Wellspring UMC; Sixteenth
Sunday after Pentecost; September 16, 2007:
-Psalm 37: 1-11 (UMH 772); Luke 6: 27-36
“Loving Beyond Reason”
This
is week #2 of a sermon series based upon Luke’s Sermon on the Plain, Luke’s
condensed version of what we find in Matthew’s radical Sermon on the
Mount. Last week we talked about the
blessings and the woes, and how when Christ comes we can find our world turned
upside down. We saw that God’s ways are
not always our ways, and that quite frankly, God’s ways can be difficult. They are a bit “out there,” and we wonder
whether we’re cut out for this kind of life.
But if the blessings and woes didn’t push us enough, today’s passage
certain does.
I
don’t know about you, but for me, this text hits hard. At best it is inconvenient, and at it worst
it can get us killed – physically, emotionally, or otherwise. “Love your enemies.” Did you hear that phrase? I certainly did. It hit me between the eyes.
I
did some research on this, trying to get to the root of what Jesus is trying to
say. I headed to the commentaries to
look up the Greek...see what Christ intended, and darn it. From all I found, it’s one of the most directly
translated verses I’ve read. “Love…” –
agape, forgiving, eternal, all-enveloping love.
“Love Your…” – you and me, those who hear, all who are ready for the
Truth. “Love Your Enemies…” – echthros
which means ‘hated’; those whom we hate,
despise, can’t stand and really don’t want to be around. So much for trying to blame the translators
on this one. Love your enemies. Jesus begins with this phrase and ends with
it. It just doesn’t seem
reasonable!...nor practical, nor logical...not to us, and certainly not to
those with whom Jesus initially shared this.
Jesus came down to the level of those gathered, and those who gathered were either disciples, those whose desire was to embody Christ’s life and ways, and those who were sick and needing healing. That is, those who were physically or mentally sick, which by the way would have been the ones whom society would have shunned, cast out, and or thrown away because they weren’t good enough for real societal interaction. Women, who were considered lesser than, lepers, who had to walk through the streets crying out ‘leper’ so everyone could move out of their way, the crippled and lame, who had to beg for food, and those possessed with demons, the mentally ill, and those who were captured by powers that made them do the unexplainable. Think about that population. Do you think they had a few enemies?
Do you think being a castaway, or better yet, a cast aside was easy? They would have a plethora of enemies! The person who walked by without even throwing a coin in the cup. The ones who looked at her with lust in their eyes. The ones who laughed or mocked or even beat them up because of their physical or mental limitations; all of whom were actually victims themselves of a society that perpetuated the hatred, strife, and pain. The hatred of those lesser than others was aimed far beyond any one person, but it was a deep-seated hatred of society and the by-products of that society.
And they sit there listening to Jesus say, “Love your enemies.” Love those who hate you. Love into the system that oppresses you. Love them, even if they slap you or steal from you. Love them as if they are your friend. It is illogical! It is beyond reason.
The
days leading up to, on, and following this past Tuesday were filled with
stories, memorials, and reflections of the events of and lives changed from
September 11, 2001. For some reason this
year September 11th came and all kinds of things pointed me toward
remembering it more deliberately than the past.
It seemed that every time I changed the TV channel some show focused on
the events of that day. On the radio,
accounts were given of memorial services and the way families have coped with
their losses. I even picked up a
literary magazine that I had not touched in years, only to open it up on
Tuesday and read an autobiographical account of a Jewish family in turmoil over
whether to hold Shiva, a memorial service, for the daughter whom they hoped had
survived...somehow gotten down from the 105th floor. The mother decided that she had to resolve
it, even if it had only been four days with no word, and the son tried to
figure out how to let go of the hope of her return.
Love
your enemies.
But
it doesn’t have to be the anniversary of September 11th or the daily
news reports of another soldier killed or teenager gunned down. We are reminded of how hard it is to live
together by simply looking next door.
