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YOU’LL NEVER REGRET IT – I PROMISE

2/24/2019

Luke 6:27-38
“To you who are ready for the truth, I say this: Love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer for that person. If someone slaps you in the face, stand there and take it. If someone grabs your shirt, giftwrap your best coat and make a present of it. If someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously.
“Here is a simple rule of thumb for behavior: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you; then grab the initiative and do it for them! If you only love the lovable, do you expect a pat on the back? Run-of-the-mill sinners do that. If you only help those who help you, do you expect a medal? Garden-variety sinners do that. If you only give for what you hope to get out of it, do you think that’s charity? The stingiest of pawnbrokers does that.
“I tell you, love your enemies. Help and give without expecting a return. You’ll never—I promise—regret it. Live out this God-created identity the way our Father lives toward us, generously and graciously, even when we’re at our worst. Our Father is kind; you be kind.
“Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults—unless, of course, you want the same treatment. Don’t condemn those who are down; that hardness can boomerang. Be easy on people; you’ll find life a lot easier. Give away your life; you’ll find life given back, but not merely given back—given back with bonus and blessing. Giving, not getting, is the way. Generosity begets generosity.”

We are back at the Sermon on the Plain, picking up where we left off last week. Last week, if you’ll recall, we heard and discussed Luke’s version of the Beatitudes with his four blessings and four woes.

Today’s reading is a straight continuation of that same lesson, but again, before we get into today’s reading I want to very quickly review the Old Testament reading for today, which is part of the story of Joseph – he of the many colored coat and the jealous brothers -- the spoiled next to the youngest child of Jacob.

Joseph’s story, as told in Genesis, was that those jealous brothers, to get rid of this spoiled brat, sold him to a passing slave trader and then went home and told their father he had been eaten by a wild animal.

While Jacob mourned his son, Joseph ended up in Egypt as a slave where, in a long convoluted story involving the interpretation of Pharaoh’s dreams, Joseph finally ended up as the highest official in Egypt. Second only to Pharaoh. A man with a whole whopping lot of power and prestige.

When a severe famine drove Jacob and his sons out of their home land, the brothers ended up under the governance of the one brother they had so casually tossed away years before. Today’s Old Testament reading is the moment when Joseph reveals his identity to his brothers – who fear the retribution they so richly deserve by worldly standards – until Joseph assures them he forgave them long ago because he came to believe that God had redirected their evil intent to bring good from it all.

This story is connected to our current reading as a lesson all its own, but also as a reminder that much of Jesus’ most radical teaching was not new at all but was simply a reframing of already ancient Hebrew teaching.

So - back to our current reading - this is one of those lessons that those of us who are church people have heard so many times that I wonder if we really hear it all anymore. Like a kid who’s being told for the hundredth time to pick up their dirty clothes and put them in the hamper, our brains just shut down for a while because we’ve heard it all before – over and over. That’s why I often choose another translation – just so we hear the reading in different words. Today I’ve chosen to read it from The Message because the words from the NRSV translation almost put me to sleep, they’re so familiar.

And familiar as this reading may be, we do not want to drift off here because this may well be one of the most important lessons anywhere in the gospels:

Love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer for that person. If someone slaps you in the face, stand there and take it. If someone grabs your shirt, giftwrap your best coat and make a present of it. If someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously.

This is hard stuff. My first response when I read it, I’m embarrassed to say, is usually something childish like “I don’t wanna.”

love your enemies
- not just “don’t attack them, but actually love them”
do good to those who hate you
- I’d rather just ignore them
bless those who curse you
- and not just “bless your little heart” sarcasm
pray for those who abuse you
- I can pray for people as long as I don’t have to actually be around them
turn the other cheek
- I’m not terribly good at this one
give to whoever asks of you
- I have a few caveats here, but mostly I can deal with this
love your enemies
- from a distance
lend without expecting return
- this I can do – so many people in the past did it for me in our hard times
be merciful
- I try
do not judge
- oh, I judge – but I’m clear that it’s not my job, and I try never to act on it

Just reading that list makes me tired.

And I have to keep reminding myself that these are not just things Jesus thinks it would be nice if we were to attempt – he actually expects us to do these things. He really expects us to do all these hard things:

to return love for hate
to give with an open hand (and heart)
to return kindness for attack
to remember that judging has never been our job – ever
to offer mercy – because we ourselves benefit every day from God’s mercy

And the reasons we are to do all these things are two – One, is that Jesus promises us more goodness in return: Give away your life [he says] and you’ll find life given back, but not merely given back—given back with bonus and blessing. Giving, not getting, is the way. Generosity begets generosity.

