• Jeremiah 17:5-10

Jeremiah presents to our imaginations two starkly different images.  One image is of a scraggly bush struggling to survive in the desert or on a salt flat; the other is of a mighty tree, flourishing with a root system so deep and so strong it stays green even in a drought.  The first image is the person who trusts in “mere mortals;” the latter image is the person “who trusts in the Lord.”  In a related aphorism Jeremiah adds: “the [human] heart is devious above all else; it is perverse– who can understand it?”  And then the prophet reminds that “I the Lord test the mind and search the heart… according to the fruits of their doings.”

• Psalm 1

Walter Brueggemann regards the psalter as “Glad obedience to the commands of Yahweh, enacted in full obedience that such obedience produces a life of joy, well-being, and blessing.”  And regarding the very first psalm in the psalter, he concludes: “Psalm 1 is… an introductory clue for the whole collection.” (Theology of the Old Testament, pp 197-198)

• I Corinthians 15:12-20

Paul posts a strong statement that Christ’s resurrection is the lynch pin for believers.  If it is not believed, then “our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain.”  Also, you would “Still be in your sins” and “those who have died in Christ have [merely] perished.”  Such speculation is useless, Paul insists, because “in fact Christ has been raised from  the dead….”  Christ’s resurrection is the “first fruits of those who have died.”

• Luke 6:17-26

Luke’s narrative usually places Jesus in the the midst of large crowds, who are eager to hear him and to be near enough for healing.  In such a typical scene, Luke present Jesus’ ‘mission statement’ for discipleship.  There are four “blessings” followed by four “woes.”  “Blessed” are the poor, the hungry, those who weep and those who pay a price “on account of the Son of Man.”  Endure such circumstances, Jesus says, “For surely your reward is great in heaven….”  But those who are currently rich, satisfied, reveling, and are esteemed by their peers are warned

These readings and today’s gospel are not rendered in the soft hues of the Impressionists, but in the bold back and white of Abstract Expressionism.

Jeremiah paints two very different pictures.  One shows a sad, barren bush in a bleak environment and the other shows a magnificent, healthy tree with roots so deep it survives in a drought; the first represents human deviousness and self-centerdness, the other is the person who trusts in the Lord’s teachings.  The first psalm in the psalter sets the theme for the whole collection: “For the Lord embraces the way of the righteous and the way of the wicked is lost.”  Luke’s version of the “beatitudes” is the stripped-down summary of all that Jesus has taught and will live out, which is a message of pure and simple fairness– who gains or who looses, who is content or who is dissatisfied with the status quo, who hoards and who is generous.  One will end up with nothing that matters and the other will find the richest benefits life can offer.  This is Luke’s reduction to the shortest, most succinct statement of the basics of the whole message from and about Jesus.

Emmanuel Levinas was fierce in his insistence that all philosophy and all religion could be stripped down to their “primitive forms,” which for him meant ethics/justice.  He writes that the whole purpose of what is generally regarded as his most influential book, Totality and Infinity, is

“the establishing of the primary of the ethical, that is, the relation of man to man (sic)… a primacy of an irreducible structure upon which all other structures rest….”  “Everything that cannot be reduced to an interhuman relation represents not the superior but the forever primitive form of religion.” (p.79)

The precis of the whole of Jesus’ life and teaching in Luke’s gospel is not an abstract, theoretical statement.  It is a clear statement made by one who will throughout his life shatter human-made barriers left and right, who will upend settled religious and moral conventions, and who will pay with his life for it, only to be vindicated by God “on the third day”  and then launch the church.    He bet his life on it– and the story says he was vindicated by God– and he invites us to bet our lives on it.