Well, here we are, once again, in the season of weird stuff and shiny things! Of course many will tell you that it started on January 5th with the 12th Night of Christmas. In days of old that marked the end of the 12 Days of Christmas and the coming of Epiphany. Most of us know it locally as King Cake Season.
Seriously, this is a weird time of year. We’ve already dealt with controversies over who makes the best King Cake and why naked cake babies were banned from Facebook. The parades have begun, and we know that for some people it’s just an excuse for excess. All things said and done, it’s just a fun time to be around, but it does get a little weird.
Although, I guess if you're used to it, the weirdness is more of a balance between personal expression and testing the boundaries of what we believe to be acceptable. Sometimes those boundaries get broken. Sometimes they get shattered. Sometimes it brings us together in new ways. It just depends on how much weirdness we want to allow or condone.
Our scriptures are no different today. Joseph is reunited with his estranged brothers, who sold him into slavery. Paul gets weird with this idea of spiritual bodies, and as if Jesus wasn’t weird enough with his blessings and woes he goes and tells us to love our enemies!
Let’s start there. Love your enemies. This goes way beyond loving someone even though they get their King Cake from the wrong bakery. Love your enemies. Was he serious? I mean, it’s one thing to say, “Blessed are the poor,” and “Woe to you who are wealthy,” but “bless those who curse you?” Love the ones who threaten me and my children?
Let’s take a step back and see if the “50 ft view” can help a bit. Last week we talked about the blessings and woes as a way of describing what it’s like to live in the Kingdom of God in the here and now. Today is part of that same invitation. Jesus is not necessarily endorsing pacifism so much as he is saying that violence is certainly not the answer. The answer is found in living into the hope of the Kingdom of God.
Listen to the active language of it: love, do good, bless, pray, give. Those words by themselves seem really great, but the person on the receiving end is not the person to whom we want to do things. Love your enemy. Do good to those that hate you. Bless those that curse you. Pray for those who abuse you.
Jesus is not asking us to take the easy way out. Jesus is demanding that we take the harder road. Then he hits us with that “Golden Rule.” Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I think most of us tend to think that we do that – and maybe we do – but Jesus is clearly connecting this rule with things that we do not want to do. It’s not a simple thing. It’s not an easy thing, but it’s a good thing.
In some way, it reminds me of why I like rock climbing. Stay with me on this. In rock climbing, you are presented with a challenge. It’s a challenge that you choose, and you generally have the equipment to help you face the challenge. While it feels good to get to the top, some of my favorite experiences are those times when the wall or the rock face has beaten me. It is in these times that I realize the fall has not destroyed me, the equipment has not failed me, and the relationships that carried me into that place will carry me out again.
In rock climbing, everything is a means of grace. The harness, the ropes, the person or device that belays you and keeps you from falling are all things that go beyond your ability in order to help you achieve beyond your ability. So it is with the grace of God, and so it is with our love for those who hate us.
I think it is important to recognize that, unless we are in military deployment, we tend to have less direct engagement with enemies. Of course, those in law enforcement engage with those we tend to call “bad guys” all the time, but the reality is that most of us don’t have regular interactions with those who hate us, with those in need, and with those that might literally abuse us.
None of us have ever been sold into slavery by our brothers like Joseph, and our community is not divided over class and ethnicity and theology like the church in Corinth was. Yet I would argue that it’s a pretty human thing to make enemies of one another. We divide ourselves by political parties. We assume the intent of others when it seems threatening. We engage in petty injustice after petty injustice in order to feel safe behind emotional walls of protection.
That’s what it looks like to live in the kingdom of the earth, yet God is constantly calling us toward something more. God is calling us to live out the Golden Rule as an act of compassion. We aren’t just asked to be nice or treat others politely. We are told to love unconditionally and inconveniently.
Here’s what really matters about this. Joseph didn’t reveal himself to his brothers because of a commandment. He did it because he felt compassionately toward them. In the story, Joseph realizes that what they meant for evil God used for good. I think it’s important to say here that Joseph is the only one in the story that has the right to say that. Too often we slip on the slope of ends justifying the means to help us feel better about suffering.
The hard reality is that God does not want us to suffer, yet God calls us to sacrificial love. God does not force us to climb the mountain, yet God calls us to take the hard road of vulnerability and compassion and love that demonstrates grace and mercy.
We are called to this path because this is the path of loving in the same way that we were loved. This is the path that leads into Kingdom living! This is the path that helps us experience the “not yet” in the “here and now”. It may still sound a little weird, and it probably is, to say that choosing to love those that hate, giving to others just because they ask, and praying for those that abuse is like heaven on earth.
Which is why I’m glad that we are given this weird kind of “word soup” from Paul about the resurrection. Everything that we experience in this life is connected in some way to an experience of walking around in these bodies of ours. The hope that Paul is offering is not simply to be rid of our bodies, but to be transformed into something greater! We don’t know what that is – and neither did he, frankly – but we know what it will feel like.
It will feel like we feel when we realize that we are forgiven. It will feel like we feel when we know that we have been defined by love rather than abuse. It will feel like we feel when all the physical limitations of our bodies and the suffering that we impose on ourselves and others are released. It will feel like it feels when we get to the top of the rock and our view of the world has changed forever.
It all starts with the walls we choose to climb in the here and now. One last thing I want to say, though. This does not mean that Jesus endorses abuse or denies accountability. The point of all of this is transform abuse of power and of persons, and to raise accountability to an ultimate extreme.
Abuse of power and of persons is all about devaluing the person or the group that has given over their power. The proof of God’s amazing love is that it transforms the abuse of power and of persons into a means of grace. It transforms all that harms into the opportunity for a gut check. It transforms all that harms into a way to demonstrate that what defines us is not the things we’ve done or the things are done to us, but rather the thing that was done for us through the resurrection of Christ.
So, enjoy your King Cake and revel responsibly, but remember that the weirdest thing you are about to encounter is not on the streets. It is in your heart and mind and hands and feet, every time you demonstrate love and mercy and redemption!
That might get a little weird, so I’ll leave you with some simple advice. You’ve probably heard that it is from Mother Theresa, but it was actually written by a guy named Kent M. Keith.
People are illogical, unreasonable and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.
We don’t do it because we believe we will be rewarded in some quid pro quo earn your way into a heaven Ponzi scheme. We do it because the abundance of God’s love is at hand, and we are living proof. It just doesn’t get any weirder than that. Amen.
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