The Sermon on the Level Place (10): Love Your Enemies

 I’m thinking about the Sermon on the Level Place in Luke 6. Going through it section by section, but trying to see how the whole thing hangs together. Here’s how it breaks down:

1. 6:27-36 Love your enemies.

   1. 6:32-36 This is the behavior of the “sons of the Most High.”

2. 6:37-38 What enemy-love looks like: Don’t judge. Be merciful. Forgive.

3. 6:39-42 Two parables that illustrate the previous points.

4. 6:43-45 Good tree/bad tree [Q: how does this fit?]

5. 6:46-49 Build your house on a the Rock (not sand)

Love your enemies

Jesus is giving instructions for his disciples. “Love your enemies” is the overall theme. It sets a very high standard. Verses 27-31 sum it up. Later he is going to talk about a good tree and a bad tree bearing good and bad fruit. Our behavior flows from our essential being, who we are. Whatever pretensions to righteousness we may claim, the truth is in the fruit. So right here we can say that loving your enemies is the kind of fruit that a good tree produces.

That comment shows the connection between (4) & (1). My thinking is that that (2) thru (4) are subsets of (1), but I just want to take a closer look at that.

So Jesus in (1) sets this very high standard which I’m saying is the controlling idea at least for the next 3 sections. So we can put it this way:

Loving the way Jesus commands will look like this:

• Loving enemies: being merciful.

  • Withholding judgment. [this is very clearly a subset of enemy-loving]

    • Judging others would be like a blind man leading a blind man.

    • It would be like presuming you have perfect sight and only others are the ones in need of an optometrist. Don’t be a hypocrite. Remove your log before you give lessons to others.

    • “no good tree bears bad fruit.” This implies a very serious question: how can I be a good tree? Because only then can I love my enemy as Jesus commands.

Here, being a good tree is like having an umimpeded vision (no log in the eye). It’s also like a sighted man leading a blind man rather than just another blind man leading him. Being a good tree is bearing good fruit, which is the fruit of loving the way Jesus proposes: a love that even extends to enemies. So Jesus is saying here you can’t do that if you’re not a good tree.

So here we have come to the point of a question: how can I be a good tree? I want to be that kind of tree, the kind that produces good fruit. In fact, Jesus is calling these prospective disciples to be good trees among their enemies. The whole sermon has been leading to this. The answer to this question will place you among the blessed or the woeful.

And in the final section Jesus gives his answer: build your house on the rock. I think we should see this as the summation, the drawing together of all that has come before, and the answer to the question, How can I bear good fruit? This is it. This is what the whole section beginning at verse 27 has been leading to.

• Set very high bar for loving

• Give examples of behavior that makes the bar

• And behavior that falls short

• Put special emphasis on the problem of claiming to have made the bar when you really haven’t: don’t do that

• Be a good person producing good treasure “out of the abundance of the heart.”

• How? By building your house (your life) on The Rock. IOW, base everything on Jesus.

Note: At verse 38 Jesus says, “Give and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over into your lap.” This picture of abundance is returned to in verse 45, but instead of receiving abundance now the “good person” is offering it in the form of high-bar deeds of loving kindness. And not only deeds, but speech. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”

Note (2): Jesus himself is speaking out of the abundance of his heart in this entire passage. Jesus, of course, speaks out of the abundance of his heart whenever he speaks. Words themselves are deeds. Words are fruit, good or bad.

In summary, Jesus uses this opportunity in talking to his disciples (this is early in his ministry and they are all quite new, just beginning to learn the true meaning of following Jesus). Jesus throws them into the deep end of the pool right at the start with his call for them to love their enemies.

He has already said that his people will be persecuted (and are blessed because of it!). Now he says, respond to the persecution with love. The call to love his so broad as to include every enemy. The old way was to love those who love you, give to those who give to you, etc. The Jesus Way is to love those who hate you. This love casts the widest possible net.

To love in this way is to be a Jesus follower, a disciple. “Your reward will be great in heaven,” Jesus says. Don’t look for it in the here and now, and above all don’t only love those who can reward you in the here and now (a brown-nosing kind of love). Isn’t God kind even to the ungrateful and evil? To be a Jesus follower is to have that kind of loving kindness for all others.

