7 Epiphany Yr C Feb 24 2019

Audio  7 Epiphany Yr C Feb 24 2019

Genesis 45:3-11, 15, 1 Corinthians 15:35-38,42-50, Luke 6:27-38, Psalm 37:1-12, 41-42

The kingdom that Jesus preached and lived was all about a glorious, uproarious, absurd, generosity. Think about the best thing you can do for the worst person and go ahead and do it. That’s what this continuation of the Sermon on the Plain is all about. We remember what comes immediately before the passage we just heard, we call that the Beatitudes, and we heard all about that last week. This continues Jesus painting the picture of what God’s absurdly abundant love looks like.

The trouble in the text is that it can’t be true. Love your enemies? Do good to people who hate you? Bless people who curse you? Pray for people who treat you badly? If someone hits you on the cheek offer him the other cheek? If someone takes away your coat don’t stop them from taking your shirt?

That is not the way the world works. That is not the way business works, or government. And why would we want it to be that way anyway. Who cares about enemies, who cares about people who hate you, or give you a raw deal, or curse you. Who cares about the people who treat you badly, you want them out of your life! Who cares? This is the cause and effect world we live in. Love deserves love, hate deserves hate, deeds both good and bad should be repaid in kind, force must be returned with force, violence begets violence, and so on and so on. It seems that many people are involved in the unholy work of ripping and shredding our social fabric, through dehumanizing language, racial prejudice, misogyny, and exclusion. Sound bites lead news stories that heap judgment upon judgment, and unless we question, research, and educate ourselves, we are lead to believe that what we read is all fake news anyway. 

But the kingdom that Jesus preached and lived was all about a glorious, uproarious, absurd, generosity. That is the good news that we hear in Luke, even though it makes no sense. 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. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

Is this a command or a promise? If it’s a command then it is just one more thing someone has told us and that we’ll be held accountable for and then we’ll likely continue to live in fear and, while we may behave a little better, at least when someone’s watching, ultimately be no different.

But if it’s a promise, then we might just imagine that there is another way, a way of love, available to us at this very moment, and see each other as gifts of God and experience the transformation Jesus offers. I believe this is the case, and that other world, that kingdom, that way of love, is right here in front of us, right here for us to participate in.

Because Love itself, when you think about it, makes no sense in a kind of mechanistic view of the universe, or a transactional way to interact. For love, defined most simply, is seeking the good of another above your own. Love is not a means to an end, it is an end unto itself which, in turn, creates morality and justice and all the rest of the things we strive for yet fail to find or manifest without love. Love is not about how you feel, it is about what you do.

So we are about the holy work of love. And this kind of work is about building relationships. If people in our community and in our neighborhood are about the unholy work of ripping and shredding our social fabric through dehumanizing language, racial prejudice, misogyny, and exclusion, then we must be about the holy work of building relationships.

And the good news is that is possible because of God’s absurdly abundant love. It is possible because each and every one of us is created in God’s image, each and every one of us has the mark of God’s love upon us. Even those who don’t know it; even those who would not do to others as you would have them do to you. The holy work of love is possible because Jesus is showing us how. Do not judge. Forgive.

And ultimately the place where Jesus shows us about judging and forgiving is on the cross. Jesus says from the cross, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing. It is in that horrifying moment, it is in that place of death, that love wins.

I am reminded of the story of Ruby Bridges. In 1960, young Ruby was six years old, and one of the first children to be bused to an all white school to begin the process of integrating people whose skin colors where different. Ruby was called names, and some wanted to hurt her. Ruby was accompanied by federal marshals to protect her. She would stop on her way to school and on her way home each day to pray, “Please, God, try to forgive those people. Because even if they say those bad things, they don’t know what they’re doing. So you could forgive them. Just like you did those folds a long time ago when they said terrible things about you.”

The kingdom that Jesus preached and lived and died for is all about a glorious, uproarious, absurd, generosity. A generosity that includes all who are created in God’s image, all of God’s beloveds. An absurdly abundant love that includes all and forgives all, loves all. Let us pray it is so. Amen.

4 Lent Yr B

Last week, Virginia taught us about a word we tend to dislike, obedience. She helped us to see that obedience is about listening receptively to God's word in our lives. It is what we do when we are on a pilgrimage, we make camp, pitch our tents, and listen receptively to the word who is Jesus.

Today we hear another word we don't like much, judgment. I recently read a novel, called The High Flyer, (by Susan Howatch) in which a character, Nicholas Darrow, tells a story that his father, an Anglican priest, would tell. Once upon a time, a man and his small son were on holiday and they saw a sign directing them along a road to some sheepdog trials which were being held on a nearby hillside. The little boy said: 'O, I'd like to see a trial!' so his father agreed to take him, but when they arrived at the scene the little boy was very disappointed. He said to his father: 'But where's the jury? And where's the judge in the black cap, like the judge at the Old Bailey who sentences murderers to hang?' Then the father had to explain that it wasn't that kind of trial. No dog was going to be condemned to death or sentenced to prison. Every one of them was there to be affirmed and valued and encouraged, and if some of them didn't come up to the mark they were always told they were welcome to come back later on when they had learned how to be more skillful." You see, God is like the judge of the sheepdog trials, not condemning to hell, but loving the creation so totally and absolutely, that our lives are transformed by that Love.

