Lectionary for Feb. 16, 2025
Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
Jeremiah 17:5-10; Psalm 1;
1 Corinthians 15:12-20; Luke 6:17-26
One thing my wife absolutely does not tolerate in our home is mockery. The injunction in Psalm 1 to not sit in the seat of scoffers is oft-repeated by Pechan-Drivers. Why? Nothing is more corrosive to love and respect than mockery. Discounting someone’s intelligence and not engaging with them based on respect is exactly the sort of dehumanizing linguistic violence that Jesus says leads directly to hellfire (Matthew 5:22).
Far too often, Christians of various flavors display contempt toward others who believe or worship differently. But the diversities in the body of Christ are to be valued and treasured, not mocked or dismissed. I’m profoundly grateful to live this side of the 1999 Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, where we can bury the contempt and violence that led to hundreds of years of war because of differing human doctrines about God’s grace, among other things.
The lectionary texts this week call us to set aside human doctrines and notions of how the world works in favor of rejoicing in what God is doing.
Jeremiah, paralleling the language of the psalm above, pronounces blessings on those who trust in God and issues curses for those who trust in humanity or human strength. In evocative language, Jeremiah compares the one who trusts in human wisdom to a dying bush in a parched desert. However, the one who trusts God will be like a well-watered tree by a stream. Even in times of drought, its leaves will continue to be green, because its roots are tapped into the source of life (17:8). The prophet spoke in a context of rampant false prophets who relied on their own understanding and violently opposed those like Jeremiah who spoke for God. Jeremiah called people to trust God, not human doctrines.
In the second reading, Paul takes aim at those who insist that Jesus should conform to their doctrines of what happens after death. Some members of the Corinthian church were happy to acknowledge that Jesus was the messiah, but they didn’t believe in the resurrection of all people (1 Corinthians 15:12). Paul could not abide this and lambasted those who claimed one resurrection but denied it for everyone else. If there is no general resurrection, Paul argues, how can there be a specific resurrection of Jesus? If there is no resurrection for everyone, then the whole Jesus movement is a sham! But Jesus rose again bodily, and so will we, irrespective of what human doctrines say.
The one who trusts God will be like a well-watered tree by a stream. Even in times of drought, its leaves will continue to be green, because its roots are tapped into the source of life.
I’m very interested in Luke’s introduction to Jesus’ sermon on the plain. What follows is largely the same material that Jesus taught at most places he and his disciples went. To use modern political language, this is Jesus’ stump speech, which he adapted to each local context. So, here on the plain in Luke 6, he inserted woes that he didn’t discuss on the mountain in Matthew 5. But make no mistake, this is the core of Jesus’ teaching. And this is exactly what people showed up to hear.
Luke notes that people from Jerusalem and Judea (Jews) joined people from the coasts, including Tyre and Sidon (gentiles) to hear Jesus. They wanted to hear for themselves what the teaching miracle-worker had to say. But they also wanted to touch him and be healed. I love the specificity here, because Luke distinguishes between those who had physical ailments and sought healing (iathenai) and those who experienced spiritual afflictions and needed to be cured (etherapeuonto). There were those in that day, and certainly those in our day, who discount the spirits and form doctrines based on a spiritually neutered world. Jesus cares not a whit for those doctrines. Instead of explaining that there are spiritual maladies and physical illnesses, he heals, exercises and teaches, each as they needed.
The takeaway is that wrapping up our unchanging beliefs in tidy bows and rehearsed catechisms can be dangerous. Knowledge puffs up. When we think that we have the correct answer, it can act as intellectual blinders that prevent beholding the mysteries of what God is doing in the world. Many in Jesus’ day could not accept him as their messiah because their theology or Christology prevented them from recognizing Jesus as who he said he was. God forbid it that we should miss what God is doing in the world because we idolize our doctrines and miss the chance to see Jesus. Instead, let us hold on loosely to our doctrines and welcome reformation when needed.
