A MESSAGE FOR THE SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY

(a link to a worship service including this message on the YouTube channel is found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi7q77Nq69k)

Prayer of the Day:

O Lord Jesus, make us instruments of your peace, that where there is hatred, we may sow love, where there is injury, pardon, and where there is despair, hope.  Grant, O divine Master, that we may seek to console, to understand, and to love in your name, for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.  Amen.

Luke 6:27-38

²⁷“But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, ²⁸bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. ²⁹If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. ³⁰Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. ³¹Do to others as you would have them do to you. ³²“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. ³³If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. ³⁴If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. ³⁵But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. ³⁶Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

³⁷“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; ³⁸give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

I shall be up front with you and say that, as I prepared the sermon for today, I found this passage extremely difficult to preach on, partly and maybe mainly because I find it hard to live.  I hear these words of Jesus and they hit hard.  We are still in the Sermon on the Plain, the great long sermon that Jesus gave in the Gospel of Luke.

Jesus had come down the hill with his twelve apostles and had taken a spot on the level ground.  Remember, we had these three tiers of people that we talked about last week.  There were the twelve apostles.  There were the disciples of which there are a great number.  Disciples were those who had attached themselves to Jesus as their teacher.  And finally, there was the multitude, people who to a large degree had either brought friends or brought themselves to Jesus to be healed and to be released from demons.

Jesus had just finished the section on blessings and woes.  I mentioned last week that I think we should read blessings as encouragements and woes as warnings.  This was very early in Jesus’ ministry.  This was his first

major public address and the finality of reading it differently seems inappropriate.  The audience for those blessings and woes were the twelve and the disciples.  Jesus seemed to expand that.  In the south of the United States this would be “I say to y'all”.  This is a plural “I say to all of you”.  “I say to all of you that listen.”  Now, for you grammar nerds, this is a participle and it has been rendered once we plural the “you” and participialize the “listen”: “but I say to all of you who are still listening  

It seems that Jesus had some sense that the first section, the blessings and the woes, may have put some of them off.  We know that there were a number of times in the gospels where people say to Jesus “What you are teaching is just too difficult.  Some of the disciples left, presumably to go find another teacher that was not so challenging, not so brutal as they perceived it.  The 12 never left.  The 12 stayed but even they said on occasion that it was tough, what Jesus has to say.

What I am going to suggest is that this passage, as we begin to look at these verses, are under dual umbrellas - one smaller and then one larger.  The smaller umbrella is that classic question that appeared on coffee cups and wristbands not so long agon: WWJD?  What would Jesus do?  These verses are answers to that question.  This is what Jesus would do.

It is much like the 13^th chapter of First Corinthians.  How would God love?  Well, God would love like this.  Love is kind.  Love is patient.  Love is never rude, never boastful, and never impatient.  I mean, it is a daunting list to be able to love like that but that is how God loves.  And these verses indeed talk about what Jesus would do.

The larger umbrella, of course, is that this is the kingdom of God.  This is how the kingdom of God works.  This is how the morality, the behavior of the kingdom, lives itself out.  It is daunting.  It is difficult.  You heard when I read it and you will see as we go through it.

“But I say to all of you who are still listening: Love your enemies.”  It is a tough beginning.  Already we are in trouble.  “Love your enemies.”  Well, they are enemies.  Asking that we love our enemies, well, it was what Jesus would do. 

“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.  If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.  And from anyone who takes away your coat, do not withhold even your shirt.  Give to everyone who begs from you and if anyone takes away your goods do not ask for them again.”

What?  Seriously?  This is difficult stuff.  The world would look at this and label anyone who lived like this as a patsy.  You are just letting people walk all over you.  That is what Jesus did.  When someone would invite Jesus to dinner he would say yes.  If somebody asked for release from a disease he would heal them, release from

a demon he would lift the oppression from them.  He gave and he gave and he gave and he gave and received precious little in return.  In fact, was put to death for his troubles. 

Now, it strikes me that these verses read a little differently if we flip them.  It is part of what the kingdom ethics does, right?  It turns everything on its head:  the first shall be last and the last shall be first.  I think if we read these flipped over, well, we hear something a little different.

• Be loved by those who consider you an enemy.
• Receive good from those you hate.
• Receive blessing from those you curse.
• Receive prayer from those you abuse.
• Receive the other cheek from those you have struck on the one cheek already.
• Receive a shirt from those that you take their coat.
• If you beg from anyone, receive from them.
• If you steal from someone, they will not ask for it back.

That is different.  It has to do, I think, with the kind of bow it is tied up with.  There are two sections here and each one is tied up with a bow.  And the bow for this section is “Do to others as you would have them do to you”.  That is that reversal.  Treat people like you would want to be treated.

