posts — Page 23 — Andy James

The Stories That Define Us: Abraham

March 16, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on Genesis 12:1-9 and Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
preached on March 16, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

There’s an old song I learned back in Sunday school:

Father Abraham had many sons,
many sons had Father Abraham.
I am one of them, and so are you,
so let’s just praise the Lord.

Now we are clearly not all “sons” of Abraham—some of us are daughters of Abraham, after all!—but this simple song reminds us that Abraham is one of the most important characters in the Old Testament. His story is an important part of our story. His story defines us, too.

Abraham started out as the man named Abram in our reading from Genesis this morning. Abram seemed to be a pretty average older fellow, seventy-five years old, who had no children or grandchildren. For some unknown reason, God reached out to Abram at his advanced age and made him quite an offer:

Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing… In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

There’s no clear reason for why God chose Abram. He wasn’t exactly in the prime of life to make a long journey, let alone father a great nation. His family at that point consisted of a wife who was unable to bear children, a nephew who seemed to stand at the center of controversy wherever he went, and the women and men who were his property. And Abram was pretty well settled in his home and life at that point, with extensive possessions and people around him, so there was no reason for him to go anywhere. All in all, Abram wouldn’t have been my first choice to receive the great fullness of God’s blessing, so it’s almost as if several others had been approached and turned it all down! Yet for whatever reason, God chose Abram to receive this promise of something new.

But nearly as important as God’s choice in all this was Abram’s response. After God gave him this command, Abram picked up his possessions, his small family, his slaves, and his animals, and set out on this journey. It was a pretty crazy move. Nowadays, people think very little of moving across the country, away from family and friends, but even one hundred years ago, a journey of 400 miles as Abram made would have been very difficult. First off, long-distance travel was not easy. The roads were focused on commerce, so a family on the move would have been very much out of place and would have faced some real danger along the road. But once they got “to the place that [God showed them],” it didn’t get any easier. The place wasn’t empty— “the Canaanites were in the land,” and Abram and his family couldn’t just buy it up with the proceeds from the land they had left. But Abram didn’t turn back—he built an altar to the Lord there at his first stop, then traveled on further, pitched his tent, and built another altar to the Lord as he “journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb.”

That of course is not the end of Abram’s story. God continues to work in his life to keep changing things for him. His journeys take him a little further, into Egypt, before he finally settles back in Canaan. He receives a new name, Abraham, that indicates how God’s promises are taking hold in his life. And he and his beloved wife finally bear a son in their old age who is the firstborn of the promised great nation. In the end, Abraham’s journey covers hundreds of miles and many, many years, but it ultimately reflects the deep and wide promises that God offered to him and that carry through the centuries of Judaism and Christianity.

Abraham’s story matters for us in a wide variety of ways. Now there are certainly some elements of it that are more problematic, such as the promise of land in Genesis 14 that continues to inflame relations between Israelis and Palestinians today, the truly shameful way in which Abram tossed out his slave Hagar and their son Ishmael, and the disturbing tale of how Abraham followed God’s instructions so carefully and so far that very nearly he offered his beloved son as a human sacrifice to God. But the broader story of God’s promise to Abraham and Abraham’s subsequent response is one of the great defining stories of faith for us even today. It gives us three particular gifts for our own day and age, for our own walk of faith in this world.

First, God’s promise to Abraham shows us how God’s transformation can take hold in our world. Things do not have to remain as they are now, even if we don’t quite know how they will change or where we are going. We like Abraham can listen for God’s call and journey forth into a new and different way of life. We can encounter something deeper and greater than what we have known before. We can stop being defined by what has come before and instead trust that God will unfold a new future for us.

