Sermon: Love Your Enemy

Love, Bless, Pray, and be Merciful

            Love your enemies, bless those that curse you, pray for those that abuse you.  There is a lot packed into these three statements.  Love, bless, and pray, just those three words can be challenging enough, but to love, bless, and pray for those that aren’t our friends, that don’t seem to be treating us correctly, that perhaps are even causing us harm.  Does Jesus really expect us to live into this?  These are things that we aren’t even sure we want Jesus or God or the Holy Spirit to do.  We want God on our side, why would we want God to extend love to those that oppose us, that want to harm us, that are greedy or violent or cruel?  Aren’t there teachings against these things?  So why would we extend love, and blessings, and prayers for those that seem to be living outside of God’s teachings?  Isn’t there even a teaching about separating the goats from the sheep?  I truly think, this is one of the hardest teachings of Christian discipleship. 

            And so, in order to love your enemy, you first have to identify the break in relationship that has caused this division.  Were you once friends?  Do you have values that are on the extremes of the other?  Did the person break your trust, disappoint you, or betray you?  Or is your enemy someone you have never even met, such as the terrorist group Isis? 

            After 9/11 there were so many hate crimes committed against Muslims, mass stereotyping was happening, and suddenly anyone that had any kind of connections to those terrorists must also be the enemy.  Trauma and fear created this incredible sense of distrust of the other and many innocent people were targeted.  And so churches began to reach out to Mosques in their community, they began to create relationships and build trust with one another and fight against the hatred and stereotypes and negativity that had formed over this horrific event.  In so doing, we put into practice the concept of loving our enemy, or at least loving our presumed enemy, extending love to neighbors in our communities instead of buying into the fear. 

            Apparently, our nation is extremely polarized right now.  I don’t know if our division with one another has created enemies amongst each other.  Every once in awhile I will read a post that a relative shares and I have to say to myself, okay, you completely disagree with this, but she is your aunt, or he is your cousin, let it go. 

            Often times, in order to love or to forgive, one first has to overcome anger, anger at a person, or an event, or some deep hurt that has not healed.    I’ve been working through a book on spiritual disciple and one of the activities was to name 50 things that you are angry about.  I was shocked at how easily I was able to name 50 things that either have angered me in the past or make me angry right now.  Some of them our personal, but some are for the hurts of the world, such as homelessness, human trafficking, and hungry children.  Anger can harm us, but it can also motivate us to make changes in the world.  In order to move yourself out of destructive anger into transformational anger, God reminds us that we have the tools of love, blessing, and prayer. 

Anger is often a response that comes out of fear.  If someone cuts you off while driving, you might become angry at that person, perhaps even honking your horn or flashing your lights at them.  But the anger is driven from the response of fear, fear that that person could have caused an accident, could have harmed you, could have even killed you.  The fear is also driven from the loss of control.  I try to be a defensive driver, always looking around me, always doing my best to be in control of the situation, but someone else’s negligence can wipe out everything I have done to keep myself safe, I am no longer in control and that creates fear. 

What is it like for us as a people to be constantly living in a state of fear and anger?  Well, it pushes us to stress which can then wreck havoc on our physical, emotional, and spiritual selves.  So, if we find ourselves continuously stressed out, or angry, or just feeling out of control, God reminds us, God calls to us, God offers us a better way.  And yes, that way involves loving your enemy, bless those that curse you, and pray for those that oppress you.  More than anything, it is going to push yourself into spiritual practices of growth and perhaps even transformation, it is going to push you into positive ways to deal with fear and anger rather than harmful negative behaviors. 

From the Book:  The Way of Forgiveness, Flora Slosson Wuellner is quoted as saying:  “Acts of cruelty and evil cannot be condoned or forgiven…When we are the victims of radical evil, we are not asked to forgive the evil act  We are asked to remember that the perpetrator, even though trapped for now in the evil, is nonetheless a child of God.”  If you have seen the movie:  The Shack, there is a scene where the father and the Holy Spirit are in deep conversation about this.  The Holy Spirit pushes the father into trying to understand judgement, it can seem so easy to judge on our part.  Murder is wrong and a murdered is an evil person.  But what kind of brokenness is going on in that person’s life, what caused the murderer to become the person he has become?  And to God, are we able to accept that that person is still a child of God?  We want to control God, we want to be the judge, we know how wrong some actions are, and yet, God calls us to love, to bless, and to pray. 

There is such a powerful scene in the movie:  Deadman Walking.  A nun becomes a spiritual guide to a man on death row.  He has committed horrible acts including murder.  The family of the deceased cannot understand why the nun is offering God’s love to this person.  In a standoff between the family and the nun, the grieving father shouts: don’t you think we could use some of God’s love as well?  His anger at her was so complicated, but it seemed he grieved so deeply that the criminal had the attention of the nun and no one came to them.  Perhaps they too needed saving. 

Again, from the book: the way of forgiveness, the reader is encouraged to start with small steps, we can’t be expected to love the worst offender of our lives right away, we need to build into the spiritual practice, we need to begin with smaller areas of disconnect and begin to grow from there. 

