Love Your Enemies

Luke 6:27-38

A lot of what Jesus has to say in this morning’s gospel story sounds like familiar moral teaching to many of us who’ve spent much time in church. (Raise your hand if you’ve heard “Do unto others as you would have them do to you” before.) But other bits may be startling, when we take them literally.

 

All the moral teaching about generosity – giving more than others ask or demand (or sue you for), being merciful, not judging or condemning, lend and do good without expecting any return – are rooted by Jesus in the idea that we must love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, bless and pray for people who revile, curse, or insult us.

 

Wait, what!?

 

Anyone hearing Jesus the first time, or listening to Jesus now, might naturally ask: “How can it possibly be a good idea to love the people who are doing horrible things to everyone – or even just to us?

(Isn’t the right thing to object? To protest, to try to stop the horrible things?
Of course it is.)

For that matter, isn’t it genuinely dangerous to cooperate with abuse, to offer yourself to others’ violence, to give generously to thieves – whether government or corporate or malicious lawsuit thieves, or pickpockets and car window smashers?

(Of course it is. What a terrible idea.)

 

And Jesus was saying these things directly and first to a bunch of people who were living under occupation, with an autocratic local ruler, and were, in many cases, subsistence farmers and fishers and tradespeople.

Sounds dangerous. And odd that Jesus is talking to the disempowered about how to act from a position of power. Talking to the “have nots” about how to act from having abundance.

 

Because he’s not talking about how to collaborate with oppression.

He’s talking about how to act when we already live, here and now, in the kingdom of God.

How to act in the midst of the often screwed up, mean and broken world we occupy, when you are already living in the fullness of God’s love and strength and power, filled up and running over the containers of our lives. With peace like a river, joy like a fountain, and love like an ocean in our souls.

 

Because that’s how Jesus himself lives, and how Jesus tries to teach us to live.

 

If you live like that, it’s not so dangerous to be generous to thieves and haters and internet trolls and imperious Roman soldiers. Because no matter what you give away to them, you yourself will never run out of love and strength and trust and goodness. And that is an act of resistance against violence and hatred and evil.

When you live filled up with the unlimited peace, joy, resilience, and love God places within you, cannot be drained or conquered; you cannot lose, because God’s love can never run out.

 

It’s still scary.

Your cheek is still going to get hurt when you turn it to a Roman soldier or riot cop.

You’re still going to be chilly when you give away not just your outerwear, but your shirt.

You’re still going to be missing the material goods or wealth or time that you gave away to someone who hadn’t earned it and won’t pay it back.

It’s still going to be a big emotional effort to love those enemies.

 

Which love – by the way – does not mean you have to agree with, or cooperate with those enemies.

Loving your enemy, Jesus’ way, means not concession or collaboration, but empathy.

Many of us here may have known a toddler terrorist at some point in our lives, and have already practiced this. Because when that self-centered and reckless child of God is noisily and violently upset that grapes are juicy today (like they are every day), or that their shoes are too yellow for the occasion, or that the world is just wrong, we know how to say in our hearts “Same, friend. Same. I feel you.” AND make clear that we are still not going to throw the grapes at other people, or kick every shelf in Target.

 

Loving your enemies does not mean condoning their actions, or giving up resistance to evil. It means looking at the “enemy” across from you and remembering that this person, too, was created by God, is a beloved child of God, and God yearns for them (and us) to turn from enmity and evil, and be filled with the peace and joy and love of God running through their souls.

AND loving your enemy prompts you to object to the evil-doing, protest the horrors, urge the end of violence, protect others from abuse.

Because love wants what is best for the other.

And God’s love, joy, and peace will – given the chance – push evil and the desire for enemies and conquest out of anyone’s heart and soul.

 

And none of this – none of that enemy-love, that generosity to the undeserving, that willingness to meet violence with peace, to bless the haters – is something Jesus is telling us to do from our own strength and resources.

None of it is what God expects us to do to earn God’s love.

All of it is what we do when we are tapped in to the love and joy and peace of God welling up within us. When we are rooted in God’s strength, not depending on our own limited endurance.

 

And for those of us who don’t always feel the peace, joy, and love of God welling up within us, and giving us power to transform hate to love, I promise you, Jesus is not telling us to seek out abuse from a position of weakness or give what we do not actually have.

But he’s still speaking to you, to us, all the same.

And I believe he’s telling us to do what we can do, if we can’t do it all like him.

 

To pay attention so you notice the day when you do have the peace or the strength you need to make a generous gesture to the world’s most annoying co-worker, if you don’t have enough peace and strength to love your mortal enemy.

