GeeDubya's Sermon Site: Luke 6: 27-38

Before I say anything specific about the difficult words of today’s gospel reading, I want to say four things about the Jesus of my understanding:

· Jesus Christ is love incarnate. In his words and deeds, the cuddly ones and the challenging ones, we see what it is to be a person infused in God’s own love.

· The way of Jesus is the way of peace; peace, understood through the Jewish concept of shalom which is typified by such words as harmony, wholeness, tranquility, dignity.

· From his life experience, Jesus understands power, and I trust what he says about it; as a Jew living under Roman rule, he lived under oppression and in his path to the cross he experienced what happens when power is abused. In the face of all that, Jesus chooses the healing power of love.

· The grace of Christ Jesus opens us to new life by the power of forgiveness, a forgiveness which still involves accountability, repentance and restitution.

I lead with these four points, and will leave them on screen throughout today’s message, because they remind us of the loving heart of Jesus and the passion that Jesus has for those who have been mistreated. I also recognize that in every congregation there are folks who live with the after-effects of trauma, and that needs to inform how I approach our reading from the gospel of Luke. In leaving these words on screen about Jesus, our loving, empowering saviour, I hope that everything I say from here on in will be understood within the embrace of his abounding love.

Theologian Dale C. Allison wrote a book entitled, The Sermon on the Mount: Inspiring the Moral Imagination. That subtitle, “inspiring the moral imagination” is a great description of what Jesus was attempting to do in his very first sermon to his gathered disciples, his opportunity to set the tone for everything to come. Rather than developing a new form of legalism, in which he defines rules for our lives and then punishes disobedience, Jesus assumes that those who came to him were yearning for something new, uplifting and life-changing. In answer to that yearning, Jesus engaged their imaginations: he invited them to imagine with him a new realm, the Kingdom or Kin-dom of God, a world made new where everything is answerable to love. To spur their creativity, Jesus said,

“Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also”

Love and pray for your enemies, says Jesus – turn the other cheek. These words may sound foolhardy, but these are not words of naivete, or a worldview through rose coloured glasses; they were spoken by one who knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of hatred. As such, we can be confident that Jesus would never recommend a system that rewards the oppressor; Jesus would never tell someone who is already in a vulnerable position to do nothing to keep themselves safe. Jesus, the Prince of Peace, a peace based in justice, wholeness and lovingkindness would have none of that. Yes, in the centuries since Jesus, overlords and abusers have coopted these words to further disempower those whom they mistreated, but the way of Jesus draws us away from elevating the power of hatred, proposing instead a sacred path of reconciling love.

Love and pray for your enemies; turn the other cheek. Hard words, yes, but let’s hold them not as a rulebook with a “do this or else” attached to them, but as words intended to inspire our moral imagination. These are words in which Jesus invites us, in these days when each day brings new shapes of aggression from the new governing regime in the US, to envision our Church and our households as what Meg Wheatley calls “islands of sanity:” places where the human spirit can live and thrive, even in the midst of toxicity. Jesus invites us, not to ignore the danger or stay silent, but to reject the lure to respond to hatred with hatred, aggression with aggression, spite with spite. Friends, what would it be like, if we as individuals and as Church, could retain the fullness of love amidst this hot mess, even while standing firm against its dangers?

Psychologist Carl Rogers, in the mid 1950s, developed the concept of “Unconditional Positive Regard”, in which I step away from my anger and judgmental feelings toward those who really push my buttons and choose, instead, to hold them in love. To me, this is the love that Jesus calls me to have for others, even those who have named me as enemy. This doesn’t mean their words and actions go unchallenged, and I will never put myself into unsafe situations with them, ever, but it does push me to dig beneath my immediate knee-jerk emotional responses, and envision instead the core of my being interacting with the core of their being; an interaction which is respectful, fair-minded, even loving. Whether it’s an infuriating public figure, or someone who has been your personal nemesis over the years, the goal is the same. We’re not going to be on each other’s Christmas card lists, but Jesus invites us to choose a positive (or at least neutral) emotional response.

As I consider “love your enemies”, I think I can get there. If I have to. I guess. But when it comes to “turning the other cheek” well, that seems dangerous and an awful lot harder.

