Bethlehem Lutheran Church

Sermon series: Rich Living

2010-06-20.mp3

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Tom Holiday’s book called The Relationship Principles of Jesus opens with the following:  “Relationships are painful.  Relationships are wonderful.  We all live in the drama that plays out between these two truths.”  I can’t imagine any of us would argue with that: siblings fight; best friends betray; spouses disappoint; coworkers conspire.  There is no relationship exempt from pain.  But we know the joys that relationships bring too. There’s nothing better than that look from a newborn, the comforting word from a friend, or the unexpected note of thanks for a difference we didn’t know we made.  Today we continue with our sermon series:  Rich Living, focusing on how through our relationship with Jesus Christ we are blessed to make the most of our relationships with each other.

Jesus continually teaches that nothing is more important than relationships.  He makes this point repeatedly and no more clearly than when the lawyer asked Jesus to narrow his message to what matters most:  Love God, Jesus said.  Love people.  Easy for you Jesus.  Not so easy for us:  my friend talks about me behind my back; my neighbor disrupts the entire neighborhood with wild parties; the guy at work refuses to acknowledge my presence.  Each of us has a story we could tell.  To be alive means to be in conflict writes John Orberg.  It’s part of our human condition.  We are broken people.  “Relationships are painful.  Relationships are wonderful.  We all live in the drama that plays out between these two truths.”

In his book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten Robert Fulghum reveals a personal practice that he has incorporated into his life to help him deal with life’s drama.  Every Spring he sets out to write a personal statement of belief.  The book goes into detail about the Credo he wrote one year, a statement of belief by the same name as the book, in which he was able to boil everything down to one page:

Share everything.

Play fair.

Don’t hit people.

Put things back where you found them.

Clean up your own mess.

Don’t take things that aren’t yours.

Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.

Wash your hands before you eat.

Flush.

Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.

Live a balanced life—learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

Take a nap every afternoon.

When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.

Be aware of wonder.  Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup:  The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup—they all die.  So do we.

And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned—the biggest word of all—LOOK.

Everything on the list makes sense.  It’s practical advice as we live in relationship.  But let’s contrast it with what Jesus says in the Gospel reading today:

          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

            Give to everyone who begs from you

            If anyone takes something away from you, don’t ask for it back

            Do to others as you would have them do to you

This list makes little sense. There’s really nothing practical about it at all—well except maybe that last one:  Do to others as you would have them do to you.  That one makes sense.  We know these words as the Golden Rule.  They’re not unique to Jesus.  The Golden Rule has its roots in a wide range of world cultures.  It was present in the philosophies of ancient India, Greece, Judea and China.  Philosophers and religious figures have stated it in different ways throughout the centuries and it’s a wisdom that continues to be taught today—as early as kindergarten in classrooms around the world.  It’s the wisdom that sums up much of what Fulgham writes as his statement of belief.  But we’re talking about the Bible here, and the Bible can’t be summed up in one phrase that’s easy to understand—as much as we might be tempted to do.  If we focus on the Golden Rule we miss most of what else Jesus says.

So let’s look at the context in which Jesus is speaking.  Jesus has just called his 12 disciples and now lays out the framework within which they will go to work.  “Blessed are you who are poor….Blessed are you who hunger…Blessed are you who weep….”.  It’s the most well known sermon in the Christian faith.  Jesus isn’t describing the world as it exists.  Jesus is describing life as it is in the kingdom of God. It’s a whole new kind of reality that is made possible through him. 

The disciples must have wondered how they could go about living in this new reality…and so do we.  Fortunately, Jesus ends his sermon with a game plan. He names certain disciplines that can be practiced to help navigate the path he calls his followers to take:  Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you…”.  Doing these things does not make sense.  They are not practical.  They will not earn special favor with God.  But in practicing these disciplines the new reality Jesus has just described can be realized. “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you…” Jesus tells us this and then he shows us what it looks like in the way he lives and the way that he dies.  Through his life and death, we learn that hate, abuse and conflict are not a part of God’s kingdom.  These things still exist in our world, but in Christ, God has established his plan for the way to healing and new life.  That is the hope we receive in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  It’s a hope not just for the life to come; but also for life right now, right here.  When we practice this impractical love of Christ God’s blesses us with a kind of rich living, an abundant life, in spite of the discrepancies that exist.

“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you….”  Notice that even as impractical as these disciplines sound to our ears, Jesus is not ignoring the difficult, painful reality we sometimes find ourselves in.  He acknowledges the brokenness in our lives and introduces a new way for us to respond so that we might discover his reconciliation and peace. Most of us our live by a rule of reciprocity but in Christ we are bound by a new norm:  the selfless love of Jesus.  What Jesus is teaching us is a new way to respond.  Violence begets violence.  But Jesus empowers us to break the cycle.  There is another way:  “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you…”  Preacher Barbara Lundblad writes:  “Jesus is not telling people to remain victims but to find new ways of resisting evil.”

          We’ve seen it practiced over time and we know this counter cultural way brings about surprising, life-giving kinds of results.  Think Gandhi, who pioneered resistance to tyranny firmly through total nonviolence.  India realized independence and the nonviolence inspired movements of civil rights and freedom across the world.

A little closer to home, we think of Martin Luther King Jr, who kneeled down with others before water hoses and snarling police dogs.  Many people thought he was crazy.  Only violence can fight violence they told him.  But by responding to the oppression in a new way, by refusing to fight back with violence they claimed their place and reshaped the conflict completely.

 There are very few of us in this immediate community who face justice issues on such a grand scale but that doesn’t mean Jesus’ plan is not relevant for us. Every day we read headlines that make public the pain and violence that thrives in the world, in our neighborhoods and in our homes. At the very core of Jesus’ game plan is a way for us to break unhealthy cycles of relating.  And as his follower Jesus empowers this new way of living to begin with you! 

So say it with me:  Love…do good….bless…and pray.  Again, love….do good….bless and pray.  Practice these things wherever you’re at, with whatever relationship you find yourself in.  Practice, practice, practice:  Love…..do good….bless and pray…. Practice these things and a pattern of relating will be formed in you that will spill out into your home, to your neighbor next door, the stranger on the street, and in situations you find yourself in around the world.  This is the life-giving pattern that Jesus has already established through his life and his death on the cross. In your baptism the Holy Spirit empowers you to live in this pattern too: Love….do good…bless and pray…these may not make a lot of sense, this behavior may not be practical, not in the sense of getting ahead or of doing what comes naturally, but you will discover gifts of forgiveness, peace and hope.  Practice these things and you will be blessed to have God at work in you and through you, bringing about good and changing the world one relationship at a time.  Amen.

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