February 23 -- Seventh Sunday after Epiphany

Listen to this sermon HERE.

Grace mercy and peace from Jesus...

Sisters and brothers in Christ, this reading today is the last installment of Jesus’ sermon on the mount.  We’ve been hearing parts from this sermon all month.  It started with those great beatitudes.  Jesus started with blessing and named for us who was blessed, in God’s eyes (not who’s blessed in the world’s eyes), he told us, his disciples, to be salt and light, talked about anger and divorce, caring for the poor, and now these last--what are called--anti-theses: “You’ve heard it said...but I say to you...”

art by Daniel Erlander (former pastor of SVLC)

You’ve heard it said an eye for an eye...but I say to you do not resist/retaliate against an evil doer.  You’ve heard it said love your friend and hate your enemy, but I say to you love your enemies, and pray for those who attack you.

This, frankly, to our ears here in San Diego, Navy city, Marines, throws a wrench into our whole military industrial complex, set up to defend ourselves and defeat the enemy, right?   Many of us wouldn’t be here today if the enemy (either foreign or domestic) wasn’t targeted and destroyed, right?  And how, Jesus, am I supposed to love the same person I’m aiming a gun at?  Sometime I would be very interested in having a discussion from those of you who are in the military or military families -- on how you hear this passage?  How can we go into combat and love our enemies?  Did Jesus just not get it?  Was he just some hippie dreamer?  He certainly lived in a time, as we do, where there was plenty of military presence across the land.  I struggle with this, and I wonder how you’re struggle too...because like other parts of the sermon on the mount, this isn’t easy.  If we’re going to follow Jesus, we’re in trouble, in some ways.

That question of loving our global enemies is a huge one that we can certainly discuss and debate and continue to pray about.  And I think those were exactly the enemies Jesus was talking about.  They could probably see Roman military officers right down the hill, as Jesus was giving the sermon.

But I also suspect that we have more enemies than just global terrorist, or certain North Koreans, or Al Qaeda, or all our other suspected enemies.  I think this is exactly the wrench Jesus was talking throwing, and I’m struggling with this, as I’m sure you are too.  But I also but I also think we have enemies closer to home.  

I think, if we’re honest, we have enemies in our workplaces, or at our schools, or in our neighborhoods, or maybe even in our families.  We might not call them enemies exactly, and wish to kill them, but we definitely have some less-than-loving thoughts and wishes for them deep in our hearts, and maybe even on our lips as we vent about them with our friends.

Jesus is speaking to this too.  Remember: we start to see with Jesus in this sermon on the mount that he cares not just about our external actions, but maybe even more importantly what’s going on in our hearts.  Blessed are the pure in heart.  If your heart is full of hatred, and plans for retaliation, and bitterness and anger, I think it’s safe to say that you are not blessed.  Not because God doesn’t love you:  God deeply loves you and wants the opposite for you and your heart, but you are not blessed.  You are not happy (as some bibles translate that word).  Happy are those who are not weighed down with anger.  That’s true.  Know anybody like that?  (for me it’s the ones who spend significant time in meditation)  

Jesus’ very strong, very challenging, very clear teaching today, is once again a gift to us.  And it wraps his powerful sermon up:  Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you.  [back to beginning]  Blessed are the pure in heart.

Jesus who loved his enemies, loves us too.  We have been met by this counter-cultural Jesus in this place, maybe for the first time today, but knowing you all, I know you’ve met this Jesus many, many times before -- in water, wine, word and wheat and through people.  And this Jesus still hasn’t given up on us!  He comes to be among us again and again.  And today, he calls us into a new place of loving our enemies and resisting the need to retaliate, to return one evil for another evil.  

Martin Luther King, Jr. has become an icon of the black community in our nation; he became in his lifetime a public figure; and a now we have a public national holiday to remember his life.  But it’s worth reminding ourselves today that MLK was a deeply religious, Christian man (who spent significant time in prayer and meditation).  And he centered  his whole life and teaching on Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount.  Go home and read some of King’s words on this text.  This is a man who grew up with white supremicists throwing bricks  through his living room window...and that was just the beginning.  And yet he preached loving your enemies, and like any practicer of non-violence, he tells us that it’s not a project for the faint-hearted.  

Jesus is calling us into a different way.  There’s nothing new about loving your friends and hating your enemies.  (That’s a strong word for us as church.) Even the tax-collectors do that.  What’s new is loving your enemies, going the extra mile.  And if you love your enemies, how much more will you love those closest to you.  

God loves us as we struggle through this perhaps -- the most challenging passage of the bible -- God is with us.  I wish that word ‘perfect’ was not used to translate the Greek telios.  “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.”  That’s by definition impossible.  Only God is perfect.  But the word is telios is richer than our English word ‘perfect.’  It means, be mature and complete, be a whole person, a healthy person, a pure in heart person, a loving person, someone who’s not weighed down with anger and vitriol and the need to get back at everyone who’s wronged you.  It means don’t roll over, and let others roll over you either.  (Turn the other cheek actually is a reference, not to ‘here, hit me again‘ but rather, to stand up for yourself.)  Be a person who stands up for yourself and for others.  A person who does what is right and good.  Be telios.  

Today we get a booster shot.  And like we try to explain to our kids, those terrible shots are actually good, and we actually have them done because we love our children.  

“Love your enemies” stings.  It pinches.  And if we never thought we needed God’s help before, boy, we need it now with this one.  “Help us Jesus, show us Jesus, how to do this very difficult thing.”  And unlike the nurse or the doctor who gives a shot and leaves the room until the next shot or time there’s something wrong (with all due respect to our good doctors and nurses.  Katie: “You’re mean!”), Jesus stays with us through it all.  Through that moment when you’re facing your latest “enemy”.  Jesus who has forgiven us, helps us with forgiveness.  Jesus who has loved us helps us with love.  Jesus who has had nasty words and actions hurled at him, helps us when we have nasty words and actions hurled at us.  Christ is with us as we go out into a world that is filled with...the usual -- hatred, greed, retaliation, bitterness.  And he is with us as we strive to be different.            

For -- remember how this whole thing got started -- blessed are you.  AMEN.