6th Sunday after the Epiphany
Luke 6: 17-26
"The Lifestyle"
17 And he came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, who came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases;
18 and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured.
19 And all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came forth from him and healed them all.
20 ¶ And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said: "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
21 "Blessed are you that hunger now, for you shall be satisfied. "Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh.
22 "Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, on account of the Son of man!
23 Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.
24 "But woe to you that are rich, for you have received your consolation.
25 "Woe to you that are full now, for you shall hunger. "Woe to you that laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.
26 "Woe to you, when all men speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.
Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Saviour, Jesus who is the Christ. Amen
Our gospel lesson this morning is Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount. Like the Sermon on the Mount, the Sermon on the Plain is a snap shot of what the Christian life should be like. This preaching does not weigh wealth over poverty, or being well feed over going hungry, but it is more of a statement of how one should live as a follower of Jesus, as one lives in the kingdom of God.
The people in Jesus day thought that if you were rich, successful, happy and popular this was because you were favored by God. But if you were poor, miserable, and rejected, or you had a disability or a terrible accident this was because you, or a relative had done something to displease God.
But Jesus says that is wrong for even those who are poor, who are miserable, who are rejected, those with a disability are all welcomed into the kingdom of God.
But those beliefs of the early Jews are still alive today. The theology of glory, or the prosperity gospel says if you are faithful then God will reward you materially. This theology of glory also says if you are sick and are prayed for but do not get better, then they are told it was because of their lack of faith. So then the ill person becomes guilty and falls into despair.
But Jesus says woe to all of that. Everyone belongs to the kingdom of God.
In Jesus’ teachings, he says that all people are welcomed into the kingdom but as he said to the rich young ruler, to the Pharisees, and to those who had a high value of themselves, it might be more difficult for them to enter the kingdom of God, because they valued themselves more than they did Jesus, and his kingdom.
Mahatma Gandhi is one of the most respected leaders of modern history. A Hindu, Gandhi nevertheless admired Jesus and often quoted from the Sermon on the Mount. Once when the missionary E. Stanley Jones met with Gandhi he asked him, "Mr. Gandhi, though you quote the words of Christ often, why is that you appear to so adamantly reject becoming his follower?"
Gandhi replied, "Oh, I don’t reject your Christ. I love your Christ. It’s just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ."
Apparently Ghandhi’s rejection of Christianity grew out of an incident that happened when he was a young man practicing law in South Africa. He had become attracted to the Christian faith, had studied the Bible and the teachings of Jesus, and was seriously exploring becoming a Christian. And so he decided to attend a church service. As he came up the steps of the large church where he intended to go, a white South African elder of the church barred his way at the door. "Where do you think you’re going, kaffir?" the man asked Ghandhi in a belligerent tone of voice.
Ghandhi replied, "I’d like to attend worship here."
The church elder snarled at him, "There’s no room for Kaffirs in this church. Get out of here or I’ll have my assistants throw you down the steps."
Imagine that, Ghandhi was not good enough to worship in a church. This is what Jesus is talking about in the Sermon on the Plain. Everyone is welcomed into the kingdom of God. No one is excluded!
Everyone is welcomed and everyone in the kingdom needs to help each other. The rich can give to the poor, the well feed can give food to the hungry, the healthy can help the sick, the abled bodied can assist the disabled, the joyful can ease the burden of those who mourn, and on and on we can go.
The Sermon on the Plain is not about pitting one group against another, but is more about how to live, what kind of lifestyle one needs to live in the Kingdom of God.
George Bernard Shaw said
Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
As we are in the season of Epiphany, the season of light, that quote speaks volumes to us as we talk about the lifestyle of those who are in the Kingdom of God.
How is your candle burning? Do you reach out to those who need a hand?
One of my favorite singers is Neil Diamond and he sings a song called Brother’s Love Travelling Salvation Show and one of the verses says this:
"Brother now you got yourself two good hands
Now when your brother is in trouble you got reach out your one hand to him cause that what’s it’s there for
And when your heart is troubled, you can reach out your other hand, reach it out to the man up there cause that what he’s there for"
And this is exactly what Jesus is talking about in this Sermon on the Plain. As members of the kingdom of God, we need to reach out our hand to our neighbor and reach out our hand to God. As kingdom people, we are grounded by those two hands, one hand out to God, one hand out to our neighbor.
