A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. Arthur Van Seters is Principal of the Vancouver School of Theology, Vancouver. This article is the text for one of the sermons Dr. Van Seters presented at the General Assembly in Vancouver in June, 1990.
Christian Ethics has fallen on hard times. Not that people don’t want ethics. Terry Anderson, who teaches Christian Social Ethics at Vancouver School of Theology is in constant demand in various departments at UBC, including Medicine, Dentistry, Law, Nursing, and Business Administration. People are facing tough decisions and they are looking for ways of thinking through the implications of possible actions.
For example, a patient has been in a coma for a month, caused by an accident. Should support systems be turned off? The technology available in hospitals today allows for a kind of passive euthanasia. Her husband says yes; the court says no. She comes out of the coma and is fully restored.
People want a framework for making moral decisions, but in a secular, pluralistic society there is less and less consensus about ethics as people face more and more decisions. A Christian ethic is no longer the public ethic. Laws may make it legal to dump a certain amount of effluent into Howe Sound, but is it ethical?
A California architect made a technical mistake on a drawing. The developer immediately seized upon that mistake and legally forced her to lose thousands of dollars. He said it was shrewd business. But was it ethical?
The church is a covenanted community with an ethic, the ethic of the Kingdom. The Way of Jesus is a way of thinking shaped by a theology of God’s coming reign. We believe, therefore, that our responsibility is to live by the ethic of the Kingdom as presented to us in the Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6.
Context of This Ethic
The context of the preceding chapters in Luke’s gospel include John the radical charismatic who introduces the ethical teacher from Galilee as one who baptizes with Holy Spirit and fire. In the desert, this ethical teacher is filled with the Holy Spirit and struggles in a cosmic battle with the powers of evil personified in Satan. His absolute commitment to God remains firm. He then pronounces that the programmatic mission of Jubilee – namely the reversal of the social and political order outlined in Isaiah 61 – is beginning. He demonstrates how difficult it is to interpret Scripture as God acting in God’s way. This rabbi then chooses followers to join his movement, to enter the radical newness of his way.
Now, in Luke 6, he spells out the ethic for this journey. If the Kingdom or Reign of God is unexpected newness, its ethic is unlikely to conform to conventional wisdom; it is most likely to be significantly different from what people expected, both then and now.
An Ethic for Discipleship
The most obvious aspect of the ethic of the Kingdom is that it is for discipleship. In the Reformed tradition, there are three marks of the Church: Scripture, sacraments, and discipline. Discipline is the behaviour of disciples. Disciples are learners, people who receive instruction (the Latin word is disciplina).
Lots of people were beginning to crowd around this travelling rabbi, Jesus. His popularity meant he might be in line to become chief rabbi at one of the big synagogues in Jerusalem. He’s sensitive and responsive to the masses – touchable, reachable. Many come out of curiosity, others in hope of some magic healing. He speaks specifically to those who are serious about following, namely, to disciples. It makes me wonder about my own preaching. I’m invited to preach, and in front of me I look at a sea of faces. Some of them are drop-ins, some come out of habit, some are wondering, some are really serious. Do I look for a lowest common denominator? Or do I speak to them as a covenanted community?
If Jesus is Lord of the church, our theology and ethics are derived from him, not from society. It is the ethic necessary for discipleship that is being looked at here, and it may be very different from the world’s ethic.
A Radical Perspective
In fact, this is an ethic that may not make sense to everyone. Blessed are the poor is not conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom is that wealth is a sign of blessing. When we thank God for the blessings of our Thanksgiving turkey dinner with all the trimmings, we think of how well-off we are. Of course, our blessings are not only material we say, but food, shelter, clothing, a good job and a good environment help!
Blessed are you who are hungry, you who mourn, you who have been pushed around, jailed a couple of times, beaten, tortured. Now wait a minute. This does not look at all like blessing. The woes look like the blessings: woe to you who are rich and well-fed, you who laugh, you who are admired and cheered.
This is confusing. Everything is reversed. The world is turned upside down. What is Jesus getting at? If he keeps preaching like this, he’ll never get a call to one of the Jerusalem synagogues!
It is not that Jesus is dividing the congregation into rich versus poor, well-fed versus hungry, happy versus sad, praised versus persecuted. The congregation is a cross-section of the well-to-do, menial workers, and peasants. All of them, without exception, would be surprised at what Jesus is saying. What do you mean I am blessed? I don’t feel blessed. What do you mean I already have my reward? I have always given to the poor, supported the General Assembly budget, been a member of Rotary. Both have internalized conventional wisdom and think it is adequate.