The second reason is equally simple – it really is. We are to do these things – we are to be kind like this -- because that's what God is like – and we were created for this – our whole reason for being is to reflect the image of God -- a loving, merciful, abundantly forgiving God.

May it be so -- Amen.

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PLANTED BY THE WATER

2/17/2019

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Luke 6:17-26
He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.
Then he looked up at his disciples and said:
   "Blessed are you who are poor,
       for yours is the kingdom of God.
   "Blessed are you who are hungry now,
       for you will be filled.
   "Blessed are you who weep now,
       for you will laugh.
    "Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.
    "But woe to you who are rich,
       for you have received your consolation.
    "Woe to you who are full now,
       for you will be hungry.
    "Woe to you who are laughing now,
       for you will mourn and weep.
    "Woe to you when all speak well of you,
       for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets."

What we just heard is Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, the better known version of which is found in Matthew’s gospel as the Sermon on the Mount. Before we get into this reading I want to share part of the Old Testament reading for today. The reading is from the 17th chapter of the writings of the prophet Jeremiah and If we listen carefully here I think we will better understand the Luke reading when we get into it.

Thus says the LORD:
   Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals
       and make mere flesh their strength,
       whose hearts turn away from the LORD.
   They shall be like a shrub in the desert,
       and shall not see when relief comes.
   They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness,
       in an uninhabited salt land.

Blessed are those who trust in the LORD,
      whose trust is the LORD.
   They shall be like a tree planted by water,
      sending out its roots by the stream.
   It shall not fear when heat comes,
      and its leaves shall stay green;
   in the year of drought it is not anxious,
      and it does not cease to bear fruit.

Jeremiah is, of course, not really giving a lesson in horticulture here. He isn’t talking about trees and shrubs – he is talking about people. People, those who trust in mere mortals instead of a loving God, people who turn their hearts from God – people who when hard times hit, won’t see relief even when it’s all around them. Those who will continue to live in what they see as a waste of desert land and perceive everything around them as parched and lifeless.

On the other hand, there are the people who are firmly rooted in trusting God. These people still face the same heat, the same years of drought, but they do it without fear of destruction – their trust remains like the green leaves and they continue to bear fruit instead of growing anxious and being made sterile by fear.

Keep all this in mind now while we go back to Luke. This reading starts out sounding very familiar because we are used to hearing Matthew’s version, but halfway through the Luke version we start to run into language that is not so very familiar.

First off, there is some playing on words here that the original writers may or may not have intended – but our twenty-first century ears hear them. Matthew’s version is the Sermon on the Mount. In that one Jesus sits up high above the crowd and preaches down to them. He speaks to them at a distance, in third person: "Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Not you people, but them, those guys over there.

In Luke’s version, Jesus speaks to the people directly, in second person: Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. While most often called the Sermon on the Plain, Luke’s version here is sometimes known as the Sermon on the Level – a play on words all it’s own. Here Jesus not only sits down on the same level among his listeners, he speaks straight to them – on the level – person to person. Again, whether these nuances were intended or not, we perceive them and they affect how we hear these words.

But the primary difference is that, while there are nine blessings in Matthew, here there are only four. Four blessings followed by four “woes.” And here lies the meat of this teaching. Before we go any further let’s be clear on what Jesus does not say. He does not say that those who are full now, those who laugh now, those who are rich now are going to be punished in any way for their good fortune. It is not a sin to be comfortable – unless, of course, your comfort has been bought by the misery of others.

There is nothing wrong with going to bed warm and sheltered at night, nothing wrong with being well fed or famous. What Jesus does say is that if these are the things you count on to make your life good, if you judge your own value by what you possess – then one of these days it isn’t going to be enough for you. If ego is all you have that matters to you – it will never be enough to fill the emptiness left by the lack of love and compassion. If you have no spiritual depth, no love or kindness counted among your blessings, then you will one day come up on the short end of things. It's not a threat - it's a prediction.

When you lose someone dear to you, when your health fails, when your retirement fund crashes – and you have nothing else to give you comfort – you will be like Jeremiah’s shrubs in the desert, parched and shriveled in a barren salt land.