This kind of loving is elucidated more when Jesus adds, “Don’t judge or condemn people, but forgive them. Then there is a reciprocity offered her, something different than the “reward in heaven.” The like of what you give will be given to you in abundance. Give love, receive love. Give forgiveness, receive forgiveness.

This sort of dynamic will make you worthy to lead the blind (not just another blind person). Right now, that’s what Jesus is: a seeing person (seeing better than any man ever), giving guidance to those who have vision problems. And that’s what he wants his disciples to be. In other words: “everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.” (v.40) They’re also going to be, like Jesus, people with good spiritual vision (spiritual understanding) leading people with faulty vision (faulty spiritual understanding).

But they’re not there yet. At this point, they are more like the person with the log in his eye trying to correct the person with the speck in his eye. The task before the disciples right now, as they sit at the feet of Jesus, is to learn about the log in their own eye and tend to that first. They are never going to be good trees producing good fruit if they don’t do that. They’ll be blind guides leading the blind, or hypocrites trying to fix everybody else when they themselves need the most fixing. Good fruit flows from what’s within (the abundance of the heart) and as we have seen, it is God who puts that abundance there.

Now I should note that Jesus doesn’t suggest that there is a learning period when you receive all this good stuff, and only then comes a practice-time where you go out and actually do the enemy-loving. Not exactly. Jesus calls on his disciples to love their enemies even now, and suggests that the abundance from God will come even as they do that, and out of that abundance, more and better loving might be expected. He pours in, and you pour out, but the first step is to receive your marching order and go do it. Love your enemies. Start now.

At verse 45 Jesus mentions “the good person.” The good person is the person who loves his enemy, who has mercy and forgives, who gives (expecting nothing in return), etc. The good person is the guide with good vision, the good tree producing good fruit. It comes from the abundance within, which itself comes from God.

Note: we who read this may or may not be disciples. Perhaps we hear all this and wonder if we should be. Some of us might back away. Others might be determined to follow, but they naturally wonder if they are going to be able. Jesus has said that God will equip us for the task (v.38) if we would only begin.

And now we come to the big finish (46-49). The ones who are able to do this are not merely the ones who say “Lord, Lord” to Jesus. To claim to be a follower without really following at all is obviously getting back to the idea of hypocrisy, which we saw at verse 42. But to come to Jesus, hear his teaching, and put them into action (loving their enemies, etc.) is like a man who builds a sturdy house that will not fall down in the storm. It’s built on a firm foundation. He dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock beneath. The teaching of Jesus that he is offering in this sermon is that “firm foundation.” To build on anything else is to build on impermanence. It will all be washed away in the storm.

So: listen to Jesus. Do what he says. Trust in the dynamic that Jesus lays out, with God’s abundant love coming to you as you love in the way that Jesus commands. All in all this a revolutionary directive. Enemy-love is going to have a remarkable leavening effect within the empire, but it can be suggested that we in our day have neglected this high calling. To read this sermon is to come back to foundational matters, the stuff on which all else is to be built (if it is to stand). You can’t emphasize this too much. When Jesus gathered is disciples for their first extended teaching-session, this was his message.

The Sermon on the Level Place (9); Good tree, Bad Tree

 We come now to Luke 6:43-45, often entitled "A Tree and Its Fruit."

For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

First of all, we can see by the first word here that this passage is closely connected and follows from the previous passage, where Jesus suggests that we deal with the log in our own eye before we attempt to deal with the mere speck in our brother's eye.

Many of us suffer, apparently, from a kind of blindness. How would it be if the blind only had other blind men to lead them? Jesus seems to have thought that this world was full of the blind leading the blind. As a teacher, then, his goal was to equip his disciples with sight. That reality lies behind the "log in your own eye" story.

But just as a blind man can't lead a blind man, a bad tree can't produce good fruit. That seems obvious, right? But ask yourself what is the fruit that Jesus is talking about here? Seeking the answer to that question in the immediate context, we see that answer may well be vision. And broadening our context to include the whole sermon, the fruit he is speaking about may certainly be love.

