NewCreation

Homily for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this, the homily for the sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time. And it's a big jump since last time, so I'll have to do a little bit of backtracking. Remember last time, after the miraculous catch, the four boatmen — three of them mentioned and a fourth presumed — that Peter, Andrew, or Simon, Andrew, James, and John follow Jesus. That's where we left last time. Today's Gospel begins after Jesus has chosen 12 of his disciples to become apostles. But between then — between the four starting to follow him and now — Jesus has been engaged in a whole series of activities. And he's cleansed a leper, healed a paralytic, he's called Matthew, he's taught them about the Son of Man. The Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins — the beginning of the teaching that God is now sideways among you, and God's power is to be exercised horizontally. This is part of what he's bringing in, and it's causing stupefaction. His teaching about fasting, which is not to take it very seriously. His dismissal of old wineskins, and saying that people will like them but it's the new ones that matter. His paying very little attention to the Pharisees' concern about his disciples eating with corn. And it's not as though each one is weighed up in its arguments as it is in Matthew's Gospel. Each one of these issues is weighed up with arguments. The Lukan Jesus is pretty dismissive, doesn't bother with this stuff, cures a man with a withered hand. Now, what all these instances have in common is that they're all instances which are also treated in St Mark's Gospel, with only very small verbal differences. So we get them during the year when we read Mark, and in some cases with Matthew. So I guess that the compilers of the lectionary reckoned we could jump that and get to some specifically Lukan themes. But in order to understand today's specifically Lukan theme, we need to just stand back a little bit and see his choice of the apostles. Because "apostle" is not a common word in the New Testament — it's most common in Luke. It means literally "sent one." It's become a technical term. But here Luke does make something about this, and he also makes something about it in the Acts of the Apostles. Twelve are chosen, and the number of twelve is fulfilled in the Acts of the Apostles when Judas has gone to his death. So here it says: now, Jesus, during these days, went out to the mountain to pray, and he spent the night in prayer to God. One of the things which Luke always does is show us how the dynamics of desire work. For Jesus to keep doing what he did, he needed to be in constant prayer. His life, his soul, his heart needed to be constantly in touch with God so that he wouldn't be run by all the mimetic crowd activities around him. That's a constant in Luke's Gospel, and we'll see it in Jesus's teaching. Very clearly next week. So praying up in the mountain. When day came, he calls his disciples and chose twelve of them. So his disciples by this stage are quite a lot of people. We don't know how many – the four we knew about – but he calls his disciples and chose twelve of them, whom he also named apostles. So this is where Luke gives the mention, and then gives the standard list, with slight variations: Levi for Matthew, Bartholomew for Nathaniel – slight changes, but it's basically the same list as we know from elsewhere. And it's after having chosen these twelve apostles that he then comes down the mountain to begin his preaching, so that the sermon which is known in Matthew's Gospel as the Sermon on the Mount, in Luke's Gospel is known as the Sermon on the Plain. And as everywhere with Luke, all geographical and directional hints are to be taken very seriously. He's coming down the mountain. This is not supposed to be a piece of top-down preaching. The word is not supposed to be top-down. The choosing is top-down. And we'll see that that's going to be something which gets repeated in Luke's Gospel, and is absolutely central for Luke's understanding of what our vocation is. Our vocation is the name we have in heaven – if our names are inscribed in heaven up, if you like – then our living out of that is going to be the earthly iteration, if you like, the earthly working out of our real name, which is the name given now. So: chosen above, but then he comes down. So he comes down with them, he comes 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. So a huge mixture of people: Jews, non-Jews, Jews of dubious heritage, Samaritans. In the verses which today's Gospel leaves out, he says they'd come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases – so both the word and the healing – and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. But notice: all of these people are at the same level as him. He's not above them, which means he can't have been seen – it must have been tremendously difficult for him to be seen in their midst. That's a point that is worth seeing. Also, that a crowd gathering together can very quickly become a lynch mob. We've seen how Jesus has had to sidestep that at Nazareth. We saw how that was enacted by an evil spirit in one of the synagogues he was at. But then how he moved aside from the crowd to teach from the boat, again to try and be at the same level as them. So here he's been willing to put himself in the midst. Then it says, "Then he looked up at his disciples," and the Greek says that literally: "looked up." Now this is weird in a variety of ways. First, he says he's standing in the midst of them… What does it mean in terms of communications that he had to look up to see them? Does it mean he was sitting down in their midst? In which case he was lower than them. So physically to look up it may mean that he was sitting in their midst, unless they were much taller than he, but we've got no reason to think that's the case. Now if you want to speak to a lot of people in an open place, you are much better to get onto something high and speak down to them – hence the Sermon on the Mount makes sense. Jesus sits above, speaks; people can hear below. If you sit in the middle of people, and even sit below the people immediately surrounding you, what sort of act of communication is being lived out? Well, a very specific one: you're relying on people to pass the message outwards. You may remember the Life of Brian scene where, mocking the Matthean version of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus announces "blessed are the peacemakers" and a game of Chinese whispers follows and ends up as "blessed are the cheesemakers." Joke aside, from a mountain top or