Luke’s “Sermon on the Plain” - just asking the question.

With Easter being so late this year, we get to hear Luke’s “Sermon on the Plain”.  We don’t get to hear these readings when lent starts earlier, which is a great shame.  

This is a great piece of teaching and stands in contrast to Matthew’s “Sermon on the Mount.” The setting is important – not a mountain top but a plain. Biblically plains are both places of corpses, disgrace, suffering, misery, hunger and mourning[1]; and places of renewal and hope as promised in Isaiah and Ezekiel. Jesus stands on this plain in the midst of broken people; poor, sick, hungry, shamed. And he speaks to his newly picked out disciples. To these Jesus repeats and expands on his message from his hometown when he read from Isaiah, which echoed his mother’s song of protest. He declares these people blessed, honoured, of great importance. And he warns those whose comfort, wealth and sense of entitlement is built on their poverty, the ones usually seen as blessed, to change their ways.

Each week we pray “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.” At the heart of this is true community; the kind of community that is life giving for all, and for all life. This is the dream of Isaiah that Jesus said was fulfilled. In his healing he defeated the powers that seek to undermine and destroy this community. In his teaching he showed us what true community takes.

I wonder what our world would look like if we took Jesus seriously. What would change if the most important people were the poor, the hungry, the homeless, those who mourn? I wonder what would happen if our attention and resources went to addressing all that causes abject poverty first. I wonder what would happen if the poorest countries were the first to be given vaccines, and the rich West had to wait? Luke’s words are a warning to us all.

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[1] Ronald J. Allen, <https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3960>