If, however, you are on the losing end of things now – as were most of the people who came out to hear Jesus teach at this time – those who walked for miles to hear him remind them of the promise of God’s unfailing love for them – if you have little of what the world values, then you have nowhere to go but up. You already know the things that matter – a kind word from a friend, a helping hand, a look that says you are seen as a valued person. You know how to value kindness and love over fancy meals. You rely on God rather than the world because the world has shown that it doesn’t care and God is all you have.

You are like Jeremiah’s trees planted by the water, those whose roots go so deep that even in years of drought they continue to bear fruit.

None of this should come as a surprise to us. Remember that Jesus’ first words that morning in Nazareth were a message of reversal – I have come to bring good news to the poor. This is the teaching the church today calls “the preferential option for the poor,” -- the belief, in the words of theologian Gustavo Gutierrez that God prefers the poor "not because they are necessarily better than others, morally or religiously, but simply because they are poor and living in an inhuman situation that is contrary to God's will." They get more of God's attention because they need it more than those who are already comfortable.

Jesus tells us here – and all throughout his teaching – that we are blessed whenever we are a blessing. Not when we have stuff. Not when we have privilege or power. But when we ourselves are a blessing to others – and that doesn’t require stuff. It only requires compassion and respect and caring.

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GOING FISHING

2/10/2019

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Luke 5:1-11

Once when he was standing on the shore of Lake Gennesaret, the crowd was pushing in on him to better hear the Word of God. He noticed two boats tied up. The fishermen had just left them and were out scrubbing their nets. He climbed into the boat that was Simon’s and asked him to put out a little from the shore. Sitting there, using the boat for a pulpit, he taught the crowd.

When he finished teaching, he said to Simon, “Push out into deep water and let your nets out for a catch.”

Simon said, “Master, we’ve been fishing hard all night and haven’t caught even a minnow. But if you say so, I’ll let out the nets.” It was no sooner said than done—a huge haul of fish, straining the nets past capacity. They waved to their partners in the other boat to come help them. They filled both boats, nearly swamping them with the catch.

Simon Peter, when he saw it, fell to his knees before Jesus. “Master, leave. I’m a sinner and can’t handle this holiness. Leave me to myself.” When they pulled in that catch of fish, awe overwhelmed Simon and everyone with him. It was the same with James and John, Zebedee’s sons, coworkers with Simon.

Jesus said to Simon, “There is nothing to fear. From now on you’ll be fishing for men and women.” They pulled their boats up on the beach, left them, nets and all, and followed him.

Last week, if you’ll recall, Jesus revisited his hometown, Nazareth. He impressed everyone there with his wisdom – at first – but then everything went south when he began preaching a message of inclusivity rather than separatism, when the Nazarenes present turned against him and tried to toss him off a cliff.

He managed to “slip away” from those people and went to Capernaum, a larger village, the home of Simon, on the northern shore of Lake Gennesaret, which is another name for the Sea of Galilee. He taught in the synagogue there and healed a man possessed by an evil spirit.

From the synagogue, he went to Simon’s home and healed his very sick mother-in-law. When the people of Capernaum saw all this they brought all their ill and broken people to him and he healed them all. The next day he left Capernaum to travel around to other towns in Galilee – healing and teaching -- and his fame grew.

Some unspecified time later he returned to Capernaum but this time he arrived with a crowd pushing around him, all wanting to be healed and instructed, so to gain a little space he climbed into Simon’s boat and they pulled a short distance offshore, where Jesus could speak and everyone could hear.

All that now is history and setting for the main part of this reading, which happened after he finished teaching and sent the people on their way again. Here he instructed Simon to set out into deeper waters and throw out his nets. Simon protests that they’ve already done that all night with no results – but if that’s what Jesus wants, he’ll do it.

Have you ever wondered just how big these boats were? How many fish they could actually hold? Kathryn Matthews who curates and often writes for the UCC Sermon Seeds lectionary guide, included the following notes about the size of a Galilean fishing boat: measured by an archaeological find, a first-century boat from the Sea of Galilee, would have been 26.5 feet long, 7.5 feet wide, and 4.5 feet high.

Measure it out on the floor - that's what we did in church Sunday. It really helps to visualize it. What we found was that it would have held a lot of fish.

The story tells us they netted so many fish they had to call for help from their partner boat and even working together they could barely land all the fish and almost swamped both boats.

It was something very big. Big enough that this is one of the few stories that is told in every one of the four gospels.

