Not too long ago, I was reading a magazine article on today’s Gospel reading and I was struck by the author’s use of the phrase, a “cross-shaped life.” The author, a Lutheran pastor named Amy Ziettlow, writes, “On Thursday evenings I teach ballet class. In constructing barre exercises that help warm up the body for more intricate steps, I aim to balance the use of muscle groups. The practice of moving en croix, in the shape of the cross, creates both tension and balance in the body. Each exercise is completed with the foot tracing the shape of a cross on the floor, once to the front in fourth position, to the side in second position, and to the back, again in fourth position.”
To the front, to the side, and to the back, back and forth, again and again.
She goes on, “The dancer stands in the center of the cross, and the limbs move to explore the space where the well-worn path of the cross leads them.
“Luke’s opening to the Sermon on the Plain,” Ziettlow writes, “invites us into the tension of living a cross-shaped life.” (Christian Century, 1/26/22, p. 23)
The opening she’s referring to, of course, is Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, which we also hear in a more expanded form in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. (Lk. 6:17-26)
Here in Luke, although Jesus is teaching and healing in a level place, hence the designation as the Sermon on the Plain, just before this Jesus has in fact been on a mountain. As is his custom in Luke, before making a major decision or choosing a significant course of action, Jesus has spent the previous night in solitary prayer on a mountainside – traditionally, a place to literally be closer to God.
When morning comes, he calls his disciples to him on the mountainside and he chooses twelve of them to be apostles as well as disciples; to be those who will be both followers and leaders; those who will be sent forth to carry Jesus’ teaching and ministry into the world.
They all come down the slope together and now in this level place they’re joined by even more disciples, joined by those who are also here to learn and to follow; joined as well by “a great multitude,” Luke says, from as far away as the cities of Tyre and Sidon, both located to the west on the Mediterranean coast. They’ve come to hear Jesus’ words, yes – but many of them have also come to be healed, healed of physical disease and/or spiritual unrest…and this being said, I think we need to consider verse 19 again, because it tends to get lost in the shuffle. When we read this verse, I think our eyes jump over it and our mind moves ahead to deal with the Beatitudes themselves.
Verse 19 reads, “And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.” (Emphasis mine.)
Power came out from him and healed all of them. All of them. The power of healing, the power of reconciliation, the power of restoration to community, the power of forgiveness and compassion and love came out from him and washed over them all – and only then did he begin to speak: four blessings, and four woes; four invitations and four challenges.
Now, I’m emphasizing verse 19 because I believe it shows us that this Sermon on the Plain is a setting of major healing, not a setting of major recrimination. I think many of us, if not most of us, tend to hear the Beatitudes both here and in Matthew as recrimination; as reproach; as a major reminder of our failings, our fears, and our shortcomings.
In spite of how we think or fear these words may sound, however, we are not in fact being blessed as sheep or condemned as goats by Jesus here. Instead, his words recognize that our human reality is such that at one time or another, we all find ourselves in each of these places.
As Pastor Ziettlow writes, “Living in the equal tension of Luke’s Beatitudes is to stand en croix, tracing the shape of the cross into the sacred ground beneath our feet in both confession and forgiveness. We stand in the center between receiving God’s grace and comfort in times of poverty, physical hunger, tears, and revilement and confessing the ways that we [ourselves] contribute to the hardship of others, place false trust in our abilities and assets, and fail to bring comfort to our neighbors.”
This is to say that the circumstances of both the blessings and the woes can distort our sense of self as well as our understanding of our relationship with God and with each other – and it helps to remember that “blessed” here as Jesus is using it doesn’t simply mean “happy.” Instead, “blessed” means having “the knowledge that one is being included in the realm of God.” (LP, Water, 29)
Having the knowledge that one is being included in the realm of God.
In times of deprivation and sorrow, times of being on the receiving end of the scorn and dislike of others, we may feel unworthy, despairing, or forgotten; and we turn away from the God that we may well feel has turned away from us. Here Jesus calls us back into relationship, assuring us that we continue to be recipients of God’s grace and love, that we continue to have a place in God’s kingdom, and that in spite of how it may feel, we are never out of God’s sight.
Likewise, in times of plenty and success, times when we find ourselves held in high esteem by others, we are equally prone to turning away from God; but in these instances we turn away through self-centeredness and neglect. We turn away through trusting in our own righteousness, our own abilities, our own gifts – and perhaps we turn away through listening a little too much to the voices of others.
Here, says Pastor Ziettlow, “Jesus calls out, ‘Whoa!’ and in [the holy pause that follows] we can repent, [turn back, step back], and make room for God’s presence in our lives.”
In 1 Corinthians, Paul is also calling out, “Whoa!” to a congregation that has taken the bit in its teeth. He too has been inviting the faithful to live a cross-shaped life -- but a cross-shaped life has resurrection at its heart, a cross-shaped life has the power of God and the ultimate defeat of death at its heart; and resurrection, the power of God and the ultimate defeat of death, is being questioned and even being denied by some in the Corinthian church.
