Sermon Seeds: Down with Them

Sunday, February 16, 2025
Sixth Sunday after Epiphany | Year C
(Liturgical Color: Green)

Lectionary Citations
Jeremiah 17:5-10 • Psalm 1 • 1 Corinthians 15:12-20 • Luke 6:17-26
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts/?z=e&d=19&y=384

Focus Scripture: Luke 6:17-26
Focus Theme: Down with Them
Series: Posted Sentinels (Click here for the series overview.)

Reflection
By Cheryl A. Lindsay

Fifty years ago a groundbreaking sitcom, The Jeffersons, debuted on the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) in the United States on January 18, 1975. It was actually a spin-off of another groundbreaking and widely popular show, All in the Family. The Jeffersons featured an African American family who became wealthy through their chain of dry cleaning stores. The theme song for the series opened each episode and summarized their story:

Well we’re movin’ on up, to the east side
To a deluxe apartment in the sky
Movin on up
To the east side
We finally got a piece of the pie
Fish don’t fry in the kitchen;
Beans don’t burn on the grill
Took a whole lotta tryin’
Just to get up that hill
Now we’re up in the big leagues
Gettin’ our turn at bat
As long as we live, it’s you and me baby
There ain’t nothin wrong with that
Well we’re movin on up
To the east side
To a deluxe apartment in the sky
Movin on up
To the east side
We finally got a piece of the pie
(Ja’Net Dubois)

Movin on up was the clear metaphor for obtaining not only financial success. It also indicated the accompanying social status that the family eagerly embraced. An uphill battle, their new circumstances were hard won and a source of pride.

Ascending has long been an indication of achievement, blessing, and progress. Perhaps, humans long for what is beyond our reach, and the sky, also known as the heavens by some, represents the most unattainable destination. For the Jeffersons, their goal was more modest yet in some ways nearly as unattainable as the clouds those building the Tower of Babel attempted to reach. Reaching it altered their lives, yet the audience witnessed the continued barriers, resistance, and even blatant racism they would face despite their new elevated location.

Our society as a whole fixates itself on moving up and reaching the prize. Coming down is a sign of regression or defeat. To lower oneself is not a good thing. To be the better person is to take the high road. Biblical imagery supports this, with some exceptions such as the Tower of Babel. How many mountains were climbed by Moses in the Exodus narrative or Peter, James, and John accompanying Jesus in the gospel accounts? Even Matthew’s version of this sermon situates Jesus on the Mount. Luke’s gospel deviates not only by placing Jesus on the Plain, but also by changing his directional movement. Rather than going up to speak to the crowd, presumably to be seen and heard better in Matthew’s account, Luke notes that Jesus comes down to stand on the same level as the crowd including the disciples and a multitude of folx from throughout the region. In other words, Jesus starts off at the higher elevation in order to situate themselves among the people.

I used to preach from a pulpit. After the congregation I pastor resumed worship in the sanctuary following COVID physical distancing, I planned to return to that practice. During the lockdown, I streamed worship from my home, using a combination of Zoom on my computer and my smartphone to reach multiple platforms live. One joy of that time was my ability to see the faces of the congregation on Zoom up close. When we returned to the building, we continued to stream as we had before the pandemic, but I found the pulpit too distant as a preaching location after having seen their facial expressions so clearly. So, only a few sentences into my sermon, I left the pulpit, walked down the three steps to the floor, and preached on the same level as the people. Because our sanctuary has the Akron style design, with its semi-circular pew arrangement and sloping floors, much of the congregation was actually a little higher in their seated position than I was in my standing one. My soul was happy, and the feedback from the congregation, even those joining online rather than onsite, was consistent: they liked it. Some were explicit: they liked me being on the same level and coming to them.

Accompanied by his freshly minted apostles, Jesus descends to the plain, where an immense throng of disciples and others has assembled to hear him and to seek healing. He obliges. In his longest speech so far, he shows present and potential disciples, and those who would lead them, what God’s gracious mercy requires of all who would follow Jesus. God’s mercy will wear a human face in their company.
John T. Carroll

This is the heart of the incarnation, Jesus in the midst of humanity. Not distant in a cloud requiring a tower or a mountain to reach, Jesus is available, accessible, and touchable. His ministry encompasses all, and the crowd that assembles resembles the commission they will articulate before ascending through the crowds at the conclusion of their embodied ministry. The people came from Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon just as Jesus will instruct the disciples to witness to the good news “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8) Jesus coming down to the crowd reflects not only a heavenly descent on their part, it also models an approach to ministry that reaches the world through humility. In the kindom, the goal is not to go higher, it is to go where there is need so that all may be well.

