Demonstration: Luke 6. 17-36
As a Church we have committed ourselves to “Learning to show the Father’s love”!
That breaks down into four sections:
* Learning – Discipleship.
* Showing – Demonstration
* Father’s – Deeper with God (or, “Spirituality)
* Love – Dialogue with people i.e. (Relationship)
Today I want to look at the “Demonstration” part of our vision. Learning to show the Father’s love. In Matthew 5 (the teaching known as the “Sermon on the Mount”) and in its sister passage, here in Luke 6 (sometimes called the “Sermon on the Plain”), Jesus actually talks about showing the Father’s love: "be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked".(verse 35) "...sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust". (Mt 5.45) "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful." (verse 36) "Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Mt 5.48)
The people
For a start, Jesus is talking to disciples. Now there was a large crowd who had gathered around Jesus and were listening and watching. This is very much like the setting for the sermon on the Mount. On both
occasions, interestingly, Jesus is in among a crowd, yet talks to his disciples. And I think that when he does so, he is not just talking to the twelve, as though nobody else was there or mattered even if they were there. His disciples were not just the twelve but those in the crowd who had genuinely opened their lives to God’s kingdom, and begun that lifelong process of learning to live as a son of God. And I believe that is important. Sometimes we talk about the “ethical teaching of Jesus” as though it were just a great ideal; but this is a manifesto for the new community, a pattern sheet for what their life together is supposed to look and feel like. And that community is meant to be real, loving, belonging; it is more than an organisation. It is a family, a body. Demonstration is done in community. And that community consists of ordinary people, not all superstars. You can be part of this demonstration, this showing the father's love. Indeed you are called to be. part of it.
The Place
These disciples, this new community are living in a world where not everyone is sympathetic to the Christian message. "Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man." (v. 22)
That is the world Jesus and his disciples lived in That is the world the early Church lived in. It is in many ways not that different to our world. We have the World wide web: they had the world wide Roman Empire. We have a world of urbanisation, oppressive economics, injustice, moral degradation, military dictatorships, nationalism and globalisation. That is just exactly the world of the earliest Church, the world in which the Gospel first thrived. So let us not imagine that the Gospel cannot thrive in our world We just have to make sure we understand the Gospel and apply it correctly to the world we live in, and that means living as the earliest Church lived.
There are going to be “enemies” who will curse and ; there will be the Romans with their right to demand menial service at a whim; there will be the ever present temptation to settle for life as a little, misunderstood, despised holy huddle, to “love those who love you” and ignore or hate everyone else; to only give a cheery greeting to our friends.
The practice of showing Father’s love.How are the disciples to show the Father’s love. What will that look like?
Firstly, it involves being among people in the power of the Spirit. That was one of the main planks in Jesus strategy for demonstrating the Father’s live, the reality of the kingdom. We read about that again in verses 17ff as Jesus is mobbed by crowds – some of whom want to experience God’s healing. But Jesus described his healing ministry as "Doing what he saw the Father doing." (John 5. 19) It’s not about going and emptying the hospital to sweep everyone into the kingdom. But because healing is part of the character of our Heavenly Father, there is no reason why we should not be seeing healings today, alongside other forms of demonstration that are just as vital.
Secondly, it involves having a radical upside down values. Jesus says blessed are the poor, those who hunger, those who weep… Matthew gives a bit more detail: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, blessed are the merciful, blessed are the pure in heart, blessed are the peacemakers…" Remember what the complaint was about Paul when he preached at Thessalonica? “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here too…” (Acts 17. 6) It involves being those who themselves have been turned upside down. We can only turn the world upside down if we ourselves are turned upside down by the kingdom of God. That kind of "upside-down-ness" is an absolutely necessary antidote to the “right-side-up” attitude of a world that lives by “me-first, take what you can get, reject authority and always avoid consequences”
Thirdly, it involves an outrageous generosity (to quote shamelessly from the theme of this year’s Baptist Assembly). That in turn means
* Open hearts: Forgiveness and forbearance. This is the ability to deal graciously with those who fall. "If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also" (v 29); "love your enemies, do good to them... be merciful…(v. 35-36) We need to demonstrate the Father's love by being generous in our evaluation of people. In one episode of The Simpsons, Maude Flanders returns from a time away from home and explains that she has been on a Church retreat, "Learning to be more judgemental!" Ouch. if we are known to be judgemental we are not showing the Father's love. If we are critical and waspish, we are not showing the Father's love.
* Proactive giving – not only to support the "Church" as an institution, but to support the poor. Giving to those who ask (v. 30); lending when we know we are not going to be repaid (v. 34). It may mean that we are prepared – especially in months and maybe years of recession and hardship – to show the love of Jesus by making resources – our resources – available for the relief of people’s emergency situations round about us.
© Gilmour Lilly October 2011
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