Luke 6:20-31
Secure in God’s Love
James Sledge October 30, 2010 (for All Saints)
“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” What on earth for!? What would possess anyone to do such a thing? Did you pray for Osama bin Laden in the days after 9-11?
George W. Bush, who probably wore his Christian faith on his sleeve more so than any president in more than half a century, argued quite forcibly for attacking our enemy before he attacked us, creating the new American doctrine of preemptive war.
And on an individual level, we don’t celebrate the person who calmly “takes it,” who endures abuse. We celebrate the one who stands up for himself. I grew up when Westerns were still popular on TV and the big screen, and the hero was often an every day fellow who, when pushed to his limits by the bad guys, rose up gave them what they had coming.
Truth is, we just don’t know what to do with this love your enemy stuff.
In Luke’s gospel, Jesus’ Beatitudes flow right into his words on loving enemies and turning the other cheek. Luke’s version of the Beatitudes is not as familiar to some of us as those found in Matthew. Not only are the blessings more concrete in Luke – blessings on the poor rather than the poor in spirit – but they are paired with a corresponding list of woes.
Those in the blessed category are the poor, the hungry, those who are weeping, and who are reviled. On the other hand, the rich, those who go to great dinner parties, those who are laughing, and the popular folks are in the “woe to you” group. But this doesn’t sound right. It’s backwards, just like loving your enemies. I don’t know many people who want to be poor, hungry, sad, or unpopular, and the reverse doesn’t sound like a curse to me, far from it.
When I was a kid, The Smothers Brothers were quite popular, with a string of records and a television show. For those who don’t know of them, this musical comedy team involved one of the two brothers, Tommy, playing the fool. In real life he was the one who had created the act, but on stage the comedy came from his misunderstandings and foul-ups played against his “smart,” straight-man brother.
A recurring bit in their act was Tommy’s feeling of inadequacy expressed in the line, “Mom always liked you best.” They even had an album with that title. The album cover featured the two brothers posed like children. Dick stands there grinning as he wears a toy gun and holster, surrounded by a wagon, bicycle, scooter, beach-ball, and assorted and sundry toys as a dog gazes at him. Tommy, on the other hand, is seated, gazing up at his smiling brother. He has not a single toy and is holding a rope, used as a leash for a chicken. The album title is above him, depicted as his spoken words. “Mom always liked you best.”
The “truth” of Tommy’s words is clear for everyone to see. His smiling, happy brother is surrounded by good things while he has almost nothing. Any fool can see that his Mom favors his brother and slights him.
We humans are quite sensitive to such things. “That’s not fair!” cries the young child whose sibling has gotten a slightly larger slice of cake. Even if the Smothers Brothers stretch it for comic purposes, we are anxious about what others have, compared to what we have. From an early age, we compare ourselves to those around us, noticing who is different, who seems to have more, who seems to have less.
When you think about it, we humans are a rather insecure sort. I suppose that there are biological, evolutionary advantages to this. It could provide drive to gather or hunt for enough food to get through the winter. It’s a good survival instinct to notice which potential mate might be likely to provide enough to raise children. It makes sense to worry about whether or not a shelter is sufficient to keep out the elements. From a survival standpoint, our insecurity makes sense.
But once we leave the realm of survival, our insecurities cause more problems than they solve. It begins when we are small. We clutch at what we have, worried we may lose it. We don’t want to share. And we worry about fitting in. We will change our appearance, our clothes, so we can belong. Worse, we will belittle others to make ourselves feel more secure.
Many of us always feel that we are just short of having enough. If we just made a little more money, just looked a little better, just had a little hotter boyfriend or girlfriend, just had that latest high tech gadget, we’d be happy. But somehow we never quite get there.
And when things are going badly, our insecurities really kick in. As we wind down the current political campaign, candidates on both sides play on our insecurities and fears. They know that we worry about all sorts of things, and they seek to stoke those worries, telling us that their opponents don’t simply disagree with them, but they’re out to destroy our way of life, to take away our jobs, our things, our money, our happiness.
Even the Church has insecurity problems. For years mainline churches have looked at mega-churches with a mixture of envy and loathing. Presbyterians have lamented our loss of prestige and power. Fortunately there is always some congregation that is much worse off than us, and we can feel better about ourselves when we realize that we look a lot more successful than that sorry congregation over there.
Often we draw God into our insecurities. Some claim the Presbyterian Church’s woes are because we’ve failed to believe certain things or understand the Bible correctly. Others say America’s woes are because we’ve abandoned certain religious values, taken prayer out of schools, or said “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas.”
We seem to think God operates out of the same insecurities that we do. Listening to some Christians you’d think God was worried that all creation could come unhinged. I hear people say God will have to do this or have to do that if people don’t straighten up. Wow, it must be awful being God and having to worry about all the things that could go wrong.
But Jesus presents a very different view of God. Amidst our insecurities about having enough, being good enough, being popular enough, Jesus speaks of God’s blessings poured out especially on those who have next to nothing. Jesus even speaks of those things our insecurities drive us to chase: wealth, popularity, and so on, as being a curse. As a 1st Century, Palestinian Jew, Jesus was prone to speak in hyperbole, but still, he warns us that the insecurities that so motivate us, tend to drive us away from God
Tomorrow is All Saints Day, so we are celebrating it today in worship. But over the years Christians have distorted the original meaning of “saint” so that it now describes a super Christian, someone who has out-Christianed the rest of us. Out of our human insecurities, we have undermined the Bible’s insistence that each one of us is an integral a part of the body of Christ, and we’ve insisted that some are better and so more valued.
But the good news of Jesus is that God is not like us. God has no insecurities. God is not frightened of anyone or worried that someone could undermine God’s happiness or God’s plans. And so God is totally free to love. It upsets our human sensibilities sometimes, but God loves us, not because we are good enough or because we believe the right things or because we belong to the right group. God simply loves us. God loves you, whoever you are, whatever you’ve done or failed to do, and wants what’s best for you, even if God’s understanding of “best” looks quite different from what our fears and insecurities lead us to chase.
On this day when we remember the saints of this congregation who have died, we also remember that Jesus calls us all to be saints. Saints are simply those who have experienced God’s love embracing them, who have discovered that the security of God’s embrace liberates us from our fears and insecurities, and allows us to live as the children God longs for us to be. And when God’s love frees us from our worries and insecurities, the transformation is remarkable. Secure in God’s love, we are free to love, even something so foolish as loving our enemies.
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