Getting Down With Jesus

Luke 6:17-26, Jesus heals, The Sermon on the Plain

• on Jesus’ beatitudes in Luke, unique parallel format of blessing and woe… the first three blessings are second person (to you, you disciples) now (in the present). Poor, hungry, weeping. You are happy! You are blessed! You are to be congratulated and celebrated is what the Greek word makarios means. Hooray for you. You are in the pole position, you’re the next contestant on the Price Is Right, you've found the golden ticket.

I’ma jump over a few verses to the “how terribles”… which are the opposites of the blessed, the happys. Where the Greek word makarios means blessed or happy or congratulated, the word translated “how terrible” here is ouai (oo-eye). An expression of grief, woe. I think it’s an onomatopoeia, a word that sounds like what it is.  Oy. Unwanted, disagreeable, the noise you make when you find the milk has gone bad or you have a flat tire or you’re going to be audited.

Remember the happys? The poor, the hungry, the weeping? The sads, the terribles are for the rich, the full, and the laughing, the opposites. 

Jesus is saying something here: If you spend your life motivated by money, appetite, or even happiness, you’re missing the boat. It’s worse than that, actually, it’s like you’ve got a cancer of the soul. 

If your main concern is money, then it isn’t God; your God comes after your money. 

If your main concern is satisfying your appetite, then your eyes aren’t on God, and you put God after appetite. 

If your main concern is your own happiness, then once again, you are putting God in second place.

The fact that Jesus makes the statements two different ways back to back shows he takes this stuff seriously, he seriously wants people to know that God must be first, that kingdom work is priority. And in case you need convincing that he’s serious, he gives us two other verses… Happy are you when people hate you, reject you, insult you, and condemn your name as evil because of the Son of Man… that’s what they do to God’s workers.

• That’s what they do to Jesus. And Jesus doesn’t let it stop him from doing God’s work, he gets right in. He gets tired in his line of work, his commitment to his job takes a toll on him, body and spirit, but he gives how much? He gives his all. He doesn’t let big things get in his way, and he doesn’t let little things get in his way.

• There’s a few little things get kind of lost in the shuffle from the beginning of this “sermon on the plain”… Jesus has come down from the mountain where last week we noted that he had spent time in prayer and had chosen his team, named his twelve disciples, called them apostles. He comes down from the mountain and there’s a great crowd of disciples therefrom everywhere. They came to hear him and to be healed from their diseases, and to be made right. The whole crowd wanted to touch him, because power was going out from him and he was healing everyone.

• And we get a beautiful little detail in verse 20, two beautiful little details. One is that he is speaking to his disciples. He delivers the blessings and woes, the happys and the how terribles, to his disciples. He is talking to us here. Would you be my follower, he asks? It isn’t gonna be easy, it isn’t gonna be all fun and games. You won’t have a lot… the things you’ll have a lot of will be questions, hunger, and troubles.

• But the beautiful detail of verse 20? You might not even see it if you’re reading NIV (which says looking at his disciples) but in the Greek it says having lifted up his eyes  to his disciples… he’s below them, somehow. He’s looking up. 

Jesus, the son of God, the Christ, the Messiah, who should be above his disciples, is looking up at them. 

I think maybe because he was healing somebody on the ground, right then and there, and he was saying “this is how you follow me. This is how you give of yourself.” 

If he wasn’t healing someone right then and there, I think he’s looking up to the disciples because he’s exhausted. Again, this is how you do it, you give your all. And when you’ve given your all, when you’re hungry and poor, even crying, you’re doing it right.

• There is great work to be done, great work given by the son of God, who didn’t leave his disciples to do the work without him but commissioned and led by example… great works that require great commitment and for which there is no greater reward.

• May our closing song be a song of encouragement for those who would be called disciples of Christ.

 • Hymn insert Forward Thru the Ages, hymn of Christian unity and purpose, connection to each other and the church in general