CAMINANDO WITH JESUS: The Sermon on the Plain

Jesus came down with the twelve apostles 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. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.

Then he looked up at his disciples and said:

“Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
“Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.
“Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man.
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."
"But woe to you who are rich,
for you have received your consolation.
"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.
"Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets."

- Luke 6:17-26

We are more familiar with the Sermon on the Mount than with this Sermon on the Plain. The Sermon on the Mount, composed solely of blessings, is Good News for all, proclaimed from the perspective of the reign of God to the world. On the other hand, the Sermon on the Plain is a mixed message which includes a warning of our failure to live into the reign of God. The Gospel is good news for all people, and Jesus calls us to bring it to bear in a world of good and bad news depending upon who one happens to be and where one happens to find oneself. The Gospel is God’s will, and we are taught to proclaim it and to pray for its fulfillment in the Lord’s prayer.

The Sermon on the Plain calls us to account for the fact that we pray for God's will to be done in the Lord's Prayer, and yet we choose not to participate in doing God's will. The juxtaposition of the blessings and warnings in the sermon fleshes out the Gospel by letting us know that worldly gains are not God’s will for us:

It is not God's will that some should be rich while others are poor.
It is not God's will that some should starve while others indifferently have their fill.
It is not God's will that some live and laugh at the expense of others.

In this sermon the tangible nature of the problem at hand replaces the intangible elements of the Sermon on the Mount. The poor in spirit from the Sermon on the Mount are now the poor we can see and bless in practice. The hunger and sadness are imminent to be addressed in the here and now, and the persecution is for the sake of the Gospel, not just a general persecution. This is a call to proclaim the Gospel in word and deed coupled with a warning of what the world will do if we fail or are complacent, even though it is the world that is filled with temptations to lead us astray.

This sermon confronts us with a choice to follow Jesus in doing God's will or to follow the ways of the world, a path of least resistance but one that ends with a worldly reckoning. When we follow Jesus, we begin to live into the Lord’s Prayer, or, as missionary Elisabeth Elliott aptly put it, "To pray 'Thy will be done' I must be willing, if the answer requires it, that my will be undone." That is the clincher of this sermon; that is why we find the warnings in this passage. We live in a world that draws us away from God by calling us to seek power in the form of security, money and control which leads to a woeful path of death. In the Sermon on the Plain, Jesus is warning us so that we repent. To repent is to turn back to God and follow Jesus in reflecting God's will until all that is, is the Sermon on the Mount; for we all need God’s blessings and none of us needs humanly made afflictions disguised as illusory prizes.

The Reverend Frederick (Fred) Clarkson is the Spanish language ministry coordinator of the Diocese of East Carolina and vicar of Iglesia La Sagrada Familia, Newton Grove.