Sermon from Sunday, Feb 18

Based on Luke 6:27-36 (read it here:http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=38826705 )

OK, I confess–I love old Monty Python sketches. For those of you who might not know about Monty Python, they were a British comedy troupe in the 1970s; they had a hit TV show in Britain, Monty Python’s Flying Circus. They also had a number of successful movies, most famously Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail. I never really got into the movies, but my dad was a big fan of the TV show, so I loved to sit around and watch it with my dad. It was a sketch comedy show, so there would be these 4-5 minute sketches and they sketches were just so silly. They’re the kind of silly that would lose something if I tried to tell you about them now; they’re the kind of silly that you just have to be there to really get. There was the one about the Spanish Inquisition showing up and tormenting an ordinary British married couple; the one where Vikings sit in an ordinary restaurant and sing a song about Spam. There was the one where a person bought a parrot only to find out it was dead, and so returned it to the pet store where the owner insisted it wasn’t dead, it was only lonely for its native Norwegian homeland. It’s hard to say exactly what made Monty Python so funny–I think it appeals to me because it’s just absurd, relentlessly absurd. It took everything normal and proper and simply turned it on its head, and so it was laugh-out-loud funny.

Of course, Monty Python in and of itself doesn’t have much to do with today’s Scripture passage. But you could use the same two words to describe the kinds of things Jesus is talking about here: relentlessly absurd. Here, Jesus outlines a way of thinking, and even more importantly, a way of living, that is simply, relentlessly absurd. I went through this short passage, just these ten verses, and look at all the absurd stuff that I found:
1. “Love your enemies.” Huh? Yeah, that’s nice, pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by stuff, but how’s that going to work out when the rubber meets the road?
2. “Do good to those who hate you.” That’s about as absurd as it comes; when it comes to dealing with people who hate you, there are two kinds of people: people who attack people who hate them, and those that fantasize about attacking people who hate them.
3. “Bless those who curse you.” Have you ever been cursed? Has anyone ever looked at you and told you they wished evil upon you, wished you were dead? Has anyone ever told you they wished something terrible would happen to you? Yeah, go ahead, bless that person, I dare you. How absurd!
4. “Pray for those who abuse you.” Umm, yeah, do you know what it’s like to be abused, misused? Do you know what it’s like to be treated like a nobody, an object, rather than a person? It’s not fun–and I’m supposed to pray for that person? How absurd!
5. “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.” Ummm...have you ever been struck on the cheek? Do you know how hard it is to stand there and take it again? I remember being in 7th grade and a boy named Keith slapped me on my cheek. I didn’t know what to do, and I was paralyzed, so I sat there and took it. Do you know how people laugh when you don’t fight back? I do, and I still don’t like thinking about it today.
6. “If someone takes away your coat, give that person your shirt as well.” Well, I don’t know about you, but in weather like we’ve been having recently, I rather like having a coat, thank you. And if you tried to take it away from me, I’d probably snatch it right back from you and tweak your nose to boot. I wouldn’t give you my shirt too!
7. “Give to everyone who begs from you.” Umm...this is absurd too. Do you have any idea how many times when you give money to a beggar it goes for some sort of addiction instead of for something worthwhile? Give to everyone who begs from you?
8. “If anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.” I hate when I lend a book or something to someone and they don’t return it. Is this for real? Am I never again supposed to ask them to get my book back? How absurd!
9. “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” So if I’m secretly wishing you would take me to lunch, I’m supposed to take you to lunch? If I’m secretly wishing for the good life in some way, I should go out of my way to give someone else the good life? How absurd!
Jesus sums all of this absurdity up in verse 35: “But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return.” In short: “Be merciful, just as your Father [God] is merciful.” Perhaps, in non-Scriptural language, we could say: “Love other people extravagantly without any guarantee that they’ll return the favor. Love other people recklessly, without concern for your own heart.”