Lake Gennesaret or the Sea of Galilee, whatever you prefer to call it, is roughly 2/3 the size of Lake Tahoe. We’re not talking an ocean here, but it is still plenty large enough that men died out there on those waters. Recall the story of Jesus commanding the waves to be still when an unexpected storm came up another time they were all out on the boat and how terrified the fisherfolk were in that story.

What happened out there on that lake with all the fish on this particular day was a miracle and Simon and the others were right in the middle of it. We should not walk away from a miracle unchanged.

These were brave men who made their living out in those boats every day, and yet in today’s story, Simon – who at this point in Luke’s telling of the story suddenly receives a name change and becomes Simon Peter – this new Simon Peter ended up on his knees begging Jesus to go away from him because he, a sinner, was overawed and afraid to be in the presence of such holiness.

Simon was already following Jesus around, listening to his teaching. He knew he was someone very special but I doubt he had figured yet just how special. This moment today is Luke’s equivalent to the moment in Mark’s gospel when Jesus asks Peter, “who do you say I am?” and Peter replies, “You are the messiah.” This is Simon Peter’s moment of total commitment – and therefore worthy of a new name.

When they finally beached their catch-of-the-century, Jesus told them not to be afraid [that phrase we hear so often throughout scripture] – don’t be afraid, I’m going to make you a different kind of fisher – and they dropped what they were doing and walked away from their boats and followed him.

Did you notice that this last bit says “they walked away”? We already know that Simon Peter’s brother, Andrew, was the first to follow Jesus and brought Simon Peter with him, but here we learn that James and John, the sons of Zebedee, were among the fisherfolk that day, possibly on the second boat, and they too left everything, walked away, and followed after Jesus.

They didn’t stop to clean the astronomical catch of fish, or mend their nets, or tend their beached boats – they just walked away – leaving their fathers, John and Zebedee, presumably, to deal with it all. Jesus came to heal bodies, yes, but also to heal broken spirits, broken hopes, broken trust. So touched were these men by the power and spirit of Jesus that none of the things they were leaving behind mattered for them anymore. They left their fears behind and they followed.

Next week’s reading will be the Sermon on the Plain – Luke’s version of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. But between today’s story and that one there are healings galore – lepers, a paraplegic, and the man with a crippled right hand, among others. There is also the calling of another follower – Matthew Levi, the hatred tax collector.

Once Luke gets started with the stories they come fast and furious now. In just a few chapters we have already watched Jesus go from an unknown 30 year old from a tiny out-of-the-way village to someone who is known and admired and actually followed around – just so people could see and hear him.

Maybe it isn’t Luke’s storytelling that moves that fast -- perhaps it is just that Jesus moved that fast. Healing is what he was sent to do. That is what he had learned in the moment of rising from the waters of his baptism. That is why he could so easily withstand Satan’s temptations – they couldn’t be allowed to get in the way of doing what he was sent to do.

He knows now what he is supposed to do - and he's doing it.

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US AND THEM

2/3/2019

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Luke 4:16-21
He came to Nazareth where he had been reared. As he always did on the Sabbath, he went to the meeting place. When he stood up to read, he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written,
God’s Spirit is on me;
    he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor,
Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and
    recovery of sight to the blind,
To set the burdened and battered free,
    to announce, “This is God’s year to act!”
He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the place was on him, intent. Then he started in, “You’ve just heard Scripture make history. It came true just now in this place.”
Luke 4:22-30
All who were there, watching and listening, were surprised at how well he spoke. But they also said, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son, the one we’ve known since he was a youngster?”
He answered, “I suppose you’re going to quote the proverb, ‘Doctor, go heal yourself. Do here in your hometown what we heard you did in Capernaum.’ Well, let me tell you something: No prophet is ever welcomed in his hometown. Isn’t it a fact that there were many widows in Israel at the time of Elijah during that three and a half years of drought when famine devastated the land, but the only widow to whom Elijah was sent was in Sarepta in Sidon? And there were many lepers in Israel at the time of the prophet Elisha but the only one cleansed was Naaman the Syrian.”
That set everyone in the meeting place seething with anger. They threw him out, banishing him from the village, then took him to a mountain cliff at the edge of the village to throw him to his doom, but he gave them the slip and was on his way.

Today we pick up the story we began last week – the declaration by Jesus that the day of Jubilee had arrived.

