Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on February 16, 2025

[sermon begins after two long-ish Bible readings]

Jeremiah 17:5-10

Thus says the Lord:
Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals
and make mere flesh their strength,
whose hearts turn away from the Lord.
⁶ They shall be like a shrub in the desert,
and shall not see when relief comes.
They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness,
in an uninhabited salt land.

⁷ Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
⁸ They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
in the year of drought it is not anxious,
and it does not cease to bear fruit.

⁹ The heart is devious above all else;
it is perverse—
who can understand it?
¹⁰ I the Lord test the mind
and search the heart,
to give to all according to their ways,
according to the fruit of their doings.

Luke 6:17-26 [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.”

[sermon begins]

There was a super-sized football game last Sunday. I was a Philadelphia fan for the day. After cheering for Kansas City a few times when Denver wasn’t in the hunt (don’t hold it against me), I thought I’d give Philly a turn. I meant what I said a few weeks ago when the Broncos played their last game. I don’t always pray for football, but when I do, I pray that everyone plays their best game and that the calls are fair. The Super Bowl showed who brought their best game and who didn’t, regardless of the play calling. One team was ready to play their best game. The other team wasn’t. As I watched the triumph and the meltdown, I kept wondering about the backstory. Rob was the recipient of my wayward imagination as I came up with possibility after possibility as to why the meltdown was soooo melty. I was a bird fan for the day to spread the wins around, NOT to relish a full reversal of the fallen mighty.

I wondered if there were warning signs leading up to the game. Warnings can inspire adjustments toward a different outcome. But warnings are often wasted because it’s tough to have your logic challenged. Discrediting the messenger with a scathing eyeroll or stinging gossip is way easier. Similarly, Jesus’ likely didn’t deserve the contempt he received in response to his warnings either.

Warning is one way to think about what we hear today in the “woes” recorded in Luke’s gospel.[1] They are not curses. They’re more like an inevitable consequence when you think you’re an exception to the pain of this life. The word used in the Greek is more like a warning sound than a word.[2] Like, “ay-oh, oh-ay.” There are connections between the woe warnings that Jesus uses, and the language of woe used by Old Testament prophets. Prophets didn’t pull any rhetorical punches either. They wanted people to hear the inevitable conclusion to their current behavior and call people to repentance, to new ways of being in the world as God’s people. The woes that Jesus lays down are for those of us who are rich, full, laughing, or admired. Sure, we have options. We could roll our eyes and trash talk Jesus, wasting his warning for the wayward. OR we could let the warning of the woes settle over us. Let the warning of the woes challenge our skewed focus much like the prophets used to do. The prophet Jeremiah challenges his listeners not to trust in mere mortals but to be aware of our devious hearts that befuddle us. By extension, this means we can treat our own inherently wayward opinions and circumstances with a bit of mistrust; with a healthy, well-deserved dose of skepticism for our own limited thinking.

Since I started with the Super Bowl, let’s keep going. I’ll give one small example of what I mean by a healthy dose of skepticism for our own opinions. That small example being THE most watched Super Bowl halftime show in the history of Super Bowls. Right up front, I’ll confess my deficit when it comes to current rappers. Kendrick Lamar’s awards – including a Pulitzer and, like, a million Grammys – were news to me. But back in my high school days, rap was the music of the day. School busing had just ended from our east Altadena home to northwest Pasadena but I still attended with my older sister. It was one of the most successful examples of busing to diversify race and ethnicity within a student body. John Muir High School celebrates graduates the likes of baseball great Jackie Robinson, rocker David Lee Roth, novelist Octavia Butler, comedian Dax Shepherd, and more.[3]

There’s a documentary about my high school called “Can We All Get Along,” named after John Muir alumni Rodney King’s infamous plea during the Los Angeles riots.[4] When I attended Muir it was 89% kids of color – African-American, Asian-American, Armenian-American, Hispanic-American; and 11% White-American. I attended Muir in the early years of hip hop and rap. Lunch bands in the quad had a beat – bom, bom-bom, bom-bom, bom. Everybody walked to it. Our drum corps amplified it. Many danced to it. When Compton-born Kendrick Lamar started rapping, I started moving. Come to find out that the half-time show wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Opinions and reactions about it are flying fast and loose. Even faster flew the judgments ABOUT the justifications and self-justifications. Perhaps the warning of the woes could give us the courage to examine our own thinking with a healthy dose of skepticism, to not end up the hero of our own story at the expense of everyone else, to seek to understand rather than be understood.[5] To wonder why halftime dancers represented the flag as they did. To be curious about the streetscape that also looks like a prison yard. When we react against art, it can be an entrance to self-examination.