Now, I don’t want to be simplistic about all this. I don’t think all of these things are as easy as they sound, and I’m not even sure whether we can literally do all of them. Take, for example, the instruction to “turn the other cheek.” Remember that when Jesus was arrested, he was taken before the high priest. And the high priest asked him a question, and Jesus gave an answer that they didn’t like and a bystander struck him in the face. And Jesus didn’t hit back, but he didn’t exactly turn the other cheek so that he’d get hit again.

Or take the question about giving to anyone who begs. While Jesus says, “Give to anyone who begs,” the early church very clearly had rules about who was eligible and who was not eligible to receive aid from the church. In those days, the prime group that needed financial help were widows, because they often had no way of earning income once their husbands had died. But still, the need was so great that in 1 Timothy, Paul had to lay down rules about which widows could get assistance and which could not. “Let a widow be put on the list if she is not less than sixty years old and has been married only once; she must be well attested for her good works, as one who has brought up children, shown hospitality, washed the saints’ feet, helped the afflicted, and devoted herself to doing good in every way.” (1 Tim 5:9-10) Even then, it was a little more complicated than simply giving to everyone who was in need.

So I’m not looking at it simplistically. But even when you get past that, you cannot avoid the fact that what this passage of Scripture is asking you to do is to live an upside-down kind of life. In this passage, Jesus is asking you, at every turn, to do unnatural things. He is asking you to be kind to people who just don’t deserve your kindness. He is asking you to not worry first about self-preservation, but to undergo trials without worrying about yourself. He is asking you to have so little attachment to possessions that you can give them away without even caring if you ever get them back. When Jesus says, “Be merciful even as your Father [God] is merciful,” he’s saying a mouthful. When Jesus talks about God’s mercy, he’s not just talking about some syrupy sweet sentiment God has toward us. He’s saying, “Look at all the good gifts God gives freely to everybody. Look at nature, the gifts of the sun, moon and stars; look at the fields and the farms, how they grow; look how the rain comes both on the just and the unjust; look at the breath of life, that precious gift given to us, and look how it is given to people who just don’t deserve it.” Jesus says, that God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.” Life–all of it–is a gift that none of us deserves; no one is more aware of how little we deserve it than God himself, but yet he continues to give, gift after gift after gift, and though we fail, he continues to give. And Jesus says, “That’s the way you’re supposed to be–that’s mercy, that’s what God is, that’s what I want you to be.”

How do we do it? How do we live this upside-down kind of life? That’s the great unanswered question of this Scripture, the great unanswered question of a lot of Scripture really. How do we get our hearts to the point where this kind of upside-down life is possible? I think there are two real answers to that question. The first has to do with our mindset. How do we get our minds adjusted to start thinking upside down from the rest of the world?

Well, good preachers try to find examples from natural life that speak to the spiritual life. So I started to think–when do we go through other things in our lives that turn us upside down? Naturally, my thoughts immediately turned to marriage. Getting married turns your world upside down, on its head; that’s why, I think, that it’s not for everybody; it’s mainly for those of us who need to have our worlds turned upside down.

Anyway, when you get married, you are called on to make a major life switch. You are no longer to think of yourself primarily as your own individual; you now are pre-eminently part of a team, a team that needs protecting. You get married because you think you can serve God better as a team than you could on your own; and so since you believe God wants you in a team, you have to totally change your mindset to that of being one of a team. So how do you change your mindset?

Well, for one thing, you move in with your spouse. You surround yourself with that other person. Every time you turn around, there that person is; when you want that person around, when you don’t want that person around, all the time, that person is living where you are living. And that person’s presence is a constant reminder that things are different now. Now I’m part of a team; now I’m not my own person, now I’m not looking out only for my own interests; now I’m not looking to serve God only in the way I think best; now I’m part of a team and we work together. So we move in together not just because it makes us happy; we move in together as part of a strategy to strengthen our team for God’s sake. Now I suppose it’s technically possible for two people to be married but not live together; but it will be very very difficult for them to start thinking of themselves as a team, because there won’t be that day-in, day-out, sometimes delightful, sometimes difficult, interaction with each other. It’s hard for a marriage to survive and thrive without the day-in, day-out interaction of living together.

