Luke 6:17-26
“Tipping the Scales”
February 17, 2019
My mom was the queen of fairness when we were growing up. I’m not sure if it was deeply ingrained in her as a child or whether it came out of necessity in an effort to maintain her sanity while raising seven children. The memory of her counting out the exact same number of cookies for our school lunches, or making sure everyone got exactly the same size scoop of Jell-O or pudding for dessert is etched deep within me. This approach cut out a whole bunch of whining on the part of us kids – well, at least the whining that was aimed at changing her mind – but it meant that most of us tried to find ways to get just a little bit more when she wasn’t looking or sometimes less when it came to peas or other vegetables we didn’t like. Inevitably at some point, one of my brothers would sneak a cookie or two or try to hide their peas under the lip of the dinner plate and then very efficiently get rid of the evidence during the clearing of the table. Eventually my mom rubbed off on us and we all became little princes and princesses of fairness, hastily being sure to tell mom or dad about the rule breaker and with great flourish because the injustice of trying to have more – or less in the case of vegetables – made us into enforcers of fairness so much so that eventually we took up much of the job for our parents.
Jesus is speaking here not from on high, like in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, but rather standing with the people, on their level – not separating himself but becoming truly one of them. His leadership has not been conferred on him because of his power but rather because he led with such compassion as to be empowered. He is surrounded by people who have nothing to give him except devotion and enthusiasm and he is expecting nothing more. They have come as they are and that is enough.
This Sermon on the Plain is intended to be a great leveler. It is saying that God’s way doesn’t glorify wealth and possessions. It is intended to lift up the lowly and lower the rich and haughty and this is really hard to hear. When most of us think of what’s “fair” for us – fairness in access to education or jobs, for example, we think that we all should be treated the same. The problem with this thinking is it forgets that everyone doesn’t start from the same place. If life and its opportunities are viewed as a baseball game, a whole swath of us didn’t start at home base but rather second or third base.
Here Jesus is saying in the early stage of his public ministry that God’s kingdom operates from a different place than earthly values. He is pointing out that those with more – food, money, titles – are not to be glorified. Our aspiration in life is not to have more than others. What Jesus is ushering in is a reign of generosity which says that God’s abundance and our seeming obsession with excess are in conflict. What this Sermon that balances Beatitudes or Blessings with Woes is pointing to is a world view where there is to be an evenness of perspective. So much of our culture tries to get us to see the view from above looking down and declaring, “Isn’t the view better from here” which then means there have to be those who are below and looking up and thinking they are less valued or important. To insist, as Jesus does, that grace and God’s love are the great equalizers is to say there is enough for all of us but this doesn’t work if we place too much importance on the scarcity model which says more for you means less for me. Part of the disconnect that makes Jesus’ economy hard to hear about and even harder to live could partially come from its roots in the ancient Mediterranean world where power was how you ultimately got wealthy in contrast to our modern Western world where wealth buys you power.
What would living a life where we wanted less for ourselves and more for those with less look like? How would the message we pass onto our children and grandchildren about aspiration and happiness sound different? What if we devoted our energy to seeking out opportunities where we could share of our abundance in such a way as not to call it “charity” which implies a one-shot effort to throw money or goods at a problem without any hope of reconciling the disparity between those who have and those who do not?
Jesus is talking about feeding and caring for the poor as an assumed part of what it means to live into God’s reign. Jesus cares deeply for the poor as he demonstrates over and over again.
This week I heard the story of four women volunteers – Natalie, Oona, Madeline and Zaachila who a year and a half ago drove into the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona and left jugs of water and canned food for migrants as part of an interfaith humanitarian group called No More Deaths that has the simple goal of preventing migrants from dying in the desert. A U.S. Border Patrol officer cited them for entering the wildlife refuge without a permit and “abandonment of property” for leaving the lifesaving items. The women’s religious convictions were cited in court but all four were convicted last month and are facing up to six months in prison and there are 5 more No More Death volunteers who are about to go on trial for the same thing. If we are to value the level nature of Jesus’ message, then these lives are worth saving. Jesus blesses those who the rest of the world curses. That includes the ones with no jobs, no money, no permanent housing, and the oppressed ones. The balancing act that Jesus also offers in this Sermon on the Plain are the woes – woe to the rich, the full, those who laugh and those of whom others speak well. This is the part that is the great leveler that Matthew having Jesus speaking from a mountain doesn’t add.
We try to constantly find ourselves and our lives in Jesus’ stories. We who have much in comparison to those with so little – what are we doing to bring more equity to bear to our hurting world? How do we stop looking down from above with pity on those with less and stop admiring with envy those with more and instead look across the room, across our community, and across our world and see our equals in God’s eyes? How do we as church use what we have to bring such equity to bear? Does all this seem dreamlike, somehow not in touch with reality? Wasn’t that Jesus’ purpose – to offer us a view of what might be that we could be part of bringing into existence? Maybe we could share in this dream that Archbishop Desmond Tutu envisioned when he wrote:
“I have a dream, God says. Please help Me to realize it. It is a dream of a world whose ugliness and squalor and poverty, its war and hostility, its greed and harsh competitiveness, its alienation and disharmony are changed into their glorious counterparts, when there will be more laughter, joy, and peace, where there will be justice and goodness and compassion and love and caring and sharing. I have a dream that swords will be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, that My children will know that they are members of one family, the human family, God’s family, My family. (God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope of Our Time)
Amen.