the heart’s awakening to God’s loving Presence.
Remember that Luke writes his Gospel in ways that expand God’s kingdom to include those who are typically marginalized. Jesus comes down on the plain with all the people, not above them, but with them. This is Incarnational Theology as we celebrate the season of Epiphany, of God with us, and this is more than just theory, but an invitation to evolve, to move from our mind to a larger heart awareness so we may recognize God among us. Jesus is living the power of unity and showing the larger vision where everything belongs. But to perceive this larger vision we need trusting hearts.
What are these? (Pastor points to offering plates). What are these? (Pastor holds up list of community prayer requests). Are these good or bad? (People say what they are, they also say they are good). Just the fact that we could answer questions of what things are, and decide whether something is good or bad shows us that we spend most of our time using our smaller mind, our more limited perceptions, or our false self as a reference point. We constantly judge. We define. We give attributes. We label. We assign. As our monkey mind constantly chatters, this process forms identity. Jesus is teaching on the plain about this dynamic. Weepers. Laughers. He mentions categories we typically assign as opposites, or mutually exclusive. Either you’re rich or poor, hungry, or filled. People view one as good and the other as bad. This is all or nothing thinking, and Jesus exposes the futility of it.
As that great multitude of people and the large crowd of disciples gather around Jesus, he astonishes them by putting the world’s assumptions on their heads. Usually, for example, if someone is successful and rich, it was assumed, and often still is assumed, that God is blessing them. For the poor to be called “blessed” is just the opposite than what people are taught. They thought the poor were cursed. Same with having food, or being hungry. The shame and blame cycles are alive and well, echoing into our own time, but Jesus is derailing that train, saying the poor are blessed, and they experience blessing right now, in the present. The rich may experience temporary, temporal satisfaction, but it pales, and leads to future regrets.
Music helps us quiet our mind and open our hearts to participate in life at higher frequencies, or deeper capacities. Today we have a choral anthem that invites us to gather around the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, as we gather around the communion table. Notice that word, Communion. It has co- C-O, and also comm, like other group words such as community or committee, or even the word, come, which is invitational and social. Communion also has the word, union. Unity, united, unified, a coming together in experiential ways.
Today the choir sings Come Share the Lord, and the words involve the invitation to Come eat the bread, come drink the wine (although we use grape juice, non-fermented), come share the Lord. No one is a stranger here, all are welcome, everyone belongs; this is the sentiment we sing about as we claim God’s unity shared through comm/union, that we gather as a community around a shared table and we have a common status and equal access. Christ is the host, God’s Spirit is at work, our Creator is among us, and Jesus shares this meal as we participate in a heavenly banquet even now.
Humanity needs to learn how to enter the Larger Mind, a deeper Consciousness, a more Loving Presence. Notice that Jeremiah calls us to this deeper trust, to a movement away from viewing God as an object into an experience of God as subject. We read,
“Blessed are those who trust in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD.”
By trusting God in our hearts we not only participate in God’s holiness, we become God’s holiness. By sharing this meal, we not only participate in breaking bread, we become bread broken and shared for the world. We are the Body of Christ, the comm/union of saints, called to live as new creations, marked as Christ’s own forever.
As our world struggles with socio-economic, political, and other types of dynamics, may we allow God room to work in our hearts at deeper levels which re-define reality itself. Trusting the Lord with our hearts, may God be glorified, NOW, even as forever.
Amen.