I have a pastor friend who tells a story about leading a Bible study focused on what he called “the hard teachings of Jesus”. His group was discussing the story of the rich young ruler in Luke 18, who came asking Jesus about how to inherit eternal life. As we pastors tend to do, he was trying to put the story in relative context. This story is not a model for everyone, right? We’re not all like that young man: we’re not all that rich, we’re not all supposed to give everything away in order to follow Jesus. And after the pastor gave a very thoughtful and nuanced interpretation of the gospel, one younger man in the group innocently asked: “Have we ever tried it? What would happen if we actually did give everything away?”
What indeed would happen if we actually did what Jesus asked us to do? If we really loved our enemies, did good to those who hate us, blessed those who curse us, prayed for those who abuse us. What if we took the blows another gave, gave to everyone even the clothes on our backs and never asked for anything in return. I confess that I can’t really answer these question, because I’ve never tried that hard. Even just last week, my family ended up in an argument about what to do about a car that had blocked our driveway. In my annoyance, I was the one who voted for towing the car. My husband, who is a much better Christian than I am, asked me “what would Jesus do?” I tried to make light of it by saying that Jesus would overturn the badly parked car. But of course John was in the right. I’m pretty sure Jesus would not want me to exact revenge on the person who had—likely unknowingly—blocked my parking space.
And most of the time, these are the kind of situations in which the ethical rubber hits the road for us. Not when we are asked to sacrificially give everything, or to love a genuine enemy who actively seeks to do us harm. Although there are enemies whose intentions are harmful, as is currently the case with Russia and Ukraine. And I have no doubt that many of you would behave heroically in circumstances of genuine risk. I know you, and I know that you are deeply compassionate, brave and generous people. And I also know God, whose relentless love is such that God will get us all to where we need to be in the end. If we don’t love, forgive, bless and pray with great abandon now, we will surely do so at the end of our lives when we kneel in awe before God’s great mercy seat.
All will be healed and forgiven in the end. Of that I am sure. And of whatever we think we need in order to feel loved and secure, there will be plenty: a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over. It will be put directly into our laps, such that we’ll recognize it as a gift of grace. It’ll be obvious that it came from God, and not from our own labors or social advantage. And that abundant grace will be available for everyone.
But God has given us more than the promise of salvation and satisfaction. God has given us his very self, as God with us. Such that even if we can’t quite see ourselves in Jesus’s teaching, we can see him there. For what did Jesus himself do, but love his enemies. This is exactly his story: the powers that be hated, cursed and abused him, quite literally. And while he had plenty of opportunity to strike back, he chose to absorb the violence of those who sought to harm him, thus interrupting the violent cycle of retribution. So while we can surely debate who Jesus’ intended audience was in the teaching we heard this morning, and whether these instructions are intended for all people at all times, what we do know for sure is that what he taught is how he lived. And we also know that we “bear the image of the man of heaven,” as Paul taught. So Jesus’ story our story because it is his story, and we are his.
But wait, there’s even more. God has given us life, and years, and Christian community together. Which is when and where we can practice the hard teachings of Jesus. In those everyday situations where we’re faced with neighbors like mine who park badly, or siblings like Joseph’s who are jealous, or fellow parishioners whose choices annoy us, or pastors like me who do things differently from my predecessor. We will disappoint each other; I will disappoint you. And this human reality gives us dozens of everyday opportunities to practice the love and forgiveness of Jesus. And while practice doesn’t necessarily always make perfect, it definitely makes us much better over time.
Here’s a helpful hack for good Christian practice. We can actually love the situations and people we don’t like. We can remove ourselves from abusive situations without mentally removing the abuser from the community of those whom we trust God to redeem. We can give without going naked. What’s much harder to do, however, is to love without listening. Which doesn’t necessarily mean sitting down and having a heart to heart with someone who has abused us.
In the safety of our own prayers, we can hold them in our hearts of love. From that compassionate stance, we can seek out their motivations. What might have prompted the behavior or decision we didn’t like? Is it possible that it had nothing at all to do with us, but instead with a deep hurt or fear or need of their own? In my experience this is far more often the case than not. Sometimes we know, or will learn, what caused the hurt or enmity between us. But even if we never know why a hurtful choice happened, we can still assume the best of each other.
As a pastor who hears confessions—a sacramental rite that is available to all of us in the Episcopal Church—I can testify that most people are not motivated by desire to hurt another, so much as by a desire to protect themselves. If we can imagine what another person’s heartfelt need might be—safety, love, security, connection, freedom—we might be able to discern what motivates them. To put this in the most everyday of terms, we might consider the possibility that the person who parked in our driveway was disabled and needed a closer parking place in order to feel safe walking at night.
Of course I don’t know that for sure. I didn’t get to talk to them before they kindly moved the car, with the help of some polite notes written by people in my family who are nicer than me. But by giving the person who offended me the benefit of the doubt, I give myself the benefit of greater compassion, which is what Jesus calls us manifest towards each other. Every. Single. Day.
So let’s keep practicing Jesus’ teaching, friends. Practice is our job. Perfection is what God will do to and through us, usually with the help of time and more than a few mistakes and course corrections along the way. Remember that when Jesus descended to the plain to speak his challenging words, he did so with the intention of healing every one who listened, both the blessed and the woeful. And as last week’s Gospel reminded us, power flowed out of him. As it flows out to each of us, even now. Reminding us that we don’t have to do this discipleship thing under our own steam. We can always turn to the one who himself showed us how to live.
There’s a ritual, in our oldest known baptismal rites, of the adults being baptized making a physical turn away from the church door towards the cross, as a sign of their commitment to new life in Christ. Some of our churches preserve that tradition by encouraging people to make a physical turn at the creed. Of course that depends somewhat on where you are facing during worship. You already face one of the many crosses in our church, and perhaps you already bow as an act of reverence. Recall that we bow not to the altar but to the cross. Take a moment, if you like, to look toward a cross in this space that moves your heart Christ-ward. And if you’d like to make a turn or a bow during while we say the Nicene Creed, I’ll be praying that you receive all the power that Jesus longs to give you, for a more faithful Christian practice.
