Jesus People Who Become Jesus Community
Luke 6:27-38
From our "Non-Trial Pursuits" Game, these questions: “Who are the members of my community?” and “What responsibility do I have to my community?”
Trivial Pursuit Cards
I don’t know about you, but today’s gospel is a collection of directives that draw me up short. Wait, Jesus. What did you say? Love your enemies? Do good to those who hate you? Pray for those who abuse you? It feels like everywhere I turn, I stub my spiritual toe on Jesus’ idealistic, costly demands.
I mean, really, did you get out of bed and come to church this morning, thinking, “I hope I get a real challenge today from the preacher. Like maybe I’ll be asked to love my enemy. Oh, I can’t wait for that.”
Better that you get some teaser like “Five Easy Steps to Love,” or “How to Build a Community that Sparks Joy.” Something like that. Yet that is not what the gospel offers us today. Instead, the gospel challenges us—and big time.
Tabor
Jesus’ words in Luke follow closely on the heels of his blessings and woes in the Sermon on the Mount—or in Luke’s case, the Sermon on the Plain. Blessed are you. . .woe are you. . . In Matthew, we get the Sermon on the Mount, because Matthew is making connections between Jesus and Moses on Mt. Sinai. In Luke, we get the Sermon on the Plain, because Luke wants to emphasize how often Jesus mixed and mingled with ordinary people. Same location (Mount Tabor), just a different perspective.
Yet the same conditions in life apply. Woes and blessings experienced by a variety of people. In the first century, just as in the twenty-first, the people who listen to Jesus teach are a mixed bag of folks. What they share in common is that very few of them—maybe none of them—are wealthy or well positioned in society. Matthew has been a tax collector, so he probably has had some means before he leaves that job to follow Jesus. Simon Peter, Andrew, James, and John are fishermen and businessmen—working class men. Simon the Zealot is an interesting addition to Jesus’ disciples because he is a hothead who would love to help Jesus overthrow the Roman government.
However, it is not likely that any of the people listening to Jesus teach have much in the way of money or possessions—which is why Jesus tells them they are blessed. Blessed are the poor, for they will inherit the kingdom of heaven. The rich eat expensive food. They drink good wine. They parade around in purple clothing—which only the wealthy can afford—and generally get rich off the backs of the poor. Here is a truth: if you ever doubt that God’s principles of “love, mercy, generosity and gratitude”[1] have gotten corrupted, just pay attention. Who is sitting comfortably at the table? Who is gathering crumbs under that table? Yet Jesus assures his listeners that wealth, prestige and power are not requirements to being part of God’s beloved community. God loves them. God blesses them. God’s grace always welcomes them to God’s table. This is good news to the people who sit with Jesus at the foot of Mount Tabor in Galilee. It is still good news to those of us here today. Why?
Because it really does not matter how much money is in our retirement accounts—or not. It does not matter about our bank account balance, how many degrees we have, where or how we have been raised. No matter what, you and I belong to God. When God looks at you and me, I believe that God sees us as whole, generous, giving, fulfilled human beings who have already lived into our fullest selves. You and I rarely see this perspective, of course. What we see is our failures. Our shortcomings. Our failure to reach particular goals. Almost no one thinks we are enough—whatever enough looks like. Almost no one thinks we are living our fullest selves. Yet we do not have God’s vision or perspective—thank God. God sees us as beloved children who are enough. More than enough.
So maybe the challenge before us is to practice our acceptance of that truth. We start as we look at, think about, read about someone who lived his life as an open channel of God’s healing love: Jesus.
Here is how we are to love God and love each other: We love like Jesus. We act like Jesus. We walk and talk like Jesus. This is how we know how to be community to each other: we look at Jesus and do what he did. As we learn from Jesus, we remind ourselves that we are God’s beloved children. We practice accepting ourselves and others in the community. We also pay attention to see the examples God gives us in community. You ask: Who are the members of my community?
Daily Office
One answer to that is to look around you this morning. Here are the members of your community. Here is your tribe. We come from all sorts of places and backgrounds. We look different, one from another. Some of us are differently-abled. We have different political views. We have varying educational levels. Some of us have deep wounds inside us—wounds of abuse, neglect, poor self-image. Yet here we are—this unruly, messy group of God’s children—all just trying to do the best we can every day.
