Saying the Loud Part Out Loud -Seventh Sunday after Epiphany (Luke 6: 27-38)
Today’s scripture reading from Luke comes from a collection of Jesus’ teachings known as the Sermon on the Plains. Now, you have most likely heard of the Sermon on the Mount, which is found in the Gospel of Matthew and begins with the Beatitudes. This was the Sermon on the Plains. The difference in the name comes from the location from which Jesus teaches. Sermon on the Mount, Jesus goes up to teach on the mountainside. Sermon on the Plains, Jesus comes down to preach on what Luke calls “a level place.” Or, in other words, a plain. Outside of the name and the location these sermons by Jesus have many other things in common. They both occur not too long into Jesus’ ministry. They are some of the largest extended sections of teaching in their respective Gospels. If you have a red-letter Bible, where the words of Christ are printed in red, you will find pages and pages of red text during these teachings. They also include many of Jesus’ best known and often quoted sayings and teachings, known as beatitudes.
It’s sort of like that one album from a band that is a really big hit for them and includes several popular songs. For instance, Fleetwood Mac’s album Rumours, which includes songs like “Don’t Stop,” “The Chain,” “Go Your Own Way,” and “You Make Loving Fun.” All still heard frequently on Classic rock stations. Perhaps you would prefer The Beatles. Maybe the White Album which includes songs like, “Back in the U.S.S.R,” “Dear Prudence,” “Obla-d, Obla-Da,” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” And that was just side A. Neither of these are greatest hits albums per se, but they are great pieces of work that have endured over the decades, and if someone wanted to start listening to either band and get a feel for what they were all about and what their music was like, these albums would good places to start. Who knows? Maybe you have other, better suggestions for this analogy. I’m more of a movie guy then a music guy, so I might use the example of Steven Spielberg in 1993 when he directed Schindler’s List and Jurassic Park in the same year. Not nearly the entire filmography, but a great place to start and see what was possible for this artist.
Similarly, there is a lot more to the life of Jesus then the Sermon on the Plains. There is a lot more that he does, a lot more that he says, and some of it even pretty miraculous. Still, consider just some of the things we heard in this morning’s reading; love your enemies, turn the other cheek, do unto others as you would have them do to you, even sinners love those who love them, be merciful as God is merciful, judge not lest ye be judged, give and it will be given to you. And that’s just side A! After the lectionary reading for today cuts off Jesus’ sermon continues and we hear about the blind leading the blind, and the question about seeing the speck in your neighbor’s eye and ignoring log in your own eye.
If you wanted to introduce someone to Jesus, this might be a good place to start. After all, these are not only some of Christ’s most well-known, oft quoted teachings, but they are also some of his clearest. No parables here. No hard to decipher double meanings. Just Jesus telling us, “Don’t be like that. Be like this instead.” In other words, “Stop living in the old world, doing things the old way. Live in a new way, as if the realm of God were here right now.” Jesus is saying the loud part out loud.
You might have heard the phrase, “saying the quiet part out loud.” This phrase is used to describe someone openly stating something that was previously an unspoken truth or considered too sensitive to express publicly. Usually it has a negative connotation, as well. Such as, when the politician said that the new policy was only about ‘helping the economy,’ he was essentially saying the quiet part out loud about wanting the policy to benefit the wealthy. Now, I was having trouble coming up with a concise example, so I relied on AI to provide me with that one. And, since artificial intelligence just spits out something based on the most common inputs for a particular topic, we can assume that when people think about “saying the quiet part out loud” they are making a connection to politics and politicians. However, they are not the only people in our societies that have a gift for not clearly or concisely saying what they mean or what they intend.
When it comes to Jesus, especially here in the Sermon on the Plains, we don’t have to worry about deciphering when he is saying the quiet part out loud, because there is no quiet part. There is only the loud part. Which is, that if we believe in God and we believe in Christ as the son of God and that he is God’s love made manifest in the world, then we are called to live our lives according to that truth. He may communicate that in different ways. In sermons, in parables, sometimes in the form of questions, and his audiences don’t always get it at first, but I think the message is consistent. Love God, love one another, and live that way. These lessons from the Sermon on the Plains are so effective and so memorable because he says them clearly, and because he makes the point to contrast them with the way people were (and are) currently living in the world and making clear how God’s realm will be different.
