Week of Sabbath I, Day Five, Evening Devotion

Prayer for hope and healing:

Spirit of love,
You touch the quiet places in my soul, with your presence and your healing. You know the healing which I need, the ways in which I am troubled, hurt, and angry. Enable me to receive your healing touch, and to be renewed by your love and guidance.
Amen

Reading: Luke 6:17-19: Jesus teaches

Jesus came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.

Meditation:

This reading introduces Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain, the much-less-well-known cousin to the section of Matthew’s gospel called the Sermon on the Mount. I actually prefer Luke’s telling of this story, for two reasons. The first is that first line: “Jesus came down with them and stood on a level place.” That seems to me to encapsulate the ministry of Jesus. He “came down to a level place,” became human, just like us. He advocated the leveling of all of the hierarchies of society. He taught that all people—priests and prostitutes, saints and sinners, temple scribes and tax collectors—were worthy of the love of God and each other.

This is amazing teaching. Some have called it a teaching ahead of its time. It is surely a teaching ahead of our time, when so many hierarchies still exist.

--Spend a few moments imagining this “level society.” How would our lives be different? What would you gain in such a world? What would you have to give up?

Prayer of joy:

Lord Christ,
What a wonderful vision you have put forward for the whole world—a society of equals, a rainbow of different folks all working together for the good of all. Thank you for offering this vision to us, and for inviting us to be a part of it. Thank you for calling us to something better.
Amen