Jesus spends a good deal of the sermon re-orienting his disciples toward a radical view of love. This is in fact such a radical view that it will in time cause some of his followers to balk. The log in their eye is their previous understanding of whom they should love, whom they should forgive, whom they should be generous toward. In fact, if they do not remove this log, they will be like blind men leading other blind me. They will not be equipped to lead at all.

So the point of this passage about the good tree and the bad tree is not to get the disciples to strive to be better trees. Not exactly. Jesus addresses this issue elsewhere when he talks about cleaning the inside of the cup, or about how we are not sullied by what goes into us but by what comes out of us. The issue is transformation on the inside, and that's all that Jesus is driving at here.

It is well to keep in mind that this sermon represents Jesus' first lesson to his disciples. It's his introductory lecture. In it he makes some startling assertions about love that will need to be "unpacked," as they say. His call to love enemies is so discomforting, in fact, that many followers of Jesus for centuries to come will lboriously ignore it. The disciples themselves, as we will learn, are not going to understand him fully, not at first. It will take the whole ministry of Jesus over the next two or three years, and then, as Luke will detail in his "Acts of the Apostles," the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, before they even begin to truly understand this teaching.

In the next segment, Jesus will finish his sermon with an answer to the question, how does one become a good tree, bearing good fruit? How does one become a seeing person with no log in his eye, able then to help others with specks in theirs? How does one love enemies? The answer Jesus gives will be brief, symbolic, and require (again) "unpacking." 

The Sermon on the Level Place (8): On Seeing and Not Seeing

 I've been walking through the Sermon on the Level Place, a passage from Luke's Gospel found in chapter 6. It's the Lukan version of the more famous Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew 5-7. We come now to the passage beginning at Luke 6:39.

He also told them a parable: "Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher. Why do you seek the speck that is in your brother's eyes, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Hoe can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,' when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother's eye."

As usual, we must remember the context. What came immediately before this passage? Jesus had given his disciples a mandate: Instead of judging people, forgive them. Offer this as freely to others as you wish it would be offered to you. [Verses 37, 38]

Now in the next section we have two parts: the parable of the blind leading the blind, and the metaphor of the speck and the log. First, we must always remember that Jesus is speaking to disciples. He is teaching them, preparing them, equipping them for the role to which he has called them. They will be teachers themselves. Even as Jesus teaches them, they will teach others. What Jesus has announced concerning the kingdom of God, they too will announce. 

Now, you cannot be a teacher unless you have first been taught. This is the meaning of "Can a blind man lead a blind man?" This is simply a reminder to the disciples that if they have not forgiven others, suspending judgement and condemnation, then they cannot very well teach others to forgive. They cannot bear the message of the Kingdom to others if they have not first learned (heard and believed) that same message. Don't try to lead a blind man when you yourself have no sight.

This is important. Unless you have received, you cannot give. The teaching of Jesus is "sight" in this parable. You cannot lead the sightless if you have not first received sight from Jesus.

After this, Jesus returns to the matter of judgement. He has stated categorically, do not judge. This is simply not the role of the disciple. The role of the disciple is to teach. In fact, if you are focused on the flaws (the sins) of others, that is an indication that you have not imbibed the teaching of Jesus. If you are decrying the splinter in someone else's eye (in other words, judging), then you have clearly got a log in your own eye . You are a blind man seeking to lead another blind man, one who is in fact quite possibly less blind than you! Once again Jesus is talking about sight-impairment.

We know from Matthew 28:19 ("the Great Commission," as it is often called) that the mission of the disciples was to make other disciples. This is to say, the mission of the student of Jesus is to pass on the teaching Jesus to new students of Jesus, and so on, down through the generations. And you cannot do this, not effectively over the long term, if you have not truly sat at the feet of Jesus and received and believed his message. Until then, no matter how you might pretend to be a teacher of men and a guide to the blind, you are merely another blind person, judging and condemning because you think that's what a teacher does, and so you might fool them into thinking you wise and insightful. 

