Hate is Exhausting Epiphany 7C

There's a great children's book called Let's Be Enemies. The story is all about James and John, two boys who’d been friends but because John found James to be a bit too bossy, are now enemies.
You can’t be enemies, in the true sense of the word, without first being friends.
“Enemy” is derived from the Latin inimicus, “In,” meaning “Not” and “amicus” meaning friend. An enemy is someone who is, decidedly NOT A FRIEND.
Now I know we toss the term enemy around when referencing less personal relationships---the New England Patriots and more seriously, terrorists, white supremacists, mass killers of innocent people Isis, Al Quaeda and before them Nazi’s are all deserving of the moniker “ enemy” - but when considering the true meaning of the word---enemy as in “notafriend”---we get closer to what scholars believe Jesus meant in this part of Luke’s gospel.
In Let’s Be Enemies, John, the narrator, is ticked off at his current “notafriend,” his enemy, James. He spends most of the story talking about retaliation-- what he isn’t going to let James do now that they’re enemies-and what John is going to do to James---revenge.
John engages in what Jesus is telling us to avoid---retaliation and revenge in response to being betrayed, violated, cheated or in some way disgraced.
In the days of Jesus, this code of conduct, as outlined in the Book of Leviticus, was the law of the land.
In The Message a contemporary English translation of today’s Gospel, the last verse, 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." Is translated to read: “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.”

In Let’s Be Enemies, John is acting like a child. Which is appropriate since he IS a child, but to us, Jesus is saying---“enough with revenge and retaliation—an eye for an eye will just make the whole world blind (Ghandi) Love is the way forward. It’s the only way forward.”
Now, Jesus isn’t telling us that we should be some type of doormat for abusive behavior. Nor is He telling us that we must passively accept the misfortunes of life. Today’s Gospel is telling us that when we’re treated badly, when our feelings are hurt, when our trust is broken and when our faith in another is betrayed, we shouldn’t “beat them at their own game” or give them a taste of their own medicine.” That’s the behavior of the playground, of children, of immaturity. The behavior of the grown up, the behavior of one mature in the faith of God is to respond to betrayal, lies, and hurt feelings with Love. To realize that the one who is behaving badly is the one who’s hurting, the one who’s lost, the one who’s stuck on the playground of retaliation and revenge. We’re to the best of our ability, treat “our enemies,” like God treats us, with love and patience, in generosity and graciousness.
[Now hear me loud and clear, I’m not saying that we should stay in dangerous situations. People in situations of physical, sexual, economic or emotional abuse need to first treat themselves with love, and get into a safe place surrounded by trusted people. God does not want us to be martyrs.] But, outside of these abusive situations it’s pretty clear: we are to love our enemies.
I get it…this isn’t easy. Who wants to love the very person/people that has hurt or infuriated us? But, as we all know, being authentic followers- of Jesus Christ isn’t always easy.
But it is pretty simple. All Jesus asks us to do is to be like him and he---even when he was hanging on the cross---had one clear and consistent position when it came to other people: he loved them. He didn’t always like them, he didn’t always agree with them, he didn’t always enjoy them. But he loved them. Doing this isn’t easy, but it’s necessary, because it’s the foundational principle of our faith.
In Let’s Be Enemies, James and John learn that not being friends is a lot harder than being friends, so they make up:
After walking away from each other for a time, John approaches James and says:
“Hey James?”
What?”
“Let’s roller skate.”
“OK. Have a pretzel, John.”
“Thank you, James.”
In this era of hateful political rhetoric, a growth of intolerance and bigotry, of hate first, ask questions later--there’s a lesson here----as children of God we have a responsibility to rise above pettiness, to rise above reacting out of anger, to rise above retaliation. We are Children of a God who will give us all the love we need, who will soothe our wounds with a love which is beyond all understanding. And, just like the child who finds solace when wrapped in the arms of a loving parent, we too find solace in the loving arms of our God, who will—who does-- make everything better. So better that, once the sting of our anger, our hurt and our betrayal is washed away by that Love, we can, like John, turn to the James’ in our life and say, “want to go roller skating, want a pretzel” Because, through the grace of our loving God, I’m able to forgive you, you are able to forgive me and together we can move on.
So …Let’s be Enemies, Let’s Be Friends, remembering that we are the children of a God who gives us the grace to turn the other cheek, to love the unlovable and to leave the playground of revenge and retaliation behind.
Amen. 

