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July 13, 2003
Basic Consequences of Identifying with Jesus
Basic Consequences of Identifying with Jesus
Psalm 18: 1-19 / Genesis 50: 15-21
Luke 6: 22-23
July 13th, 2003 (Eucharist)
It’s good to be back in this pulpit that has been my home for so many years. And it’s good to be back in the thick of what Jesus taught us.
Always when I’m on leave from preaching I ask myself probing questions. Am I preaching what and as I should? Do we think about the kind of thing and live the kind of lives Jesus had in mind for His followers in the 21st century?
Back in May when I spoke at the weekend seminar on Church history for people preparing to be lay-pastors, we looked back and thought we saw many pivot moments when the Church got off track. Now I find myself wondering, where are we in Jesus’ scheme?
Now we’re trying to understand what Jesus taught in the “Sermon on the Plain,” Luke’s version of the “Sermon on the Mount”—that is the core of Jesus’ teaching.
This has sometimes been compared to Moses’ delivery of the Law of God after coming down from Mt. Sinai. Matthew tells us how Jesus received the information on the mountaintop. Luke tells us how Jesus delivered it when He came down from the mountaintop. Up there Jesus said, “Blessed are those who . . .” Down on the plain He personalized the message, “Blessed are you who.”
But there is a great difference between Moses’ giving of God’s Law, and Jesus’ explanation of God’s will for us. And it’s more than a matter of where the teaching took place.
Moses gave us a list of dos and don’ts, “Thou shalts and thou shalt nots.” He enforced them by fear of consequences for disobedience.
Jesus gave us a series of “blesseds.” We call them beatitudes. “Blessed are you poor. Blessed are you who hunger.”
Jesus did not command what to do with the same tone of voice Moses had. Jesus’ few commands are supported by “If you love me you will keep my commandments.” Jesus did command a few things: love one another as I have loved you; forgive each other, serve each other. But the Sermon on the Plain is not a list of commands.
Instead, He taught us that we are blessed when our hearts are in such and such a way. He taught the reformation of the heart by holding out before us carrots that are sweet. Moses wielded the stick of the law. Jesus lures with the carrot of grace. “You will be happy if this is what you are like inside.” Aha! We respond. I want to be happy. So we listen intently. Jesus quietly tells us, “Listen, examine yourselves, and then do.” His brother, James, wrote, “Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”
Jesus began, “You will be happy if you realize how poor you really are.” What a strange way to begin! But we think we are rich because we have lots of stuff. Material wealth is an idol of the American tribe. Jesus says, “Yeah, you have lots of stuff, but you’re poor. You’re rich when you know how poor you are. Your stuff enslaves you. You are captured by your property, by your stocks and jewelry, and cars. You worry about them. They dictate what you think. You are rich and happy if you realize you are poor. What you need is something God alone can give you and nobody can take away. You can’t buy it. You’re happy if you are poor.
Second, Jesus said, “You will be happy if you are hungry.” Every football coach tells his players, “You’ve got to stay hungry.” We know what he means. A team sitting on its laurels, content with its reputation, is headed for defeat. Jesus meant something like this when He said, “You will be happy if you are hungry.” Matthew tells us Jesus said it’s a hunger and thirst for righteousness that makes us happy. Righteousness is wholeness, a life filled with love for God and people. When you hunger and thirst for righteousness, then you’re happy. When you hunger for fame, or for fortune, or for power, or for sex, or for security, you will never be satisfied. But hunger and thirst for righteousness—ah, that’s the hunger that makes you happy. Oddly, Jesus tells us nothing about scrutinizing others. He says: you be poor and hungry.
I pray you are poor, knowing your great need for God. I pray that you are hungry, so that you still have an appetite for loving God and each other.
This morning we come to a beatitude harder to digest than the first two. “Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you [from the synagogue] and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, on account of the Son of man. Rejoice in that day and skip [for joy], for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.”
