2022-02-21
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text
Scripture:
Genesis 45:4-15
4 Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come closer to me.” And they came closer. He said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. 5 And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. 6 For the famine has been in the land these two years; and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. 7 God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. 8 So it was not you who sent me here, but God; he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. 9 Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to me, do not delay. 10 You shall settle in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s children, as well as your flocks, your herds, and all that you have. 11 I will provide for you there—since there are five more years of famine to come—so that you and your household, and all that you have, will not come to poverty.’
15 And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him.
Luke 6: 27-38
27 “But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29 If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. 30 Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.
32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. 35 But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return.[a] Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
37 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”
Today’s Gospel reading puts us right in the heart of one of the things that makes Christianity so counter-cultural and dare I say, so difficult. Love your enemies? Really? This is easy enough in the abstract, when it is all theoretical. But what about when we take it personally? Did Jesus really mean that we are to find a way to love those who drive us craziest and incite our ire? Those who have hurt and betrayed us? those most flagrantly and arrogantly on the other side of the political divide, for example? As in the uncle we haven’t spoken to since the Thanksgiving after that especially testy election? Those who raise our blood pressure just by thinking of them? Or could Jesus have meant those who are literally our national enemies, like Isis and the Taliban, or maybe right now, Russia? Those who represent everything we reject by way of national values? Or how about the note I received from a trans-gender friend this week who said, “I heard what your topic is for Sunday. What about those who want me dead?” Well, here’s the tough part: I think he did mean it. I think he particularly meant whomever it is that you would call to mind when you hear the phrase, “surely he did not mean _____________.
Make no mistake, this is tough stuff. But today I’d like to offer a few thoughts that might make it, if not easy then at least more possible for us to love our enemies.
First: I don’t think the word “love” here means what we typically think of with that word. I don’t think it means that we have to somehow work up warm, fuzzy feelings of affection for the “enemy.” Nor does it mean we soften our boundaries toward people who would do us harm. I personally define love in the most general sense as intending or willing for another their highest good. So it’s a matter of setting the rudder of one’s will in the direction of intending for another their highest good as defined by God, not by us. And if we can give up the judging, as the final verses of today’s Gospel suggests, then we can leave to God to flesh out what our enemy’s highest good is. And I can get there, in time, even with the person who stepped all over me in pursuit of what she wanted and without regard for me or my rights. After honest anger and healthy bleeding of the wound of how I was hurt, and taking steps to protect myself if necessary, after honest work on my part, I can finally at least get to the place of praying for her highest good even if I can’t ever invite her over for dinner. The twelve step program directs its followers to pray for those for whom they hold resentments every day for two weeks. Longer if necessary. They see miracles happen this way. Long-held resentments lose their sting when one takes seriously the disciplined, daily task of praying for the other. We may not be able to shed a tear of warm affection for them ever, but we can set our will in the direction of intending good for them. I was reminded recently, by Kathy Muzik, of the powerful addage, “prayer goes where we can’t.” Maybe we honestly cannot love our enemies. But we can pray for them. Prayer goes where we can’t. So my first point is that love isn’t just about mushy feelings, it is a matter of willing for another their own highest good.
Secondly, the task of loving our enemies may be made at least slightly more doable when we wake up to the truth that sometimes our enemies are at least partly of our own creation. Sometimes we build up resentments in our own minds that have little correspondence with objective reality. Ann Lamott, in Traveling Mercies tells of creating an enemy out of another mother from her son’s kindergarten class. This Mom seemed to have it all together. She was fully informed about the workings of the kindgergarden. She knew, for instance, when the early release days were, which Ann could never quite seem to keep straight. The other mother’s son was an early reader while Ann’s son struggled. At one point the other mom made what Ann interpreted to be a condescending offer to help Ann get it together, and Ann wrote, “I smiled back at her. Then I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.” Eventually, she wrote, “I finally got that I was mad as a hatter.” She realized she had layered up resentment upon resentment for this woman and had created her enemy herself. Once she could get honest about this, she was able to let go and love, or at least intend for the other woman, sincere good.
Even when our enemies are not of our own creating, sometimes we add flame to the fire by giving the situation too much ruminative thought. Writer and speaker Brene Brown says, “Don’t grab hurtful comments and pull them close. When someone spews something really hurtful, don’t pick it up and rub it into your heart and snuggle with it. Don’t carry it around for a long time. Don’t even put energy into kicking it to the curb. Simply see it and step over it. Or just go around it and keep going.”