To notice when you have the compassion or the joy that makes it more natural, just for today, to give to the undeserving, to settle an argument without winning it, to demand justice for others again, even though the first seventeen attempts fell on deaf ears, or got you in trouble.

 

And to pay attention so we notice the others around us who bubble up with peace, or joy, or love. Because those examples, those fountains of grace, can deepen our experience of the love of God that will make us more like Jesus. More capable of that transforming generosity.

 

I know I can always find those examples in the Trinity Preschool.

Any time I might need it, our children and teachers will remind me that the answer to almost any need is to be a good listener – and then I quiet myself for a moment, and notice God whispering unconditional love into my ears and heart. 

Any time I need it, I can find joy in the play and friendships and new discoveries our children are sharing – and that helps unclog the fountain of God’s joy that wants to bubble in my soul.

And when I really need a reminder that love can never be defeated, one child will quietly mention in chapel that God never leaves us. And my heart stops for a second, and starts beating again with all the rhythm of God’s love.

 

Those reminders are all around us, even if you don’t get to spend time in our Preschool like I do.

I find examples day-to-day in surprising places on the internet, and among my family and friends, when I am paying attention. I know that seeing peace resist violence on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, love overwhelm hate in front of the US Supreme Court, or good done without expectation of return on a playground in elementary school, has transformed lives and re-directed the course of society.

I know there are thousands more little words and actions that, if we watch and listen, can free God’s power and love, God’s joy and peace, to spill through you and me, so that like Jesus, we can do the impossible.

Love our enemies – just a bit or with all our hearts.

Give beyond anyone’s expectations, turn violence into peace, turn the world merciful and good – for a moment, with one action – or with all of our lives.

 

Rooted in God

Jeremiah 17:5-10

“Like a tree rooted by flowing water – free from fear and anxiety in times of stress and distress.” Did you notice that image from the prophet Jeremiah this morning?

I wonder how many of us, today, feel like you fit in that image? Vibrant and fruitful and well-resourced in the face of trouble?

 

Not me, most days, honestly.

 

I want to be strong, and fruitful, not vulnerable to the waves of strain and distress that come from the world around us. I long to be non-anxious in drought and trouble.

 

And sometimes, for a minute, a day even, I can feel that undaunted strength, flowing from God.

But most of us, here in this time and place, are taught to start with self-reliance instead of God-reliance – to turn to God only when the drought and trouble have already worn us out and dried us up, and when we’ve felt ourselves fail already, and might not even notice the resources God is trying to bring to our thirst – be it a thirst for healing or justice or relief or security or peace.

And Jeremiah warns us that’s not sustainable.

 

Jeremiah’s telling us, today, that his promise of peaceful, confident fruitfulness even in trouble is the blessing that comes not just from trusting God when we have to, but of trusting God before we exhaust our self-sufficiency. Trusting God before we trust ourselves; as the foundation of how we use our own resources.

 

That’s countercultural for many of us, however much we want, and need, to be able to meet times of trouble and distress with confidence and calm, like Jeremiah’s well-rooted tree.

 

But over and over again, humans like us, people of faith, have done that countercultural thing, trusted first in God…and we often tell their stories as heroes of the Bible, or saints of the church.

 

And we also can recognize that countercultural blessing in stories about lives close to ours, intertwined with and among us. This month, as we celebrate the leadership, hope, and achievement of African American History Month, the idea of Jeremiah’s well-watered tree reminds me of my visit last month to the Smithsonian Museum of African-American History and Culture.
Exhibit after exhibit resonated with the strength of communities and individuals well-rooted in connection to the divine, in trust in God, in love of one another, neighbors, and even enemies.

Roots well-watered in faith producing artistry, innovation, courage and beauty, whether amid stark deserts of enslavement and deliberate oppression, or the heats of political and social change. Stories of musicians and artists, politicians and preachers, healers and humorists, bearing fruit in droughts and rains, and watering the faith of others.

 

One story, dear to me, which has watered my faith, and my own trust in God, for years, is one The Episcopal Church officially celebrated for the first time last Tuesday.

February 11 is the anniversary of the ordination, in 1989, of Barbara Clementine Harris as the first woman bishop of the Episcopal Church, and of the world-wide Anglican Communion. In the United States, that remembrance resonates even more in February, because the first woman bishop in our church was an African-American woman.

 

One of the stories I’ve heard often re-told about that day is that despite the heated and often vitriolic objections to her ordination, despite the trouble roiling in the church as people struggled with the fear of change, despite even the death threats, Bishop Barbara declined the Kevlar vest she was offered for physical protection during the ordination service, saying that if she were to be shot, what better place to go than at the altar.
The tree watered in trust, Jeremiah tells us, will not fear when heat comes.