One thing that needs to be dealt with in order to even engage these difficult words of Jesus, is the frequently quoted words of Deuteronomy 19, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” In their historical context, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” was a way for the Jewish Law to say, “when someone harms you, your retribution can only be equal to the wrong, you are not allowed to accelerate things by taking extra punishment”. That may not sound progressive, but it was in its day: rather than upping the ante each time you were wronged, you could only get even, rather than increasing the violence by taking a punitive bonus. Jesus then goes one step beyond Deuteronomy and invites us to imagine and co-create with him a world in which the cycle of violence ends. We see moves in this direction in practices of restorative justice in parts of Canada, particularly in Indigenous settings, with a goal of rebuilt relationships, rather than punishment; this encourages me to believe that new ways are possible. The non-violent pattern of Jesus is the way of the Kin-dom of God, the place where Shalom unfolds in all its beauty.

As he moves us beyond retributive justice, Jesus is not intending that his followers just absorb suffering, and he is definitely not saying we just stand back as someone else is mistreated. What Jesus draws his followers away from, is the easy slide into a life in which the thing that motivates us to get up in the morning, is lingering hatred. In the words of Malachy McCourt, “Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” Jesus invites us to a new way of being, a much better future than that.

Resentment, getting even, allowing my anger to be satisfied, these are things Jesus calls us away from. Jesus calls us to forgive one another, even as we rely on God’s forgiving grace in our lives, but this does not cancel the importance of accountability. Years ago, I read a story by an evangelical Christian author, who told the story of her family being abandoned by her father when she was quite young, and the struggles that ensued. Decades later, Dad came waltzing back into her life, seeking forgiveness. Yes, she said to him, by the grace of Christ she forgave him; she released him from her anger, but she did not trust him or feel safe around him, and her forgiveness did not release him from accountability. Saying that she forgave him was one thing, but his saying sorry wasn’t going to change the life-altering changes that his wife and kids experienced when he walked out on them. Even in the realm of “turn the other cheek,” my friends, there are boundaries. Actions have consequences in our human relationships, even in a world of forgiveness.

Which brings me to a specific example which we’ve been dealing with behind the scenes in our worship planning. You may have noticed that we stopped using a sung Lord’s Prayer that was used here for many years, and are starting to test-drive some other versions with hopes of finding a new favourite. The reason for leaving the previous version and seeking a new one, is that four years ago it came to light that the composer of the previous musical setting had for decades sexually abused dozens of young women and girls, and his music workshops were a significant venue for this grooming. As a result, we are joining with many congregations and his music publisher in not using his music. This both is to let the women who have brought these complaints – very few of whom have received apologies of any sort - know that they have been believed, and because each usage of this song puts a few pennies of royalty money into the perpetrator’s pockets. So I ask myself: can I find it in myself to hold this man’s life in unconditional high regard? Yes. Do I believe that his earnest confession will be heard by God? Yes. But even with those two yes’s, are there consequences to his reprehensible actions? Also yes. The words of Jesus about love and forgiveness are not intended to give carte blanche to those who repeatedly make others’ lives a misery.

Throughout my words this morning, I hope the words on screen have helped to place the things I’ve been sharing within the things we know about Jesus:

• Jesus Christ is love incarnate.

• The way of Jesus is the way of peace.

• Jesus knows how power works, and chooses the healing power of love.

• The grace of Christ invites forgiveness…and accountability.

In his difficult invitation to love and pray for our enemies, and turn the other cheek, Jesus invites us to new life, a life with him in which we imagine the power of love surpassing all the hate-filled nonsense presently filling our world. Jesus frees us, if we choose to accept the gift, from a baseline hatred which only perpetuates and intensifies the brokenness. Christ Jesus invites us to engage our creative imaginations in the pursuit of new realm of shalom, to put away hatred and mean-spiritedness as we welcome his love-based ethic into our interactions. When we let love be our guide, we say yes to Christ’s glorious vision, and life truly comes alive. May this be so, Amen.

References cited/consulted:

Allison, Dale C. The Sermon on the Mount: Inspiring the Moral Imagination. NYC: Crossroad, 1999.

Anderson, Amy Rees. https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyanderson/2015/04/07/resentment-is-like-taking-poison-and-waiting-for-the-other-person-to-die/

Government of Canada. https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/jr/gladue/p4.html

Palmer, Rodney A. https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5292&context=pubs

Ravitzky, Aviezer. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/shalom/

Rousselle, Christine. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/248588/new-allegations-against-david-haas-prompt-top-music-publisher-to-sever-ties-with-hymn-composer

Wheatley, Margaret. https://margaretwheatley.com/books/restoring-sanity/

Wikipedia. “Unconditional Positive Regard » https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconditional_positive_regard#:~:text=Unconditional%20positive%20regard%2C%20a%20concept,context%20of%20client%2Dcentred%20therapy.