Just before our reading today, in Luke 6: 20-26, we hear Jesus’ famous statements of blessing and woe. As in, “Blessed are the poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” These blessings are followed by the statements of woe, “woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. 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.” These words of woe may sound like a threat, but they are not that. What they are is an acknowledgement that the good news that Jesus has come to turn the world upside down might not sound like good news to those who are rich and comfortable because of the way the world is now. Still, Jesus is not speaking words of condemnation. These are words of invitation to the world Jesus teaches us about. After all, Jesus does not tell his disciples to rip the wealthy from the comfort of their lavish homes. No. The next instruction he gives is to “love your enemies.”
An unexpected instruction perhaps, but that is what the following beatitudes will be about; love, and how love will change things. The type of love this is pointing us to, the type that Luke is talking about in his gospel, is agape love. Which is a Greek word meaning a love that is unconditional and selfless, a love that is not dependent on circumstances but that can be for (and should be for) everyone. In the Gospel of Luke, agape love is God’s love manifested in the person of Jesus.
Jesus knows that responding in kind to old, bad behaviors does not create justice or make things right. It will only increase the brokenness of such a world. Instead, Jesus’ words here in the Gospel of Luke are encouraging us to live as if the Realm of God is already here. To live in a way of wholeness in a broken world. The words we read for today describe to us how to make that world happen. We are told how to bless the poor instead of the rich and feed the hungry instead of the well-fed, it comes from the way we treat each other. People are to be loved rather than used. That is how we can bring about the world Jesus is talking about. That is how we bless those on the margins of society. That is how we make the loud part louder.
We don’t call the Sermon on the Plains, or the Sermon on the Mount for that matter, one of Christ’s miracles. However, teaching people to behave in a new way -a way that is contrary to the way the world operates in the present- can be a miraculous act. Loving your enemy when the world tells you to hate them is miraculous. So is turning the other cheek, when the world tells us that retaliation and revenge can be appropriate and right. Not repaying violence with more violence is a miracle. In a world that encourages us to make judgements about everyone based on how they look, how they act, who they love, or how they live, withholding judgment can be a miracle. In a world where we are told that it is right and just to look out for ourselves first of all and then our families, then our friends, and so on down the line, there becomes something miraculous about thinking first of doing to some one else as you would have them do to you. If we do these things, as Jesus tells us, then our reward will be to live in a world that is like the realm of God right now. Which is a miraculous thing.
Of course, living in this world right now is no easy thing. And even if we commit to living as Jesus teaches, as if the new realm of God is here now, there can be no guarantee that everyone else will live that way. We will still live among people that conform to the old ways of doing things. There will still be people very invested -in many ways- in the old way of doing things. There will still be people who try to keep the truth quiet. However, its not just other people and their manipulations that make it difficult to live the loud part of the gospel out loud. We can make it difficult on ourselves. We get can distracted, busy, in a hurry. The world comes at you fast. When that happens it feels like all we can do is react, and when we do that, we tend to react in ways that align with how the world is, rather than how Jesus tells us it can be. We react by hating our enemy or judging our neighbor or responding to violence with more violence.
Those beautiful things Jesus has told us can begin to fade into the background as we shift our focus to dealing with the demands of the everyday. What can we do in moments like that? Well, I know that sometimes when driving in my car I can get lost in my thoughts. I think about where I’m going and what I need to do when I get there, and when I might be able to leave that destination so that I can get to the next place on time. I might be replaying conversations from the day before or thinking through a conversation that might happen tomorrow. I might be worrying about something or fuming about something that upset me. I’m reacting. Then I’ll hear it, the first few chords of a familiar or beloved song. It breaks through the noise in my head. I reach out and turn it up to eleven. I make the music louder and it becomes my focus, and all that other stuff fades away.
If you are caught in a cycle of living and reacting to the world, judging or hating or taking what isn’t yours, take a minute and let the loud part get loud. Maybe that means getting out your Bible and turning it to Luke 6. Maybe there are other verses that help ground you in the realm of God. Maybe there is a particular author or a favorite podcast. Whatever it is, find that thing that will help you remember the agape love that Christ preaches, and turn it up to eleven. Let it break into your world and let yourself live in the world Jesus promises, right now. Amen.