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Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany – February 16, 2025
Luke 6:17-26
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Oftentimes in scripture the locations and landscapes are important. Sometimes they offer important context. Sometimes they even have a spiritual significance to them. And so when a gospel writer mentions a placename or a feature of the landscape, it is a good idea to pay attention. Often it is a clue pointing to the meaning of a given passage.
Today we hear St. Luke drop one such clue for us. He tells us that Jesus “stood on a level place.” Unlike the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, which has Jesus at a higher elevation to bring a word from God just like Moses did at Mount Sinai, here on a different occasion Luke specifically tells us Jesus stood on a level place as he healed and preached. The content of what is sometimes called the Sermon on the Plain is very similar to the Sermon on the Mount – Jesus surely repeated his message at different times – but in this setting he wasn’t any higher than anyone else. Now, of course Jesus is the Son of God, and so he has a higher authority than any of those he is addressing. He is literally their higher power! But even so, Jesus met his hearers on a level place.
It is an odd detail to include, unless it means something – and it certainly does! Luke loves to tell the story of Jesus in such a way that he is meeting us in the nitty gritty of human life. Luke tells us Jesus was laid in a feedbox for livestock as a newborn and visited by common shepherds. Now he tells us about how Jesus healed and preached while standing at a level place, meeting people at their level. He meets them where they are.
The crowds that had come out to see Jesus on this level place were a mixed group. There were people there from every walk of life. There were people from Judea and Jerusalem, who lived close enough to the Temple to participate regularly in its worship life. There were also people from the Gentile cities of Tyre and Sidon, way up north on the coast. People from all over were coming to see Jesus. It was “a great multitude,” St. Luke tells us. They were coming to hear him. They were coming to be healed of their diseases. They were coming to be delivered from unclean spirits.
Jesus meeting them all on a level place offers us a clue by which to interpret what comes next. Jesus then looked 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, exclude, revile, 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.” Jesus was meeting his disciples, as well as the crowd that had come to see him, in their need. He met them in their places of suffering and struggle.
Jesus was meeting them in their poverty. This means economic poverty, to be sure, but this is not only a socio-economic category. The crowds were full of people who were poor in every other way too. They were poor in health, coming to Jesus for healing. They were experiencing a poverty of the soul, coming to Jesus to be freed from unclean spirits, from sin and despair and all the dark forces which were troubling them. Some there were poor in credentials. They were people who had no spiritual status whatsoever, no spiritual accomplishments to claim. Jesus was meeting those who were hungry, whether their stomachs were literally groaning for food, or their souls were groaning to be filled with hope. Jesus was meeting those who wept, those who were grieving or afraid or lonely or sad. Jesus was meeting those who would eventually be hated for following him, preemptively blessing them with the assurance of the reward in store for them.
The great multitude came from all human categories. The one thing they had in common was their need for Jesus. And Jesus, meeting them at their level, meeting them where they were, blessed them. He spoke to them with a first-person address: “Blessed are you, blessed are you, blessed are you.” This was not an abstract or hypothetical blessing, like: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Jesus wasn’t speaking in generalities. Not here, not on the plain. This was a blessing which was delivered to them personally by Jesus right then and there as he said, “Blessed are YOU, blessed are YOU.”
In announcing these blessings, Jesus was not glorifying poverty or pain. He was not giving them steps to climb in order to be blessed. He wasn’t giving them a to-do list. He was not saying, “You must make yourself poor or hungry or miserable in order to get into God’s Kingdom. Remember, Jesus spent much of his ministry alleviating misery! No, Jesus was simply meeting these hurting and broken people where they already were.
In Lutheran circles we call this the Theology of the Cross, which is a shorthand way of referring to the fact that it is in the places in our lives that are broken that God is found to be present and at work. It is in our poverty, our weakness, our vulnerability, our sin, that we come to see our need for Jesus, who is present in the crosses we bear to bless us with his saving love.
The inverse is true as well. The Theology of the Cross also teaches us that the places where we think we are strong, the things we often turn to in life for comfort or a sense of security, are the very things that are always passing away and coming up short. In some cases, they are the very things that are killing us. This is what the woes are about. This is why Jesus warns those who are presently rich and full and laughing and popular. It isn’t that they will be forever excluded from the kingdom. It isn’t that they won’t ever receive blessings from Jesus. It is just that when you are comfortable and in control and outwardly self-sufficient or comfortably numb, you just don’t see a need for Jesus. In fact, many resent the suggestion that they need his help! And so they remain closed off – at least until those things begin to fail them, which they always do.
I was thinking about all of this after we were discussing this gospel reading at our men’s lunch this week. After lunch I got to thinking about some of the pastoral visits I’ve made to men who were hurting. Maybe they were grieving, or afraid, or sick, or lonely. Maybe they were in the hospital or home after a major surgery. Maybe it was just a phone call. I can’t tell you how many times on those visits these men have gotten choked up or have broken down in tears simply because someone has noticed their need, someone has seen them, someone has met them where they are.
Middle-aged and older men are not on very many people’s radar as a vulnerable category – quite the contrary most of the time. It is more often the case in our culture today that they are ridiculed or vilified or ignored. They are not part of any of the currently preferred victim groups, and so they are often overlooked. Maybe it is assumed that they are strong, but they have fears and hurts and troubles like everyone else. Sometimes they stubbornly suffer in silence, no doubt about it, but just as often I can tell you that they feel invisible to others. When their supposed strength is kicked out from under them, they often feel unseen. Perhaps this is one reason middle aged and older men have the highest rates of suicide.
I bring this up not to get on a soap box, but to point out that the Lord Jesus sees all of us in our need, whoever we are. He doesn’t see the category; he sees the need. That’s what this part of the Sermon on the Plain is all about. The great multitude included all kinds of people, and what they all had in common was their need. Male or female, longtime worshipper or not, super spiritual or not, Gentile or Jew, young or old, Jesus came to all of them in their poverty, in their hunger of body and soul. He came to them in their tears, in their struggle against unclean spirits. He met all of them at their level. He met them where they were with a direct address, saying, “Blessed are you, blessed are you, blessed are you.”
If things are going well for you, give thanks to God and don’t go looking for trouble. That is not the point of Jesus’ sermon today. Don’t go seek out hardship in order to get these blessings. Jesus doesn’t want you to be poor or poor in spirt. He doesn’t want you to be hungry or hurting or hated.
But don’t put your trust in the status quo. Don’t seek your security in wealth or health or popularity. Hardship will find you eventually. And when it does, know that our Lord Jesus will meet you there. And when he does he won’t be looking down at you from on high, or from a distance, but will instead meet you at your level to bring you the blessings of his kingdom. He will meet you where you are to fill you up with hope and peace. He will bring you his promises right in the nitty gritty of this world of sin and death, assuring you that on the day of resurrection, you will laugh at everything that currently makes you weep.
Even now our Lord Jesus meets us where we are, giving us his promises. Even today he meets us at our level, giving us his Word, giving us his Body and Blood to heal our hurts and cast out the unclean spirits troubling us.
None of you are invisible to him. He sees your need, and it is through the broken places in our lives that he enters in, saying, “Blessed are you, blessed are you.”
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church