Listen to the Sermon.
We are back with Jesus on the Plain, as we were last week. One thing I’ve noticed about being in the middle of a crowd, when you’ll all on the same level, it’s hard to see much beyond the first couple of rows of faces in the crowd. Jesus is face to face with a crowd of disciples who have come to be healed and to hear him teach. He is IN the crowd, in relationship with the people by sheer proximity. Seeing faces and body language and no perspective on how far the mass of people stretches, smelling food and other odors of humanity, hearing whimpers of babies and groans of aching old people, being touched by everyone who came for healing. Knowing deep needs, fears and desires of humanity, Jesus has just offered a set of blessings and woes that exhort the gathered crowd to live with humility and generosity.
In this next section of the sermon, he talks in more specifics about how we live with our selves, and our motivations for how we relate to our co-human beings - particularly those we don’t like or who seem to stand against us or our values. In a nutshell, he says, “love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return” (Luke 6:35a).
David Lose, a Lutheran pastor whose theological musings I follow, offers three ways we often hear this portion of Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain [1]. The first is as prescribing a fairly impossible way to live and thus forcing us to admit our sinfulness or brokenness, and turn to God’s mercy and grace. The second possibility is that we hear it as a naive dream from someone who really doesn’t live in the reality of this competitive, chaotic world. The third possibility is that we hear it as a list of things we think we do really well, and others need to live up to the same standards.
When we see these commands as humanly impossible, naively utopian, or as rules to self-righteously enforce on others, we use them as ways of dismissing and de-valuing the deep and life-changing work Jesus asks us to do.
What if Jesus’ message is about nothing more than loving our neighbor as ourself? About treating others as we want to be treated. About forgiving those who hurt us instead of seeking violence against them. About forgiving ourselves for hurting those we love - and asking forgiveness from God and from those we have harmed.
What if, instead of a set of rules for living within our media-defined culture, Jesus is defining a whole other way to live? A Way defined by love instead of violence or competition for falsely scarce resources?
So we have this invitation, which, like any of Jesus’ invitations is about Love (capital L) that begets Love, and leads to relationships founded in and overflowing with Love - for one another, for self, for the world and all creation, and for God. Sweet to say and think about. Incredibly difficult to live into all the time in our thoughts, in our hearts, in our words and relationships.
If Jesus says this is possible, maybe we should TRY living it. But where and how do we start?
How to integrate new spiritual ideas and practices is not a new question for disciples. In the 6th century, St. Benedict established a Rule of Life for religious communities that is still used today. The Benedictine Rule offers us a framework to understand how to process new information into our lives - personally and as a community. The Rule embraces three key values: stability, obedience, and conversion of life. [2]
Stability involves finding God in our current situation. Not looking for God in the next thing that might be coming our way, but finding God in our lives as they are HERE and NOW. We could call this an attitude of gratitude - finding and naming God’s presence with us in this very moment, in times of joy and sorrow, unknowing and fear.
When we know God’s abiding presence with us, we live with a sense of calm. Rooted in the knowledge that God is with us, in the life we have today, we are ready to move to Obedience.
Obedience, in this case, is about deep listening, with an ear to responding. The kind of listening that focuses our heart, our mind and body. Listening that happens through conversation with friends and community about possibilities, gifts and strengths. Conversation with God, through silence, and scripture. Listening for what God is pushing, nudging, whispering, inviting us to do and become and try.
Open-hearted and listening, we move to Conversion of Life.
In Conversion of Life, we seek new life in Christ by trying something new. We expect that faithful new adventures will bear fruit, will engage us more deeply with whatever God is calling us into. Living into the questions and possibilities, growing and becoming in God’s image, will change and transform us, and the world around us.
Conversion of Life gives us practice seeking new life in Christ. After we practice something new for awhile, it becomes part of us. Then we come to a place of Stability, noticing and naming God working among and through us. And we begin the cycle again.
Like yoga and meditation and all practices that stretch and strengthen us, these values all require practice to become deeper, more intuitive, more naturally part of our habit of life.
This cycle of listening, living, and learning, is the kind of discernment we do all our lives as disciples trying to live faithfully through the ups and downs of life. Like when we hope for good news about a job interview, or when we hear a troubling health diagnosis, or when some violence happens that makes us feel vulnerable. How do we process that kind of information, or those situations?
We start with stability, because it’s where we’ve been. Where or how is God present in our lives, here and now? Then listening, with an ear for action, but listening first - to friends, to experts, to our own hearts and emotions, to how our bodies feel, to God in quiet time, nature, or scripture. When some action that feels true for us begins to emerge from the listening, then we decide to live in that new way. Expecting that living faithfully will reveal new life, a new understanding of God’s presence in our lives.
We use this same cycle of discernment in Christian community. It’s the process the diocese is using for discernment about Bishop Greg’s tenure. It’s the process we use here at St Hilda St Patrick - though maybe not so consciously - when we live through a change in clergy leadership, or in trying a new program, or moving the location of announcements in worship.
At Coffee Hour today, we will be listening - to God and to one another - about how God is present in the announcements. We will be listening with an ear to possible actions we might take next to live more deeply into God’s call to us to share in spreading light to the world. I hope you will join us - it’s going to be more fun that it sounds, and your voice is important to our listening.
Back to Jesus, standing out there on the plain, face to face with a diverse crowd of eager, listening disciples. Like any parent or teacher, he wouldn’t need to give particular instructions about what to do or not to do if his listeners were already doing the right thing. In this case, the ‘right’ thing is loving one another. As our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry has said, “If it isn’t about love, then it’s not about God.”
If we hear Jesus’ message as a list of rules, then we will approach them with fear of breaking someone else’s rules, and a tendency to err on the side of caution. If we hear the message as an assurance of the stability of God’s love, overflowing and contagious, then we will find ourselves calmed and ready to listen. Our hearts and ears will be opened to God’s nudging into new ways of living together in love. The promise Jesus makes is that we will receive “A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back” (Luke 6:38b).
This week, I invite each of us to listen for God’s nudging invitation to us to do one of the things Jesus talks about. It could be loving someone we see as an enemy, or giving up judging other people, or trying really hard to treat others the way we want to be treated. Some of us may need to listen to our hearts and God about how to do this. Others of us may be at the stage of living in new ways - actually trying it out. Some may be at the point that we have tried something for awhile and it’s time to reflect on our learnings and God’s presence in that new way of living. Let me know how it goes, what you heard, or tried, or learned.
Let us pray.
God of kindness, interrupting our vicious cycles of resentment and revenge: teach us to walk the way of forgiveness beyond all accounting, and to love the gift that has no measure; through Jesus Christ, who died for all. Amen. [3]
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[1] Thanks to David Lose for articulating these ways we think about this passage, and for several other thoughts loosely incorporated here, found in “Epiphany 7C: Command or Promise?” on www.davidlose.net, accessed 23 February 2019.
[2] The Benedictine Rule summary taken from The College for Congregational Development Manual - Year B, Diocese of Olympia, 2018.
[3] Steven Shakespeare, Prayers for an Inclusive Church (New York: Church Publishing, 2009), Collect for Epiphany 7, Year C.
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