In a book many people were reading a couple years ago, The Shack, the author illustrated judgment in this way. The scene involves our protagonist, Mack, and he is in conversation with an unnamed character, who calls him into thinking about how he views God as judge. It is a compelling scene, and she invites Mack to recognize that he is blaming God for all his pain, for his Great Sadness as Mack describes it. She says to Mack, "if you are able to judge God so easily, then you certainly can judge the world." She asks Mack to choose two of his children to spend eternity in God's new heavens and new earth, and the other three he will sentence to hell. Of course Mack is alarmed at this, but isn't it exactly what some have led us to believe, that God so easily can condemn God's children to hell. Mack pleads with her, and finally says to her, "Could I go instead?" Mack was willing to put himself in his children's place and be condemned, so they didn't have to. But you see, that has already been done for us. God has judged us worthy of love, and it cost God everything.

You see, the purpose of judgment is inclusion, not exclusion. It is not that God is so warm and fuzzy that anything goes, that we can do no wrong, indeed, we all miss the mark, we are all judged guilty, but, according to Eugene Peterson, judgment means the "decisive word by which God straightens things out and puts things right. Judgment puts love in motion, applies mercy, nullifies wrong, orders goodness." We are guilty but we are forgiven. God's love and God's grace call us into mercy, repentance, and we are forgiven and transformed.

So we hear in the gospel today, Eugene Peterson's translation, "This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life." Again, the purpose of judgment is inclusion, not exclusion, it is about transformation, not damnation. Love does indeed win.

Again, with all of this said, it is Love that calls us into a whole and lasting life. Love calls us into mercy and compassion and away from the judgment of others. And Rob Bell writes in Love wins, "...there are strong, shocking images of judgment and separation in which people miss out on rewards and celebrations and opportunities. Jesus tells us these stories to wake us up to the timeless truth that history moves forward, not backward or sideways...While we continually find grace waiting to pick us up off the ground after we have fallen, there are realities to our choices. While we may get other opportunities, we won't get the one right in front of us again...Jesus reminds us in a number of ways that it is vitally important we take our choices here and now as seriously as we possibly can because they matter more than we can begin to imagine. Whatever you've been told about the end-- the end of your life, the end of time, the end of the world-- Jesus passionately urges us to live like the end is here, now, today."

Live as if you are fully and completely loved, right here and right now, today is the day you have, how are you going to show forth God's amazing love and grace. How does your life tell this story of Jesus, this story that Love wins?

Here is one story, it's not my story, but it's a great story about how Love wins. "Last weekend, Chase and I were grocery shopping in the produce section and he was having a blast weighing each new bag of vegetables I collected. I handed him a bag of tomatoes and he walked over to the scale and waited patiently in line. As I watched, a man walked up behind Chase, scowled at him for a moment, and stepped in front of him, bumping Chase out of the way. Chase looked shocked and scared. I left my cart and walked over to Chase, stood by him and said loudly, "Are you all right honey? I saw what that man did to you. That was very, very wrong and rude." Chase said nothing, the Grumpy Old man said nothing. Chase and I held hands and waited.

When the man was finished weighing his bag, he turned around quickly and all of his onions spilled out of his bag and on to the dirty floor. The three of us froze for a moment. Then Chase looked up at me and I motioned toward the floor. Chase and I got down on our hands and knees and started collecting onions while the old man grouchily and grudgingly accepted them from our hands and put them back into his bag. After Chase and I retrieved the last onion, the man walked away. Chase and I did too, and we didn't discuss the event until we got back in the car.

On the drive home, Chase said through tears, "Mommy, I've had a frustrating day. That man cut right in front of me and that was wrong. And we had to help him pick up his onions! Why did we do that? That didn't make any sense." I took a deep breath and said, "Chase, that man was acting horribly wasn't he? He seemed to have a very angry heart. I'm so sorry that happened to you. But if we didn't help him with his onions, do you think we would have made his heart softer or angrier?" "Angrier," Chase said. "Since we did help him, do you think that might have made his heart softer?" "Maybe," Chase said. "But you know what, Chase? I understand how you feel. I didn't want to help that man with his onions. You know what I wanted to do?" "What?" "I wanted to kick him really hard in the shin. I was very angry with that man for treating you badly. But sometimes doing what we really want to do, if it's going to add more anger, isn't the right thing to do. Even if it feels good at the time. If we wouldn't have helped that old man, we might have felt good for a second, but then I bet we would have felt really, really yucky about ourselves for a long time. You and I, we have a lot of love to share. Maybe that man doesn't have much. Maybe we offered him some today. People who behave badly still need love."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/glennon-melton/best-mommy-moment_b_1334708.html?ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false

Many people in our lives behave badly. Many people in the public arena as we have seen recently, behave badly. We, at times behave badly. But judgment is about inclusion, not exclusion, because Love wins, every time.