This is the point. The blind guide is a pretender. His blindness (his log) is glaringly obvious. Even as he judges and condemns the flawed vision of others despite the Messiah's command, do not judge), his distance from the true teaching of Jesus stands out like a glaringly obvious log in his eye. Unless he learns well Luke 6:37 he will never be anything but the hypocrite of Luke 6:42.

The Sermon on the Level Place (7): Love and Abundance

 Let's move on to the next passage in Jesus' Sermon on the Level Place, verses 6:37, 38.

Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.

 A couple of things to remember: Jesus is elucidating the good news about the kingdom of God. All of the imperatives of Jesus (such as the four in this passage: don't judge, don't condemn, forgive, and give) must be understood in this light. In other words, if the kingdom isn't real, the imperatives are merely gestures toward an unachievable good. 

Second, Jesus has been focusing on love. He has been calling his listeners, who are his disciples, people who at least for now are committed to learning at his feet and then following in his way, to a kind of love that busts down all the barriers and is extended even to our worst enemies. 

So we have to deal with two difficult and inextricably related truths: the long-anticipated reign of God (his kingdom) has in some real and yet not complete sense "come," and because it is a kingdom of love, the citizens of that kingdom are in an extraordinary sense love-people. 

These love-people resemble--live out--the heart of God. Because God is merciful, so are they (v.36). Because God is love, they are love-people. This is the inescapable logic of Jesus. 

Now, in verses 37 and 38, he is only further elucidating this call to love. To love, he has already made clear, is to have mercy. In my Bible verse 37 is separated from verse 36 by an inserted heading ("Judging Others"), but this is unhelpful. Verse 37 is closely-tied to the previous verse. To "judge not" is an extension of the imperative to "be merciful." And in fact "be merciful" is an extension of the previous imperative, "love your enemies" (v.35). One flows from the other. And this flowing continues on to verse 38's "forgive."

• Love your enemies (v.35)
• Be merciful to them (v.36)
• Don't judge them (v.37)
• Forgive them (v.37)
• Give (v.38)

There it is in a nutshell. This is Jesus showing, explaining, elucidating, the way of life to which he calls his followers. It's going to look like this. And if someone should ask, how many times should I forgive my enemies (as of course one of his most famous followers would did one day ask), Jesus answers, it's an unending imperative. There is no "for the last time." It's simply a way of being in the world, of being Jesus-y, as the follower of Jesus becomes more and more like him over time. For you to stop forgiving would be to stop being like Jesus, to become like salt without saltiness. 

And a final point about the "good measure" of verse 38. What a wonderful promise! If you live in this way, the passage seems to say, you will receive in return an overflowing measure of exactly what you have given. This is a kingdom promise. In the eschatological kingdom of God, the people of God live in true and unending abundance, the ever-flowing love of the Father, pouring forth as light from the sun, running over like flour from a measuring cup into which God simply keeps pouring more.

And so they are called to embody that vision even now. To be what they will become. To offer what they will one day receive. So that, as the Apostle Paul might say, the aroma of the kingdom might accompany them wherever they go.

That's a beautiful vision, both in its future aspect and its partial and yet still aromatic present realization.

The Sermon on the Level Place (6): More on the Loving of Enemies

 One of the central themes of the New Testament is love, and love is quite literally at the center of the Sermon on the Level Place. Coming immediately after the introductory "blessings and woes," Jesus goes on to spell out a new boundary-destroying definition of whom his followers are to love. (Luke 5:27-36)

It is expected that anyone would love those who love them, but Jesus challenges his disciples to extend the boundaries well beyond that rather limited cohort (probably comprising family members and perhaps a few lucky friends). In calling his followers to love even their enemies he has broken down the last possible limiting-factor on love. 

And he had only just before this spoken of enemies, mind you.

Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! (verse 22)

And now he says:

But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. (verses 27. 28)

I think it's safe to say that Jesus calls his disciples to walk in love, period. Making no distinction, giving no thought to who is and isn't deserving, but simply maintaining an attitude of love in all one's interactions with others.

If you're like me, you can probably think of an example of your own failure to do this only yesterday (for instance). 

