February 17, 2019 - Sixth Sunday after Epiphany - Jesus is for Losers / Coming to Terms With What We Can Lose

Photo by Debi Stromberg

Today was Youth Sunday. The youth volunteered for the service work and led the congregation in music. I appreciated watching from the congregation's view. Ari did great work as Assisting Minister. There was an energy to her Prayers of the People. The youth performed their glocal music and the congregation felt particularly powerful in the delivery of the African and American Liturgy.

"Jesus is for losers." Pastor Ray stated this in his sermon today and this directly addressed the feeling I have struggled with for weeks. Today's Gospel addresses that feeling as well. The emotion I feel is a mixed sense of humility and knowing life's transformation happens from something more than displaying individual humility alone.

Rather than Matthew's Sermon on the Mount today's reading is Luke's Sermon on the Plain. Pastor Ray preached about how easy it can be, and the disservice we make, to read the Sermon on the Plain through the lens of the Sermon on the Mount. For people at Creator reading “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." or "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled." is comforting because we can be included among the blessed.

At least on a cursory reading, the Sermon on the Plain eliminates that comfort and inclusion unless we attempt to relate it back to the sermon in Matthew. The blessed appear to be only those who are economic losers and those who are literally hungry. If these are, indeed, the true conditions Jesus is addressing in his sermon no one in worship today at Creator is among the blessed. Being blessed like this is not what humanity is striving for either. Jesus has flipped the "winners" and "losers" in life. Our perspective is totally changed.

If Jesus was a champion for the economic losers and those who are literally hungry, the Sermon on the Mount can be read as an example of accommodation or adjustment which allows most Christians who take scripture to heart, to better relate to the story of Jesus.  Another example of this exists in the art of the church. In particular the art that portrays Jesus with Western European features and skin color. Relating to a Jesus who does not look like they do can be uncomfortable to many Christians.

I ended last week's post with Bishop Eaton's question "What is God up to?" in the church today. The Sermon on the Plain offers not only a different perspective than the Sermon on the Mount in words, but also in how Jesus related to his followers in our world. The Sermon on the Mount presentation comes from a God on high. This is becomes another Moses and the Ten Commandments moment. God's communicates the law or blessings from a mountaintop. God is separate from, and looks down on, the people.

The Sermon on the Plain stands in stark contrast. God, as Jesus, comes down among the people. God as King. Instead of looking down, verse 20 specifically reads "Jesus looked up at his disciples and said". This comes from the tradition of the good news where Jesus is Emanuel "God with us".

There is a strength in both perspectives. Both viewpoints have scriptural foundations and both are necessary for a strong church. The times can call for the right balance between the two. Historically the church, after 1000 CE, successfully adopted the Sermon on the Mount way of looking at God far more than the Sermon on the Plain viewpoint. The Luke-Acts narrative, beyond the Sermon on the Plain, also provides the account of the Ascension of Jesus which "moves" the resurrected Jesus to where God supposedly resides. As a result, people look to a Jesus above us far more naturally than a Jesus among us. Even the physical moment of ascension people would naturally tend to focus upward and "star gaze". We like our stars and prefer looking to one savior rather than looking to the body of Christ as it existed after the ascension and exists today to bring about the kingdom of God.

I recognized myself at the end of the podcast as mostly being a star gazer. My vision of the Ascension, as just described, attests to my star gazing. My mind's eye attempted to look only to the physical body of Jesus in the sky and not to the body of Christ on earth.

The first 1,000 years of Christianity, in contrast, was actually marked much more with the idea of the earth being the primary location of divine presence. Churches were built as domes. The whole architectural vision at that time was that the dome of heaven rested right here on earth. Then Western architecture came to adopt the steeple. The steeple stands like an elevator shaft up to sky. God’s way up there and people are way down here. The trick is to figure out how to ride that elevator right up into heaven or how we can buy ourselves a stairway to heaven.

Part of the church thrives on some vision that we can have a mountaintop perspective and participate in the privilege of being above those who are served. This is the way of the world. The Sermon on the Plain advocates for a different frame of reference. This frame is found throughout the New Testament. If the mountaintop perspective and privilege persists as our mindset I believe that is where the condition of woe is found. Where the consolation is received that does not last, or that someone is full now but will later be hungry.

An extreme Sermon on the Mount church, rather than experiencing God among us, appeals instead, to an Old Testament understanding of God. The sense of being the body of Christ is not there. Our relationship with the poor and hungry becomes our way of appeasing a God who judges us. This God, who exists above us, laid down the law and gave out rules and labels for us to try to live up to. Then God judges our actions, our faith, our being to punish or reward us accordingly.

Jesus provided m a new understanding of God. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible, "You do not have to go on lying to yourself and to other Christians as if you were without sin . You are allowed to be a sinner. Thank God for that." This is truly part of the Good News proclaimed in the Gospels.

I find Creator constantly struggling to become more of a Sermon on the Plain church. What is a Sermon on the Plain church? In my mind, this church is the living, breathing, organic body of Christ, animated by the power of the Holy Spirit, and moving towards the original intent of God for all of creation, which is compassion. A Sermon on the Plain church moves from understanding itself as God's institutional hierarchy on earth, to providing  a different model for community life.

Art by Scott Erickson

At times we are tempted individually and collectively to swing further to the Sermon on the Mount perspective in our actions. This temptation can present itself as a call to purity. We feel chosen, set apart and imagine we are better than those whom we called to serve in God's eyes. This mountaintop perspective is seducing. We can see our church as shell that protects us. Unfortunately way of thinking may leave us acting only from the church's institutional power, a power that does not contain the sacred intention we could embody. It can lead us to envision our church as needing protection from the world and from inevitable change.

What is odd is that we can convince ourselves that this struggle for purity is an exclusive path to holiness. Yet I know the holy moments I have experienced never came from that feeling of being chosen or as a reward for my efforts to help others alone. Holiness, for me, comes in the collective moments of connection. In collective joy. In moments of humility when praying to the God among us to be merciful.

Today's Hymn of the Day was Blest Are They. The words apply to the subject of this post and may be sung with a completely exclusive personal understanding of being blest to an all-inclusive prayer that affirms all of humankind is blessed, depending what the you is that we hold in our hearts as we sing.

"Rejoice and be glad! Blessed are you, holy are you. Yours is the kingdom of God."

I know I have sung it with both exclusively and all-affirming in my heart at one time or another. A church that journeys to become a Sermon on the Plain church prays for faith and the trust of knowing that we are all allowed to be sinful as we continue with our individual and corporate struggles with true awareness of the body of Christ as it can exist.