Measuring Spiritual Progress
David Orendorff · Luke 6:17-36 · February 11, 2007
At the beginning of Jesus ministry, in Luke 4:16-30, right after he is baptized and then temped by the devil, Jesus goes home to Nazareth and officially kicks off his ministry by reading from the scroll of Isaiah in the synagogue:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. She has appointed me to preach good news to the poor; and sent me to heal the brokenhearted, and to proclaim release to the captives and sight to the blind; to strengthen with forgiveness those who are bruised; And to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
Jesus then announces that his God given purpose in life is to fulfill this scripture. For the rest of his life, and in his resurrection, Jesus kept this purpose as his primary focus. And if we are to be disciples of Jesus then we adopt Jesus’ purpose as our purpose; that is, we are called to preach good news to the poor and to heal the brokenhearted. We are challenged to organize our lives, as individuals and as a congregation around the priority of agape, servant love.
In preaching to his home congregation in Nazareth Jesus clearly states that as a prophet the objects or recipients of his ministry are not his friends and family in Nazareth but with those farthest away. Quoting scripture he reminds them that the prophet Elisha during the great famine of his time went to the widow of Sidon in modern day Lebanon rather than the great many widows in Israel. And he reminds them that the prophet Elisha went to Syria to heal the Syrian general Naaman and Israel’s enemy (sort of like healing Osama Bin Laden) rather than heal the lepers of Israel. He is reminding them that the first and greatest of the prophets did not serve their own people, but the foreigner and the enemy. For Jesus mercy would not begin with miracles at home but in the surrounding villages and countries, with foreigners, children, lepers and enemies. His home church was enraged at this message because they thought they ought to be the first recipients of his healing. They drove him out of town and took him to a cliff to throw him over but it was not yet his time to die.
In Jesus’ sermon on the plain, Luke 6:20-26, today’s scripture, Jesus again gives the purpose and objective of faithful and successful discipleship. For Jesus faithful discipleship is when we can say to the poor, "You are blessed, for today the whole of God's kingdom, all heaven and all earth, are yours;” when we can say to the hungry, "You are blessed for today you shall be filled;" and when we can so to those who weep, "You are blessed for today you shall laugh." It is our blessings, the gifts we give from the love of God to those suffering outside of us that define our fulfillment of God’s purpose in us.
I love the beatitudes. Martin Luther King Jr. loved them, as did Mother Teresa and Gandhi. John Wesley uses them as a guide to authentic Christian character for 13 of his 53 recommended sermons. E. Stanley Jones, the great evangelist of India, gave a whole book to them as defining life’s real meaning and goals. Albert Schweitzer gave up the life of a scholar, philosopher and musician to be a doctor and servant to the children of Lambarènè1Wikipedia Lambarènè Entry in Gabon2Wikipedia Gabon Entry, west central Africa3Wikipedia Africa Entry. In fact, most of my heroes have found this particular set of verses powerful for who they became and were always, in some way, becoming.
What repeatedly strikes me about the beatitudes is that their way of being spiritual is not about me, but how, in what manner, I am related to you. My call from God is not about me getting the blessings of God for myself, but about me being a blessing from God to you. And the same is true for you. To hear the call to discipleship fully is to know that you are not here for you but are here to be a blessing for those who suffer.
I expect this to make some of us a bit uncomfortable. After all, this is just the point at which Jesus’ home church in Nazareth became enraged. Jesus church family wants God’s blessing to be first about them. They want God to take care of them before God takes care of others. They want Jesus to heal them before he goes to the unclean and unholy, to the wicked and the enemy. In fact, far from being healed, they want their enemies dead. If I announced that I am headed to find Osama Bin Laden to give him my kidney so he could be healed, I might not be killed (though some would think me deserving of death) but I probably couldn’t get the necessary visas.
Cultural Christianity believes that faith in Jesus is about the believer and his or her wants or needs. This is one of my big objections to it. It turns the way of Jesus into another item to consume for our benefit. You go to Costco to get the material stuff you need and you go to Jesus to get the spiritual stuff you need. I have heard people say with some anguish, “That church just doesn’t feed me” as if the church existed to feed them. Jesus says it is not about us being fed, it is about us feeding the hungry of the world. It is not about how well we are clothed, but about how we clothe the naked. True agape servant love, the very heart and mind of Christ, is not about what is in it for me, but about what I have to offer you.
And it is not just any random you, but the poorest you, the most hungry you, the broken hearted you. We will know that we are fulfilling the call of Isaiah, of Jesus, and of Saints Francis and Clair, when our acts of compassion include our enemies, both personal and national. We will know we are fulfilling our God given purpose when we are as compassionate as our Father, Brother and Mother in heaven are compassionate.
