Rev. Dr. Les Martin

Epiphany 6 2024 – Trust in the Lord
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Jeremiah 17:5-10; 1 Corinthians 15:12-20; Luke 6:17-26

My blessing is on those…who trust in me, who put their confidence in me. – Jeremiah 17:7 (NET)

We are in the early days of Jesus ministry.  He has just spent an entire night in prayer on the mountain, and named his 12 apostles.  Coming down from the mountain, he encounters a large crowd: country folk from Judea, elites from Jerusalem, the coastal, compromised, and cosmopolitan Jews of Tyre and Sidon, maybe even some Greeks.  In other words, a little bit of everybody have come out to see and hear Jesus.  Why have they come?  They have come for a word from on high, for hope, for healing, for deliverance from evil spirits.  Verse 19 tells us that Jesus met them at their point of need- healing and delivering them all.

We do well to remember that, in the Gospels, the miracles are never merely about themselves. They point to Jesus. To who he is. And today, on the plain, the Son of God speaks very plainly about who we are. He addresses the human condition.  Echoing the Magnificat of his mother, the prophecy of Isaiah he had read in the synagogue of Nazareth, the words of aged Simeon concerning “the falling and rising of many,” Jesus speaks of God’s blessing upon the poor, the hungry, the reviled. Of God’s judgment on the rich, the satisfied, the comfortable. He is explaining what those proclamations mean in short, pointed sentences of blessing and woe.  The God of the Prophets is speaking about the kingdom – and is creating a new, unsettling, and upsetting order.

It just may upset us as well.  It may upset us, citizens of this prosperous land, if we read Jesus’ teaching as a manifesto of politics or economics.  But I would encourage you not to get hung up on that.  Jesus is not teaching civics here, despite the real, profound, and inevitable implications of his teaching for our common life.  The truth is, he is trying to upset us at a much deeper level.  The new order of the kingdom cuts much deeper than politics and ethics – as Hebrews 4:12 would have us remember, the Word of God discerns “the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”  Old Simeon had also testified that “as a result of…[Jesus] the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.” Jesus, in teaching his disciples today, is addressing not so much the externals of human life as he is the motivations behind the externals. Despite how we might first hear it, the Sermon on the Plain isn’t a “Second-through-Tenth Commandment” teaching. It’s a First Commandment one.  What Jesus is getting at today is a matter of the heart.  Jesus is challenging the apostles – and us – to ask ourselves where is our heart? What do we put our trust in? Is what we trust in a blessing, or is it a curse?

Let’s take wealth as an example. In my experience, that’s where what Jesus has said has the potential to offend so many of us in entirely the wrong way.  Because, again, it’s not about the money, and if we miss seeing that, we miss where he really wants to mess with us.

No doubt there were many economically stable people on the plain that day – maybe even some who were downright rich. It is true that some rich people have had a hard time following Jesus. The rich young ruler of Mark 10 comes to mind. And in Matthew 19:24, Jesus states it’s hard for the wealthy to enter the kingdom. On the other hand, there are success stories: Zacchaeus, Barnabas, Cornelius, Lydia, Joseph of Arimathea.  So what’s the point? The issue is not money, but trust. In Matthew 6:21 we read “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” – and that’s what Jesus is getting at.  Money, health, time – they all run out. They are not a place to put our trust. And yet our hands are so full of the things that we tightly cling to hoping for some sense of safety, that we can’t receive blessings from God. Our hearts are so anxious there is no room for the Prince of Peace.

In his teaching on the plain that day, Jesus dissects the four key areas of life in this manner. He addresses: wealth, food, happiness, and reputation. And the choice is always the same: trust in them, or trust in God.

The people who came to Jesus on the plain that day came because they had nothing to lose. They were ready to trust God, even if it was out of desperation.  By contrast, the ones who stayed home that day must have been reasonably content. As the Anglican Archbishop of Jamacia, Howard Gregory writes:

The poor and the hungry know the reality of their situation. They are totally dependent on God and therefore are disposed to entrust themselves to God’s care and mercy, which is the foundation of grace and a right relationship with him. The rich, on the other hand, are disposed to take comfort in themselves and their resources, thereby finding it more difficult to trust themselves to the mercy and grace of God.

And in a similar vein, priest and theologian Jane Williams would have us consider that:

Those who have nothing else in life to trust in, and so have to fall back on God, are the ones who are blessed, Luke tells us. The rest of us have had our blessing from what we chose to put our trust in.

Trust. This is why verse 19 in our story today is so important. Why what Paul is saying in Corinthians today is so important.  For if we are to trust Jesus, he needs to be who he says he is, and he better be able to deliver for us as he did for those broken people who came to him on the plain.  Abstract faith is one thing, after all. Choosing to live out of that faith day by day, when it’s hard, when it’s very hard, well that’s another.  Without getting sidetracked into an entirely different sermon, let’s just reaffirm this: the healings were real, and, yes, the tomb was empty. Jesus is who he says he is.  The apostle John encourages us by saying:

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched- we proclaim to you. (1John 1:1)

As Presbyterian pastor Dr Lewis Galloway reminds us:

The resurrection gives the faithful the freedom to live their lives in the shadow of the cross, as Jesus did. The hope of the church is not confined to this world.

We can trust. And that’s a good thing, because we really need to. Life is hard right now, have you noticed? Our culture is unsettled, our faith is battered from all sides, the economy is fragile, there is political and military uncertainty. On top of that mere modern existence crushes us, bringing out our desire to cling to things, and luring us to put our trust in false idols as opposed to the Risen Christ.  The prophet Jeremiah spoke in times of great change in transition.  He said that those whose hearts would turn away from the Lord to other things would be like a shrub in the desert, constantly searching for water that could never be found.  Again, money, health, time – they all run out. They are not a place to put our trust. Those who trust in God, however, will be like trees whose roots spread toward the water. Always green, always fruitful, even in times of drought. Our reading from Psalm 1 echoes these sentiments. We, rooted in our baptismal identity, drawing nourishment from his Body and Blood, can not only endure these uncertain times, but also bear the fruit of life in him.  Trusting in Christ, and in him alone, we need not be afraid.  We need not cling to secondary things.  They will always disappoint. The blessed do not seek their security in the things of this world, the power structures of the culture, or the potential of celebrity status. In Christ, we are set free from fear and striving. Free from the empty promises of false idols.  Free to live, and to love, and to give of the Fruit of the Spirit to a world that is so desperately in need of it.

In our Collect today, we have prayed that “ by your great goodness… [we] may be governed and preserved evermore.”  Friends, Jesus is for you. He is who he says he is. And he will answer that prayer.  The Kingdom of God rests on those who put their trust in him.