The motivation of the crowd is twofold, matching the customary dual activities of Jesus. They are intent on listening to Jesus, whose renown as a teacher continues to grow, and they seek healing (v. 18). Once more the narrator indicates the source of Jesus’ ability to heal: “power was with him, and he was healing everyone” (v. 19). The power for healing comes from God, as the similar formulation in 5:17 indicates, though this is only implicit in 6:19. The correlation between the desire of sick persons to “touch” Jesus and the experience of his “power”—apparently an unseen (divine) energy that flows from Jesus to the one seeking healing—will again find dramatic demonstration in 8:44–47. Although the sick try to touch Jesus, he has been seen to heal both by touch (5:12–14) and by word, without touch (4:33–36, 39). The narrative shows some interest in the mechanism of healing, but more important is its source, the power of God effective in Jesus, as well as its effect, liberation. The passage draws healing and exorcism together under the rubric of healing: “those who were troubled by unclean spirits were being healed” (v. 18; cf. Acts 5:16). Luke’s narrative does not sharply distinguish between exorcism and healing; both represent liberation, release from forces that harm, distort, and constrain human life. But liberation for what kind of life?
John T. Carroll

Another distinction of the Lukan account from Matthew’s version is the presence of the series of “woe” statements. Like Matthew, Luke reframes blessings and presents a countercultural perspective on faithful life. Further, Luke juxtaposes the condition of what may be described as the lower class or downtrodden with the upper class or privileged through the litany of blessings and woes. These are not simply theological statements, they promise and proclaim God’s justice among the people who have come seeking deliverance and healing.

The detail that Jesus looks at his disciples is a key to understanding his sermon. He describes their life in God’s commonwealth, but the crowds also hear. Jesus highlights the poor from the outset of his speech (6:20), as did Mary (1:46–55), and as he did in his proclamation in Nazareth (4:18–19). The programmatic 4:43 indicates that the Beatitudes describe life under God’s commonwealth.
Robert L. Brawley

Forbes has identified 2,781 billionaires in the world with a total net worth of $14.2 trillion. To put that number in perspective, the gross domestic product of the United States, the highest among the countries in the world, is approximately $30.34 trillion followed by China at $19.53 trillion and Germany at $4.92 trillion. Only the two richest countries in the world exceed the combined wealth of less than 3000 people. The population of those two countries, the third and second most populous, exceeds 1.7 billion people. It is not a direct comparison, but serves to illuminate the excessive resources held by a few.

This is not the kindom of God. Woe to the world that continues to reject the way of Jesus and allow entire people groups to live in hunger and subpar living conditions as well as lacking access to health care, education, and economic opportunity. Woe to a society that celebrates hoarding of resources and demonizes the exploited, marginalized, and oppressed. The Lukan account declares there are consequences to choosing allegiance to the power systems of this world over the power of the Spirit of God among us.

Those consequences are not limited to the afterlife; they have current implications. And through their example, Jesus invites their disciples to follow another way: to come down with them.

Come down with compassion to the border where asylum seekers meet the barrier of animosity and indifference.
Come down with accountability to the houses of local, state, and federal legislatures enacting discriminatory and life threatening laws targeting trans folx.
Come down with affirmation of difference and commitment to the fullness of the beloved community when corporations and other institutions abandon their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Come down with the righteousness and justice of the reign of God when false prophets and powerful leaders make heretical claims that the love of God may be stratified and withheld for political and personal gain.
Come down with them in your neighborhood, your community, your state, your country, and your world.

Come down like Jesus. Come down with Jesus. Come down with them.

