Jeremiah 17:5-8; 1 Corinthians 15: 12-20; Luke 6: 17-26
During a film festival here in Christchurch a few years ago there was a French movie in the comedy section called The Valet. This was French farce at its best. The story contrasts the lives of two men who are desperate to live the good life. Both want to win the hearts of the woman with whom they are in love. The first man is young and poor. He lives in a one bedroom flat with a friend and his job is to park cars for the rich and powerful at one of Paris’ exclusive five star hotels. The woman he loves is his childhood sweetheart. She is beautiful and intelligent; but she is deeply in debt, having just taken out a Euro34,000.00 loan to set herself up in business. The poor man sums up his situation as hopeless when he discovers that the lady of his dreams wants a man with much better career prospects to provide security in case the new business struggles.
The other man in the movie is wealthy. He is the CEO of one of France’s biggest multinationals. He is already married and highly successful and rich, but this is not enough. He is desperately in love with his mistress; one of Paris’s top 10 models. The problem is that divorcing his wife will cost him hundred’s of millions. He wants to avoid this huge cost, yet he is desperate for the affections of his mistress. While scheming about what to do about all this, a newspaper photographs him with his mistress and publishes the photo on the front page. So begins an elaborate plan to convince his wife that his mistress means nothing to him. Of course, everything goes wrong. In the resulting fiasco the rich man looses everything he has ever valued. His wife uncovers the plot and dumps him, his mistress realises she is being used and his Board of Directors decide to sack him and get a new CEO. Meanwhile, the poor man, presented with huge temptations, the possibility of enormous wealth, the chance to blackmail one of France’s richest men and having other top ten models throwing themselves at his feet, turns away from all of these temptations and remains totally faithful to his first love. By twist of fate, he ends up engaged to be married to his childhood sweetheart having paid off her debt in total. The Rich man however, is really the poor man in the story.
That movie sums up a great deal of the bible’s teaching about what it is that really makes us rich. The question before us in today’s gospel could be phrased this way: What is living the good life really all about? The gospel text before us today uses the language of blessings and woes, contrasting two different approaches to life. Luke’s gospel today is asking us to understand what the good life is really all about in terms of the Kingdom of God, to see it from God’s point of view. We might be tempted to think that the good life is really about being the CEO in the movie with a bit of religion tacked on. If only he want to church occasionally, sorted out his private life and lived with a bit of compassion, all would be well.
But what if living good life is about something else all together? This is where Jesus is going with his ‘Sermon on the Plain’. Jesus is steeped in the tradition of the prophets of the Old Testament. The prophets understood God’s creation as gift, God’s provision of a world of abundance and fullness. All through their proclamation and poetry their prayer is that God’s people would open their eyes and see that reality, instead of seeing the world’s resources as a scarcity to be hoarded. Jesus wants his disciples to see this, to learn to trust God’s providence and that he will provide a fullness and a plenty that we can only begin to imagine. Disciples of Jesus will learn to see the world as God’s gift, with life in abundance. Then they will be willing to share one’s possessions and goods; this willingness to share will be a sign of whether or not the gospel has taken root in our lives.
Blessed are they who this day hunger for God, who love with a spirit of sacrifice, and who act for the coming of the Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven; sharing our possessions, working for justice. This is the emphasis in Luke’s Sermon on the Plain. Following the Lord is done every day. “Blessed are your poor… who hunger now… who weep now… who are hated now… and woe to you who are rich now, who are full now, who laugh now…” The gospel couldn’t be clearer. It’s almost as if the movie makers were thinking of Luke’s gospel when they made their film. Those who hunger for what is right, who seek the best for ones they love, who share what they have with others; these are the ones who live the good life, who really are rich. Whereas those who abuse their power, who care only for their own needs and walk over everyone else, these end up living in a hell of their own making.
Therese of Avila is arguably one of the greatest thinkers and spiritual directors of the church in the West. She describes the human soul as an interior castle, a house with many rooms. In the centre of the castle is a special room; a place for God. The spiritual journey for every person is to enter that room and to become comfortable communing with God. Living the good life as a disciple of Christ is more than sharing possessions and seeking what is right. These are the outward signs that the kingdom has taken root in you heart. We need first of all to encounter God. Jesus is the revelation of God, but he comes to lead us to God, to reveal what living the Christian life is all about. At the centre of his life is an intimate relationship of trust in God. We need that trusting relationship with God to be fully human. When we find ourselves fully loved by God, there is a sense of being “filled up” with God. At that point, all our other needs dissipate and seem no longer to matter. Now we can lift the focus of our attention from self to loving others as much as ourselves. Now we can share. Now we can trust. Just as Christ gives of himself to us and to the world, so we begin to give of ourselves to others. We carry that attitude of love and trust into our human relationships. At the heart of the Christian way we are called to love God and others as much as we love ourselves. The more we do this, the more we live the good life of the Kingdom.
Even the most pious among us struggle on this journey. One of the biggest motivators in human behaviour is the fear of loss, the fear of missing out on what others have got. That’s often what makes us hoard possessions and prevents us from sharing. A real estate agent on of those TV real estate programmes noted that people will keep bidding in an auction way beyond the point they had agreed to just because they hate loosing to that other guy over there or because of the fear of missing out on something they think they desire more than anything else. And so it is that the space within each of us that is reserved for God is easily crowded out by consumerism, the need to be seen as one of the beautiful and successful people of our culture. The fear of loosing is or missing out on what others have is what makes us distrustful and puts love of ourselves at the centre.
Recall Jeremiah’s message, “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord… and cursed is the one whose heart turns away from God.” It is important to sense this direction of the heart, the magnet that is pulling our hearts. Are our hearts restless because they already know God and desire to seek the Lord more fully? Or are they restless because they wish for that which is more temporarily satisfying? Are we impatient for the next pair of shoes, a better car, and the right make-up for our faces? Do we hunger for the acclaim of our friends and the safeguarding of our reputation? Are these the things that claim the attention of our hearts?
In the beatitudes of Luke, the direction of the heart is a key concern of Jesus. The readings today call us to search our hearts. We are gathered around a table of blessing here, of course. The point of the Eucharist is to sit down to eat and drink with God and experience the cup of blessing, God’s meal of abundance; eating with God who longs to fill us up and who wants us to enjoy the Good Life of the Kingdom.
If you are able to place our needs and desires before God, you can be assured that God will come to the party. But the journey is costly. Admitting our need, even to God, is never comfortable. Differentiating ourselves from the noisy mass culture that surrounds us can be scary. Ultimately though, the way of the gospel is costly not because we must face down our fears and anxieties. The way of Jesus is costly because we are called to love and serve others. We are called to love God, and to love our neighbour, and to love ourselves. Jesus came to reveal the extent of God’s love. Ultimately he was prepared to pay the price of loving to the end, which is what the cross is all about. But those who choose the way of love will find that God makes ours lives richer than we could ever have imagined possible. Blessed are you who hunger, who thirst, who are poor now: yours is the dominion of heaven.