There is some neighbor with whom we have some beef. There are school board members or
administrators or county supervisors whose actions affect us and our children
drastically. There are customer service
representatives, some local and some across the world, whose ethics for service
seem rather lacking if not non-existent.
Heck, there are drivers on the road who do things that make us want to
just burst.
Love your enemies. It just not logical. It’s just not reasonable! Then again, who said God was logical or reasonable?
Did you notice the first phrase Jesus lays this out? He says, “To you who are ready for the truth...” That is, “This is for those who see that what God is doing is something new through me, and so I speak to those who are ready. I know that not everyone is ready, but let me tell you what God’s truth is, God’s intention, and the way to truly live in the world. Love your enemies.”
Jesus gives them a way out, and yet he invites them to hear and at the least entertain the thought. Love your enemy. Live generously. ‘Ask yourself what you want people to do for you; then do it for them.” He is saying, “Imagine what would happen if the world was able to see the other as worth it. Imagine that the other is a child of God. Imagine if we live out a ‘God-created identity,’ as opposed to that which we have created or has been created by society, our parents, or our peers. Love, like God loves.”
But how could that be?
On the day he spoke it they may have understood it, or they may not have, but when this was recorded they certainly did. When Luke wrote it down they had either heard or heard of Jesus’ plea from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” They had been through the death AND the resurrection and seen what God had done despite the cruelty and evil of the world. They remembered Him saying, “Love your enemies. Do to others what you would want them to do for you. Live into who God desires, for in doing so you will be changed...the world will be changed.”
According to the world’s standards it may have seemed illogical and irrational, but Jesus came to turn the world’s standards upside down and realign creation with God’s original intention – paradise in full communion with God and one another.
Love
one another. Turn the cheek, give the
shirt off the back. Do unto others. Love your enemies. Live as God lives. As God the Almighty is merciful, so are we to
be.
As
I was preparing for today I was reminded of a phrase which my mentor and
friend, Bert Sikkelee often uses,“Be kind to everyone you meet. They’re having a hard time.” I e-mailed him to check the source, only to
find that he didn’t know the source but had heard it in a sermon in
seminary. I googled it, and it is
actually an adaptation of a quote from Plato, “Be kind, for everyone you meet
is fighting a hard battle.”
Are
you fighting a hard battle? Are you
having a hard time? Does it feel
overwhelming to simply navigate the day to day, or even worse, to get up and
face another day? Do you need someone to
be kind to you?
Whether
we like it or not, we are someone’s enemy.
Someone hates us, whether it’s the neighbor down the street or the
extremist across the globe, we are hated.
Collectively and individually someone would probably hurt us, debilitate
us, if not kill us.
That’s
a hard concept to grasp, because we don’t think that we are that bad, and many
of us don’t think there are folks out there who should be killed. And yet, there is something inside us – us
meaning humanity – that easily makes the jump to hatred. Self-preservation takes over and we isolate
ourselves and our lives, look out for number one, or seek for self, and a wedge
is made, which grows quickly.
And
all of us have this in us. All of us
have to face this battle. “They” do just
as much as “we” do. “Be kind to everyone
you meet. They’re having a hard time,”
and I’d add, just like us.
That sounds well and good, we might say, but it still isn’t logical to love our enemy. It’s still not rational. Maybe not, but God did. God does, and God does this because God knows that love is the purpose of life. Love is the aim, and God’s love is greater than anything!
“It bears all things, believes all
things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Love never ends,”
Christ says, “love your enemies. Do unto others,” because Christ knows that we can be his enemies. We are the other that perpetuates the antithesis of God’s purposes. And yet, despite this, Christ loves us.
And yes, it is not logical. It is beyond reason. But such is God’s love for us, and such is the invitation given to us.
Peterson recounts Jesus saying, “Love your enemies...Live out this God-created identity the way our Father lives toward us, generously and graciously, even when we’re at our worst. Our Father is kind; you be kind.”
Love beyond reason. Love beyond human reason, but love into God’s reason. To do so will change our lives. To do so will change the world. Amen.