The Hebrew people had long held fast to the promises received though the many prophets that God would one day send a savior who would release them from their subservience to the Roman Empire. This promise, as it is found in Isaiah 61 – to set the poor, the prisoners, the blind, the burdened, and the battered free – is the promise Jesus read and claimed as becoming present and real in himself, that very day.

But there is one piece of the promise as it is written in Isaiah that Jesus neglected to include in his reading and that is a line at the end which reads “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God.”
Any mention of vengeance is completely missing from Jesus’ version of the promise. This omission is never explained – to us or to those present that day. We, today, can easily enough understand this as Jesus being a man of peace and not in the vengeance business – and yet, for a people held in virtual slavery and oppression for centuries, vengeance was exactly the piece of the promise they preferred to focus on.

For an oppressed people it is all too often only the possibly of revenge that holds them together and keeps them moving on through their oppression to another day. When you are bullied and broken and dehumanized you secretly roll a promise of vengeance around on the back of your tongue and it tastes so good. Even promises of freedom and healing don’t sound as good anymore if you take away the possibility of that sweet revenge, and those listening to Jesus that day wouldn’t have taken kindly to being denied that vengeance.

But they are still, at first, caught up in the idea that this is a home-town boy, one of them, and he’s speaking with such wisdom and authority. They’re liking what they hear – until Jesus goes a step too far. Way too far.

The Hebrew people didn’t just want revenge against the Romans. They were just the current oppressor. Over the centuries these people had been oppressed by all kinds of “others” – they didn’t even bother to differentiate by nationality anymore. They simply hated everyone who wasn’t one of them. Anyone who could be described as Gentile. God was God of the Hebrews - he belonged to them and didn’t care about anyone but them -- and a major piece of the promise – for them – was that there would be vengeance taken against their enemies.

And this is where Jesus went over the line for them. He first points out that prophets aren’t ever accepted in their home territories and he illustrates this with examples from the lives of their greatest prophet, Elijah, and his successor, Elisha:

No prophet is ever welcomed in his hometown. Isn’t it a fact that there were many widows in Israel at the time of Elijah during that three and a half years of drought when famine devastated the land, but the only widow to whom Elijah was sent was in Sarepta in Sidon? And there were many lepers in Israel at the time of the prophet Elisha but the only one cleansed was Naaman the Syrian.”

Now this may not sound too inflammatory to us because we don’t know all the players, but the key piece to our understanding lies in the fact that Sidon and Syria were Gentile areas. What Jesus pointed out with the two stories he chose to cite was that twice in Hebrew history God had bypassed the Hebrews in need to grant grace to two hated Gentiles.

And this is what totally inflamed the Nazareans that day. While he dwelt on the promise from Isaiah they were fine with Jesus, even proud to call him one of their own -- but by citing the stories of Elijah and Elisha as he did, he took their vengeance away from them. He took their promise away from them. To their minds, Jesus tried to take their God away from them. And, just like that, they flipped from admiration to rage and a desire to kill this person who would say such things (most likely because they were terrified he might be right.) This person they were just admiring was now someone to be silenced by any means.

When I was in seminary, a hundred years ago or so, my preaching professor encouraged us to approach the story on which we were preparing to preach from multiple directions – basically to take a few minutes to “see” the story from the point of view of the various people involved. In this particular story there’s not that many individuals mentioned – there’s just Jesus and “everyone else,” but when we took a few minutes to try to understand the expectations of “everyone else” a story that could be pretty bizarre at least began to make a little sense. We don’t need to agree with their murderous rage at the end of the but we can, at least, recognize the frustrations and fear that drove them to it.

This is a good method to use in dealing with any disagreement with others. Do I understand why they are responding in a certain way? What lead them to hold their opinion? Where do their fears and anger come from? Would I respond the same way if I were in their shoes?

Jesus didn’t respond to their anger with anger of his own – he just quietly slipped away. We don’t always need to “win” a disagreement. We live in such an “us and them” time right now where, if we are right, then everyone else must be wrong. If you don’t do things the way I do them you are not only wrong but actively evil.

Yes, some things are evil and must be resisted – Jesus didn’t passively stand around and wait for them to throw him off a cliff but he did see them compassionately – he understood where they were coming from – and rather than resisting and fighting he went out and continued teaching that god’s people were one people – and all people were God’s people. All people are valued and loved.

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YOU’LL NEVER REGRET IT – I PROMISE

PLANTED BY THE WATER

GOING FISHING

US AND THEM

Rev. Cherie Marckx

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