Let's step back for a moment. I said at the start that love was a central theme of the New Testament. One could marshal a long list of quotations to support that claim. But the problem is, we humans are damaged by sin, so that our ability to love in this New Testament way is effectively stymied. We may profess our undying allegiance to the concept, but in the act we fall woefully short. And this is not simply a failure to live up to an ideal, but a willful decision to avoid living up to it. If we are honest, we are all absolutely guilty of this.

Looming behind much of the Bible is an idea about what constitutes the good life. In fact, the good life is one way of describing the life of the kingdom of God. This idea has an eschatological aspect, and a real-time live-it-now aspect. That real-time aspect, people living the good life of Jesus in the here and now, is where we fall short, I'm afraid.

In real-time, people only love their friends, not their enemies, just as they do favors only for those from whom they can expect favors in return, or only lend to those who will be able to repay (I scratch your back, you scratch mine). Into such a world comes Jesus:

But love your enemies, and do good, expecting nothing in return, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. (Luke 6:35)

This is so not going to happen! And yet, it is the standard to which Jesus calls his disciples. If we too are disciples, this must be reckoned with. We can't talk our way around it with theological qualifiers and yes-buts. If we are hearing the words of Jesus, this is where we stand, under this call, and not only feeling inadequate to answer, but unwilling as well. 

This is not meant to be a comfortably self-satisfied moment for us. All we can do at this point is follow on, hoping that Jesus can somehow enable us to do what we cannot do in our own nature. Here on the Level Place, we are beginners. We say, this is hard Jesus. I don't know if I can do it. But to whom shall I go, other than to you, Jesus, for truth and life? Lead on.

The Sermon on the Level Place (5): Loving Your Enemies

Christianity is not a moral system, a plan for being good so that we can win the prize of heaven, but it should come as no surprise that many people do seem to think that's exactly what it is. That's how we (we Christians) talk about it among ourselves and often how we preach about it. In other words, though it's a mistaken notion, it's one that we ourselves are responsible for.

In our walk through the Sermon on the Level Place we come now to a set of imperatives that follow from the Blessings and Woes of the previous section. One may sum it all up this way: "Given what I've just told you, love your enemies."

Now there's a hard-to-obey imperative for you! We Christians have a couple of strategies for dealing with these difficult imperatives of Jesus. First choice: ignore them completely, and if someone brings them up, forget about it s soon as you can. Second choice: figure out a theological explanation for why we don't really have to obey the imperative at all (which simply provides a rationalization for Choice 1).

Let's get to the passage. Jesus has just been speaking of the kingdom of God. This "kingdom" is in fact the subject of all his early teaching. The reign of God has entered into the old order of things. It's a kind of new reality wherein you are likely to see the poor and the weeping and the hungry filled with joy, even though this very reality, this blessing, also sets them on a path toward persecution.

I tend to use the word that Jesus used for this new reality, kingdom, but admittedly that is a somewhat problematic word in our time. Michael Frost explains the term nicely here. Brian McLaren calls it "the ecosystem of God." And then there's N. T. Wright's explanation of the term:

The phrase "the kingdom of God" translates out as "how God is now taking charge of the world."

You can fill a whole library with books on this subject, but Jesus didn't provide a reading-list to his followers, he simply spoke of this "new reality," announced it and told stories about it. And it is in the context of this new reality that we set his many imperatives (how to live). We see that clearly in the 4th and final beatitude (Luke 6:22-23):

Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.

See that imperative? "Rejoice!" And see on what it is based? In following Jesus, you have joined in a heavenly project that the prophets of old were also a part of.  You're a part of God's kingdom project! 

All this is the "given" behind the imperatives (I would venture to say, all the imperatives) of Jesus. In other words, the command of Jesus follows from and is rooted in the new reality that he has announced.  To attempt to obey the command apart from that reality is simply to engage in a particularly fruitless kinds of moralism.

And so let's at last take a look at the "love your enemies" passage (Luke 6:27-31):

But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.

First, note that the enemiles of which Jesus speaks are the enemies of the kingdom. Those who are being hated and  reviled (6:22) are being hated and reviled "because of the Son of Man!" In other words, they are hated because they follow Jesus. Because they are a part of God's new kingdom reality. Those who are treating the Jesus followers with such disdain are enemies of that kingdom. 