Now, some of that seems to involve not being held accountable.  Well, some of us want that at times.  On one side of the equation, we seem like patsies.  On the other side of the equation, it seems like we are getting away with something.  But, again, this is how Jesus lived.  This is what Jesus would do.  Jesus treated others with generosity, compassion, and mercy, period.  No exceptions.

And then there is this next section, this group of “ifs”.

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?  Even sinners love who love them.

If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?  For even sinners do the same.

If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you?  Even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much again.

That is the ethics of the world, right?  Make sure that the scales are even, are balanced, all the time.  If someone gives you something, give them something so the scales are even, and you are never owing to anyone.  Now, again, you flip that over and have people owing you, well, sometimes that is an advantage.  But only in the ethics of the world.

God's love is so infinite that there is no way to balance the scales.  And so, again, with the bow: “Be merciful just as your Father is merciful”.  Jesus introduced this by repeating what he started with: “Love your enemies”. 

“Love your enemies.  Do good and lend expecting nothing in return.  Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.  Be merciful just as your Father is merciful.”

Part of living out the ethics of the kingdom is representing the household from which we come, the household of God.  People should see our actions and say, “Oh, that is what God is like.”  It is a tough measure to live up to.  We all have bad days.  We all have days we are not proud of.  And if people were to judge our God by our actions on our bad days.  Well, it is a little embarrassing.  It all just seems impossible.  It sounds desirable.  I mean, we would want to live like Jesus.  We would want to exhibit the love of God.  We received the love of God.  We should want to then share that love or return that love to God by loving the rest of God's children.  But it is tough.  And if it is impossible then what is it doing here?  Why is Jesus beginning this great public address with these impossible things?  And it gets worse!

“Do not judge and you will not be judged.“  This judgment is a final verdict not those little instances of life but judging somebody's ultimate reward or punishment.

“Do not judge and you will not be judged.  Do not condemn and you will not be condemned.  Forgive and you will be forgiven, give and it will be given to you again.”

If it is impossible, what is it doing here?  And if it is here?  The point I want to make is that if it is here, it can not be impossible.  That can not be what Jesus is asking for.  So, what else is going on?  Well, he had addressed this to everyone: the 12, the disciples, and the multitude.  And what he exhibited here, as I have said, is how he was going to work.  If we follow Jesus, if they are to follow, Jesus the Messiah, the Messiah that Jesus was, this was what they were going to see.  This was what they were going to witness.  If they were looking for something else, if they were looking for a messiah that was going to even the scales with the world and give some kind of victory and some kind of one-upmanship.  It was not going to happen.  It was not the kind of Messiah that Jesus was.  Some people found that disappointing and some people left over that very thing: he was not tough enough; he was not vengeful enough; he was just all too loving and merciful and compassionate.

I am not going to answer completely the difficulty of this.  I have not answered it for myself.  I’m not keeping anything from you.  I still find this extremely difficult but there are a couple things I want us to keep in mind.

One is that all the “you-s” in this passage, remember as they were in the blessings and woes, all the ”you-s” and “yours” are plural.  Jesus was talking to all of them.  He was not presenting something that he was asking them to do alone, all on their own.  No, he was not. 

Love your enemies, you lend, you love, you forgive, all of you, together.  The ethics of the kingdom are community ethics.  They are behaviors.  They are ways to live in community.  So, we do not do it alone.  Still difficult but not alone.  And we do not do it on our own, by our own power, by our own resources.  Remember the big umbrella.  We are the children of God, and we have the infinite resources of God at our disposal through the gift of the Holy Spirit.  We have access to infinite forgiveness, infinite compassion, infinite mercy, infinite love.  So, when we are just out, when we are just empty of those things, there is the possibility of refilling because God's love, God's grace, God's mercy, is not pie.  They are not cut up in a limited quantity.  It is limitless. 

And so, we, as the community of the Most High, live by the resources of the Most High and have high standards to reach for.  Some days we are going to end the day and say, “Wow, that was a dumpster fire of a day.  If people judged God by what I did today, I would be ashamed.”  Other days we get to the end of the day and say, “You know, I did all right.  I didn't react in anger to anyone.  I was generous.  I was loving.  I was forgiving.  I did okay today.” 

And our lives are going to be a mix of those days.  Some days we feel like we are a deficit.  Sometimes we are in the plus, we are in the black.  And sometimes we barely break even.  And then the next morning we awake as Luther encouraged us to do and say, “I am baptized.”  It is a new day.  The Spirit of God is still in me.  These words still call to me.  I am still called to welcome those God puts in my path, to be kind, to be gentle, to be

Forgiving, each and every day.  It is, as the saying goes, not a sprint but a marathon.

These are hard words.  I am not going to tell you otherwise.  But I think if we hear them together, as those filled with the Spirit of God, they become at least aimable, by the mercy and grace of God.

Be safe.  Be well. 

God bless you all.

Pastor Greg