7 Fishing for Light, Life and Love. St Peter’s Westfield Epiphany 5C Feb 10, 2019

+Most of us take today’s readings as the Call Story, the Follow Me Story, the Fisher for People Story. This Gospel reading is iconic to our faith for Jesus calls us all with the words: Do Not Be Afraid, from now on you will be fishing (or catching) people.

That’s all good. But I don’t think we can “Be Not Afraid “until we tackle another prevalent theme in today’s readings: sin. It’s is a powerful and often misunderstood word in Christianity. And it’s probably the number one obstacle to living fully into our faith.

So, before we can truly Follow Him and fish for people we need to grapple a bit with sin.

Sin is mentioned, in one way or another in each of our readings today, beginning with the Collect:

“Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins…”

Truer words have never been spoken for sin does indeed hold us in intractable bondage. But the key concept here is that it is our –humanity’s-concept of sin—which binds us. We have the key to unlock the chains of sin, we always have, we just fail to do it. Time and time again. 

Sin is referenced in our reading from Isaiah:

“Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips…” and then later: 

“Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.”

This reading is often heard at ordinations, for it’s a “call” reading…a young man finds himself unmoored, lost, and in his estimation, unworthy of anything good being bestowed upon him by God, but then a seraph, an angel, “blots out his sin.” It’s a beautiful reading, showing a classic redemption scene—the young man is lost---admits it---and then is found, absolved and blessed. 

In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians we hear:

“Christ died for our sins”

This is a big one folks----it’s a sentence we use all the time but the theology behind it—atonement theology---is a dangerous and for the most part, debunked theory. There’s hours and hours of conversation we could have about atonement theology but for our purposes this morning suffice it to say that (I freely admit this is a simplistic take on the theology and encourage and readers to dig much more deeply) atonement theology suggests that Jesus’ death upon the cross was a sacrifice to appease God for the sins of humanity. There could be nothing farther from the truth----Christ’s death upon the cross was God’s way of defeating the forces of this world –the darkness of the world- the evil of this world which is the source of all our “sin.”

And finally, in the Gospel, Simon Peter says to Jesus:

“Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”

In response to Simon Peter’s lament Jesus says: Do not be afraid, from now on you will fishing for people.” Jesus isn’t judging Peter and Andrew, James and John’s self-worth, he doesn’t care about what has been he cares only about what can be, so he says to them, “come along now, follow me.”

And he says the same thing to us as well. Neither Jesus nor God care all that much about what we’ve done and left undone. They’re much more concerned with who we can be and where we can go. For what our Creator knows is what we were created to be---embodiments of God’s abundant, outlandish, never-ending and amazing Love. 

For what God knows and what Jesus preaches is simple: all of creation was built upon the foundation of Divine Love and our job is to be the skin and bones version of this love, spreading it, espousing it, celebrating it in all that we do and with all whom we encounter. 

​So what about sin? Well first of all you need to know that the Greek word that is translated into the English word sin is more accurately translated as “missing the mark.” 

Sin is when we allow ourselves to follow the forces of this world, the forces of darkness, the forces of not-love, the forces of evil instead of the force and source of light and love and goodness, which is God. Sin is when we miss the mark of following God and instead follow our base desires, when we give into our darkest and deepest fears, when we give into doubt, abandoning the hope that is Jesus Christ.

​When Simon Peter falls at the feet of Jesus and says “I am not worthy,” when we are consumed by our feelings of self-loathing, of missing the mark, of being consumed with all that is not God, we all need to simply stop and take the always outstreched hand of Jesus, grasp it and then follow him. 

For when we do that, when we fish for people instead of fishing for ourselves, when we follow the forces of God instead of the forces of evil we will bring our world ever closer to the dream God had when creating us in the first place. 