These are the enemies that Jesus is talking about when he says, "Love your enemies." In other words, their is a power struggle going on between God's kingdom and the kingdoms (the power centers) of this world. And if you opt in for Jesus, you become a part of that struggle. The other side is going to hate and exclude and revile you, abuse you, steal from you, and perhaps even kill you in the end. Love them anyway. Remember, your reward is great in heaven!

Note: the call of Jesus on our lives as Jesus-followers is to love people. Everybody. But here he is speaking specifically about those whom it is not only hard to love, but who don't seem to deserve it. The very enemies of Jesus and his message! But Jesus is not talking about deserving, or about your carefully calibrated measurement as to who should and shouldn't be loved. You can just toss those calibrations in the trash where they belong!

So far in this "sermon on the level place" we have had two imperatives:

1. Rejoice when people persecute you because of Jesus.
2. Love those who are doing the persecuting.

But please note: you are simply not in this picture if you are not following Jesus. God is on the move, his reign and rule is becoming manifest, and the powers of this world are reacting with enmity. If you belong to Jesus, the kingdom bringer, then rejoice, because great things are afoot, eternal things. Given this, walk in love.

This is one of those passages that leads into the deep things of God. I have done less than scratch the surface here, but I simply want to make a couple of points. First, put away notions of proving yourself to God by obedience to this commandment. One never loves to prove something, to get something back. That's calculation, not love. It will come to nothing.

Second, if you are a Jesus follower, you are blessed no matter how faulty and apparently inadequate all your following is. But just remember: Jesus is a teacher, and you are his student. Learning is a process. Learn at his feet, contemplate his words, and gradually get it deep in your knower that with Jesus the plan of God for his whole creation has been set in motion. This is nothing less that re-creation, and Jesus is at the center of it all. You're also blessed to be included in this. You're blessed to be excluded by those who like the ecosystem of this world as it is. So love the excluders, because come what may, you're blessed anyway.

The Sermon on the Level Place (4)

 So after Jesus introduces his sermon with the four blessing statements, he follows up with four parallel woe statements. His blessings, you may recall, were both counter-intuitive and foundational to understanding what it means to follow Jesus.

Before moving on to the woes, I want to emphasize that last point one more time. These "beatitudes" are not merely meant to be a collection of reassurances when you're feeling down, but the starting point of understanding what Jesus, with his arrival on the scene, was inaugurating: a new community of Jesus-followers, assured of their destiny despite appearances, and heedless of the world's disdain. [See Post 1, Post 2, Post 3]

The woe-statements, as I've mentioned, are parallels to the blessing-statements. So, whereas the poor are blessed, the rich have only woe to look forward to. Though the the hungry are blessed, the well-fed will one day hunger. And though the weeping are blessed, those who laugh will one day weep. Let's juxtapose these parallel statements so as to see their relationship.

• Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
• Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.
• Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied.
• Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry.
• Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.
• Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.

And finally:

• Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.
• Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.

Remember, Jesus is a teacher, and he is setting out to teach those people who have come to him from far and wide. The healing that many of them received from the hand of Jesus is an indication of his power (and of his identity). He refers to himself in this passage as the "son of Man," a clear echo of Daniel 7:13-14.

. . . and behold, with the  clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days. . . . and to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom. . . .

For our purposes, we must keep in mind that Jesus has been preaching that a kind of new reality had arrived with his own arrival. He called this "the good news of the kingdom of God." [Luke 4:43]

This "kingdom" is at cross-purposes with the powers of this world. This world's poor, hungry, and weeping are those for whom the kingdom is "good news." For those, on the other hand, who have triumphed in this world, who are rich and well-fed and full of laughter, there is nothing more for them in the world to come, where God's reign is complete. They have no part in it. 

There are strong echoes of this message throughout the New Testament. It is a big part of what we call the Good News. At the start of Jesus' ministry he proclaimed this news (Luke 4:18-19), and here as the prelude to his first extended classroom session, he demonstrates its reality by miraculously healing many.

