Meet Me in the Middle - April 27
Today’s Readings: AM Psalm 45; PM Psalm 47, 48; Wisdom 3:1-9; Col 1:15-23; Luke 6:12-26
Today’s Reflection
Then he looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.” –Luke 6: 20-23
In today’s Gospel, Luke sets the scene for Jesus preaching a sermon that begins with a series of blessings that we now know as the Beatitudes. Just before this, Jesus had spent the night away from others, up on a mountain, praying to God all night. When day broke, he called together his disciples and chose the twelve who he would name apostles (Luke 6: 12-16). Then all of them came down from the mountain, and Jesus “stood on a level place” to speak to a “great multitude … who came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases.”
Jesus, rather than standing up above the crowd, has chosen to speak to them from their level. He who is divine and lifted up is choosing to come down to the crowd’s level, to speak from among them, which seems like an apt analogy for the message he has for them in this series of four blessings and four woes. One of the main, recurring themes in the Gospel of Luke, according to scholars, is something called “the great reversal.” This is what we hear Jesus preaching in this sermon. As one commentator explains, when Luke highlights Jesus’ message “in which the last are becoming first, the proud are being brought low and the humble are being exalted, Luke places great emphasis on God’s love for the poor, tax collectors, outcasts, sinners, women, Samaritans, and Gentiles. … many of the episodes that appear only in Luke’s Gospel feature the welcome of the outcast” (ESV Study Bible, Introduction to Luke).
This past Sunday evening, my daughter turned on the Academy Awards, the Oscars, hoping she might see the musician Jon Batiste win an award for the soundtrack to Soul—which he did, and we shared in his infectious joy as he thanked God for all the blessings in his life, “a series of miracles.” As I was coming and going from the room, trying to gather laundry and do a few other chores after a long Sunday at church, I stopped in my tracks when I heard the voice of Tyler Perry, whom I admire, in the midst of accepting the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for the ways in which, through his position of influence in the entertainment industry, he has shared his gifts for the good of others.
Perry is a prolific screenwriter, producer, director, and writer for both television and film. Though at one point he was homeless and lived out of his car for a time before he began to realize success as a writer and actor, Perry now owns a massive film and television studio in Atlanta and is one of the most influential people in the entertainment industry. He began his acceptance speech by telling the story of how, 17 years ago, he encountered a woman on the street outside a building where they were filming, and as she approached, he expected her to ask him for money. And even Tyler Perry, who understands well the struggles of having nothing, found himself judging her.
I reach in my pocket and I’m about to give her the money and she says: ‘Excuse me sir do you have any shoes?’
It stopped me cold because I remember being homeless and having one pair of shoes and they were bent over at the heel. So, I took her into the studio. …So, as we’re standing there [in] wardrobe and we find her these shoes and I help her put them on and I’m waiting for her to look up and all this time she’s looking down. She finally looks up and she’s got tears in her eyes. She says: ‘Thank you Jesus. My feet are off the ground.’
In that moment I recall her saying to me ‘I thought you would hate me for asking’ but how could I hate you when I used to be you?
Perry used this story as a way into reflecting, with all of us listening to him on Sunday evening, on growing up in the South by a mother who had grown up in the Jim Crow, segregated South, and had taught him to love, not hate: “My mother taught me to refuse hate. She taught me to refuse blanket judgment.” He then called on all listening to be people who love rather than hate, then closed his acceptance speech with this rousing call to be people of the middle ground.
I want to take this Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and dedicate it to anyone who wants to stand in the middle, no matter what’s around the walls, stand in the middle because that’s where healing happens. That’s where conversation happens. That’s where change happens. It happens in the middle. So, anyone who wants to meet me in the middle, to refuse hate, to refuse blanket judgment and to help lift someone’s feet off the ground, this one is for you, too.
Perry’s message reminds me of what Jesus was preaching when he came down from the mountain and preached the Beatitudes, this series of great reversals, in which the low are lifted up, and the high are brought low. Jesus, too, is calling us to be the people in the middle.
—Becky+
Questions for Self-Reflection
Recall a moment when you, like Tyler Perry, judged someone wrongly, when you jumped to a conclusion about their life situation or intentions. How do the Beatitudes inspire you to live free of judgment and hate?
Daily Challenge
You can watch and listen to Tyler Perry’s full acceptance speech here.