How do we live in that kind of messy community? First, we acknowledge that it belongs to God, not to us. Second, we look at today’s gospel for clear instructions. Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you. The truth is that you and I are just broken human beings. Sometimes we really are not going to love our enemies well—or at all. Sometimes I have enough trouble with people I like—never mind the ones I mutter against as I look at the latest online “breaking news.” Yet the gospel is very clear about the kind of community God wants, the kind of community that Jesus came to inspire, to shape, to develop.
But to step back for a moment. . .I do not believe for one moment that Jesus would ever condone our being a doormat for violence or abuse. I know that parts of today’s scripture has long been used by privileged groups to justify abuse of spouses, partners, children, slaves—in fact, any individual or group that is “other.” I do not believe this is what Jesus had in mind. I believe that God asks us to stand against all evil, and sometimes that means we must take action against it—act with our feet while we pray with our lips.
Dr. Martin Luther King
In 1957, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote an article entitled “Nonviolence and Racial Justice.” In this article, Dr. King acknowledged the “profound longing for freedom that motivates oppressed peoples all over the world.”[2] Although Dr. King had not yet visited India—he would not do that for two more years—it is clear that he had already studied Gandhi’s method of nonviolent resistance.
King argued that nonviolent resistance “is not a method for cowards; it does resist. . .this method is passive physically but strongly active spiritually. . .”[3] The civil rights preacher and activist went on to say that “nonviolent resistance does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding.” Further, he insisted that the struggle for justice was not personal, but cosmic. As he wrote, this struggle was “against forces of evil rather than against persons who are caught in those forces.”[4]
In other words, Dr. King understood very well the principles, the ethics, the struggles that shaped the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Love your enemies. Do good to those who curse you.
“At the center of nonviolence,” Dr. King wrote, “stands the principle of love.”[5] Love. Not a passive, doormat kind of love. Not an easy kind of love. No. Agape love—unconditional love. Gospel love. This kind of gospel love is love “as strong as death.”[6] This fierce, unyielding, agape love builds communities so strong, the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
Dr. King understood—as we should—that building community is not just a personal goal that takes five simple steps. It is a community vision that includes cosmic struggles of light against darkness, of good against evil. It is not a journey for the faint of heart. It is likely a journey beyond our own lifetimes. Yet the destination is so worth the struggle—I believe that with all my heart.
So you will ask, how do I get from here to there? I am nowhere close. I have enough trouble remembering to pray for my friends, much less my enemies. I would rather hang out on Facebook pages of people I agree with, because it’s better for my blood pressure. Yet you and I belong to Jesus. Jesus has set high gospel standards for us. And even if we don’t always act like Jesus, we do profess to follow him—and we are “sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.” So when Jesus speaks, we listen. When Jesus leads, we follow. We start by taking small, stumbling steps. We practice—like an athlete, or a musician. Every hour. Every day. We fall and skin our spiritual knees. We get back up.
Instead of reacting “with words or actions that seek to answer hurt with more hurt,”[7] we stop. We take a deep breath. We ask ourselves what words or actions we can use to show love. To show light. We ask God what we can do, in small ways, to build up relationships, not to tear them down. We ask ourselves how we—imperfect human beings that we are—can help build God’s beloved community in ways that Jesus compels us in today’s gospel. Alone, we can do none of these things. Yet together, we are more than—so much more than—the sum of our parts.
Today, know that you are God’s beloved, and act on that truth. Know that you may well be someone else’s light in the midst of darkness, someone’s symbol of justice in an unjust world. Someone else’s much-needed love in the midst of bitterness and hate. Take your own small step towards the beloved community you see way out there on the horizon, then stop and look around. You are not alone. We are all in this together, children of God. Marching. Marching to Zion. Marching in the light of God, into God’s dream of God’s beloved community. Amen.
(c) The Rev. Dr. Sheila N. McJilton
[1] Tom Erlich, in “Jesus’ warning,”, at www.morningwalkmedia.com. Accessed on Feb. 14, 2019.
[2] The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Nonviolence and Racial Justice,” in A Testament of Hope: Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr., James. M. Washington, Editor, (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1986), 7.
[3] Ibid., 7
[4] Ibid., 8
[5] Ibid, 8.
[6] Song of Solomon 8:6.
[7] Charles Bugg, in “Pastoral Perspective on Luke 6:27-38’ in Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 4, David L. Bartlett & Barbara Brown Taylor, Editors, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 382.