Christianity, in essence, “marries” us to God. We stand in the waters of baptism and we make vows to God. Today, I ask those who are being baptized, “Do you affirm in this act of baptism your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ?” Then I say, “Is it your intention, then, to follow Christ in word and deed, throughout your life?” You make promises, vows, that marry you to God.

Yet too often we Christians would say that we are married to God but in all reality we don’t live together. Our lives often are not characterized by day-in, day-out interaction with Jesus. We don’t take seriously the idea that our relationship with Christ is at the very center of our lives, impacting all the decisions we make just like a marriage. We put our lives here and Christ here; if I did that with my marriage, if put Jill here and the rest of my life here, my marriage would suffer and probably die. If we do that with our faith, our relationship with Christ will suffer and probably die.

If we want to learn to see the world upside down, if we want to be loving in a hateful world, if we want to turn the other cheek in a vengeful world, we will have to find real and tangible ways to put Christ at the center of our lives. We will have to recommit to weekly public worship and daily prayer, because those practices put Christ at the center and form our spirit. We will have to start viewing all of those difficult questions in life–how to spend our money, how to spend our time–not as ordinary single people, but as the bride of Christ. When we start to view those questions as the bride of Christ instead of on our own, our minds are changed, our spirits are formed, we are shaped to see the world differently. This marvelous ideal that Jesus gives us is only attainable in so much as we are willing to be shaped and formed by our relationship with Jesus. In other words, this “upside-down” way of life is the natural result of being married to Jesus and living with Him each day; and we simply cannot expect to do it if we insist on keeping our faith at arm’s length, if we insist on living alone.

So it starts in our mindset. But there is a second truth here in this passage that we dare not miss. This passage is rather relentless in using action verbs. “Love...do good...bless...pray...turn the other cheek...give your shirt...do to others as you would have them do to you...love...do good...lend.” This passage reminds us that truly follow Christ is not merely to intend well, it is to do well. When Jesus sums this up by saying, “Be merciful even as God is merciful,” he is reminding us not of God’s inner feelings toward us, but toward his loving acts toward people. “He is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked,” says Jesus and we are reminded that God gives great gifts even to people who do not appreciate them, even to people who abuse those gifts by using them to hurt others. For instance, you can grow poppies for two reasons: beautiful flowers or to make heroin. Does God look down from heaven and say, OK, these poppies are clean, I’ll send rain on them; but these poppies are being used for evil, I won’t send any rain to them? No–rain is a gift from God given freely to all people, no matter if they’re good or bad. For God, mercy isn’t in the thinking, it’s in the doing.

And it is just so for us; if we are to be truly merciful, it can’t be something only in our hearts, it must be something also in our hands and feet. It means taking the hard first step in reconciling with someone you don’t think deserves your reconciliation. It means creating a real, living, breathing relationship with someone who it’s difficult to relate to. It is measured not in intentions but in doing–sometimes in hours, sometimes in dollars, sometimes in tears.

We embark this week on the season of Lent. This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, when we start that 46-day season that leads us through the last weeks of Christ’s earthly life and his death, up to his resurrection. And it is during this time of year that the upside-down life comes most into focus. We worship a God who brought life through his death; we worship a God whose crowning moment of glory came when he died the death of a criminal; we worship a God who said no to all those things that would make him comfortable by earthly standards and yes to an upside-down way of life.

If you want to live the upside-down life, now is the time to start. Now is the time to think different, to give yourself to a whole new way of living and thinking. Now may be the time for you to “Move in” with Jesus, to begin a day-in, day-out relationship with Jesus. If this is you, we have a way to help. Dick Rusbuldt, our founding pastor, has once again written a daily devotion book that takes us through the stories of Lent. As you read the Scriptures, as you read Dick’s thoughts, you will be challenged to think differently. This year, Pastor Steve is also going to lead an online discussion about the book, which you can find out more about in your bulletin. This is a chance to have your heart and mind shaped to think differently, to think upside-down. You also will be challenged to live mercifully–to live in love towards others, not just with your head, but with your hands and your feet as well.