Year C 7th Epiphany 2022 In Abundance Love Them All

Year C 7th Sunday of Epiphany, 20 February 2022

St. James the Less Episcopal, Ashland, VA

“In Abundance, Love Them All”

Collect: O Lord, you have taught us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing: Send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts your greatest gift, which is love, the true bond of peace and of all virtue, without which whoever lives is accounted dead before you. Grant this for the sake of your only Son Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

1 Corinthians 15:35-38,42-50

Someone will ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.

So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, "The first man, Adam, became a living being"; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.

What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

Luke 6:27-38

Jesus said, "I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 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. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

"If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 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. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

"Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; 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."

Good morning, friends. It is good to be home, and many thanks to Becky+ who was able to lead us so ably while I was away.

As we move into the end of the season of Epiphany, we hear some teachings that will take the rest of our lives to move into. Epiphany is God’s glory is revealed. In these teachings, this is shown, but Jesus’ teaching here is hard. It goes against our natural tendencies. 

The order of this world is summed up in the lines of Sean Connery’s character Malone in the movie The Untouchables: 

They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue.

That is why in the Hebraic laws there was a limit on retaliation. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. What was done to you is the limit of what you can do back. Seeking payback is the reflex in a world ruled by tooth and claw. But Jesus in his normal fashion takes an issue, reframes the problem, and invites us into it and to raise our consciousness. Reframe and Step Up is how I sum up his approach to things.

Jesus reframes the issue of revenge, and instead of setting limits on the retaliation, he says to be bigger than the situation. DO NOT RETALIATE AT ALL. Beyond that, LOVE YOUR ENEMIES. And when we do that, they are no longer enemies, or at least they begin to transform in our understanding and in our response to them.

I fail miserably at this all too often. I wrestle with my desiring to live fully into this. When our blood is up in the heat of the moment, for me at least, my inclinations need to be tempered by my desire to live the way Christ calls me to live. 

The Passion shows us how much he meant what he said. When Peter tried to defend him with the sword in the Garden of Gethsemane, he healed the wounded servant. When lies were thrown at him in the illegal trial of the Sannhedrin, he stayed silent. When he was hanging on the cross, he prayed forgiveness on the soldiers. Jesus meant what he said. And he means it for us as well.

He calls us to see the world with his eyes. A world of Abundance ruled by a loving Father who wants us all, the Good, the Bad, the Sick, the Poor, the Rich, the Powerful, ALL OF US, to succeed and live into the fullness of the Kingdom made real, right here, right now. This is a tall order. But it encapsulates so much.  

Love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful… 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.

Abundance is the key to our being able to see beyond the immediate deficits. 

When we are insulted and cursed, we don’t curse back because our worth comes from the Abundance of Grace and Worth we have found from God.

When we are struck on the cheek, we show that we are above the wounds given for our concern is not of this world, for we have been given a world much greater than any power or grandeur that might be before our eyes. And also, when someone is reduced to violence they show how little they are and they are inviting you to their level of pettiness. It shows how small they see themselves. To stand in the face of the violent with peace and blessing even, they cannot understand. It may be dismissed as weakness, but actually it is the true and overcoming power that comes from God above.

There is a powerful scene in the movie Gandhi where the Mahatma organizes a protest at a factory. The unjust practices are hurting the poor in the area. The gate to the factory is lined with soldiers and the protesters go up to confront the horrible practices and are struck. Then the next row of protesters steps up to receive the blows and not strike back. It was horrific. And even the British perpetrators saw what they were doing to Gandhi’s followers as horrific. And in giving the blows, they learned of their own injustice and eventually, as the movie shows, they gave India back to the Indians with home rule. As Gandhi said, “You will leave, and you surely will. And when you do, we want you to leave as friends.” He pointed these teachings of his to the teachings of Jesus we read today.

We cannot fight battles without tragedies happening. But the greatest tragedy is when we say we follow the Lord of Love and seek revenge, or mach tit-for-tat. We show that we do not know him at all. Jesus reframes the issues of this world, and invites us to step up to his view and way of life.

The story of Joseph and his brothers from our Genesis reading today is the end of a long, hard story of woe, but that in the end God uses for good. We missed the part where his jealous brothers fake his death and sell him into slavery, lying to their father that his favorite son is dead. We won’t get into the issue of parents playing favorites, but don’t do it. We miss him doing well with Potipher, until his wife tries to seduce him and he rejects her and is falsely accused of attempted rape. We miss him interpreting dreams for Pharaoh's imprisoned servants, and their forgetting to put in a good word for him. But then when one remembers after some nightmares of Pharaoh, Joseph is raised to the highest level of authority in Egypt. And then after years of famine his brothers arrive to beg of this one who they have no idea is their long-lost brother. And Joseph has a choice. With a word they could all be jailed or killed and no one would care a wit. But that is not what he does. What they meant for ill, God took, transformed, blessed, and sanctified. In Joseph’s own words:

God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God.

Now please do not read into this, I certainly do not, that God makes bad things happen. That is a theologically terrifying and slippery slope. The rules established in this Universe to give us the gift of Free Will, means that in our Autonomy things can happen and do that are by their very nature Bad. We have to have them so as to respond and choose this day, and every day, whom we will serve. But even given the broken shards of our lives, when we give that over to God they can be transformed. God takes the Broken, and gives it back sanctified.

That is the reframing and stepping up we are talking about. Beggars and thieves, violent oppressors and cursing belittlers, they are nothing in comparison to boundless love of God. Both in this life and in the life to come. With God at our back, we are bigger than anything we face. Our enemies. Our own Goliaths. Or even our own worst selves.

The brokenness that happens in this life is what is buried, like a seed in the ground. What is raised up is eternal. This is the summation of our First Corinthians readings. A seed must die to itself for the plant to emerge. The death of the caterpillar is the beginning of the butterfly. Living a life of love to all, especially our enemies, may seem a death to the ego, and it seems that way from those outside the faith in God. But as we die to Self, and give that up to God it is transformed. As St. Paul wrote: Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

We give up the passing to gain the eternal. That is a deal that we cannot refuse.

But we have to see the Abundance beyond our senses. We have to see a Kingdom that is better and bigger and bolder than the distractions and devices and deviances of this world. We have to trust the promises of this humble teacher who at the end had not a possession to his name, and only a handful of loved ones even acknowledging him at all.

Our prayer today: O Lord, you have taught us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing: Send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts your greatest gift, which is love, the true bond of peace and of all virtue, without which whoever lives is accounted dead before you.

Friends, the only way for us to live the way Jesus said we need to live is to make Love the foundation of all we think and say and do. We do this out of necessity. We do this to be who we were born to be. We were not created for the mundane and the mortal. We were designed to thrive in the Abundance of God and do so throughout eternity. And  it all begins with Love. 

Love. Love them all. 

Love them all to death.

Wife Abuser. 

Child molester.

Midnight Cruiser.

Stock Investor.

Honored marine.

Associate dean.

Chain smoker.

Flunkie.

Hash toker.

Junkie.

Redneck man 

in Ku Klux Klan.

Congressional page.

Victim of AIDS.

COVID denier.

Convicted liar.

Beggar.

Thief.

Saint.

Or, Chief.

Love them. Love them all. 

Love them all to death, even your own. 

(Much of this poem is from Matt Tullos’s script “All Souls Come Clean” adapted)

God bless your loving. God bless your dying to self. God bless you. Amen