from a high place people can hear something of what comes down, which is why there were pulpits in churches before the existence of microphones, so that people could speak from on high down and be heard. But if you're speaking in a flat place and you are indeed even below the people, you're speaking in such a way as to rely on others to spread out what you have said. In other words, this business of the Son of Man having power to forgive – Jesus is taking it very seriously indeed. And not only is he putting himself in the midst of them at the same level as they, so that these words do not come, if you like, with oracular importance from some up-above figure, but from in the midst; he places himself under them, in the position of somebody who could easily be trampled by them, who could easily become a victim of a fast-moving crowd. But then there's another sense of the word "looking up" in the Septuagint, which is that the looking up of eyes suggests a prophetic looking up. When Abraham lifted up his eyes, prophetically he saw Mount Moriah and knew that that was the place of sacrifice. So he tried to sacrifice Isaac there, but that was going to be the same place on which King David would later set up points to where the Temple should be, where Solomon set up the Temple. In other words, Abraham was prophesying the site where God would provide. And David lifts up his eyes on the threshing field – which is a plain, it's a flat thing – and it's actually the same word in Greek: lifts up his eyes and sees the angel of the Lord who's going to judge everybody in the midst of that plain. And that's why that becomes the place on which the Temple is going to be built. So Jesus here is lifting up his eyes, a prophetic gesture, almost as though he's also saying – and obviously this may just be me being, what's the word, far too speculative, but hey, one tries – it's almost like he's saying: listen, the place, that's going to be everywhere from now on. He looks up at his disciples who are going to have to spread this word around, and then he gives these blessings and these curses, blessings and woes. And in Luke they're very punchy, and there are really two. There's one blessing and one curse, with each of the next lines being a working out of what is meant. So the blessing, the principal blessing, is: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God." And in case anybody wants to know what that means: "Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh." Very strong – the first one doesn't have the words "now," but the descriptors do. And then the woes on the other side: "Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation" – you have received your advocacy, your defense, because it's the same word, paraklesis (παράκλησις), which can mean comforting, it can also mean advocacy. It's the word which John uses to refer to the Holy Spirit, the parakletos (παράκλητος). What does this mean, "Woe to you who are rich"? It means: "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. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets." And, in the middle, the third blessing, which goes along with describing the poor: "Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you, revile you and defame you on account of the Son of Man." And then the line in the middle: "Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets." So that's the central line. It's this rejoicing. This is going to be a constant in Jesus's teaching. The binary is arriving, the sword has come, the criteria is in your midst: the Son of Man. That is going to be the criteria from now on. And that's it to you if you're poor, if you're hungry now, if you weep now. And if you're in this position because people hate you, when they exclude you, revile you and defame you on account of the Son of Man – in other words, because you have got with the program of the realization that the truth is going to be spoken from the victim, something which power never likes. "Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets." And here's another curiosity: "For surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets" – in other words, the ancestors of the prophets. And then he says: "Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the the false prophets – so the ancestors of the prophets, the false prophets. But what is really interesting is he doesn't say "your ancestors did to the prophets," though a surprising number of liturgical translations do translate the word there, which is quite clear in Greek, as "your" – as though this is something to do with something Jewish. But the interesting thing is that here Jesus is talking to a mixed national crowd. He's not trying to specify, if you like, the ethnic inheritance of the prophets. In fact, the suggestion is rather that this dynamic – "blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you, revile you and defame you on account of the Son of Man" – that is something which is available everywhere. And that's what happens to true prophets anywhere. And if you are rich and full and laughing now, then you're the kind of person who people will speak well of. And that's not true of a Jewish or Hebrew culture; that's true of all cultures. In other words, the flattery of falsehood, spin if you like, to stay in with the powerful, is the way of the world. So Jesus is announcing very, very strongly here that the dynamic, the center of what is coming upon people, is going to be very drastic. It's going to make a very strong alteration to how the order of things works. At the center is the realization that this word is spoken from beneath. It's going to replace the threshing floor that was also the basis of the Temple. In other words, ultimately what Luke will show as the replacing of the Temple will happen. But all these hints happen in every scene – this dramatic blessings and curses, which is rather similar though more drastic than the equivalent in the book of Deuteronomy, where Moses offers similarly a bunch of blessings and cursings as he gets the people going. So the journey continues. The Lucan journey continues, which is strangely secularizing, strangely international, apparently rather binary – but not because it's trying to lock people into things here and now in some sort of locked-down way, but because it's aware of the dynamic of desire, which works either towards building you up so that you are receiving who you are from your name in heaven, or for the one which is grinding people down into death and violence. And we'll see more of that next week when Jesus advances in the sermon on the plain. In the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen.