Jesus keeps offering a vision of radical love. But for some reason, we keep shaking our heads and going “No, really. What do you want?”
we keep asking the question hoping for a different answer
All Saints C
Luke 6:20-31
When I went away to seminary, I was excited to learn. There was so much I didn’t know! It was like I finally had access to a library after being stuck on a desert island with the same trashy novel. It was all so exciting, fresh, and new!
Underneath that sensation was a sense of lack—that I lacked a special knowledge about God, primarily. But also the church, the Episcopal tradition, our common story.
Knowing
Think about that feeling—I’m sure you know it; we all know it—that sense that on the one hand, you know about Jesus. You really have a sense of knowing his deepest why; his wants and ways in the world. We sing his praises and call him Lord of Lords and Prince of Peace. He reveals God is love by loving us.
And yet, at the same time, we carry in our other hand this sense of not knowing enough, not having the whole story, that we aren’t good enough. And if we can’t quote the Bible chapter and verse or the venerable church fathers, we are nothing but lack. An empty hole of inadequacy.
So I was excited because, in light of all I did know and all I did believe, I was looking to eliminate the lack. To be like a God, who, as Peter Rollins says, “lacks the lack.” I was going to fill this head with all of the information. Or push all of the tradition I could find in this ear and stop it coming out the other side.
I foolishly thought I could learn the whole, absolute, singular truth and be done with it. Then I could be a good Christian. Then I would be enough. And what I found was something way, way better.
A little transformation
Anyone who truly understands knowledge knows it is never-ending. Eternity lacks finitude.
And I knew that! And I believed that! But something about the way the church talks about faith made me think that tradition doesn’t believe that.
So, to be a good toe or finger for the body of Christ, I thought I could learn that right paradigm so I could offer that to the world. It didn’t really matter whether or not I was going to believe it. Just that if I learned that singular, true paradigm, then it would be simple enough to serve the church through that.
But seminary disavowed me of that thinking immediately.
That image of the mustard seed which grows into a bush fits so well. Because it isn’t just the volume of your faith measured against an absolute paradigm. An objective “big” and “small.” You aren’t the seed and it isn’t just about measuring your personal faith! It is about radical transformation and expansion. The seed becomes a bush taller and broader than the neighboring trees.
The truth of faith cannot be contained by a stifling, rigid dogma. It is alive and transforming us into something new.
And that kind of transformation can be a real head trip.
Cold, hard cash
The gospel writer we call Luke is a master of revealing the head trippy nature of Jesus. Because he is always making us look at our world in a different way. He can’t just give us the blessings, can he? Nope. It’s like he’s got it already cued up.
I gave you four blessings. Now here come four woes.
And these blessings themselves are trippy.
Blessed in poverty? Hunger? Sorrow? Rejection? What? Woe to you if you are rich, full, happy, and popular? Is this a joke?
There’s a way in which this all sounds like nonsense. And you might be tempted to retreat into that other thinking. That kind of thinking which looks for the real truth. That if we can just know the proper Jesus key, we can unlock this and it will all make sense. Then we can feel better because we can understand something we now think is backward nonsense.
But don’t retreat. Come back in! We can do this.
You know I think we take Jesus way too literally and way too metaphorically. We just don’t take him very seriously.
Because blessing comes in communing with God and our neighbors and loving them all like crazy. Can you be happy with $2 in your wallet? It really is that simple. What does the cash in your hands have to do with your joy?
And this is how Jesus wedges open the door. We know joy has nothing to do with money. We can be full of joy and grace and gratitude when we have nothing. In fact, my kids’ favorite time as a family was when we were broke and I was desperate to find work. I was stressed beyond belief and feeling like a total failure and my daughter was so full of joy she could break my heart wide open.
Love of Money
But we also know that the love of money is the sin. Using money to get above someone else is sin. Stealing from others is sin. Driving our neighbors into the gutter is sin. Using ill-gotten wealth to live comfortably while the world burns is sin.
