Our beautiful Gospel today opens with Jesus, coming down from “the mountain”, to give what is often called the ‘Sermon on the Plain’, corresponding to the more well-known ‘Sermon on the Mount’.
Many scholars think that these two sermons contained the core, the living heart of Jesus’s teachings. And so, they were passed on orally for 50 years by the early Jesus movements before being written down in the Gospels.
So, the Sermons, and our Gospel today, are very important. But of equal and easily overlooked importance is the context, locale and audience of the sermon itself, which we will focus on today. Who Jesus delivered the sermon to, how and where he delivered it are just as important as the teachings themselves.
And again, as always, to fully grasp the radical and revolutionary set-up, we are given by Luke in the first few verses, we need to travel backwards in time and miles across space to a culture quite different from our own.
Just before today’s action Jesus spent a night of prayer on “the mountain”. In the morning, he called his disciples and named 12 of them as Apostles also. The Apostles are the “them” at the start of our reading, “he came down with them”.
It is of immense significance that Jesus called his disciples up to the mountain. Mountains were, in ancient south-west Asia, thought to be the home of the Gods, the place where deity resided. In the Old Testament only special people and elders ascended the mountain with Moses to be near God. Here though Jesus, freely calls his disciples – and in the Greek of the time, disciple just meant “student” – Christ calls his students, calls anyone who wants to learn, up the mountain.
This idea of ascent, going up to meet God was reflected in the Jewish understanding of the Temple in Jerusalem. No matter where one lived in ancient Israel, east or west of Jerusalem, in a higher or lower place, on the flats, or in the hill country, one always spoke of “going up to Jerusalem” – because God resided in the temple, just as She was thought to reside up in the mountains.
Those who had been on the mountain, the apostles and the disciples, are however, just two of several distinct and diverse groups. These groups are listed in a very conscious and deliberate order intended to stir the emotions, minds and spirits of the first hearers of this Gospel.
· There are the apostles, those students chosen by Jesus, those closest to him, those who will be sent out to spread his Word.
· Then there is a “great crowd” of his disciples, his students.
· Then a multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem – the native home of the Jewish peoples.
· Finally, another multitude from the coast of Tyre and Sidon, the ancient Gentile enemies of the Jewish people.
The overarching image is like concentric circles of closeness surrounding Jesus: apostle, disciple, Jew, Gentile.
This consciously mirrors the Jewish idea of concentric circles of holiness surrounding the Temple in Jerusalem. Spreading out from the most inner area, the Holy of Holies, the Holiness got less and less in each subsequent circle – from Sanctuary to Vestibule to the City itself and onwards, less and less holy, more and more impure, more and more unclean.
The temple was the most important, the most holy place on the earth. Because of the constant ritual actions within, and the boundaries to the temple, the very heart of it was pure enough for God to actually reside there.
And the farther away you were from the Temple, the farther away you were from the Presence of God on Earth – until finally, all the way to the very, very, least Holy, the borders of the Land of Israel.
And here we note the first radical act of Jesus – standing with him are people BEYOND even the farthest limits of holiness, people of Gentile, enemy nations, all included in his teaching and his love.
But even more, as we discussed last week, the ancient Jewish understanding is that the seas and the ocean are symbols and the presence of chaos and de-creation. Now Luke tells us these Gentiles are not simply from Tyre and Sidon but are from “the coast of Tyre and Sidon” – and the Greek is literally “the sea-coast” of Tyre and Sidon.
These are gentiles, people who are unclean, people beyond any blessing from God, people who live with the powers of chaos and de-creation around them – and yet even these people have sought Christ and have been welcomed by him.
And even more, we have those considered unclean – Jew and Gentile – unclean because of their illness and disabilities, physical, mental and spiritual.
And all, “all of them” are healed, all of them are made whole, restored in love by the Love of God.
They are healed because power came out of him … so much so everyone was trying to physically touch him. Power comes out of his body.
This is because God now, as Christ, is human. God is body and flesh just as those healed were, just as we are. God, the Incarnate God, is now longer fully available only in the Temple; God exists fully in the world, and there are no limits to his love and healing. Christ is present up the mountain and on the plain, at the heart of the temple, and at the shores of Tyre and Sidon.
Wherever Christ, as body goes, God is present, and power and healing comes from him to all.
Wherever we, as the Body of Christ go, if we are open, God will be present, and healing, making people whole, restoring life, renewing connections, repairing relationships, will come from us to all.
And is no accident that Luke describes this happening “on a level place”. The whole idea of going “up” to meet God is shattered – everyone, outsider and insider, apostle and gentile, Jesus and God are on the same level. God is among humans and all life-limiting hierarchy has been abolished in the love of God, in the presence of the Body of Christ.
What hierarchies do we, as the Body of Christ, do we as church abolish, how do we level all that needs to be levelled?
And even more radically, though everyone, including Jesus is on the same level place, Jesus somehow looks up, somehow, figuratively, imaginatively, perhaps in posture and position, through speech and presence, somehow Jesus looks up at his disciples, at his students. Jesus, God, lowers himself to all assembled, the Master consciously becomes lower than the servant.
So, before we even hear the words of the Sermon, Jesus has shattered the traditional notions of power, of purity, of bodies, and of sacred locations. He embodies a new tradition, a new way of relationship with the Divine.
In this new relationship, which we as members of his Body are partakers, Christ levels all hierarchies, all systems of control that limit love, and calls us, out of love, to do the same.
In this new relationship, Christ declares all bodies, every type of body, abled and disabled, well and unwell, as holy and included, and calls us, out of love, to do the same.
In this new relationship, Christ brings God, as his Body, to all the places of the earth, and calls us, as his Body to do the same.
These are our tasks now – before we speak, before we as apostles and students of Christ, share the Good News of his teachings, we are tasked, as his body use our bodies to level, to heal and to bring God to all. We are tasked, using words attributed to St Francis, to “preach the Gospel always, and where necessary, use words”.
In the Name of Christ. Amen.