So this new thing, this kingdom, he teaches his followers, is good news for those whom this world's kingdoms have left behind, but it is bad news for those who are satisfied with this world's kingdoms. Those who don't even perceive their need for a cure will simply not receive it.

Jesus is not pulling his punches: if you follow me, he seems to say, you are blessed, and the kingdom of God is for you, but bear in mind that all the rival kingdoms of this world will see you as a traitor. Such was the fate of the prophets, and such may well be yours. If so, rejoice. The kingdom of God is yours.

But as for the comfortable in this world, the self-reliant and well-situated, the winners, the first-in-line, for these folk the good news is bad news. They will reject it, for by their lights, by their system of values, it rejects their status, it robs them of their hard-earned glory, and it makes nothing of all their supposed merit. Why should they take up with such losers?

But as for the needy ones who have followed Jesus this far, they are becoming something more than receivers of mercy and healing (as great as that must have been). Sitting at the feet of the Teacher, they are becoming disciples. They are learning the new way that Jesus in his ministry teaches so consistently. They will learn and internalize the teaching of Jesus, and begin in a sometimes halting and imperfect way to walk it out. There is no place in the Gospel account for those who only come for the healing miracle but do not stay for the teaching. Such a one would not truly be a follower of Jesus at all, and that in the end is the purpose of this sermon: to make disciples.

The Sermon on the Level Place (3)

We've been talking about the beatitudes of Jesus as recorded by Luke in the Sermon on the Level Place. After healing many people, Jesus began his sermon with these announcements:

Blessed are the poor, for the kingdom of God belongs to them. Blessed are the hungry, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the weeping, for they shall laugh.

As we noted in the last entry in this series, the kingdom of God is a kind of key to understanding the whole sermon. The miracles of Jesus act as a sign that this kingdom, this reign of God, has entered into our earthly reality. And Jesus is announcing here just who this kingdom is for . . . the poor, the hungry, the weeping.

But then Jesus adds one more "blessed are" statement, and it's not at all like the first three. 

Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets. [Luke 6:22-23]

Jesus is describing a condition of conflict for the kingdom of God. God's reign is here, but it has come into a world of competing kingdoms, a world in conflict with God and his reign. While, for those to whom the kingdom of God belongs there will be an end to hunger and weeping and the helplessness of poverty, these things Jesus states as fact, there will also be hatred, rejection, and even death.

Jesus is not sugar-coating the truth here (he never does that). Up until this moment, the kingdoms of this world have had their way, but in Jesus they recognize their true enemy. The reign of God is not simply one kingdom co-existing among many. The maker of all things has set in motion an invasion plan. Jesus' arrival on the scene will stir up resistance among that those who want to continue with things-as-they-are. The whole New Testament can be seen as the story of kingdoms in conflict.

And this is why the people who are "blessed" shall also be reviled. But God's blessing is greater than the world's reviling. Rejoice, Jesus says, for they did the same thing to the prophets before you. You're on the right path.

If you read any of the four Gospel accounts you will see this reviling take place. It starts as a series of complaints from the religious authorities of the day, and end with a collusion between these authorities and the state, an alliance of convenience working together to have Jesus executed. At that time, many of the followers of Jesus, in fear for their own lives, either run and hide or join in the reviling.

Jesus is laying his cards on the table. He has come to enact God's reign in the world, to make it available. It means, ultimately, satisfaction and joy for those who so far in this life may have very little experience of such, but it also means, as we will see, following Jesus. This includes learning from him, experiencing the transformation that comes to those who allign themselves with Truth, but also meeting resistance, bearing up under scoffing, and quite possibly being killed. Jesus says, expect conflict, and rejoice!

* * *

A note: My method here, if I have one at all, is to restate what the text says, focusing on brief passages at a time, and trying to be careful not to import any meaning into the text from outside. That means I'll probably not be particularly original or wildly insightful. I'm just trying to see the text clearly and deal with what it says, not what I wish it would say, or not what it says plus something new and shiny. I consider it an exercise in simple straightforward reading, which where the Bible is concerned is not as common as you might think.

