lccktacoma.org/pastor
Jesus lays out pretty simply the behavior that someone’s “enemy” might have. Enemies are the ones who hate you, who curse you, who abuse you, who strike you, who take from you.
And so Jesus says, to those that listen, the response for your someone who acts like your enemy is to do good towards them, to bless them, to pray for them, not to return violence with violence, and to act towards them with generosity. I know that this text has been used to tell victims of domestic violence, abuse, or even sexual harassment to just turn the other cheek and ignore it. I’m going to say right now that I think that is harmful interpretation of this text. If you are experiencing abuse or violence, Jesus doesn’t say to be silent, Jesus doesn’t say to be silent, he simply says to pray for them and not to retaliate with violence. So if you are experiencing abuse or violence in your life today, know that our church is, and I am a safe place for you to come if you need help. That being said, in the face of someone who acts like an enemy, when someone hates you, curses you, abuses you, strikes you, or steals from you, responding with kindness, with love, with generosity and blessing, feels impossible. Apart from, you know, Jesus, who is God with us, who can manage that kind of open heart with such harm being thrown at it? I kept trying to think of real life examples of this kind of openness and vulnerability that Jesus describes. And then I remembered back when Hadley was in daycare, sometimes she would come home with a note from the teacher. An ouchie report. I remember one that was very specific in how the ouchie occurred. The report read, “Hadley and a friend were fighting over a toy, and the friend bit her arm.” I remember asking Hadley about it, and she pointed to where the bite happened, and she said she was okay. I asked if she was upset and she said no. This wasn’t the first time, and so I knew the procedure her daycare does for something like this: The teacher jumps into the situation and diffuses it, usually by separating the two kiddos from one another. They figure out what happened, in this case it was a disagreement over who would play with a particular toy. And then they have the kids say sorry to each other. At that daycare there were kiddos 5 months to 4 years, in cases where kiddos weren’t even able to verbalize “I’m sorry”, they would be invited to offer a hug instead. In our first reading from Genesis today, there’s a similar pattern of reconciliation between Joseph and his brothers. Joseph’s brothers were jealous and fearful of Joseph’s gifts, and so after a failed murder attempt, Joseph had been sold into slavery. But God was there with Joseph through all of it, and God used their enemy treatment of Joseph for something good. First there’s a lot of separation between them, even after Joseph’s been separated from his family for years, when they do arrive looking for help, Joseph sends them away at first. Then when they return, there’s a truth telling that happens, a reasoning, Joseph names the harm they’ve done to him, and also names that God used their evil intentions to work good, that God was there with him through all of it. And then there’s a reconciliation, and it’s emotional and physical. Joseph kisses his brothers and weeps upon them. Like the three steps that Hadley’s teachers helped her and her friends go through, the stages of Joseph’s story are about love and generosity and reconciliation. From what I know from Hadley, and from the little ones I have been blessed to know in my life, after that hug, they don’t care anymore about the kid who bit them, or who tried to take the toy, they just go on playing. Usually together. They don’t respond by biting back or by trying to take another toy – not automatically anyway. Little kids have these big open hearts. They do often need prompting…but they share, they play, they hug, and they cry without worrying who sees them. When we start to grow up we start to learn that in this world, a hug doesn’t always solve the problem when people treat you like an enemy. Many of us lose those child-like open hearts. We continue to find ourselves been hurt by surprise enemies, and we learn. We learn to hate back with the same hostility we receive. We learn to curse those who curse us with words that represent our anger and our hurt. We learn to be a bit more ruthless, a bit more focused on ourselves, and sometimes our selfishness can harm others. We learn to strike back or strike first against an attacker. We learn to protect what we have, physically and emotionally. We tend not to go through the separation, truth telling, reconciliation process with those who treat us like enemies. We’ve learned to stop at separation, sometimes using those backlash tools to separate ourselves. In all that learning, in that education this broken world offers us, all that backlash and protection we wrap ourselves in, definitely helps us to be hurt less by those who would treat us as enemies. But in being hurt less, it also means that we give less. We love less. We trust less. The world, the kingdom, that Jesus brings is very different from this world. The lessons that Jesus wants us to learn are not about less. They’re about more. Jesus wants us to give more. To love more. To trust more. And Jesus invites us into this kingdom of generosity, of blessing, of faith. Jesus invites us to shed the parts of ourselves that are prone to hostility and anger, the parts of ourselves that are suspicious and selfish. Jesus wants us to be children of the Most High. Children of love and blessing. Children of forgiveness and generosity. Children of trust and faith. And that sounds all well and good. Maybe even as Jesus says “Love your enemy”, when we think about it in the abstract we might say it even sounds easy. You can love someone and not like them right? But truthfully, when we experience harm and want to protect ourselves from more harm, loving our enemy in the way Jesus describes is terrifying. For those who are hated because of who they are based on their gender, their sexuality, their race, or their faith, what good can you do for someone who hates you? How do you bless someone who curses you and defames you? If you have escaped abuse, how can you convince yourself that your abuser is someone worthy of your thoughts…let alone your prayers? For someone who has experienced violence or theft done against them, how do you respond in peace and generosity? I mean, there’s a reason we tend to leave the loving of our enemies in the abstract. There’s a reason we don’t often live up to this, why reconciliation seems impossible. We’re not little kids fighting over a toy who can hug it out afterwards. Many of us have been hurt. The truth of this broken world is that many of us have had to learn how to survive in spite of those who treat us like enemies. And so we fight back or strike first, we judge others before they can judge us, we condemn behaviors that we know make someone untrustworthy, we struggle to forgive. And if anyone knows how it feels to be hated, to be cursed, to be abused, to be stricken, to lose everything in this world, it’s Jesus. In his arrest, in his trial, in his death on the cross, Jesus experiences all that enemy treatment in a matter of days. And Jesus learns, like so many of us do. But Jesus’s lesson is different than lessons we’ve learned. Even on the cross, later in Luke, Jesus says, “forgive them”. Even when we would expect Jesus to wash his hands of the world, of those ungrateful and wicked people who treat him like an enemy. Jesus’s heart is still wide open. God is kind to all people, including the ungrateful and the wicked. And so God gives us Jesus. To show us a new way to learn. To show us a new way to live. To bring us a new kingdom. Jesus rises from the dead, conquers sin and death and all the brokenness this world can muster. Jesus rises from the dead to bring us love even when we can’t recognize it. To bring us good even when we struggle to open our hearts. Jesus does all of this to bring us blessing and faith and peace in a world of curse and abuse and violence. So that we can learn something new. So that we can learn that we are children of the Most High, children of God, receiving mercy and love even when we struggle to open our hearts. Jesus brings a new kingdom, a new lesson of love and forgiveness, so that instead of us learning how to close ourselves off, instead of us being changed by the brokenness and harm of this world, our hearts can be re-opened. We too can live into God’s kingdom of generosity too, so that even when we don’t know what else to do, when we don’t know how to love those who hurt us, when we struggle to seek God’s kingdom of generosity and our own pain, we know that at the very least we can always, always pray. Thanks be to God, amen.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
FROM THE PASTOR
Sundays: Categories
All
Archives
February 2024
|