Reflection from Voices of People of African Descent
The 33rd General Synod adopted a Resolution to Recognize the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024). As part of its implementation, Sermon and Weekly Seeds offers Reflection from Voices of People of African Descent related to the season or overall theme for additional consideration in sermon preparation and for individual and congregational study.
“Crazy for This Democracy”
They tell me this democracy form of government is a wonderful thing. It has freedom, equality, justice, in short, everything! Since 1937 nobody has talked about anything else.
The late Franklin D. Roosevelt sort of re-decorated it, and called these United States the boastful name of “The Arsenal of Democracy.”
The radio, the newspapers, and the columnists inside the newspapers, have said how lovely it was.
And this talk and praise-giving has got me in the notion to try some of the stuff. All I want to do is to get hold of a sample of the thing, and I declare, I sure will try it. I don’t know for myself, but I have been told that it is really wonderful.
Like the late Will Rogers, all I know is what I see by the papers. It seems like now, I do not know geography as well as I ought to, or I would not get the wrong idea about so many things. I heard so much about “global” “world-freedom” and things like that, that I must have gotten mixed up about oceans.
I thought that when they said Atlantic Charter, that meant me and everybody in Africa and Asia and everywhere. But it seems like the Atlantic is an ocean that does not touch anywhere but North America and Europe.
Just the other day, seeing how things were going in Asia, I went out and bought myself an atlas and found out how narrow the Atlantic ocean was. No wonder that those Four Freedoms couldn’t get no further than they did! Why, that poor little ocean can’t even wash up some things right here in America, let alone places like India, Burma, IndoChina, and the Netherlands East Indies. We need two more whole oceans for that.
Maybe, I need to go out and buy me a dictionary, too. Or perhaps a spelling-book would help me out a lot. Or it could be that I just mistook the words. Maybe I mistook a British pronunciation for a plain American word. Did FDR, aristocrat from Groton and Harvard, using the British language say “arse-and-all” of Democracy when I thought he said plain arsenal? Maybe he did, and I have been mistaken all this time. From what is going on, I think that is what he must have said.
That must be what he said, for from what is happening over on that other, unmentioned ocean, we look like the Ass-and-All of Democracy. Our weapons, money, and the blood of millions of our men have been used to carry the English, French, and Dutch and lead them back on the millions of unwilling Asiatics. The Ass-and-all-he-has has been very useful.
The Indo-Chinese are fighting the French now in Indo-China to keep the freedom that they have enjoyed for five or six years now. The Indonesians are trying to stay free from the Dutch, and the Burmese and Malayans from the British.
But American soldiers and sailors are fighting along with the French, Dutch, and English to rivet these chains back on their former slaves. How can we so admire the fire and determination of Toussaint Louverture to resist the orders of Napoleon to “rip the gold braids off those Haitian slaves and put them back to work” after four years of freedom, and be indifferent to these Asiatics for the same feelings under the same circumstances?
—Zora Neale Hurston

For Further Reflection
“I run for I don’t know how long. Hours, maybe, or days. Alex told me to run. So I run. You have to understand. I am no one special. I am just a single girl. I am five feet two inches tall and I am in-between in every way. But I have a secret. You can build walls all the way to the sky and I will find a way to fly above them. You can try to pin me down with a hundred thousand arms, but I will find a way to resist. And there are many of us out there, more than you think. People who refuse to stop believing. People who refuse to come to earth. People who love in a world without walls, people who love into hate, into refusal, against hope, and without fear. I love you. Remember. They cannot take it.” — Lauren Oliver
“. . . when it comes down to it, that’s what life is all about: showing up for the people you love, again and again, until you can’t show up anymore.” — Rebecca Walker
“The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.” — Alan Bennett

Works Cited
Brawley, Robert L. “Luke.” Gale A. Yee, Ed. Fortress Commentary on the Bible: Two Volume Set. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014.
Carroll, John T. Luke. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012.

Suggested Congregational Response to the Reflection
Consider your community and what prophetic actions your ministry may offer in solidarity to the vulnerable in your midst.

Worship Ways Liturgical Resources
https://www.ucc.org/worship-way/after-epiphany-6c-february-16/

The Rev. Dr. Cheryl A. Lindsay, Minister for Worship and Theology (lindsayc@ucc.org), also serves a local church pastor, public theologian, and worship scholar-practitioner with a particular interest in the proclamation of the word in gathered communities. You’re invited to share your reflections on this text in the comments on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SermonSeeds.

A Bible study version of this reflection is at Weekly Seeds.