Or there is the Zen story of the two monks: “A senior monk and a junior monk were traveling together. At one point, they came to a river with a strong current. As the monks were preparing to cross the river, they saw a very young and beautiful woman also attempting to cross. The young woman asked if they could help her cross to the other side. The two monks glanced at one another because they had taken vows not to touch a woman. Then, without a word, the older monk picked up the woman, carried her across the river, placed her gently on the other side, and continued on his journey. The younger monk couldn’t believe what had just happened. After rejoining his companion, he was speechless, and an hour passed without a word between them. Two more hours passed, then three, and finally the younger monk could not contain himself any longer, and blurted out “As monks, we are not permitted to touch a woman, how could you then carry that woman across the river?” The older monk looked at him and replied, “Brother, I set her down on the other side of the river, why are you still carrying her?” …When you don’t whip up or even carry the resentment, there is less to forgive and loving one’s enemy comes more easily.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, when it comes to loving our enemies, we can take a page from Joseph and realize that God can bring good from even the most hurtful intention, so there can also be less to resent. Joseph’s brothers had betrayed him in the most heinous way, beating him and finally selling him into slavery. Then over a matter of years, and through circuitous events, Joseph winds up in Egypt in a position of great power as chief advisor to Pharaoh. Famine has gripped the land, and Joseph’s brothers had come to find food, not recognizing that it is the brother they betrayed, Joseph, with whom they are dealing. Joseph eventually reveals himself to them, and they are understandably terrified because they had done him so wrong and they expect a wrathful response. But Joseph is teary-eyed in his affection for them and says, essentially, “Don’t worry! you intended it for evil but God intended it for good. So it’s all OK”
Now I have to admit, I have struggled with this story for most of my life, ever since first hearing it in Sunday School as a small child. Does the fact that it all worked out exonerate the brothers of their culpability? Well, the answer came for me when I did a word study on the hebrew verb “intend” which is “chasab” which has two distinct meanings. In the first, it, indeed, means “pre-ordained or caused.” So Joseph says, “you pre-ordained or caused it for evil,” but God “chasabed” it in the second sense, which means, plaited, braided or wove together. So Joseph is actually contrasting the two definitions of chasab: “You pre-ordained or caused it for evil,” he tells his brothers. “But God braided or wove it all together for a greater good!” His brothers were still identified as causing it, but because God, in beautiful redemptive creativity could bring a greater good from it, the whole thing was placed into a larger context and forgiveness became easier or at least possible.
Joseph, then, is not excusing his brothers, but he is bearing witness to a God who allows humans to have free will, to make even evil choices, but is always working silently behind the scenes, in the sub-terrain, to weave or braid together from the fragments something unimaginably better. And in light of the greater good, the initial infraction more or less just pales by comparison… Now there is a God I can get behind! God the creative weaver who gathers up all the fragments: the beautiful and the ugly, our successes and our failures, even what we intend for evil- God plaits or braids or weaves all of it, in time, into a beautiful masterpiece beyond our wildest dreams. So while the back of the tapestry is a random and even ugly set of back-stitches, the front reveals pattern and artistry. Joseph, the boy left for dead in a pit then sold into bondage, now raised to power and able to preserve Israel as God’s remnant- beyond everyone’s wildest imaginings. Or the broken, hopeless marriage after seemingly unforgivable betrayal, where both people finally, honestly face their own part in the estrangement and healing gradually comes and eventually brings not only simple restoration but a better, closer, loving marriage beyond either partners’ previous imaginings.
And it’s because our God is so profoundly creative and redemptive, it’s precisely because our God is the most creative “artist of lives,” that we are freer to let God be God, and to judge less. Because here’s the deal: sometimes we are the ones affected by others’ poor choices. Sometimes we are the ones done wrong, But sometimes we are the ones doing the betraying and making the terrible choices.
So it behooves us to forgive. We need to retain an open cycle of forgiving, suspending judgement, and loving even our enemies for our own good, because sometimes we ARE the enemies. Luke spells it out clearly “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.” In other words, we need to keep the cycle open, keep the river flowing, with ready and abundant forgiveness, with reckless, extravagant love for friend and enemy. It’s how God loves us, and how we, in turn, need to love others.
All of it, in a sense, has to do with us not placing a period where God has placed a comma. Even in the most cut and dried appearing saga, like Joseph’s, we need to leave room for God’s “chasab,” for God to be allowed to work stealthily and silently behind the scenes, under the surface, in order to gather the tatters and the fragments to then braid together something magnificent. A masterpiece that takes our breath away and leaves us awash in gratitude even for the painful pieces because without them, we now see, the ultimate good could not have emerged. And so we end up, like Joseph, with tears of joy, and blessing our creative and redemptive “God of the bigger picture” who can, indeed bring beauty from ashes and resurrection from crucifixion. What if we really trusted that in each situation both personal and global? What if we really trusted that God is at work and will prevail with a good beyond our most fervent hopes? That despite all evidence to the contrary, God actually IS redeeming this tired, broken world and making all things new? That eventually, all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well? I’ll tell you what: if we really believed that, then we wouldn’t have to pull the little wounds to our faces and snuggle up with our petty resentments. We could even allow the big ones to fall away because we’d know it is better to let go and let God deal with them. Our God has promised that not a fragment will be wasted. That all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to God’s purpose. May it be so in your life and mine. May it be so in our broken, beautiful world. Amen.