7th Sunday after Epiphany/Ordinary Time
Genesis 45: 3-11, 41-42
Luke 6:27-38
(homily preached at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, New Harmony, Indiana)
Last week…
We heard the beginning of Luke’s sermon on the Plain.
…who is blessed…the poor, the hungry, the mourning
…who is in trouble…the rich, the satisfied, the laughing
Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes doesn’t jump to the woes so quickly
It is still tough but a bit easier to contend with
This Lucan version
its more difficult…more challenging
Both to interpret and to follow
Last Sunday I was sitting next to Ken at Coffee Hour…
I don’t remember the conversation but in response to something Rose said
He answered “well I’m already doomed…I’m not hungry and I can pay my bills…”
Something to that effect;)
It sounds so crazy impossible that…well
We don’t know what to do with it
Best to just move on to the next passage…
But no such luck
We are just picking up where we left off
The crazy impossible continues
Loving your enemies?
…what happened to common sense?
Sounds like a good way to get smacked ONE MORE TIME
Doing good to those who hate you?
Any good therapist would name that CODEPENDENCY
…or maybe even masochism!
Giving to every outstretched hand?
If you keep that up you’ll become a beggar!
…and when you are one you’ll find out that most people don’t give to every outstretched hand!
And finally, why not help the robber out…just hand over your shirt after he steals your coat?
-----
One night…this week…after supper
I asked for Rob’s help
I read this Gospel out loud
When I was done
I looked at him
And all he had to offer me was two words…
and I quote:
Eazy. Peazy.
So for, Rob and Ken
And I’m guessing most all of us
this teaching of Jesus is
well…either too much or completely lost in translation
what are we to do with it?
We have to do something
its Luke’s Sermon on the Plain
It’s central to the Lukan story
And to Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom of God
-----
Typically the first reading is chosen to support the Gospel
…To echo a theme
Today we heard the end of the Joseph story from Genesis
And it was chosen because it is a powerfully dramatic scene of MERCY
The Joseph story is a long saga
And we only get a minor recap
BUT these brothers did worse than just sell him into slavery
There was a grand cover-up with the false evidence of the bloody coat
And Egypt was no picnic…
Years spent in prison
These brothers had a long rap sheet
This is just a GRAND story of MERCY
And it is MERCY
precisely because
they SOOOO DON’T DESERVE IT!!!
No. They deserve punishment! Retribution!
MERCY is mercy because it is purely gift…purely grace
MERCY doesn’t live in the world of ‘deserving’
-----
One of my favorite scenes of Mercy
Comes from the book/play/movie, Les Miserables
Jean Valjean
Who stole a loaf of bread as a teenager
Spends years in prison
And when he is released he is starved and half dead
He finds himself at the home of a Bishop
Who invites him in
Feeds him
Sets him before a warm fire
And offers him a safe place for the night
Valjean awakes in the middle of the night
Grabs a sack and runs off with the silver
He gets caught by the local police and
surprise---they don’t believe him when he says that the Bishop gave him the silver
Handcuffed, they bring him to the Bishop
And here’s the important part
The camera goes from Valjean to the Bishop and back
And back again
There is this long pause
A holy pause
What will the Bishop do?
And finally: “My son, I am so glad to see you. You forgot to take the candlesticks---I told you they will fetch a very good price. God bless you, son.”
(not an exact quote)
Unless you know the story
The viewer almost always expects retaliation
The voice inside my head says “now you’ve got him…!”
-----
Between stimulus and response there is a place for pause
In that pause we are free to choose our response.
And our accumulated responses become who we are
I think the gospel is calling us to reflect on those potentially holy pauses
We may be hard-wired to respond with retribution
It is sneaky and seductive
It even feels at times that returning evil for evil is just plain necessary
A matter of survival even
But we are free to choose
-----
I don’t live as a denigrated minority
In Roman occupied first century Palestine
And experiencing real hunger and daily scarcity of food
Is not an experience I am familiar with
But I know…
Even in the safety of my quiet southern Indiana life
I know ---a little--- of this mechanism.
Every time I want to take back something I have said
Something hateful or spiteful
Or when I want to take back something I’ve done to hurt or punish
How many times have I said “If only…if only I hadn’t …
If only I hadn’t pressed SEND!
If only I had just paused
If only I had slept on it
-----
Loving those who love me back
Lending to those who pay me back
Helping those who will later come and cut that tree limb off my roof…
It is a picture of life as one long tally
A kind of running balance sheet
The first half of today’s Gospel
Is an invitation
To take a HOLY PAUSE
So that we have a better chance to choose Kingdom Living
-----
The second half of the reading:
Don’t judge and you will not be judged
Don’t condemn and you will not be condemned
Forgive and you will be forgiven
Give and it will be given to you
At first glance
doesn’t this sound like accounting too…tit for tat???
But these aren’t IF/THEN statements
No. These are statements of truth.
The truth here is that our decisions
Our personal actions
Create the world in which we live
Our community actions
Create the community we live in
What we think is harmful to others
Is in fact
Harmful to us
Our choices
To not condemn and not judge
to give and forgive
these choices move us toward our potential of being images of our life-giving God
From the beginning
The very beginning
We hear the we are made in the image and likeness of God
…well we have 100% potentiality anyway
Our model to imitate is Jesus
He’s a tough model
But there you have it.
A 5 sentence story:
Jesus was walking down the road with his disciples.
Some people threw stones at him and cursed him.
Jesus blessed them.
The disciples asked him,
“Master, why do you bless those who curse you?”
Jesus replied,
“I can only give what I have in my purse.”*
I love that visual
What do I have in my purse
My briefcase
My glovebox
Or my cargo pockets?
This is where we come
to clean out our purses
to get rid of a few recently accumulated stones
and to replace them with blessing
...with the grace on offer here
WHY?
So that
when complaining, and finger-pointing,
and all forms of nastiness
Begin to swirl
I remember to take a holy pause
I remember to look further than those always convenient stones
I remember to dig deep into my purse
To find there
blessing to share
blessing to share
*John Shea, The Relentless Widow, The Spiritual Wisdom of the Gospels for Christian Preachers and Teachers, 47-51.
