No Neutrality With God
Text: Luke 6:17-26
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
During the Thirty Years’ War in the 1600s, Swedish King Gustavus Adophus, who we have memorialized in one of our stained-glass windows, saw that the legacy and teachings of the Reformation were about to be stamped out by those who were opposed to what Luther and the other Reformers had brought to light a century before. In order to rescue the Reformation and the treasures of faith it had given to the world, the Swedish king came down to Germany to give aid to the Lutheran rulers there. But upon arrival, he was disappointed by the lukewarm lack of decision that the princes in the region had. After being encouraged to maintain some level of neutrality, he said, “I say to you plainly, I will hear and know nothing of neutrality. His highness must be friend or foe. When I come to his border, he must declare himself hot or cold. The battle is between God and the devil. Will his highness hold with God? Let him stand by my side. Will he prefer to hold with the devil? Then he must fight against me. A third position will not be granted to him.”
Gustavus Adolphus accepted no neutrality when it came to matters of the faith. Of course, he was just echoing what Jesus Himself has said about the matter. “No one can serve two masters,” Jesus teaches, “for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” Then, to show us that this is a matter that concerns everyday life, Jesus ends by saying, “You cannot serve God and money.” With God, there is no neutrality. Someone is either for or against. The switch is either on or off. It’s light or dark, blessing or curse.
We have those blessings and curses today in the Sermon on the Plain. “Blessed are you who are poor,” Jesus says, “for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.” But Luke also includes in this record of Jesus’ sermon something that might surprise us and even make us uncomfortable. Yet, if we’re familiar with Scripture and the notion that there is no neutrality with God, we shouldn’t be surprised. For Luke also tells us Jesus’ words of woe. “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.”
Why does Jesus speak so sharply about this divide? Why does He draw this distinction between blessing and woe, light and dark, promise and warning? Because, as it always is with Him, this is a matter of faith. Jesus is revealing that our faith is at stake with these things, things we place importance on. We believe in one thing or another. Our faith has only one home. There is no third option.
On the one hand, there’s faith in this world and its things. Wealth, temporary satisfaction and fullness, fleeting pleasures and good times, the praises of the world and its sycophants. But these things are as short-lived as anything in this world. Money gets spent. Satisfaction fades and gives way to hunger. Laughter and giddiness is pushed aside when the serious matters of life take over. The fickle world flips its opinions about people constantly. God has told humanity not to trust in these things from the very start. In the Garden of Eden, prior to the flood, at the Tower of Babel, as Israel was entering the Promised Land—in all these times and places, God’s people are warned not to fall for the empty lies of the false gods, the things of this world, because they can never save or give them what they needed for eternity. The prophet Jeremiah summed all of this up for us this morning in our Old Testament reading: “Thus says the Lord, ‘Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord. He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.’”
It is woe to trust in these fading things and people because they cannot deliver. Think of all the failed mortal messiahs that have marched past humanity. Think of the failure of wealth, of stuff, of the frivolousness of just looking for the next dopamine hit and fun time. Think of how quickly men’s applause dies away, the kind given to the false prophets when their words come to nothing; the kind given to anyone who tells them what they want to hear in the moment. None of those things can give eternal life. None of those things can rescue from sin or guilt or death. So Jesus strips their masks off to show how weak and paltry they really are. It is woe to chase after and trust these things because they will end and the temporary status they give will evaporate.
Turn away from these things. It’s hard for us to do, but we must. It’s hard to even recognize that we’re ensnared by them, but that’s why Jesus has to speak so sharply. For we are caught. We who live the most comfortable lives in human history; who, even if we’re middle class in this nation of ours, are still wealthier than 99% of all the people who’ve ever lived; we don’t know what it is to be poor, not like the people who heard this Sermon on the Plain when Jesus first spoke it. We don’t know what it is to be hungry like they were. We can’t wrap our heads around it because we’re ensnared. So we’re called to repent and turn away from these things to tell us what’s good, what life should be about. Those things cannot and will not save you in the long run.
Instead, turn your faith, your trust to Jesus. “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,” Jeremiah proclaims, “whose trust is in the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.” Even when heat and scarcity and hunger and poverty and scorching tribulation comes, even when the world takes back its toys, and all its little idols and glittering things are long gone, when your heart is firmly planted in the Lord, then you will not fear. You will still be blessed. Even when you’re poor, yours is still the kingdom of God. Even when you’re hungry, you know you will be satisfied. Even when you weep, you know you will laugh. Even when people hate you and the world excludes you and calls you all sorts of horrible things simply because you’re a Christian, you can rest calmly and rejoice that you are on the side of the prophets, who were treated the same way. Your reward in heaven is great, for your trust is not in those that go away. Your faith is in the Lord.
For your Lord has gone to all those lowly places ahead of you. He was poor, relying on the charity of those hearing Him. He was reviled by the so-called respectable citizens of His day. He wept over loved ones. He was falsely accused of evil. He was persecuted, beaten, even killed because He refused to look to those passing things as the source of any good. His faith was in His Father. On His cross He’s conquered all those things, for you, in your place. In His resurrection, He’s blazed a trail for you into all the blessings He pronounced today: the kingdom of God, being filled with good things, laughter and joy, peace and treasure with God that can never fade away.
If your Lord has gone through these things ahead of you and created a path through it, a path out of it, you should not fear following Him. He’s won those blessings for you. He has shown the petty little idols to be nothing worth clinging to. He has, in His love, in His sacrifice, in His resurrection, shown you what’s most important. He’s given them to you in faith. He’s blessed you beyond your imagination. In the name of Jesus, who gives you the kingdom. Amen.
