He came down with them 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 on 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

Hated, Excluded, Reviled, and Defamed: Do You Feel Lucky?
The safest thing to do in this world is nothing.  Don’t say a word, no matter what you think about what is happening around you.  Better still, try to not pay attention, to never notice.  Avoid eye contact; keep your head down.  Try not to touch anyone; breathe quietly, so that no one mistakes a deep breath for a sigh, the pace of your breathing for excitement, an indication that you care.  Don’t care.  You’ll only be hurt if you care.  Don’t care.  Just be still, and try to do even that in a way that no one will notice.  Just let them do what they will do.  Especially if they’re doing it to someone else, and not to you.

Pitchers and catchers reported to Spring Training this week, in Florida and in Arizona, as the “Boys of Summer” reunite for a new baseball season where everyone starts with a clean slate, zero and zero, and every fan imagines, if only for a fleeting moment, that his or her team will still be playing when late October comes and the World Series crowns a champion, best four of seven games.  I love baseball; everyone in the lineup is treated the same, three strikes and you’re out, four balls, take a walk.  The baselines extend all the way to the wall and never change direction, no matter who’s up to bat and who in the field.  Only one batter’s box, one strike zone, every pitcher pitching from sixty feet-six inches away.  Each team gets twenty-seven outs and, if the game hasn’t been settled when all fifty-four outs have been recorded, it’s extra innings and you play until you have a winner.  And a loser, though the losers can’t complain that they were shortchanged on opportunity.  There are bad calls, of course, and errors, too, but the game is long enough and fair enough that the bad calls even out and the errors—well, they tend to come out pretty close, too.  And, in the end, there’s no running out the clock in baseball.  No matter how far ahead you are, or how far behind, both sides still have to throw the ball over the plate to get to the end of the game, and until the last out is recorded, anything can happen.

One of my favorite things about baseball—especially the major leagues—is the code of standing up for your team and protecting your teammates.  Unwritten rules that say that even the player who was just traded from the opposing team slides hard at second base to take out the shortstop who showed up the pitcher when he hit a homer, and the youngest rookie reliever knows to knock down the dirty player on the other team, even when the score is out of reach.  And the managers, who race from the dugout at the first sign that their hitters, or their pitchers, are being mistreated by the umpire.  Older men, usually, remembering what it was like and what could happen, and risking embarrassment to stand up for younger men with fat contracts and less experience.  Every injustice met by a champion.

I used to tell the kids I coached that baseball was just like life, that we treat our teammates like family, and that those from far away who hate us hate us because we play baseball, the best and fairest game in the world.  I’ve always been a little crazy that way.  Baseball is played on a level field, like the place Jesus took His followers to talk; life is anything but a level place.

Let’s pray together and then dig deeper into what Jesus is trying to tell us.

Let us all be a little bit crazy, God.  Let us know justice and its counterpart; let us know mercy and see clearly those who are without it.  Let us be enabled to see grace and to give it, even when we are ridiculed for it.  Let us see Your way, Your Word, Your will, and let us live into that as our only path to life.  Restore the levelness of this world, even if it pains us, even if You must use us as Your shovel, Your rake—Your bulldozer.  And remind us here, no matter what we see or hear, no matter what is said or done, no matter what grows sharp and clear nor what remains blurred and fuzzy, that the glory of this time and of these words is Yours, alone.  Amen.