I also can’t help wondering, is Jesus preparing his followers for the new community of faith that will grow?  A community that crosses boundaries of culture?  A community that will include both Jew and Gentile, both masters and slaves, both women and men?  In this teaching, he is preparing where people that were once separated by rigid boundaries and social construct can now gather together as one.  How hard would it be to gather with someone you once considered your enemy but is now a part of your faith community?  In the Kingdom of God, there is no space for this, Jesus breaks down the dividing walls, he calls into question who belongs and who does not, and infuses the conversation with Love, Blessing, Prayer, and Mercy.  Let us live into being a community of faith that is welcoming to all, filled with love, generous with blessings, infused with prayer, and always erring on the side of mercy and grace.  Amen. 

sermon: Sabbath

Keeping Sabbath

In college, we had a t-shirt that said:  If God was a Davidson student, he would have played for six days and pulled an all nighter.  The creation story shares that in six days God created the world, and set aside one more day to rest, to see that all is good, to delight in the creation that was made.  God rested, and should we. 

            It has been a long time since Sunday has been held as a day of rest.  Some might remember a time when stores were closed and families would go to church and then often gather for a meal together.  Our lives are so different then the day and age of when Jesus walked this earth.  The rules governing life, society, faith cultures have softened greatly.  We still get a glimpse of it every once in awhile.  I am always amazed in this modern world when I see Orthodox Jews walking to the synagogue or when I hear stories of the rules around whether you can turn on the oven on the Sabbath. 

            Rules around Sabbath keeping exist to help us understand, to help us set aside this time as sacred and holy.  How do we differentiate one day from the next, one day from the normal work that we do, from a day that is set aside as rest, as sacred, as a gift from God?  We act differently, we follow religious guidelines, we give our time and attention to God.  I am pretty sure in the day and age of Jesus, they did not have weekends.  Having one day a week as a day of rest, as a day of no work, was a gift.  For us, it is often just assumed.  Everyone has the weekend, we all get two days off from work, well that is if you have a mainstream vocation, or don’t have to work two jobs to pay the bills.  There are millions of people that have to work all week long, that don’t get the weekend, that don’t have the luxury of slowing down and finding time to be intentionally present with God with a faith community. 

            Every once in a while, we still lament the loss of some of these rules that protected the Sabbath.  We lament that there are sports and practices and so many other activities that happen on Sunday morning.  But we have also not adapted to the changing culture.  We have set ourselves rigidly as a group that gathers on Sunday morning.  This is our time, this is the time we set aside for worship, for gathering as God’s people, for our Sabbath keeping.  But what does this do to us a as a greater community of faith, as a people called together to be in fellowship with each other?  We end up forcing families to make a choice, sports or worship. 

            I wonder how Jesus would negotiate our Sabbath struggle in today’s world.  Because Jesus pushes against the rules of Sabbath keeping that exist in his own day and age.  The two stories we have today involve Jesus doing work on the Sabbath.  He and his disciples are walking through a field and they pluck some grain and eat it.  Seems like something we might do, go out to the garden in summer and pick a few tomatoes and enjoy them fresh off the vine.  But the rules were so rigid that this was considered work, they were involved with harvesting unprepared food, and they had to separate the grain from the chaff.  They were processing their food.  Eating is allowed on the Sabbath, but not picking and processing your food.  You eat something that has already been prepared.  Jesus then points back to King David, that when he was hungry on the Sabbath, he ate, even if it was food he was not suppose to eat.  Here he says, the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.  He has not yet defined himself as the Son of Man, and so those that head this were left wondering what he meant, who is the Son of Man?  And what does this have to do with what Jesus is doing? 

            Luke has placed two Sabbath stories together here, this next one happens on another Sabbath when Jesus is teaching in the synagogue.  It seems as if the scribes and Pharisees have caught onto him, since it says they were watching him to see if he would heal on the Sabbath.  And sure enough, he does.  There is a man with a withered hand and Jesus calls out to him.  As the man comes to Jesus, Jesus speaks to the thoughts of the scribes and Pharisees and asks:  I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?  And Jesus heals the man’s hand. 

            Eating and healing, responding to hunger and brokenness, these are two things that Jesus lifts up as viable practices on the Sabbath.  He is pushing back against the rigid rules of his faith tradition that prohibited these actions.  Yes, we need a day of rest, yes, we need a time of holiness, but we also cannot ignore human need just because it happens to be the Sabbath. 

            And so, in a day and age where we seem to have no rules protecting the Sabbath, Jesus just might come to us and ask about our fellowship, our time together as a faith community.  Jesus might challenge us to creatively find ways to keep the Sabbath, creative ways to gather as a faith community, ways in which we are fed and healed not just physically, but spiritually, since that is worship is intended to do for us.  How are we meeting people in their hunger and brokenness?  Are there ways to create sacred space throughout the week, rather than just the few hours set aside on Sunday morning?  Sabbath keeping is about rest, but it is also about sacred connections, about seeing God at work in the world, about connecting to the sacred and finding the good.