Now, I want to be clear: it’s not Jesus’ resurrection that they’re questioning. What they’re questioning is what Paul is referring to here as “the resurrection of the dead.” They’re questioning their own resurrections; they’re questioning everyone else’s resurrection, both the living and the dead; the resurrection that Paul teaches will take place when Christ returns in glory. This is the issue that’s behind their very contentious discussions – and yet, Paul argues, the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of everyone else are not separate events. Although they may be separated in our own perception and experience as we live here in chronos, in chronological time, in God’s time, in God’s “eternal now” of kairos, these resurrections are in fact one and the same.
Christ has been raised, Paul insists, as the “first fruits” of the harvest, the offering that sanctifies the entire crop of the faithful.
Now, in terms of background, it’s helpful to remember that the congregations in all of Paul’s churches were made up of both Jews and Gentiles – and that neither of these groups spoke with one voice about belief in an afterlife.
Among the Jews, the Sadducees flatly denied the existence of life after death; while belief in resurrection was embraced by those who, like Paul, came from a Pharisaic background.
For the Gentile Greeks, the issue was even more complex as various classic schools of philosophy had differing stances on the question of an afterlife – especially a physical afterlife. As I think I’ve mentioned before, matter, the physical world, and especially the physical body, were seen by many in the Greco-Roman world as being inferior to the spiritual realm. The divine spark within oneself was said to be imprisoned in one’s physical body, freed and reuniting with its divine creator only after death – so why would anyone want the prison of their body resurrected?
Still others, perhaps those in the Corinthian congregation who felt they were superior to their brothers and sisters in Christ, others insisted they were already living the resurrection life.
All of these conflicting beliefs are anathema to Paul because, “For Paul, Christ’s resurrection and that of everyone else stand or fall together.” (Craddock, 101). We are linked to Christ, says Paul, and our destiny is linked to Christ’s destiny. Our very identity as Easter people is grounded in the resurrection of Christ, and we can’t deny our own resurrection without denying the foundation of our faith.
In fact, says Paul, denying our resurrection, and therefore denying the resurrection of Christ, completely destroys our faith: our faith is “in vain,” our faith is “futile.” Why? Because for Paul, “faith” isn’t intellectual consent to any particular dogmatic position. “Faith” is relationship; “faith” is “the dynamic, proper relation of people to God.” “Faith” is dynamic, dynamos, in the sense of being power-filled. Faith is, as one commentator says, “the powerfully established, powerfully effective, and productive right relationship to God” – and denying resurrection distorts this relationship with God and renders our faith mataia, as Paul says: renders it “empty, useless, and power-less.” (The New Interpreter’s Bible, 1 Corinthians, 983-984)
“If for this life only we have hoped in Christ,” he writes, “we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Cor. 15:19)
Our oneness with God in Christ, our oneness with the resurrection of Christ, this is the living water of our complete dependence on God; the water of life that sustains us in the desert, that sustains us in our times of woe and calls us to the turning back of repentance in times of plenty.
For the prophet Jeremiah, the times of woe for himself and for Judea were ever-present. Called by God to prophesy defeat and exile to the people of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians because of the people’s unfaithfulness to God, Jeremiah tries to prepare the people for the reality of what will, in fact, be their new normal: the new normal of traumatic change, of dislocation, of physical and emotional exile from everything they’ve known. As he does, he tries to save them from spiritual exile as well, calling them to choose the sustaining water of faith and trust in God. If you depend on yourselves in these times, he says, if you put your trust in mere mortals, you will find yourself in a very parched place.
We too may feel that we have been exiled into a new normal, exiled by COVID and by bird flu and by contemporary politics into times of woe and uncertainty, exiled into an unfamiliar future – and yet sadly, these are not the only threats we face. Each of us at one time or another is at personal risk for being exiled from good health, exiled from employment, exiled from relationships that we thought would last forever, exiled from the familiarity of the life we knew.
None of us is exempt from the threat of exile – and so, listening to Jeremiah, we also turn to the promise of water in a barren time: the water of our baptism, the water through which we die, and yes, through which we also rise with Christ; the water into which we sink our roots for stability, for sustenance, and for life itself.
I want to read again what Pastor Ziettlow said about the warm-up exercises at the barre: “Each exercise is completed with the foot tracing the shape of a cross on the floor, once to the front in fourth position, to the side in second position, and to the back, again in fourth position. The dancer stands in the center of the cross, and the limbs move to explore the space where the well-worn path of the cross leads them.”
The limbs move to explore the space where the well-worn path of the cross leads them.
What muscle groups do we need to exercise on the well-worn path of the cross? We need to exercise the muscle groups of Blessing. Weakness. Repentance. Forgiveness. Dependence. Compassion. Trust. Faith. Relationship. Love. Always love.
And at the heart of the cross, we need to exercise and celebrate the power of resurrection. Amen.