It is a measuring rod that stood the Mediterranean world, Jesus’ world, on its head. The Mediterranean cultures defined success in wealth and honor. To be successful, i.e. to be blessed by God, was to own a villa and a nice chariot, to have a professional, white color job, to be from a well connected and important family, to have servants and leisure time for the theater and for the games. But these are not Jesus' measurements of success. To those who would count wealth and honor as achievement Jesus cries in pain and anger, "ουαι" (pronounced “oo·ah′·ee” meaning “woe”).
Ουαι to you who are rich, for you have received your comfort.
Ουαι to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.
Ουαι to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.
Ουαι to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.
Those whose life purpose is to be rich, full, happy, and respected are not the blessed ones. They are the ones who, when life is ultimately measured, will find themselves very, very short of the reign and glory of God. The purpose of Jesus’ ministry and of our discipleship is first about the suffering of others. Luke’s gospel repeatedly makes this point. It is found in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) and the parable of the father with two sons, one of them prodigal (Luke 15:11-32). And Luke is not the only gospel which says that our faith lives are not to be about us, but to be about those who suffer. All the gospels and all the letters of the New Testament make the same point. It is starkly stated in Matthews gospel (Matthew 25:31-46) when Jesus tells the parable of separating the sheep from the goats (a sort of quality control parable) where those we feed the hungry, cloth the naked, visit the ill and imprisoned are those who dwell in the Kingdom of Heaven. Those who do not comfort the least of these, no matter that they have cried “Jesus is Lord” are cast outside the city of God where they wail and gnash their teeth in anxious fear.
I believe in measuring things to see if the actual results meet the desired results. I know some folks are against measuring because it is somehow not spiritual. But to know if something is working we need to measure its effectiveness. If Bear Creek were a factory making pens, we would want to know if we were being successful, so we would make sure it is pens we are making, and we would have to count and test the pens comparing our pens with the ideal pen.
If Bear Creek were a school, our primary focus would, or I think ought to be, the students. To know how well we are doing it is the student’s success we must measure. If we measured teachers or administrators and not students we might find we have good staff that are well educated and work hard but that would not tell how well the students are doing. Only the success of the students can tell us that.
If Bear Creek were a hospital, the measurement of success would be the health of the patients. Hospitals are about the return to health of people who are ill. And no matter how good everything else is if the people are not getting well then it is not a good hospital.
But Bear Creek is a congregation who states its purpose as “to create a diverse family place of belonging for all people and to reach out and make Disciples of Christ.” I believe Jesus tells us to measure whether we are a productive congregation by looking at ourselves individually and corporately and asking, “Are we indeed cultivating and producing disciples who reach out to others with the Spirit of Isaiah and Jesus, with the purpose of including the lost and healing the broken.”
I am saying, or at least trying to say, that Isaiah’s words and Jesus’ Beatitudes are the standard, the ideal and benchmark by which we are called to hold ourselves accountable. I am saying that the true measure of our success is not how well we are doing and what God has done for us, but how well those who are far from us, those who are not of our class, our wealth, our education, our taste, our congregation, our nation or our politics are doing and what God is doing through us for them. The measurement of our success is in the wealth of the poor, the full stomachs of the hungry and the laughter of the grieving. We will know we are successful when our enemies know our hospitality rather than our rage. We are successful when we love with the servant heart and mind of Christ.
By this measurement it is clear that we are not yet perfect compassion as God is perfect compassion, but by the unflinching, unswerving, undeniable, grace and love of God, and by our dedicated response to God’s love by being disciples in worship, study and servant deed, we will mature toward perfection, and our servant love will grace the world. By the grace of God and our surrender to that grace we will more and more be a blessing to all who suffer.
And exactly here is the mysterious twist of discipleship. When we make ourselves the purpose of discipleship we are not healed, but lose our lives to suffering. But when the healing of others is our purpose then we are healed. Or as Jesus says succinctly in all the gospels, “If any want to bebecome my disciples, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.” (Luke 9:24 and parallels)
I invite you to join with the leaders of this congregation who have recommitted themselves to being disciples of Jesus and to cultivating that discipleship in us for the lost, lonely, hungry, and poor of the world. I invite you worship God completely, study Jesus thoroughly, and serve the least relentlessly; to offer your life as a blessing to a suffering world. I invite you to do this because it is how you are taught and how you are to be healed and will know a deep soul joy.
And I invite you to pray with me: Great God of grace, by our regular worship of you, we pray to grow more compassionate in word and deed. By being disciples and cultivating discipleship we pray to grow more like Jesus in heart, hand and mind. By your inner work and our outer work, we pray to be ever more perfectly become your servant love to this suffering world. Shalom and Amen.