I’d like for us to imagine together for a couple of minutes.  Would you imagine with me?  Imagine we step outside, after worship, into a world we’ve never seen, just outside this beautiful sanctuary.  Because all of the people of the world, all of their homes, their children, their lives have come near to us-- all of us have been intermingled. No walls, no borders, no rivers or oceans or mountains between us, not even a “bad side of town” or “wrong side of the tracks.” No countries so far away that they can be disregarded.  No, “it can’t happen here.”  At our feet, a group of Syrian refugees, women and children and old men who have been maimed by wars, begging that the children might be fed.  A foot away, Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world.  Can’t he smell—we can—can’t he smell the overwhelming odor of human poverty?  Remember, for every Jeff Bezos there are eleven million Syrian refugees.  But to be fair, there are two thousand billionaires in the world, so really only about 5,500 Syrian refugees for every billionaire.  Here come some Swedes and Norwegians, hearty, healthy, blond and blue-eyed but, next to them, about 2.5 million refugees from South Sudan and a million from Somalia and two-thirds of a million from the Congo, crying for their lost children and begging for education and opportunity so that the ones who remain might escape the misery of their lives. So now about five million refugees, or 25,000 per billionaire.  Can’t those blue-eyed Scandinavians see the squalor of the lives being lost in their very midst, hear the mothers crying for their starving children, react to the creeping stench of death as it settles like dust upon their clothes?  We look over and we see Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, right where it belongs, serving platters of amazing foods to those who can afford it, or who have saved so they can celebrate, but on the sidewalk in front, where we cannot ignore them, there are the hungry children from—can that be right—children from right here in Indiana, 300,000 Hoosier children who have gone at least a day without eating.  They’re right there--close enough and real enough for us to touch, to hear, to smell; in this make-believe, we aren’t allowed to turn away but, even if we did, do you know what we’d see?  More.  Older Americans—and some younger ones, too—deciding whether to spend their fixed income on rent this month, or on food, or on the insulin that keeps them alive, or on the heat bill so the electricity can be turned back on.  Beside them we see lawmakers, busy, important, unwilling to answer the questions that are spoken in clear and unmistakable voices and, truth be told, unwilling to be made aware of the plight of the people who had no money to put into their campaign coffers.  After all, if the manufacturers of cigarettes and alcohol and pornography and guns are willing to put a couple of million dollars in the till, why would you bother to care about anyone who makes your life heart feel hard?  Over there, in the vicinity of North Central are the all the parents—the parents of Columbine and Sandy Hook and Parkland, weeping inconsolable tears, bent over their children who have been murdered as they sat in school or as they tried to run away from the evil that invaded the sanctuaries of childhood education and, new to the mix, the spouses and parents and children of Aurora, Illinois whose lives are ruined and, yet, not far away, amused and empowered by the sneers and slanders of radio talk show hosts, stand those who make the deadly weapons unabated, busily counting the cash infused by the latest scare that someone might take those weapons away.  But we turn now, and we see--approaching us like a massive wave from the south, walking up Keystone, and also from the east and west, on I 465, come the remainder of the world’s 68.5 million refugees—the ones fleeing violence and persecution and widespread violation of their humanness.  68.5 million humans, truly the teeming masses; look closely, though, and see that they are just like you and me, mothers and fathers, children, teenagers and babies,, grandparents holding their grandchildren closely as they pray, pray, pray for scraps of mercy and tiny bits of grace so that their grandchildren may know life for one more day.  Real people, like you and like me.  The final tally-- 34,500 hungry refugees on the move for each billionaire standing tall in the world today.  In a world where we are all intermingled—this world I’ve asked you to imagine and to visit with me this morning--it is the billionaires, and even the millionaires, that become invisible that disappear from sight, no longer appearing in celebrity pages and no longer shining like the success that we all can achieve, if only we would try; it is the vast human need that overwhelms us.  Congratulations to the poor, says Jesus.  I’ve come or them; I call my people, my followers, my disciples to give to them.  Woe to the rich.  Nothing more for you.  Nothing for you.

The safest thing to do in this world is nothing.  Don’t say a word, no matter what you think about what is happening around you.  Better still, try to not pay attention, to never notice.  Avoid eye contact; keep your head down.  Try not to touch anyone; breathe quietly, so that no one mistakes a deep breath for a sigh, the pace of your breathing for excitement, an indication that you care.  Don’t care.  You’ll only be hurt if you care.  Don’t care.  Just be still, and try to do even that in a way that no one will notice.  Just let them do what they will do.  Especially if they’re doing it to someone else, and not to you.

I have a theory; I don’t know how to test this theory, but someday I’ll try.  My theory is this: when the difference—the disparity—between the rich and poor in America is least, that is, when there is really a middle class and it is large and the poor are not so much worse off and the rich aren’t so much better off—are you with me so far—when it’s like that, our country loves baseball more than the other sports.  When the difference between the rich and the poor keeps growing and the middle class is shrinking, football is the game of choice.  Violence begets violence; justice begets justice.  Football is the game in which size and strength and speed—and advantage--prevail.  Baseball is played on the level field, by people of all shapes and sizes and nationalities. And sometimes it’s the little guy who hits the ball out of the park.

The safest thing in the world is to do nothing.  That’s not me talking—it’s Jesus.  Right in the middle of this message He shares with the people who have come to hear Him—this stranger who has healed the sick and touched the leper and lifted up the downtrodden and, who now speaks truth to power—right in the middle of blessing the poor and then saying woe to the rich, Jesus says:

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 on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. 

Blessed are the ones who follow me, doing as I do.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
   because he has anointed me
     to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
   and recovery of sight to the blind,
     to let the oppressed go free, 
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. 

And, yet, the world hates me.  If you do my bidding, if you help the poor as I have helped the poor, if you embrace the orphans and the widows and if you give to those who are begging and do not discriminate except to show favor to those who are less and disfavor to the greater—if you live as I live—you, too, will be hated, excluded, reviled and defamed.  Congratulations; do you feel lucky.

