For the last two Sunday’s in church we have read from Jesus’ sermon on the Plain found in Luke Gospel, Chapter 6. It’s a reading that certainly reminds us of Jesus’ Sermon on the mount in Matthew’s Gospel. Yet there is one very important difference in Luke, it is that Jesus teaches not from a mountain side but from “a level place.”

In Luke, Jesus is the Messiah who fills the valleys and makes the hills and mountains low, smooths out the bumps and puts us all on the level. And so Jesus standing on the level was symbolic and important.

We live in a world that insists on a pecking order that is determined by wealth and power. Where we fit in that hierarchy is determined by how much wealth and power we possess. The only acceptable goal is to climb higher.

Not so for Jesus. And this is not so for us as Christians.

Jesus doesn’t stand over and above us. Jesus makes humble those who would stand over others and lifts up those who have been laid low. Jesus stands with the people.

Jesus stands with us.