The problem isn’t money alone. It’s having an affair with money, lusting after it. Making it our God.
But it doesn’t end there. It’s what a love affair does to our family and our neighbors. And when we follow the culture’s lead, we hope everyone will just be OK with cheating. As if poverty is just an incurable fact of life and not the direct consequence of having an ever-increasing wealth at the top.
Jesus is talking about living, now.
This isn’t hypothetical or abstract. It isn’t a little brain-teaser about happy rich people getting a comeuppance in the afterlife while the oppressed get their just reward in the sweet by and by.
Nor is it a simple paradigm of embracing poverty now so we can get rich later. Like an industrious kid saving his paper route money to use compound interest to retire as a millionaire at 40. That’s another weird, rigid paradigm we put on faith.
No, Jesus is inviting us to embrace this really weird relationship with him and each other that is full of commitment and confusion, but also peace and gratitude.
And at its heart, it’s really quite simple.
Way simpler than we think. And more than that, you already know it. You know it intuitively just as much as you’ve heard Jesus say it.
We don’t have to fight. Or seek revenge. Or force our will on other people. If somebody hits us, we don’t have to hit back. We aren’t lesser if we don’t hit back. We also don’t have to damage their car, take them to court, punish them in some less direct way, either. That’s our culture talking, not Jesus.
We know what Jesus says. Don’t retaliate. But the underside of not retaliating isn’t running away. That’s how a vengeance culture justifies violence. It calls violence necessary and just. It wants us to feel good; like we’ve defended honor. We teach our children that only bad people hurt others. But also good people hurt others.
Jesus says to us No, you don’t have to do that. You aren’t a coward for not buying into violence. In fact, it’s the opposite. It is brave to love your enemies. It is brave to offer your other cheek when someone strikes this one. This is brave. Violence is the way of cowards; from a culture that props up the bullies and punishes the beautiful.
Jesus Loves
It sometimes feels like we come to church like engineers. And we’re always asking OK, what’s the process? Like we need the formula which gets the answer we need. I’ve got this situation, so what do I do?
And what we get from our book full of stories is Jesus saying There was this rich young ruler… He tells us a story! We ask him a question and he tells us stories. And he teaches us about the world as God sees it—not as the rich and powerful see it. Jesus is telling it from the ground, from the dirt. As Jesus sees it. And all he does, over and over, is tell his followers
Come! See what I see. Because I know you can see it too! YOU can see it too. I know you can. You’ve got the ability. All it takes is the desire to see it. Look at that! Isn’t God’s kin-dom more beautiful than this?
And when we see, we realize Jesus’s answer was much more complete than we realized. What do we do if somebody hits us? Don’t hit back! That is way more answer than we take it for.
Because how can you love your enemy while figuring out ways to hurt them? Or appealing to anyone who will listen, well, he hit me first. No, you both get detention.
Tradition
Our tradition once celebrated three days in a row: All Hallows, All Saints, and All Souls. We laughed in the face of death. We honored those saints who stood against a world of violence. And then we celebrated all of those who have died.
And now, as we sort of roll all of these days into one, we might miss what these three actually have to say: not just about death, but the living. We are brave people who stand against the machinery of death without a script telling us what to say or a savior speaking for us.
We face our fear of disharmony, our fear of rejection or being misunderstood, our fear of not getting it right or being left alone, our fear of being ignored or being held responsible and we speak through the faith in our hearts. A faith that does know what to say. A faith that does know enough already.
And we speak of love.
A love that’s immeasurable and eternal.
A love that’s beyond ourselves and comprehension.
Total, uncompromising love.
A love that makes fools of violence and hatred and leaves their advocates silent.
This is our tradition of brave saints like Jonathan Daniels and Ruby Sails, Kamehameha and Emma, Oscar Romero and Dorothy Day. Bravery, hope, love. This is what we offer, our answer, our way of love.
May God love you, bless you, and make you as brave in love as all the saints combined.