It’s hard to conceive of it as a happy turn of events when people hate you and revile you for any reason at all. We all want to be loved. You want people to affirm you. How can Jesus say, “You are blessed when people hate you and reject you for any reason at all?”
Jesus was not speaking about hatred that would come from bad people. He’s not talking about bigots—KKK types who hate blacks, Jews, and all who are different. Jesus was speaking about good people who said each morning and evening, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.” He was speaking of people who believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They loved Torah. They went to synagogue. They thought about the Bible a lot and did their best to live disciplined lives, obeying every implication of the Bible’s precepts they could think of. They thought they were doing right by treating Jesus’ followers badly. Because they are convinced that the Son of man was a blasphemer.
To be a follower of Jesus put you in the camp with those we think of as followers of Osama ben Laden. As our government goes to great lengths to ferret out any followers of ben Laden, so there were those Jesus’ immediate disciples faced who sought them out. When we meet the Apostle Paul in the Book of Acts, he is leading the charge against those detested followers of Jesus. He was on his way to Damascus to round them up and take them back to Jerusalem to face the music, in handcuffs and shackles.
Jesus said to this flock of folk gathered around Him, “You are blessed if this kind of people hate you on account of the Son of man.” Jesus was the Son of man. What was there about Jesus that made devout people hate Him, and hate people who followed Him?
It’s a good question. Part of the reason had to do with “religious theory.” Part of the reason had to do with the challenge of Jesus’ behavior.
Jesus was “theoretically wrong” by saying things that made Him equal with God the Father. He said, “My will is to do the will of Him that sent me.” “I and my Father are one.” “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” Face it, you and I would be suspicious of anyone who said this today. There is a TV preacher who comes out on the platform as the audience sings emotionally, “How great thou art.” And we are alarmed. It is not clear about whom they are singing. People sang of Jesus, “How Great Thou Art,” and it gave the religious leaders fits.
If Jesus was not equal to the Father, it was blasphemy. But Jesus demonstrated that there was something about Himself that was uncannily different from every other human being. Of Him, John would later write, “We beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” But the zealous religious leaders of Jesus’ day didn’t recognize this. So they targeted Him, and got Him crucified. And they treated Jesus’ followers as they treated Him.
The practical reason Jesus’ foes hated Him was that He kept the spirit of the Laws of Moses while showing their interpretation of the letter of the Law to be foolish. No one could doubt His love for God or neighbor. Common people flocked to Him. Sinner people flocked to Him. He was one with them, while He was not one of them. He raised sinners from their destructive way of life. He gave dignity to common people. But what was infuriating was what He did with the traditions of religious people. Jesus demonstrated that their fastidiously worked out Sabbath-keeping rules were nonsense, and that hurt. And so they did as we often do when we’re offended, they lashed out at the one who showed them up.
But Luke didn’t write this stuff down so we could look back at Jesus’ religious enemies and join a chorus of bad-feelings against them. We share their disposition. Jesus was like the messenger bearing bad news of a defeat in battle. Not liking the message, people hated the messenger. But the opposite side of Jesus’ bad news—that we don’t please God by our self-approval, or by adopting copiously rigid rules––was good news, “God loves you so much that I have come to give my life a ransom for you.”
That too was troublesome. Jesus’ enemies, like many of us, liked to think they were fine just the way they were. They didn’t want a Savior, they wanted someone to praise them. They found it hard to confess their sin because they didn’t think they were sinners. They prayed, “Lord, I fast twice in the week. I give tithes of all that I own.” They wanted Jesus to compliment them on how zealous they were. But He didn’t play their game. Instead, Jesus showed them and US that the life that pleases God is topsy-turvy from the way religious people naturally think.
I have picked up a far different sense of the meaning of Jesus’ teaching from some self-consciously devout Christians. I detect a persecution complex about which Christian folk complain rather than rejoice. I’ve heard some Christian faculty at Purdue lament that they forfeit recognition and promotion because of their Christian witness. Sometimes Christians who are very outspoken get negative responses to what they say; they feel persecuted. No rejoicing. Instead complaining. If you ever think this way it’s a clue to something.
