Love Can Hurt, Especially Radical Agape Love

This is an outline of my sermon text for the Seventh Sunday after Epiphany, on February 24, 2019. The texts for my message were Luke 6:27-38.
The audio recordings will have a passing resemblance to this message because of two reasons.

1 - I realized on Sunday morning that the members of my white congregations don’t really have an idea of what it means to have “enemies” the way that the members of my black congregation does. Nor do I. So as difficult as this message is for those of us whose enemies are just those we don’t like or who drive up our blood pressure, it is harder for those who actually live with people who want to do harm to them because of the color of their skin.

2 - I had a tire blow out on the way to my first church. I was rattled and rambled through both services. I’ll eventually listen to these. I hope they aren’t too brutal.
+ pBRC

Sermon Audio from Redeemer
Sermon Audio from St. Mark

Do not fret because of the wicked …Trust in the Lord, and do good … Take delight in the Lord… Commit your way to the Lord… Be still before the Lord and wait patiently. + Psalm 37:1,3,4,5,7

-    This is one of the hardest sections of teaching for people to follow. It seems so weak and feels like being taken advantage of.

•    So, I want to use one of the tools I use when I’m wrestling with a text and it has me on my back, is to read the lesson from the bottom up.

•    Jesus closes this passage with an example from baking and cooking.

-    The measure that you give should be a true measure. Imagine your neighbor has come to ask for a cup of flour. You could just give a good scoop and send them on their way. But you should tap it down and level it off to make sure it is a true measure of what they ask for.

-    If you are going to give someone something – be it flour, land, property, your effort – you should give the full amount. Don’t cut corners. Don’t do just enough, give a full measure.

•    Jesus calls upon us to not hold things against others because we run the risk of having them held against us.

-    “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.” (Luke 6:37-38)

-    This is among the hardest things Jesus is telling those who would follow him to do, because it is so easy to judge and condemn others while expecting that we will be forgiven and given what we need. 

-    Jesus is speaking in terms of karma, the idea that what you put out will return to you.

•    Jesus is calling upon us to not be hypocrites. For us to not point out everything that someone else is doing wrong while ignoring the faults and failures that we have committed.

•    We are called to give the measure and manner of treatment that we want to receive.  We are called to share the mercy that we receive.

•    The hard part of this is to show the self-giving, self-sacrificing agape love to those from whom we will not get anything back in return. “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6.27-28)

-    We tend to expect something in return for what we give to others.

-    In our lesson from the Hebrew Bible, Joseph is trying to reconcile with his brothers who sold him into slavery. He forgives them for that wrong but only because they have repented and apologized for their behavior.

•    Joseph’s forgiveness came AFTER his brothers have shown their behavior to be changed.

-    That is normal human behavior. I forgive you after you apologize. I forgive you after you say that you are sorry. I forgive you once I am reasonably sure that you won’t do it again.

-    But that’s not agape love. That’s not the love shown and modelled by Jesus Christ. That’s not the self-giving, self-sacrificing love of God.

•    That’s not the love that Jesus wants those who follow in his footsteps and those who bear his name to show.

•    It is a love that risks it all in order to reach just one.

-     Think of the parables that Jesus used to teach us about this agape love. Think of your favorite parable.

-     It probably involves someone doing something that doesn’t make sense. It involves someone doing something out of the ordinary. It puts them at risk either culturally, financially, or maybe physically.

-     Love is a risk.

•     Think for a moment not of agape love but of eros love, a love of passion.

•     Think of the risks involved in falling in love.
The risk of “I like you, do you like me?” The risk of that long walk across a dance floor to ask someone to dance, and the danger of the walk back by yourself.
The risk of putting your heart out there to admit feelings, and the risk of having your heard stomped upon.

-     Why should the risk of agape love be any less? The risk of loving someone is the vulnerability that we place ourselves in. That is true whether we are expressing eros love or agape love.

-    So, when Jesus tells us “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. 0 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.” (Luke 6:29-31) This is one of the hardest sections of teaching for people to follow. It seems so weak and feels like being taken advantage of.

•    It has been misused and abused and used to control women and to keep them in abusive situations. It has been misused and abused to keep racial, ethnic and economic groups in subordinate and submissive positions.

•    But these commands, these teachings form a strong, self-sacrificial agape, self-giving love. But it is a challenging love, not just challenging to do, but challenging to experience.

-    We hear “turn the other cheek,” but don’t understand what that means or requires.

•    In this time, in this occupied country, to these people living under Roman rule, if they were struck on the cheek, it was because someone in a position of authority backhanded them. The abuser used their right hand to strike the person on their right cheek.

-     Turning the other cheek, giving them your left cheek as their next target means that they have to look you in the eye to hit you again.
When backhanding someone, you don’t look them in the eye.
You look only where your target is.
You don’t acknowledge their humanity or personhood.
That’s why you backhand them.
Your violence does not allow them to be on the same level as you are.

•     This is non-violent resistance. It is surrendering your body to the possible abuses of violence. But it is resistance. It is forcing your oppressor to confront the fact that they are the one’s escalating the violence.

•     Does it mean that the violence will stop? Does it mean that your cause will win?

•     Too often, the answer has been “no.” Those in positions of power will abuse and misuse their power if they are not held in check.

•     But this call of Jesus is to put the burden and pressure on them.

-    Jesus also calls upon those who would follow him “from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt” (Luke 6:29)

•    What we of a different time and place don’t realize is that the coat Jesus spoke of was a multi-purpose article of clothing. The coat was the outer wrapping of cloth, often colored, that would double as a blanket for those who found themselves having to sleep outside or without a bed.

-     If someone, a robber, a thief, or a Roman soldier, demanded that cloth, then give them not only that, but give them the undergarment as well.

-     This would leave you with literally nothing to wear. It is more than just giving the shirt off of your back. It is the trousers and undergarments as well.

•     Again, this is an extreme form of non-violent resistance.
It puts the abusive, subjugating, and dominating behavior on the abuser, who may take this resistance as insubordination, and escalate the violence.

-     But it puts the behavior on the oppressor.

-    Jesus calls on us to also be radical in our charity. “Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.” (Luke 6:30)

•    Of all of these teachings of Christ, this is the one that we may have the most personal experience with. We are making ourselves vulnerable to being taken advantage of.

-     But if someone is willing to make part of their livelihood by scamming churches and charities, they definitely need our prayers.

•    But these commands that Jesus gives to those who would follow him aren’t anything that he himself wouldn’t do. They are forms of the self-giving, self-sacrificing agape love that Christ lived every day of his life.

-    They are the expressions of love shown in a life that ends upon a cross.

-    They are the expressions of agape love that gives us the forgiveness of our sins, not dependent upon our forgiving others.

-    They are the expressions of agape love that give us life after death given only by the love of God for all of God’s creation.

-    They are expressions of being an extremist for love that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King wrote about in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

-    They are the expressions of love that change the world when just one life is changed because someone showed them unmerited They are the expressions of love shown in a life that ends upon a cross.