Jesus’ woes to the rich, full, laughing, and admired are an invitation into self-examination. But self-justification is the common instinct. We say things like, well, I’m not rich. Or I used to be poor. Or even more problematic, we try to justify why other people are NOT rich or full or laughing or admired as if they deserve their situation. It’s like we read the four blessings and the four woes listed by Jesus to see if we’re in the winner circle. In the meantime, while we’re justifying things all over the place for ourselves and other people, the opening verse of the reading says that “[Jesus] came down with [the twelve] and stood on a level place.”

The leveling language in Luke’s Gospel can catch us off guard because we only get Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain, on the level place, during Year C of the Lectionary Readings when Easter is almost as late in the Spring as it can be.[6] It’s only come up twice in Sunday’s worship readings in the last 20 years. While preparing and thinking about Jesus coming down to the level place, John the Baptist’s quotes from Isaiah came to mind about smoothing rough ways, filling valleys, and lowering mountains and hills.[7] Mary’s Magnificat also came to mind about bringing down the powerful and lifting up the lowly.[8] The leveling is NOT a reversal of bringing the low high and the high low only to change places and repeat the same bad news like the Super Bowl. Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain, on the level place, in Luke’s Gospel enacted what was proclaimed and sung by John the Baptist and Jesus’ mother Mary.

Jesus came down and stood on a level place with the twelve, and also with “a great crowd of disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon.” Naming those locations meant that the crowds were full of Jews AND non-Jews known as the Gentiles. Crowds of people showed up from all over, some were Jesus followers, some were Jews, and some were Gentiles. It was chaos. People reaching out and touching Jesus. People unbound from the social norms of their day milling around together a level place. Leveling is the opposite of scapegoating.

Rene Girard was an atheist philosopher who converted to Christianity late in life after studying scapegoating and the Bible.[9] Girard expected to find consistencies in scapegoating between other ancient manuscripts and the Bible. Instead, he found the Bible unique in its rejection of it. Jesus was to be the ultimate and final scapegoat. To show us the error of our way at the cross and to show us the possibility of transformation by the resurrection. Jesus’ way.

The Gospel of Luke in general, and Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain, on the level place, in particular, is a prime example of how the Bible levels the highs and lows of social norms that we tend to describe as “just the way things are.” This is especially true in societies like ours where “the blessed” are often considered to be the rich or full or laughing or admired while “the woed” are the poor or hungry or weeping or reviled. We misinterpret blessings and woes as deserved and bestowed by God—justifying each person’s social location. The problem is that we end up treating our neighbors based on what we think they deserve rather than on the second greatest commandment after loving God—to love your neighbor as yourself.[10]

Jesus, preaching on the level place, names the blessings of the poor, hungry, weeping, and reviled not because of a far off someday but because he calls and invites us all to be a part of the leveling here on earth—seeing each other as human siblings over and above our fear of scarcity and our urge to scapegoat. The primitive urges that pit us against each other, hoping for the full reversal of another’s downfall. The good news is that Jesus levels the playing field as he meets us on the level place. Rather than recycle the same bad news with different teams of winners and losers, Jesus invites us into the good news of our shared humanity as beloved as children of God. Divisions can be healed by the power of Jesus’ death and resurrection. After all, the Way of Jesus is our way, too.

____________________________________________________

[1] Rolf Jacobson. Sermon Brainwave podcast #648—Sixth Sunday after Epiphany for February 17, 2019. https://www.workingpreacher.org/brainwave.aspx?podcast_id=1106

[2] Matt Skinner. Sermon Brainwave podcast #1008—Sixth Sunday after Epiphany for February 16, 2025. https://www.workingpreacher.org/podcasts/1008-sixth-sunday-after-epiphany-c-feb-16-2025

[3] www.ranker.com/list/famous-john-muir-high-school-alumni-and-students/reference

[4] Pablo Miralles, filmmaker and John Muir HS alumni. Can We All Get Along: The Segregation of John Muir High School. (2022) www.pbs.org/show/can-we-all-get-along-segregation-john-muir-high-school/

[5] A sound-bite from the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi (Prayer for Peace)

[6] Easter is scheduled annually on the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring on or after the vernal equinox. https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/determining-easter-date.html

[7] Luke 3:1-6

[8] Luke 1:52

[9] Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry. “The unlikely Christianity of René Girard” on November 10, 2015 for The Week (online). http://theweek.com/articles/587772/unlikely-christianity-ren-girard

[10] Mark 12:28–34; Matthew 22:34–40; Matthew 22:46; Luke 10:25–28