 

The granddaughter of enslaved persons, active in the civil rights movement, an advocate for justice and for the rights of the disenfranchised in her day-to-day life, both before and after her ordination as a priest, Bishop Harris knew a lot about living in the desert, in drought of respect, liberty, and choices; or in systems where resources were dried up and withheld.

A child of the Episcopal Church, born in Philadelphia, worshipping with her mother at the Church of the Advocate, steeped in the hymns of faith, Bishop Harris grew from, and nurtured, deep roots of trust in God’s strength and faithfulness and love.

 

On the anniversary of her consecration this week, a friend quoted Bishop Harris saying,

“Often as we sail over the tempestuous sea of life, our world is in storm on a personal, national, and global level. But not only is Christ on the ship, Christ is in command — even when he seems to be asleep. ….” And what a comfort lies in the simple thought: “His eye is on the sparrow and I know he watches me.”

 

Her deeply rooted trust in God’s faithfulness shaped her life and ministry even more than being “the first” of so many things in the church. History records the facts of her life, the barriers surmounted, the battles led and won for equity in the church across every line of gender, race, and sexuality through her deep strength in God.

But her friends and colleagues tell the stories that show the vitality of the living water of God’s faithfulness flowing through her – bubbling up in joy and wicked wit (mostly stories I can’t tell from the pulpit; ask me at coffee hour); in deeply personal care for others that made you feel like you were the only one in the room; in bluntly realist encouragement of others to act courageously and faithfully in the face of ordinary troubles and wide-reaching injustice; in community built by singing hymns around the piano, shared laughter… The fullness of God’s love and strength shone out of her, vibrant and vivid, even from across a large convention hall.

 

In fact, Bishop Barbara’s day-to-day life and actions not only demonstrated the fruitfulness of her own rooted trust in God, but rooted those around her into the deep, unquenchable waters of God’s faithfulness, knitting trust in God into the lives she touchedn – including mine, at a distance.

Rooting trust in God’s faithfulness into the church and the world she shaped, with her historic roles, and her whole and holy self.

 

And Jeremiah encourages you and me to be the same. To be deeply rooted in our trust in God, whose “eye is on the sparrow”, and will not forget us in our times of drought and trouble.

Jeremiah invites and admonishes us to trust in God, not just when we’ve already run out of options, but because our hearts always want to be rooted in a love that can’t be drained by the heats and strains of the world around us. Because our hearts want to be more whole, more loving, more holy. And the strength for that comes not from our own effort, but from a bone-deep, root-deep reliance on the faithfulness of God in all circumstances.

 

And then, like Bishop Barbara, like named and unnamed saints and heroes and ordinary folk throughout history, we too may be able to water the roots of others. To pour God’s unquenchable faithfulness into deserts of oppression or need, loneliness or pain, wherever and whenever we meet them. To resist any force seeking to dry up God’s love in our lives, and to water the lives of others with hope, and joy, and unlimited, nourishing, life-giving love.

 

Voluntold

Luke 5:1-11

I love the drama of this morning’s gospel story, where Jesus “calls” Simon and his partners to follow him by producing a miracle that almost literally drowns Simon in fish, and then announces it’s time to stop catching fish and start catching people.

“And they left everything and followed him.”

Big dramatic moment; big dramatic change of faith and life.

 

And very much not at all the way Jesus’ call has ever worked in my life.

I suspect not the way God’s call and invitation works in many of your lives.

And the more I read this story, the more I think it didn’t exactly work that way in Simon’s life, either.

 

You see, this morning’s dramatic moment isn’t where the relationship between Jesus and Simon starts.

Luke tells us that Jesus has already been hanging around Simon’s neighborhood. First, the neighborhood heard about this Big Ideas Preacher from Nazareth, who even threw a demon out of someone in the sabbath service. Then Jesus himself comes, starts teaching and preaching in the local synagogue, healing sick people in the neighborhood. He’s even been over to Simon’s house for dinner and healed his mother-in-law from a high fever.

 

So by the time Jesus shows up on the lakeshore to borrow Simon’s boat, they know each other. And it’s either perfectly natural or only a little awkward for Jesus to say, “Hey, Simon, can I hop in your boat so these crowds don’t trample me while I talk to them for a bit?”

And pretty natural and relatively easy for Simon to say yes. Might cost him a little – he’ll be later finishing up work for the day – but not a big ask.

 

Until Jesus finishes preaching to the crowded shore, turns to Simon again and says, “Okay, go out deep, and drop the nets.”