My friends in this place, the namesake of Simon Peter himself, do not focus on the darkness that creeps into your hearts and souls, focus on the light and life of Jesus Christ who did not die because we are bad, but died so that sin would, once and for all and forever be defeated. Sin won’t win. If we don’t let it. So let us, in all things and at all times,  fish for light, fish for life, fish for love. 

Amen.

Do you see what they saw? The Presentation (tr)

This morning we’ve transferred a “minor observance” of the church year—- The Presentation of the Infant Jesus at the Temple——to a Sunday. Why? Because it is one of my favorite days of the church year and I for one think it should be a “major” observance. But nobody asked me. Why do I love this story of Mary’s purification and Jesus’ Presentation so?
Because it’s a pivot point for Jesus, for Mary and Joseph and for us.
Our focus turns from the crib of Bethlehem to the cross of Calvary.
Christmas has left the building, my friends.
Today, Mary, Jospeh and Jesus travel  to Jerusalem to Present themselves at the Temple.
It’s 40 days after the birth of Jesus and being devout Jews they have two things  to accomplish—- Mary must be purified in the baths of the Temple--traditional for all Jewish women 40 days after giving birth—-and, because Jesus is their first born son, He  must be  presented to God.
All of this is the regular, normal task of a Jewish couple.
But once the Holy Family enters the Temple? All sense of normal flies out the window. For when they walk in, they are noticed, they are seen.  Really seen.
     Earlier in the day Simeon, an aging priest of the Temple, felt a nudge, heard a call—- something compelled him to get himself up to the Temple for there was something there for him to see....and as soon as they walked in, Simeon knew why he was beckoned....for the light to enlighten the nations, the Savior, the Messiah was here...in the person of this 6 week old baby cradled in Mary’s arms.
     Simultaneous to Simeon seeing—- really seeing—- Jesus, Anna, a Woman who after being widowed after seven years of marriage has determined to live her days out within the temple, praying without ceasing, pulls out of her prayerful trance and notices, sees, is drawn toward the baby.
     Together these two elders embrace the baby and rejoice—- the wait is over—-Messiah is here.
For the most part, Mary and Joseph have taken this whole pregnancy and birth thing as calmly as they can. They’ve been pondering things, trusting as we say in 12 step context, that “more will be revealed.”
Today, on this 40th day after Jesus’ birth, more is being revealed.

This gift from God, entrusted to Mary and Joseph, is indeed something, someone unlike anything else before.
I had a parishioner who wrote an icon of this scene for me. In it, Mary’s eyes are wide, her ears burning and her heart is full even as she hears that this same mother’s heart and soul will be pierced along with Jesus’s body atop that Calvary hill.
My friends, with this story our focus does indeed turn from the wonder of The manger to the horror of the cross.
But as Simeon sings throughout the temple—- the horror of the cross isn’t the end of the story but rather the beginning. For while our hearts are pierced on Good Friday, they soar on Easter morn. And we never have Good Friday without Easter.
     But that’s not the only lesson from this story....the bigger lesson, the lesson your vestry just spent the weekend wrestling with is, do we, people of the crib and the cross but more importantly, people of the empty tomb, see what Simeon and Anna saw? Do we notice Christ in our midst? Do we notice where the light of Christ is needed, do we carry his light into those areas and to those people who are trapped by the darkness of this world?
For our job isn’t to worship an empty tomb, or a horrid cross or even a baby in a manger—- our job is to worship the living God by being the living God to all whom we encounter. ////
My friends...do we see what Simeon and Anna see? A Savior in our midst, the messiah who emboldens us to be the Light to enlighten our entire world. Starting here. Starting Now.
Christmas has left the building and our work, our work continues as we scatter the darkness and spread Love in the name of God our Creator, Jesus our Redeemer and the Holy Spirit our Sustainer in all things. For there is darkness out these doors, a darkness waiting for the Light to illuminate our world, to bathe our world in love. Let us be led out these doors to do this work. Today and always.  Amen.