This is the lifestyle which Jesus is telling us to live as kingdom people. A hand up to God for our moral grounding, and a hand out to our neighbor as evidence of love.
A closing story sums this up well:
It was early in 1945 when, as a war correspondent on Okinawa, I first came upon Shimabuku, the strangest and most inspiring community I ever saw. Huddled beneath its groves of banyan and twisted pine trees, this remote village of some 1000 souls was in the path of the American advance and so received a severe shelling.
But when an advance patrol swept up to the village compound, the GI’s stopped dead in their tracks. Barring their way were two little old men; they bowed low and began to speak. The battle-hardened sergeant, wary of tricks, held up his hand, summoned an interpreter.
The interpreter shook his head. "I don’t get it. Seems we’re being welcomed as ’fellow Christians’. One says he’s the mayor of the village, the other’s the schoolmaster. That’s a Bible the older one has in his hand..."
Guided by the two old men - Mojun Nakamura the mayor and Shosei Kina the schoolmaster - we cautiously toured the compound. We’d seen other Okinawan villages, uniformly down-at-the-heels and despairing; by contrast, this one shone like a diamond in a dung heap. Everywhere we were greeted by smiles and dignified bows.
Proudly the two old men showed us their spotless homes, their terraced fields, fertile and neat, their storehouses and granaries, their prized sugar mill.
Gravely the old men talked on, and the interpreter said, "They’ve met only one American before, long ago. Because he was a Christian they assume we are, too - though they can’t quite understand why we came in shooting."
Piecemeal, the incredible story came out. Thirty years before, an American missionary on his way to Japan had paused at Shimabuku. He’d stayed only long enough to make a pair of converts (these same two men), teach them a couple of hymns, leave them a Japanese translation of the Bible and exhort them to live by it. They’d had no contact with any Christian since. Yet during those 30 years, guided by the Bible, they had managed to create a Christian democracy at its purest.
How had it happened? Picking their way through the Bible, the two converts had found not only an inspiring "Person" on whom to pattern a life, but sound precepts on which to base their society. They’d adopted the Ten Commandments as Shimabuku’s legal code; the Sermon on the Mount as their guide to social conduct. In Kina’s school the Bible was the chief literature; it was read daily by all students, and major passages were memorized. In Nakamura’s village government the precepts of the Bible were law.
Nurtured on this Book, a whole generation of Shimabukans had drawn from it their ideas of human dignity and of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. The result was plain to see. Shimabuku for years had had no jail, no brothel, no drunkenness, no divorce; there was a high level of health and happiness.
Next day, the tide of battle swept us on. But a few days later, during a lull, I requisitioned a jeep and a Japanese speaking driver and went back to Shimabuku. Over the winding roads outside the village, huge truck convoys and endless lines of American troops moved dustily; behind them lumbered armoured tanks, heavy artillery. But inside, Shimabuku was an oasis of serenity.
Once again I strolled through the quiet village streets, soaking up Shimabuku’s calm. There was a sound of singing. We followed it and came to Nakamura’s house, where a curious religious service was under way. Having no knowledge of churchly forms or ritual, the Shimabukans had developed their own. There was much Bible reading by Kina, repeated in singsong fashion by the worshipers. Then came hymn singing. The tunes of the two hymns the missionary had taught -"Fairest Lord Jesus" and "All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name" - had naturally suffered some changes, but they were recognizable.
Swept up in the spirit of "All Hail the Power," we joined in. After many prayers, voiced spontaneously by people in the crowd, there was a discussion of community problems. With each question, Kina turned quickly to some Bible passage to find the answer. The book’s imitation-leather cover was cracked and worn, its pages stained and dog-eared from 30 years’ constant use. Kina held it with the reverent care one would use in handling the original Magna Carta.
The service over, we waited as the crowd moved out, and my driver whispered hoarsely, "So this is what comes out of only a Bible and a couple of old guys who wanted to live like Jesus!’, then, with a glance at a shell-hole, he murmured, "Maybe we’re using the wrong kind of weapons."
Time had dimmed the Shimabukans’ memory of the missionary; neither Kina nor Nakamura could recall his name. They did remember his parting statement. As expressed by Nakamura, it was: "Study this Book well. It will give you strong faith. And when faith is strong, everything is strong."1
Written by Pastor Tim Zingale
1(Clarence W. Hall, "Together" Magazine, October 1960) Temptation induces you to test God