Now, that’s a lot more effort than “let’s sit out here near the shore” in the first place.

And in the second place, it’s utter nonsense.

Simon has been out all night – a normal time for fishing around there – and caught nothing. He’s already put in a full night’s work, he’s tired, and he knows there are zero fish out there. He did everything the right way, worked hard, got nothing. Zilch.

Of all the stupid things to do, going back out to fish now…?

He tells Jesus it’s a dumb idea.

 

But – probably because they know each other – probably because he likes Jesus, at least a bit; appreciates his healing, admires what he’s saying when he preaches – Simon says, “Okay, fine. It’s not going to work, but for you, I’ll go out and drop the net again.”

(I can never read that bit without seeing Simon’s eyes rolling as he picks up the oars or lifts the clean net into the sea.)

 

And then, well, all the fish in the whole lake seem to land in his boat. More than even he and his partners can manage.

They are in awe, uncomfortable in the astonishment and amazement of the miracle, and would like maybe a little less fish, a little less raw exposure to the power of God messing around in their lives right now, please and thank you.

 

And while they’re still off balance, Jesus announces:

Don’t worry! I’ve got a harder, more terrifiying job for you! Now you’ll be catching people! It’ll be great!

 

At this point, Simon, called by God to a mission, doesn’t so much “choose to accept it”, as finds himself “voluntold” to take a major job in God’s infinite project of saving the world.

 

And I suspect that’s how it happens for a lot of us.

We might hear about Jesus.

Might be interested in listening to the ideas and promises and love, get used to having him around, maybe get some good things from the experience – healing, or calm, or joy, connections, inspiration, support in trouble from God’s own self or from other friends of Jesus.

 

Might say yes to a small task – not too difficult, possibly interesting. Lend a boat for an hour, pray for a friend, read scripture in church, spend an hour or two a month to help with a food program, substitute teach in the Sunday School, be a hospital volunteer….

 

And then might find ourselves being asked for something ridiculous. Something you’d be a fool to think would work, or make a difference.

Fish where there’s no fish. Lead a class on prayer. Testify at the state legislature. Start a new food program for a new need. Mentor someone through a role you have actually failed at. Preach.

And you know it’ll never succeed. But somehow you find yourself saying “well, if you really want me to…” and rowing out into the deep water.

 

And before you know it (but hopefully without an entire boatload of dead fish) you discover that people are calling you a saint.

Or that God’s got you actually loving the unlovable; healing people’s broken hearts; changing people’s lives, or minds, or policies by your words, or your presence, or your support.

“Catching people” not with bait, but catching them before they fall, catching people who need somewhere safe to land. Catching people back out of danger; rescuing people. Which is what Luke says Jesus actually said to Simon, in Luke’s original Greek. A “catching” that has nothing to do with fishing, and everything to do with the love and power of God.

 

That story actually could happen to any of us. It’s a story you or I could be in, and not know it until the last twist, at the end. That probably many of us are in the middle of now, whether we planned it, or know it, or not.

 

And I suspect many of us need to notice not so much that twist at the end where you’re voluntold for sainthood, but the bit in the middle, today. The bit where Simon points out to Jesus that going out fishing in the middle of the day is not going to work. Because he’s already done the fishing for the day, and done it right, and it didn’t work then.

 

Notice that here – as in a remarkable number of other places in our lives – God comes to us not for the sake of our success, but in the middle of failure.

When you or I have worked hard. Done our best. Done it right. And gotten nothing for our trouble.

Did all the organizing and praying and effort to launch a ministry, change a policy, find the right leader, heal a relationship, protect a friend or family member – or stranger.

And failed.

Has that ever happened to you?

 

And more often than we would imagine or desire, that’s when Jesus shows up and says “hey, do that again!”

And Simon, or you or I, might roll our eyes, point out that we’ve already done that, and it didn’t work.

And then maybe square our exhausted shoulders, try the thing we know won’t work – and be suddenly overwhelmed with the immensity of God’s action transforming our ordinary actions into miracle.

Or up to your hips in heavy, wet fish.

 

Because things that are impossible for us are – at the right moment – shockingly and ridiculously possible with God.

And we are never “called” to do the miracle, but to say “yes” to letting God do miracles with us.

 

And sometimes – not always, but sometimes – you stand there in the pile of fish or success or God’s glory, and hear yourself voluntold for sainthood. Hear yourself affirmed for an even bigger role in the love and peace and wonder and holiness of God on earth.

 

And you say yes, even if you never meant to.

Because “yes” is what lets God do miracles with us.