Jesus Levels With Us - Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
Author: Pastor Carolyn Hetrick
February 16, 2025
When I was in law school my favorite classes were in what
we called the “Ski Slope” room, a huge auditorium type room that had seating on
a slope. At the bottom of the slope was the professor teaching 100 or so of us
from a distance. You were supposed to be prepared to answer any question about
any case. If I was not prepared, I sat behind Ken Komoroski who was over 6.5
feet tall. One day I was in the back and truth be told, we were making fun of a
classmate. The wily law professor, moved from one part of the stage to the
other, and got a direct eye view of us, calling upon me. There was no way to
“pass” it off to someone else. That day I learned about the woe of laughing
now.
When my kids were little and I really needed them to
listen, understand and follow, or re-direct, I got down on their eye level-
then you can connect. That’s what happening as Jesus is teaching the
Beatitudes, the blessings and woes. Unlike in the gospel of Matthew where Jesus
gives the Sermon on the Mount, from on high, here Jesus is down on the plain.
He chooses to be on the same level and to level with those listening in plain
sight. That kind of connection can be a real blessing, but it can also be intense.
From the time of Mary’s song of the Magnificat, and the great reversal of God’s
vision, to the time of Jesus telling the hometown folk of scripture being
fulfilled, Luke has been making a central theme clear- Jesus is interrupting
our agenda for God’s own.
Our ways of seeing disease, distress and despair and who
deserves to avoid struggles has become fractured. Jesus is healing and then offering
teaching about the blessing of reassurance and hope. The crowd includes those
who came for healing, the curious and the skeptical. Imagine Jesus teaching
here today. You hearing that for those who have felt forgotten, the kingdom is
actually yours. If it seems like you are being excluded, insulted or rejected,
Jesus says, “I get it.”
And isn’t that what we most often want to hear? If you
watched the Super Bowl, or even just the commercials, chances are you saw the
commercial “He Gets Us.” That through all of life’s challenges and disasters,
Jesus gets what it is like to be us and uses some of us to be the helpers
responding in compassion to the very kinds of real-life things we hear will be
reversed- disaster, misfortune and griefs.
At one point the picture shows a crowd lifting up a
person in a wheelchair to crowd surf and the look on their face is exuberance. A
homeless man is getting the dignity of a shave, or an elderly person
experiencing community not isolation. Every age and stage, race and ethnicity
and identity bound up in blessing. That’s what we want “He Gets Us” to mean for
us. Jesus wants it for everyone.
If you have imagined that you are there with Jesus as he
is teaching and you are someone who has been struggling, his teaching of
blessing and the reversal of who has worth in this world is powerful comfort
and love.
But maybe you’ve imagined that if Jesus was here today he’d
find you jaded or maybe even skeptical. Maybe in our heart of hearts those “kingdom
of God” ideas of justice and mercy and peace and providing for all have costs
that seem too great, and even more so if we have to include those we would name
“enemies.” Then, the transforming power of Jesus’ call is not comforting. “He
Gets Us” feels more like “I see what you are doing or not doing” and this a
moment we do not want Jesus to be here but up on a mountain so we can say his
vision is just a vision.
Luke’s gospel, however, leaves no room for us to
misinterpret or spiritualize.
There is no relative ladder of virtue to climb. There is
no hiding poverty behind the notion of “poverty of spirit” or the notion that
the meek inheriting the earth is such a “someday” concept that those with
wealth and power can sit down to supper day after day without concern. Luke is
not suggesting that someday those who mourn will finally be comforted beyond
“thoughts and prayers,” or that “someday” mercy will show up somehow. And we
should not be comfortable with reviling, belittling or uttering falsely thinking
that on some other day and by someone else, those who struggle will get a
little bit of heaven. Jesus is on our level in plain sight to say that “not our
problem” is not God’s vision. Obtaining blessing for ourselves by wielding woe
against others is NOT Jesus’ way. As Pastor Schul said last week we need to
push into the deep water and trust Jesus here. Follow Jesus now.
When we find ourselves in the world’s power struggles, feeling
that things are too big to do otherwise, or that we are too meek to matter,
Jesus offers hope. Remember that the world in Jesus’ day was as chaotic as
ours. The kind of hope Jesus offers is the hope that emerges in the midst of
living despite all hope. Jesus is calling us to see as Martin Luther King, Jr
once wrote, “True compassion is not haphazard or superficial. It comes to see
that a system that produces beggars needs restructuring.” Jesus gets us and is
saying, “Look around, let me give you a lay of the land. It may LOOK like the
rich and admired have it made, that somehow blessings belong to them and not to
the rest. NOT SO WITH YOU. And it will not be without labor and sacrifice to
follow Jesus.
The rich will still fight to pay even less, those full of
themselves will take up all the space and more, those laughing at their own
craftiness at our expense, will make us despair. They do not know their own
need for healing which Jesus would offer if they saw it.
But Heaven has begun to come to earth. Jesus has come to
love us and save us and give us a real kingdom. That may seem as hard to
imagine as it did for those on the plain that day. I know it may be tempting to
look around and say, “thanks Jesus, but I’ll take my chances.”
Imagine Jesus looking you in the eyes and encouraging you
to keep reordering priorities. Because it’s not too late- place your trust in
God before other objects of misplaced loyalty betray your trust. They will. Woe
will come to those who miss the opportunity for truly living. And Jesus will
bring an end to all of the short-sighted love of the wrong things. Jesus gets
that we find that hard to believe, and yet what is not possible for us alone is
possible for God.
I, like you, have the same struggles and know the same
moments I could have chosen differently. It is why listening to Jesus’ teaching
and worshiping together matter. We have the blessing of confessing our
shortcomings and hearing forgiveness. We have the blessing of hearing God’s
word and regathering our scattered thoughts. So we can pray for GOD’s will to
be done and believe it can be so and share the peace of Christ that surpasses
all understanding. We have the blessing of sharing the meal Jesus gave to those
he knew could not follow fully, but who he loves infinitely. Those blessings
help us keep following and trusting.
And then we bless you to head out again as those who have
received these blessings bearing blessings rather than choosing to wield woe.
Friends, this IS the good news with the power to transform still. Let us pray:
Father, help us to live to
the full, being true to you every day
Jesus, help us to give
myself away to others,
being kind to everyone we meet
Spirit, help us to love the
lost, proclaiming Christ in all we do and say.
Thank you for giving us your kingdom.
Copyright Rev. Carolyn K. Hetrick, 2025 All rights
reserved. May not be reproduced in whole or in part without written
permission.
Sermon Text: Luke 6:17-26
17 [Jesus] came down with [the
twelve] and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples
and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of
Tyre and Sidon. 18 They had come to hear him and to be
healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were
cured. 19 And all in the crowd were trying to
touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.
20 Then he looked up at his disciples and
said:
“Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
21 “Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.
“Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
22 “Blessed are you when people hate you,
and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of
Man.
23 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.
24 “But woe to you who are rich,
for you have received your consolation.
25 “Woe to you who are full now,
for you will be hungry.
“Woe to you who are laughing now,
for you will mourn and weep.
26 “Woe to you when all speak well of
you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”
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