The Sermon on the Level Place (2)

 In the first installment of this series I mentioned that the Sermon takes place in the context of the miraculous. Jesus has gathered a large crowd, no doubt many of them troubled and needy in various ways, and Luke tells us that he healed many, for "power went out from him." We can only imagine what that must have been like, but it reminds me of another story: when the woman with a 12-year bleeding disorder presses through the crowd surrounding Jesus and simply touched his cloak and is healed. [Mark 5:25-34]

At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, "Who touched my clothes?" 

The woman answers, trembling, that it was her. And Jesus responds:

"Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering." 

Now we see one potential parallel between these two Jesus stories. The woman who sought to touch Jesus' garment and the crowds surrounding Jesus in the Luke passage both received healing when power goes out from Jesus. Only in the case of the woman we have a single isolated incident, and in the case of the crowds we have, apparently, many.

My point is to emphasize that as Jesus' sermon begins with these miraculous events having just happened, and it is in this context that he opens his sermon with several startling declarations. 

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 

Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. 

Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.

 A few things worth noting. First, the people to whom Jesus is speaking are, many of them, the poor, the hungry, and the weeping. We see this phenomenon time and again. The people who come to Jesus are the needy ones. 

Second, Jesus' great theme throughout his early ministry is the presence of, the availability of, the kingdom of God. This is his great overarching message, and here in the Sermon on the Level Place he gets right to it. I am not going to detour into an explanation of this concept here, but suffice to say that God's reign, God's Lordship, is available, Jesus says, to the poor. Not only available to them, but it "belongs" to them. And Jesus follows by saying, in essence, that when God reigns, the hungry are satisfied and weeping turns to laughter. 

Needless to say, but the poor, the hungry, and the weeping are not normally considered blessed, and they might even scoff at such language under normal circumstances, but they have just seen, time and again, power go out from Jesus and heal many of their number. Jesus is now explaining how that could possibly be. As he says often in other settings, "The kingdom of God is among you."

So I just want to emphasize that the kingdom of God is sort of a controlling idea, the key to explaining what has happened, and the key to understanding what Jesus will now teach in the Sermon. We do not understand Jesus at all if we do not understand this idea, this thing, the kingdom of God.

A final point. We should not spiritualize these "blessed are" statements in order to explain them away or make them less shocking. Jesus doesn't say "blessed are those who are poor in spirit," as he does in Matthew's Sermon on the Mount. He does not, here in this context, speak of hunger for righteousness or mourning over sin. All we have here are these three simple descriptors: poor, hungry, weeping.

There is much more to be said than this, but not less: Jesus has come for the troubled, the needy, the wanting, the hurting, the wounded, the starving, the broken, the sad. Many chapters of the four Gospels seem to make this point emphatically. This is a fundamental point that we should always remember, and when we speak about Jesus to others, we should not forget to mention. This, in fact, is a very good place to start.

The Sermon on the Level Place (1)

 I haven't been reading the Bible much lately. As any ordinary Christian will tell you, that's not a good thing. After many years of reading and studying the Word, I just seemed to grow tired of it. I decided to take a break, and that "break" has lasted for quite a while, but now I think it's time to end the Bible-abstinence. 

Where to start? After a couple of fitful stabs, I've settled on the "sermon" of Jesus recorded in Luke's account, beginning in chapter 6, verse 20. This is Luke's version of the more familiar "Sermon on the Mount" found in Matthew's Gospel. Here in Luke it is more aptly called the "Sermom on the Level Place" [see verse 17].

Jesus has gathered a huge following from all around Judea. He has healed many. On this particular occasion, according to Luke, "all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came out from him and healed them all."

That power is the background of this sermon. The sermon actually derives its relevance and believability from this demonstrable evidence of supernatural power. Apart from this backdrop of the miraculous, this sermon is downright nonsense. 

That's because Jesus says the most remarkable and counterintuitive things here. And he starts out with some of the most counterintuitive statements of them all.

And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples and said, "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh." [Luke 6:20-21]

I'm going to leave that there and come back to it tomorrow (or whenever I get to it). This would be a good time for anyone reading these words to marinate on these two verses. They will be a balm to your soul.