Calvary Episcopal Church
Memphis, Tennessee
February 15 , 2004
The Sixth Sunday After the Epiphany

Jesus on the Level
The Rev. George S. Yandell

The First Reading: Jeremiah 17:5-10
Gospel:Luke 6:17-26
(This sermon is also available in audio)

Each major faith group has core teachings that tell its story. For the Hebrew people, the passage from Jeremiah could sum up their belief system: “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord.” Of the core teachings of Jesus, the gospel reading for today sure is a humdinger. This passage flows out of Jeremiah’s prophecy almost 650 years prior. We often call this passage ‘The Beatitudes.’ If you want to live fully as a Christian, all you need do is apply the Beatitudes in every moment of your life, and heaven belongs to you now. That could mark the end of the sermon.

The word ‘beatitude’ derives from a Latin word, beatitudo. It means ‘supreme blessedness, exalted happiness’. In reading today’s lesson, we miss the extreme joy Jesus suggests in our word, ‘blessed,’ which can be an archaic term to us. The Jesus Seminar suggests a more apt translation for us- “Congratulations!” with an exclamation point. Please read along as I substitute alternatives:

Congratulations, all you poor! God’s domain belongs to you.
Congratulations, all you hungry! You will have a feast.
Congratulations, all you who weep now! You will laugh.
Congratulations to you all when people hate you, and when they ostracize you and denounce you and scorn your name as evil, because of the son of Adam!
Rejoice on that day, and jump for joy! Just remember, your compensation is great in heaven. Recall that their ancestors treated the prophets the same way.

Do you hear how wild this teaching is? It upsets the world order now, as it did for all who heard it in Judea in 27 C.E. Three main points confront me like a smack in the face: Jesus says first, the poor, plural, as a group, because they are poor, no other reason, live in heaven now. Second, those who hunger will have a banquet with God. And third, persecution goes hand in hand with prophesying and working for justice. The persecuted live in heaven now.

Jesus lived God’s love so joyfully, so wildly, that he could say it simply—‘This is just how it works’. He turned the tables on the self-sufficient, congratulating and hugging those no one else will touch. They are the ones God cares about. They’re the ones God wants to feast with. The poor, the hungry, the persecuted, make a community which live in God’s domain now.

What does this mean for us? Well, judging from what Jesus said, the invitation list God keeps for that feast is pretty exclusive. Frankly, I think most of us miss the joy of heaven now because of our satiation, and our wealth. It’s like we’ve gotten used to left-overs.

For us Christians today, living humbly, being poor, means paring away all the unnecessary stuff we’ve accreted. It means living happily with less. If the word of Jesus is so powerful, so filled with eternal truth, so joyful and lively, why does it have so little apparent impact on our behavior? Because it’s tough to shed, to pare away, to reject all that distracts us from loving God simply.

We especially need to know that the first ‘Congratulation’ was not a call to be nice to the less fortunate. It was a description of reality. Until we are broken, and share with all those other broken ones in community concern, God cannot mend us. Until we suffer, and bare the sufferings of all those other broken ones as neighbors, God cannot mend us.

Until we gag on food of our own, God cannot feed us. Until we exhaust our own resources, we cannot understand what Jesus said in his sermon on the level place. Until we become poor--not just through spiritual discipline, but broken, shattered, disgraced through pride; then letting go of all that makes us prideful--we cannot hear the prophet’s voice which calls to us across the ages: “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord.”

There is a tradition in Japan that, when a beautiful piece of pottery is broken, the person who mends it adds gold to the glue, embellishing and highlighting the path of the break, thereby adding to the beauty and true value of the piece. Evidently there are several words for this: anagama, kitsungi or shibui. I believe there are three names for this process because the idea is beautiful and wonderful. The spiritual equivalent to the Japanese process of embellishment is the acknowledgment of our frailty and brokenness.

Krister Stendahl said that wherever the brokenness of the world is being mended, there is present the kingdom of God. Every Sunday we kneel and confess our sins. Visitors to Episcopal Churches often comment it’s strange for all the worshippers to hit the deck and confess their shortcomings to God and one another. When we do kneel, confess and receive God’s absolution, I think we are very like those disciples Jesus loved and congratulated. I suspect Jesus could perceive the kingdom of heaven breaking into the midst of those poor and hungry folk almost like seams of gold knitting them back whole. A weld is stronger than the intact pieces of pipe mated by the weld. A bone once broken and healed is usually stronger than the unbroken bone around it. Those who say humbly to God, “We’re lost, we’re incomplete, there are holes in our souls,” they find richness in God’s healing presence now. When a community of God-seekers holds each other accountable for healing and reconciliation, God is intimately present. The seams of heaven break through when we gather. We become healers for each other and God’s world. We witness God’s domain coming into our midst. We see God’s face in our companions. There’s hope for all of us.

A good friend in recovery told me a true story recently that sums up this vision of Church. There was a young woman caught in the throes of addiction. She attended her first twelve-step meeting and afterwards sat off to herself, in tears, just sobbing quietly. At that point an older woman with some decades in recovery came and sat down beside her. She put an arm around the young woman and said, “Stay. Stay and let us love you until you can come to love yourself.” That’s the essence of the beatitudes for Calvary church, I think. Stay. Let us love one another until we can come to love ourselves. In the community here, the brokenness of our hearts and of the world is being healed. The church’s job is to dispense the blessing Jesus gives. We just need to love, to live gently, allowing God to walk with us, asking God to heal us individually and in our midst. That’s the most joyful message I know.

Copyright 2004 Calvary Episcopal Church

The First Reading: Jeremiah 17:5-10
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. They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land. Blessed are those who trust in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit. The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse--who can understand it? I the LORD test the mind and
search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings. NRSV

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Gospel: Luke 6:17-26
He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and
healed all of them. Then he looked up at 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 will be filled. "Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. "Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you,
and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. "But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. "Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. "Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. "Woe to you when all
speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets. NRSV

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