Levelling Down

 

Chrispijn van den Broeck  (1523–1591): Christ Healing the Sick (Royal Collection)

Sermon at Parish Mass 3^rd Sunday before Lent 2022

Jeremiah 17.5–10

1 Corinthians 15.12–20

Luke 6.17-26

 

You have probably had the experience of watching a film or TV series adapted from a book that you already know – an Agatha Christie mystery, perhaps, or the Lord of the Rings. You think you know the story but then you watch someone else’s interpretation and think, “it didn’t look like that in the book!”. But someone else’s view of the story can be enlightening, it can open up to us new perspectives and insights which we hadn’t seen before. How it looks to someone else can add to what the story says to us. And perhaps then we might go back to the book and read it again with new eyes.

So let’s try and visualise the scene in today’s Gospel reading. What do we think this scene looked like?

When we hear the Beatitudes, the sayings of Jesus that begin, “blessed are you who are poor”, and so on, we might think straight away, “ah, it’s the Sermon on the Mount”. Because, in Matthew’s Gospel, it is. But not in Luke. Luke records these sayings of Jesus slightly differently, and also adds the “woes” to those who are rich and full. But he also has a different account of where Jesus gives this teaching. In Luke, this scene does not take place on a mountain, but on a level place that Jesus and his disciples come down to.

The different scene in Luke adds to our understanding of what Jesus is teaching. A level place is an accessible place, and it needs to be because so many in the crowd have come to be healed. We have the little detail, that Jesus “looked up at his disciples”. If people are sick and coming to be healed they probably need to sit down, or even lie down. So, when Jesus has healed them he looks up to speak to his disciples. He is down there on the level ground, sitting or kneeling himself with the people who have come to him for healing.

A level place is a place which is accessible to all, a place where all are equal. And this levelling place sets the scene for Luke’s version of the Beatitudes – and the Woes.

The contrasts are sharp. “Blessed are you who are poor”, and that means materially poor, not the “poor in spirit” as in Matthew. “For yours is the kingdom of God”. But, “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation”.

Jesus proclaims this great reversal, a theme of Luke’s Gospel, in the level place. The powerful, the privileged and the rich are brought down, but the powerless, the marginalised and the poor are raised up, for the Kingdom of God belongs to them. It is a Gospel of liberation for the oppressed, but also a Gospel of judgment for those who have had their fill.

If we hear this as revolutionary, then we are hearing rightly – it is. But it is not a revolution as human beings tend to arrange them, where the structures of oppression stay the same and you just change who is charge at the top. God’s judgement, here and throughout the scriptures, is a call to repentance, to change. God’s judgement always offers hope. The Gospel of liberation for the poor is also the Gospel of liberation for the rich and powerful, because it is their judgement. They, too, need to be saved from the tangled web of power and privilege from which they cannot free themselves.

The Gospel of liberation brings us all down to a level place, where all are brought in as equals, and Jesus our liberator looks up at us to teach us how to be blessed. He frees the oppressed from their oppression, and the powerful from their power.

We need to hear this call to repentance, to be challenged by the Gospel of liberation, constantly. The imbalance between human beings, the un-level place of power and oppression is everywhere. Jesus summons us out from there to a level place where all are welcome and all are equal.

We need to hear it in the Church, as well as in society at large. Father Brian and I have just been doing the safeguarding training that clergy have to undertake every three years. Part of that training is a reminder of how badly the Church has got things wrong in the past. Not only in the appalling crimes of abuse themselves, but also in the ways that Church authorities, bishops and establishment figures, have covered things up, ignored complaints, let abusers go back to abusing, and abandoned the victims. It is a shocking and tragic history. It is also a failure to hear and to live the Gospel of liberation for all.

Good safeguarding practice in Church is not only about responding to disclosures of abuse. It is, even more, about creating a culture where abuse is much less likely. And that means a culture where there are no imbalances of power, where everyone is welcomed and valued as equals. Where children and vulnerable adults are placed at the centre of our care, not ignored on the margins. Where those who have authority realise that it is given them to serve, not to lord it over people. Authority to be down on their knees in the level place, attending most to the people who are most in need.

The recent history of the Church of England shows us that we still have a long way to go to create a good safeguarding culture, but we are learning. As I hope we are also learning in other areas such as race, gender and sexuality. We must not turn back or become complacent. It is Jesus who proclaims the Gospel of liberation for all. It is Jesus who calls us to come down with him to the level place, the accessible place where all are welcome and all are equal. The place where Jesus our liberator brings healing to those most in need, and where he looks up at us to teach us how to be blessed.