6th Sunday after Epiphany

Yesterday, February 12, was Abraham Lincoln's birthday. When I was in elementary school, one of the things we did to celebrate it was read a book about him. That got me to wondering how many books had been written about Old Abe, so I asked Google. More books have been written about Lincoln than anyone else except Jesus. At the Ford's Theater Center for Education and Leadership, there is a tower of books about Lincoln that's 34 feet tall and about 8 feet around. And in case you're wondering, the “books” are actually replicas made out of aluminum so it's not a fire hazard. There are almost 7,000 books in the tower, not quite half of the books that had been written about Lincoln through 2010, when the tower was designed. Of course, in the last decade or so, more have been written.

Now why are there so many books about Abraham Lincoln? And why are they still being written? Well, I think I can answer that in one word: perspective. In some cases, it's a matter of the audience. You wouldn't write the same way for children or teens as you would for adults. Some authors want to emphasize different aspects of Lincoln's life: his early years, his beginning in politics, or his presidency, for example. Some take a closer look at his personal life. Some talk about a particular event or related events, such as the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Some look at his personal philosophy or his politics. Some think Lincoln was the greatest president ever, while others disagree. Of course, the discovery of new documents or new interpretations of old documents can lead to books written from different scholarly perspectives. You get the idea.

Have you ever wondered why there are four Gospels in the New Testament? It's the same reason: perspective. Each of them was written by a different author for a particular audience, and each gives us a distinct view of Jesus. When you compare John to the other three, it's easy to see the difference. John has stories about Jesus and parables that he told which aren't in any of the other Gospels. It's easy to find a story or teaching that the other three have in common, but rare, outside of the Passion narrative, to find a story that is included in all four.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke are often referred to as the “synoptic Gospels”. The word synoptic literally means “seeing together”. The term was applied to the first three Gospels because they have a remarkable amount of overlapping content and can be viewed as parallel accounts. But in spite of this, there are differences among them in the way material is presented. Today's text is an example of this.

The part of Luke's Gospel that we just read is the beginning of a section often called the Sermon on the Plain, which continues to the end of chapter 6. Its parallel in the Gospel according to Matthew is the much more famous Sermon on the Mount. The version in Luke is quite a bit shorter than the one in Matthew, 32 verses to 107, but much of the material that Luke left out in chapter 6 is included later in the Gospel.

Another difference between the two is reflected in the titles we use for them. In Matthew, Jesus was surrounded by crowds of people who were coming to him to hear his message and to be healed. According to Matthew, “When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them”. (Matthew 5:1-2) In my mind, I picture a rather peaceful scene with Jesus on an elevated place, seated like a rabbi, teaching his disciples, who are arranged at his feet, and the crowds, who are gathered down below. Matthew wants to present the Gospel in a way that is consistent with the Jewish tradition and that shows that Jesus is the Messiah who fulfills the Old Testament prophecies. In putting Jesus on a mountain, he points to other important Old Testament events which took place in similar locations. In particular, he draws a parallel between Jesus and Moses, who went up on Mt. Sinai to receive the Law.

Compare this to what was happening in Luke. In the verses just before our reading, Jesus had been on a mountain with his disciples and had chosen twelve of them to be apostles. Then “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, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon.” (Luke 6:17) This is quite different from Matthew's picture. Luke portrays Jesus as the one who came to seek and save the lost. So he puts Jesus right down there among the people, including Jews from Judea and Jerusalem and Gentiles from Tyre and Sidon. As Simeon said, Jesus is “a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” (Luke 2:32)

And this was a pretty chaotic scene. Notice that Luke says that there was a “great crowd” of his disciples and a “great multitude” of other folks from all over the place. The Greek word that is translated as “multitude” here is plēthos, the root of our word plethora. We might say there was a sea of people or it was a mob scene. And when our text says that the people were trying to touch him, there's a little more to it than that. A better translation of the Greek here would be “latch onto”. It reminds me of a political rally where the candidate's supporters are trying to grab hold of her. No social distancing there! And in the midst of all of this confusion, Jesus healed all of them and then began speaking.

As in Matthew's Gospel, Jesus began his sermon with some beatitudes or blessings. But where Matthew spiritualizes them by referring to the poor in spirit and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, Luke keeps things down to earth. He's talking about people who are physically hungry and poor not only materially but also in terms of social status or power. And he adds a set of woes which parallel the blessings.

Luke's blessings and woes seem a bit perplexing and might even cause us some discomfort. What's good about being poor and bad about being rich? Why would I want to be hungry when I could have plenty to eat? Why would I want to weep instead of laugh? And what does it mean that I seem to belong more to those groups that Jesus seemed to curse rather than those that he blessed? As one commentator put it, “the blessed conditions hardly seem blessed at all and the woeful situations seem very desirable.”

Part of the confusion comes from misunderstanding what is meant by blessed here. We tend to think of it as being happy. In fact many English Bibles translate these verses using that word; for example, in verse 20, the Common English Bible, a recent translation, has “Happy are you who hunger now, because you will be satisfied”. But the Greek word that is used here has connotations of being in relationship with God and being regarded favorably by God, apart from outward condition. Jesus is promising those who suffering in this world because of poverty, hunger, grief and sadness, or discrimination that they are regarded favorably by God and will be cared for, fed, comforted, and rewarded by God.

We also tend to look at the woes almost as curses, but that's not quite right here, either. It would be better to see them as warnings. Jesus is describing what will happen if we allow the world's perspective to rule our lives. That's what Jeremiah was talking about when he warned the people not to trust in “mere mortals”. All of these things that the world values so much can easily become snares which will lead us away from God if we aren't careful. And in the end, those material things might be all we are left with.

Jesus is describing what things are like in God's Kingdom, where the values of the world are turned upside-down. This is not a new message. We've already heard it twice since we started reading from Luke two months ago. It was there in Mary's Magnificat:

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,and lifted up the lowly;

he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.

It was also there in something we heard just a few weeks ago, the sermon that Jesus preached in Nazareth:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

And he is inviting his disciples and those in the crowd to be part of this revolution which is beginning right away.

Today Jesus is also calling us to join him on the level plain with all those to whom he once spoke: the twelve apostles, the great crowd of his disciples, and the great multitude of people from all around. This is not as easy as it might sound. We've all heard Jesus open a perspective that is so different from the one that we've inherited from the world that it shocks us and shakes up everything that we've always taken for granted about how things work. It runs counter to everything that we've grown used to, where some are above us and others are below us on the social ladder. But as disciples, we have to change our perspective from the hierarchical one that society favors to God's level plain perspective.

Over the past few years, we have become increasingly aware of problems like food deserts, the education gap, and the health gap; the violence in our streets that leads to pain and grief for many; discrimination, bullying, and violence because of race, gender, religion, and a myriad of other differences. None of this is acceptable in the upside-down Kingdom of God being built right now on this earth. But as Sarah Henrich, a professor at Luther Seminary, points out they are what “we are called to address by this passage for God's sake and for our own. It's what children of God do and what they repent of not having done, confident that God gives new opportunities to live with generosity and attention.”

Amen!