The Kingdom of Heaven is a level place.  The Kingdom of Heaven is a level place.  Jesus came to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth.  And He called on the crowd as they stood together at the level place He had taken them, and He calls on us—you and me—today: make this world a level place so that it the Kingdom of Heaven might reside among us.  Make this world a level place.  And have no concern for your earthly reward, for the high places are not easily brought down, nor the low places lifted up without an ongoing and arduous effort.  In the process, you and I will be hated; we will be excluded, and reviled, and defamed.  And, in addition, we will be vulnerable, defenseless, unable to run away and hide from the predators who, in their quest to pass on to future generations one more dime, will seek to take the last shred of dignity from those who already live in a poverty they will not deign to understand.

Please, imagine with me one more thing before we come back to the pews, to the here and now and the pleasantness of his place.  Imagine the poorest citizen of Israel on the day that Jesus called on this group of followers to listen to His plea.  Imagine that poorest person, lying in the dirt in a village, wasting away and watching as the world passes him by.  Does that person still exist in the world today?  Does that level of poverty remain?  You know that it does.  You know that it does.  If we are honest, we admit that it exists even in America.  We know that the poorest of the poor are, today, as the poorest of the poor were, even as Jesus spoke the Beatitudes to the crowd.  Now, envision the richest person in the grandest city, Rome, the jewel of the Empire.  Or of empires unknown, in China, or in Peru, or in Mexico.  The richest person of the time; try to imagine his or her wealth, and rich, and luxury.  Imagine the healthcare she received, the power he held, the comfort of their homes.  Now, ask yourself this: have we not exceeded even that level of wealth in the world today, and not just for a few, but for many?  Are there not many who live lives that are longer, richer, healthier, more comfortable, less effort required and more entertainment at hand?  Has the disparity between the rich of this world and the poor—has it not increased wildly; doesn’t it increase daily, especially in this time of undiminished greed and the distant hollow promise that a “rising tide will lift all boats.”

Okay, come back inside.  We’re right here, together.  Safe--if it is safety we choose—safe from the clamor of this world’s groaning.  And the talk I just talked is the kind of talk that will lead me to be, even by some in the church, reviled; if you repeat it, just about anywhere you might go today, you will be hated, too.  It’s politics, they say, denying the truth that it is Jesus. Just for talking the talk, for sharing the Gospel that they swear is fake news, for committing the blasphemy that we have a call from Jesus to define justice as public love shown to the last, the least and the lost—for that, we will be ridiculed.  The world chooses football over baseball once again today.

The safest thing to do in this world is nothing.  Don’t say a word, no matter what you think about what is happening around you.  Better still, try to not pay attention, to never notice.  Avoid eye contact; keep your head down.  Try not to touch anyone; breathe quietly, so that no one mistakes a deep breath for a sigh, the pace of your breathing for excitement, an indication that you care.  Don’t care.  You’ll only be hurt if you care.  Don’t care.  Just be still, and try to do even that in a way that no one will notice.  Just let them do what they will do.  Especially if they’re doing it to someone else, and not to you.

Except, you see, we hear the words of Jesus today.  And His words demand that we live in solidarity in this world.  Blessed are the poor.  Blessed are those who weep for their children, at home and abroad.  Blessed are those who flee oppression and violence and persecution and walk hundreds and thousands of miles in search of asylum and sanctuary and opportunity to prove their worth.  Blessed are the hungry, and those who thirst.  Blessed are those who lift their voices in the demand that the lives of their children be made better, safer, healthier.  Woe—woe to those who hoard wealth, who refuse to share, who do not acknowledge that they are not self-made, but are, instead, fortunate in ways the world may not understand.  Woe to those who steal the dignity of the poor and the lame.  Woe to those who would deprive and deny and dispose of the masses of God’s children because of their inconvenience.

But blessed are you—and you, and you and you and you—if you will stand in the breach.  That’s the message; that’s the “so-what.” That’s our calling, if we are to be disciples—believers, followers, obedient in our life together.  Stand in the breach, stand in solidarity, brothers-in-arms with the poor, the oppressed, the sick and hungry and thirsty, the uneducated ones and those who are oppressed, imprisoned and addicted.  It isn’t about chasing Jeff Bezos and the others with pitchforks.  Jesus tells us that they have all they’re gonna get, that He’s here—and we’re called to be here—for the poor. 

The safest thing to do in this world is nothing.  Don’t say a word, no matter what you think about what is happening around you.  Better still, try to not pay attention, to never notice.  Avoid eye contact; keep your head down.  Try not to touch anyone; breathe quietly, so that no one mistakes a deep breath for a sigh, the pace of your breathing for excitement, an indication that you care.  Don’t care.  You’ll only be hurt if you care.  Don’t care.  Just be still, and try to do even that in a way that no one will notice.  Just let them do what they will do.  Especially if they’re doing it to someone else, and not to you.  But that’s not for you, and not for me.  We’re called to do exactly as Jesus did—care for those in need and call out injustice whenever and wherever we see it.  Let the Spirit of the Lord be upon you today.