(Luke 6: 17-26)

There are three levels of reality at which we live our lives.   The first level is the temporal and the immediate.  This is the day-to-day living – bills needing to be paid; the Central Line is not working; I need to get my shopping done at Tesco.  The second level is the relationships that we have with family, friends, self and others.  This level can be as sad and lonely for some as it is fabulous and fulfilled for others.  The third level is the spiritual and the eternal – God’s redeeming love for mankind shown through the life death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I took a funeral on Friday where the body of the deceased was being repatriated to Jamaica.  The first level (arrangements for the day) was sad, difficult and at one point muddled.  The words for one of the hymns (The Old Rugged Cross) were not in the hymn book.  I had to quickly print out and photocopy 50 sheets.  Then to cap it all the organist did not have the music for the song.  The second level was right and proper.  He had wanted to go back to Jamaica during his life and now was able to do that, repatriated in his death.  The third level was set and ordered.  The Bible teaches that the living and the dead wait together for the coming of the Lord.

The first level, on its own, can be awful when it goes wrong since there are no checks or balances to keep things in place.  This year marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery.  Millions of Britons are either ignorant or indifferent to this humble reality.  These days on reality TV the young can cheerfully say “slavery was a good thing” (Channel 4 January 2007).  More recent history has seen Nazism in Germany, apartheid in South Africa and genocide in Rwanda. 

‘Notes on a Scandal’ is a recently released film starring Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett.  It tells the story of a teacher (Cate Blanchett) who has an affair with a 15-year-old pupil and the chaos that ensues.  It is the story of the loneliness and the bitterness that can ensue when level two living goes wrong.  The older teacher (Judi Dench) is manipulative and horrible.  The younger teacher (Cate Blanchett) is selfish, irresponsible and reckless.

The invitation given to us by our Lord Jesus Christ is to live our lives at level 3.  A life lived in the face of eternity offers us the greatest and the most enduring reality of all.  level two can give meaning and purpose to level one – family and friends are often cited as the most important thing in people’s lives.  It is level three that roots all of this and provides us with the fruits of the spirit, joy, love and peace that passes all understanding.

The passage today deals with attitudes that would prefer to keep us stick on level one.  Woe to you if you are rich, laughing and people are speaking well of y9ou because that is as far as it will ever go – you have your reward and you are stuck on level one.  Blessed are you who are poor, hungry, weak and persecuted because you have your glimpse through to the deeper levels of reality that underpin the here-and-now.

I am constantly tripping up over attitudes that keep people stuck on level one.  We see anxiety and we read it as responsibility.  We see worry and we read it as concern.  The challenge is to allow level two and level three to enthuse and affect our lives because therein lies meaning, love and purpose.  Love, justice, right, are all shaped beyond the immediate and temporal.  It is these truths that allow, enable and teach us how to live our lives in the light of God’s eternal redemption love