But that is just the problem. Some of you who are suffering may have thought God didn’t care. Some of you who are doing okay may have thought God has been blessing you. But this world is broken, distorted – nothing like it was suppose to be. Jesus says to them, in effect, I am bringing in a new order. The mighty will be brought down from their thrones and those of low degree will be exalted (Luke 1:52). It is just like the highway in Isaiah 40. Apartheid will end. The Berlin Wall has already crumbled and so, one day, will the Bamboo Curtain be shredded.
The radicality of the gospel is that it does not just call for modifications and reforms, but revolution and reversal. You who are poor should no longer despair, Jesus says. You who are well- to-do should no longer trust in your advantages. Both need to be freed – one from fear of hopelessness and the other from relying on possessions and positions. Both need equal access to salvation, and both need to be able to journey together as disciples.
In a recent report by David Schuller of the Association of Theological Schools about five major U.S. denominations, including the Presbyterians, it was noted that two-thirds had difficulty accepting that salvation is a gift rather than something earned. Our culture has emphasized earning. This means that some don’t feel they deserve what they get, and others feel they have a right to it. But grace says “nothing in my hand I bring.” The need to bring has no place here. Being an elder or minister, a commissioner or even General Assembly moderator, and certainly being the principal of a theological school, has absolutely no advantage before God. “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy cross I cling.” This is the theology of grace that is fundamental and foundational to the ethic of the Kingdom.
Living the Ethic
Once we have grasped the reality of grace, we are freed. We can begin to work out how we live this ethic. We can discern through the Gospel of Luke the Kingdom that is envisaged, how ultimately transforming, as the prophets made so clear. How transforming? No middle-class, no rich, no poor. A new heaven and a new earth, no more tears, only hallelujahs. That’s God’s ultimate purpose.
We will not bring in the Kingdom. We have enough problems restructuring the General Assembly! But the vision of this transformation, this reversal, is integral to the gospel and its ethic. I take this to mean that if the Way of Jesus is to make a real difference, evangelism can’t be the enthusiastic agenda only of some, while societal change becomes the preoccupation only of others. We need each other in the church. Richard Mouw, the recently appointed provost of Fuller Theological Seminary, makes the comment that there is more to the gospel than individual salvation. But then he quickly adds, there is not less than that.
In a recent sermon, Neville Jacobs of West Point Grey Presbyterian Church in Vancouver said that evangelism without human societal change is a soul without a body – a ghost! And human societal change without evangelism is a body without a soul – a corpse!
When the Spirit truly gripped the Church, Act 4 tells us that possessions became common property and there wasn’t a needy person in the entire congregation. Now that’s what I call Presbyterian sharing!
Concluding/Sending Word
Sometimes we are a fearful lot and can become picky and protective, even possessive. But Jesus comes along and upsets the apple cart and throws us into a dither. And then he says, Don’t worry about those apples, they’re wormy anyway. Come, follow me. Take my yoke and learn of me. Then, in that moment, there are new possibilities, new perspectives, new resources, and an adventure with the one who leads over cross hill into his gracious newness. When the fundamental direction of our behaviour is conversion and change, then there is nothing complacent about Presbyterians!
Luke 6:17-26
Jesus and his small group of constant followers came down out of the hill country into a level plain.
Around them there were two others groups: a large crowd of people who followed him from place to place, and beyond them a huge number of inquisitive onlookers who had come from down in the Judean area, including Jerusalem, and from as far away as the coastal towns of Tyre and Sidon.
These onlookers not only wanted to hear Jesus teach but many of them also came to be healed of physical illnesses or be liberated from demonic forces.
The whole crowd jostled each other trying to touch Jesus because he exuded a sense of power, and many were, in fact, healed.
Then Jesus looked particularly at those who had been following him either as a small group or part of a larger movement and said to them,
Blessed are you anawim, you who are poor (but spiritually sensitive), because the Kingdom of God belongs to you.
Blessed are you who are hungry now because you will eat abundantly.
Blessed are you who weep now for you will laugh.
Blessed are you who are hated, excluded, insulted and slandered because you are associated with me.
Celebrate in that day, jump up and down with happiness because your final reward in heaven will be very great.
This shameful treatment is exactly what the prophets experienced in their day.
But woe to you who are rich,
you’ve already received all that’s coming to you.
Woe to you who stuff yourselves now because you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now because you will mourn and weep.
Woe to you when people compliment you.
This is exactly how the false prophets were treated.