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February 11, 2007 Rev. Steve Gehlert Most of what I know about Jesus is what I heard him say. That's all we know about almost anybody. We may say that, "actions speak louder than words." But it's also important to know what someone says about things, and what they say about why they do what they do. It's important to know how someone sees God, the world, and the future. So, what did Jesus say? Well, he began with an invitation. He invited his hearers to "repent and believe the gospel." In our world, telling people to repent and believe is likely to be heard as a summons to give up personal sins and accept a body of dogma or scheme of religious salvation. But Jesus meant something much more than that. The phrase basically means, "Give up your agendas and trust me for mine." He was telling his hearers to give up their agendas and to trust him for his way of being Israel, his way of bringing the kingdom, his kingdom agenda. In particular, he was urging them, to abandon their crazy dreams of nationalist revolution. He was opposed to it because he saw it, paradoxically, as a way of being deeply disloyal to Israel's God: specifically, to Israel's vocation to be the light of the world. With that, he challenged his followers to abandon the attitudes and practices that went with such nationalism, especially the oppression of the poor by the rich. He offered as a counter agenda a very risky way of being Israel, the way of turning the other cheek and going the second mile, of losing your life to gain it, of being a new community in which debts and sins are forgiven. This new community began with a welcome to all that shocked many. It wasn't that he, as an individual, associated with the wrong sort of people; that wouldn't have angered the Pharisees. It was that he welcomed sinners into fellowship with himself precisely as part of his announcement of God's kingdom, that he said that this welcome made them members of the kingdom. In Judaism, repentance and forgiveness were focused on the temple, where the sacrificial system offered way of restitution for those whose sins had jeopardized their membership in God's family. But Jesus offered forgiveness to all, out on the street, without requiring that they go through the "sacred" channels. That's what was offensive. Along with Jesus' radical invitation and welcome came a challenge. He challenged Israel to live as the new covenant people, the returned-from-exile people, the people whose hearts were renewed by the word and work of God. His challenge grew directly out of his sense of what time it was. His critique of, and warning to, his contemporaries, and his challenge to a different way of being God's family were based on his belief that he was called to inaugurate God's kingdom, NOW! Recently we heard about Jesus trying to preach his inaugural sermon, saying the justice prophecies of Isaiah, had begun to be fulfilled, then and now, in him. The people got so mad they tried to kill him. Today, the crowd is more congenial, hushed, ready to listen. So, with everyone attentive, he has his chance to lay out his mission in more detail. What he has to say, though, is no program or mission statement, it's a declaration of the way things are and will be in God's Kingdom. And what he says about the kingdom is radically different from how the world works. And that radical difference is expressed through a strange mixture of blessings and woes, woes that stand in stark contrast to the blessings, reversing, turning upside down our value systems. Those woes are key to what Jesus is talking about. He not only blesses, but curses. He not only promises blessing for the poor and oppressed but also judgment for the rich and the oppressor. And what's just as amazing is how he says it. Most prophetic sermons full of imperatives – church do this, do that; you should, ought, must – but here Jesus preaches in the indicative. He simply indicates, describes, how things are - in God's kingdom. He gives picture of who's in and who's out in God's reign. Most sermons describe what we're doing or should do, who we are or who we wish we were. That's because preachers assume that most people are more interested in themselves than in God. We come asking not, "What is God really like?" but rather, "Jesus, what have you done for me lately?" or, "What can you do for me today?" Narcissism, self-centeredness is a hard habit to break. But Jesus' preaching is more God centered. For him, a sermon's a sermon when it's about God. Implications for our behavior come from telling us who God is and what God's up to. Jesus' words are about the end, the purpose, the future toward which God is moving. They're a vision, not of present arrangements, but of what God is moving us toward, what God will get when God's Kingdom comes, when God's will is done on earth as in heaven. We don't hear much talk about "the end" in mainline churches these days, not because we're so progressive but because most of us have got it so good. When you sit on top of the world, who wants to be dragged kicking and screaming into some other world? Jesus is saying that God is disruptive and dangerous before being creative. Has to be. God's out to get what God wants and Jesus' sermon is the inauguration address, declaration of war, announcement of an invasion of God-power that will bring a new world. Jesus' sermon has a dual focus. Part one is a series of blessings, beatitudes. Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Jesus blesses those whom the world curses – the poor, the unemployed, the dispossessed, and the oppressed. Blessed are you hungry people, you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep. Blessed are you who are hated by others because of your love for me. If that's all there was to this sermon, we might remember it as one of the sweetest ever preached. But then, true to form, for part two, Jesus goes on the attack, moving from blessing to cursing. You rich, damn you! You have already "received your consolation." You were good at working the kingdoms of this world to your advantage. Now, in God's reign you shall be cursed. For those of you who are full, stuffed with all you can consume, with so many ways to satisfy your ceaseless hunger, what more can stuff do? When God's love rules, you'll be damned to emptiness. Stop smirking you self-satisfied happy ones! There's a new savior in town. Time for tears. All this is not simply a new moral code. It's also the challenge of the kingdom; it's a call for Israel to be Israel, to truly be God's people. In Jesus' kingdom announcement, God's at work to remake his people and so fulfill his long-cherished intentions for them and for the whole world. Jesus was offering a crazy subversive wisdom which stands ordinary human wisdom, and conventional Jewish wisdom, on its head. To take up the cross and follow him meant embracing his risky vocation: to be the light of the world in a way the revolutionaries had never dreamed of. It was a call to follow Jesus into political danger and likely death, trusting that this was how God would bring Israel through its present trials into the new day that would dawn, when God's love would rule. Jesus' sermon echoes Mary's song, which she, a young peasant girl, sang in response to the angel's word that she would give birth to God's Messiah. They both proclaim things that are hard for us to hear: God takes sides, loves with a love that is not impartial. If you want to be with this God, you'd better know what it's going to look like. So, Jesus paints a word-picture. What he paints is so beautiful, it's frightening. Beautiful because it's full of hope and promise. Frightening because it proclaims that everything the world says is worthy of our hope is false and empty – is hope-less. Is this any way to preach? It's sure not how I learned to preach. But it's the way Jesus preaches. Because he's the one with the authority to do it. Are you willing to listen to such a sermon? Are you willing to look for signs that it might be true? Are you willing to consider that it might be good news? Are you willing to be that good news? Are you willing to be a community where the poor are truly blessed? Are you willing to be a community where the hungry are filled? Are you willing to be a community where those who weep are helped to laugh? Are you willing to be a community where those who are hated, excluded, reviled and defamed, because they follow Jesus, because they put him ahead of fame or fortune, can truly belong? And you also willing to see the truth in the woes? Are you willing to see that all the wealth and possessions you might have gotten or still be trying to get, mean nothing; if you've gotten them, or if you get them, what you have is all they can give you. And if you are full now, content and secure, without a care, not caring to be bothered by anyone else's need, know that one day you will hunger for something more. If you are laughing now, in the midst of all the world's pain and sorrow, thinking it has no connection to you, know that someday you will weep. If people think you're the greatest because you are so charming and entertaining, because you flatter them so convincingly, know God already has you unmasked. Are you willing to see the truth in the woes, and the good news behind them, that there is another way of living, that we, by the grace of God, get glimpses of, every day, in our life together? Are you willing to let those glimpses shape a vision of how God wants the world to be, how it already is, and can more and more be, if we let his love rule in our lives together? That's the good news Jesus wants to offer you. Will you receive it? Amen. |
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