Jesus said nothing at all about having a martyr-complex. Jesus had no martyr-complex. There is nothing virtuous about patting yourself on the back for having offended non-religious people with your overt religious behavior. He taught us, “In the world you will have tribulation. Do not fear. I have overcome the world.” Jesus taught us that it would be our good works that should be seen. As Peter taught us in his first letter, “Be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in you,” a hope that is evident from the gracious life you live. Jesus would have no sympathy to offer any Christian who prides himself in his sense of being persecuted. “Be strong, and of good courage,” Jesus would say. “I have overcome the world.” Jesus does not teach us self-pity.
So, if you are following Jesus’ way, poor and knowing it, hungry and knowing it, and cannot join the ranks of the self-satisfied, the self-complimenting, and you discover religious people can’t stand you, rather than feeling guilty at offending them, you can feel glad but not yet smug. But for goodness sake, don’t stoop to self-pity.
It is hard today to know how to live for Jesus. Our Jesus is a brushed-up Jesus, a disinfected Jesus, a Jesus who approves of us and does not challenge us. Our Jesus is a Jesus who wants us to feel satisfied in our wealth, our patriotism, our opportunity. He is a Jesus who doesn’t want us to look too far away where other people suffer. He is a Jesus who doesn’t ask us if maybe we should share more of our material wealth.
In fact, I think our Jesus would not have bothered the Jews of Jesus’ day very much. They wouldn’t have gone to all the bother of eavesdropping when He spoke, and checking Him out to see if He would keep healing sick people on the Sabbath. Our Jesus wouldn’t have been hauled before Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate because our Jesus is very much like we are. He is a Jesus shaped in our image.
Maybe this is why our Jesus satisfies so few of us, why so few of us have deep and genuine peace. Maybe this is why Protestant Christianity today is busy with expressing points of view about Jesus rather than digging into the hard work of self-scrutiny, and then of trying to follow Him. The Jesus the Gospels show us is offensive to us too.
The more I ponder Jesus’ words in this Sermon on the Plain that is guiding our thinking now, the more I realize that we more commonly listen to one another than to Jesus. If we were following Jesus, we would find happiness in knowing how poor we are. If we were following Jesus, we would be hungry—more hungry than a football team itching for victory. If we were following Jesus more nearly, we’d be found offensive to religious people—and probably we’d be received well by “sinners” as Jesus was. There is so much self-satisfaction swirling in the Churches, but at the same time there is so little happiness—blessedness, as Jesus put it, and we are doing little to heal a broken world.
How can we find this blessedness, this happiness, so that we find ourselves skipping for joy? There is no method I can tell you that is fool proof, no set prayer to say. But maybe you are aware this morning of some sense of defect in how you’ve been approaching your life, so that you can ask questions about yourself. Ask yourself first, “How big a place in my life is played by what I own? Am I trying hard to be so secure materially because this is where I really think wealth is found?” Take to heart that what you really own is only what you can take with you when you die.
Secondly, ask yourself, “For what do I hunger? What really satisfies me?” Maybe you’re in a rut of looking in all the usual places—food, reputation, approval, financial security, sensual pleasure. If you get bored enough with what is not working, maybe you’ll actually turn to Jesus’ way. “Blessed, happy are you who know you are hungry—and come to me to find satisfaction.”
But Jesus warns you, when you come to Him to learn from Him, don’t expect everyone to approve of you. Peter wrote to those who were confused about the antagonism they were to expect in following Jesus, “Don’t be prosecuted for illegal behavior.” It’s when you are ill-treated for your goodness that, rather than feeling guilty or proud, you can simply be happy. You will be happy enjoying Jesus’ blessing when you know you are poor, know you are hungry, and when you are offensive for following him nearly, dearly, and clearly.
Let us pray: O Lord Jesus Christ, clear away the confusion that addles us, and help us to see simply and clearly the good of following you. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at July 13, 2003 09:30 AM