That new future holds the second great gift of Abraham for our lives of faith today, the gift of the journey. On this journey of Lent, I’ve been paying particular attention to the daily devotional that we’ve been sharing, Too Deep for Words. This past Tuesday, it offered a beautiful reflection on the gift of Abraham’s journey. First it lifted up the simple prayer of modern monk and mystic Thomas Merton:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself…. I hope that I will never do anything apart from [my] desire [to please you]. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. (Thoughts in Solitude)

Then the writer for the day looked further at this how this journey affects us:

However the Spirit spoke to Abraham, he followed the voice on an unlikely journey to a place he’d never seen, trusting God’s promise that blessing would come if he’d only follow. I doubt he saw many cairns, trail markers, as he trudged along looking for his new home, but his life is a cairn for us, showing us the right way, the way of faith. He did not know what each day would bring or where he was going. He simply put one foot ahead of the other, trusting that God was guiding him and would fulfill the promise, even on days it didn’t seem likely. (David L. Miller, Too Deep for Words: Reflections for Lent 2014, p. 17)

So Abraham gifts us with the possibility of a journey in our own lives, following God into unknown places, trusting a new and different way, looking for signs and markers of God’s presence, and filled with confidence that we are not the first to journey this new way.

But strangely and wonderfully, we are more than just people of promise and journey. Abraham’s third gift to us is family. We are people defined so well by that strange little song about Father Abraham, united by this common parent, linked with one another and all the families of the earth as we live out God’s blessing. Again, our Lenten devotional put it so beautifully:

Centuries separate us from Abraham, but we are all his children. Our situation is the same. We go our way trusting the great heart who launched us on life’s journey, joined with others who help us keep the faith when we waver. (David L. Miller, Too Deep for Words: Reflections for Lent 2014, p. 19)

All of these gifts are signified so well in today’s service as we ordain and install our ruling elders and deacons. In this strange and wonderful moment, we watch as God’s promises take hold in our midst as new leaders step forward and are set apart. Like Abraham, we trust that God’s call in our lives is enough to carry us through to places that we have not yet seen. And in this strange act of the laying on of hands, we are bound together with Abraham and so many other saints to know God’s continuing presence as we go forth on this journey of service and life together.

It is a gift and a challenge to walk in these ways, the gift of God’s grace and the challenge of God’s love to go forth into something new, but we can trust always that we will not journey this way alone, that Abraham and so many others have gone this way before us and that God will go with us just as God has gone with them. So may we trust the gift and challenge of God’s grace and mercy to be like Abraham, to trust that God’s promises for us are real, to step out and journey into that something new, and to remember that there are always companions with us on that journey. Thanks be to God! Amen.

The Stories That Define Us

March 9, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7 and Matthew 4:1-11
preached on March 9, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

When I was seven years old, my grandparents took me to Minnesota and North Dakota to meet their family that lived there. It was quite a memorable trip. Beyond meeting some people that my family talks about regularly but don’t often see, those two weeks together cemented an already-close relationship with my grandparents that continued until their death. We also visited some pretty incredible places, like the Lake of the Woods in northern Minnesota, the most northerly point in the lower 48 states, that you can only reach by land from Canada, and Lake Itasca, the headwaters of the Mississippi River. Near Lake Itasca, in Bemidji, Minnesota, we visited a giant statue of Paul Bunyan and Babe, his blue ox—supposedly the second-most photographed statue in the United States, after only Mount Rushmore! The myth of Paul Bunyan and Babe suggests that the 10,000 lakes of Minnesota were formed by Paul and Babe’s footprints as they wandered around during a nasty blizzard—and that the Great Lakes were created by Paul as a watering hole for Babe!

The stories of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox stand in a long line of human stories that intend to tell us how things came to be as they are—stories somewhat like what we heard in our reading from Genesis this morning. These biblical stories carry a very different kind of truth than fables like Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox, for they tell us not how some natural phenomenon came to exist but how we came to be as we are with God and one another. The Old Testament stories that will serve as our primary Lenten texts over the next five weeks recount some of the great figures of the Bible who are important in our story as the people of God.

Adam, Abraham, Moses, David, Ezekiel—all these great figures tell us something about who we are and how God relates to us and help us connect more fully to the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. These stories, much like but even more than the story of my trip to North Dakota and Minnesota with my grandparents or the stories of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox, ultimately are the stories that define who we are.

Today’s story of the temptation of Adam and Eve in the garden is quite possibly one of the best-known stories in the Bible. It carries so many important questions into our own time as it tries to explain not just how woman and man were forced out of the Garden of Eden and into the world, how pain appeared in childbirth, how women must be subject to men, or even how we came to wear clothes to cover our private parts. Most importantly, it tries to explain the origin of our human sin.

But wait a minute—did you ever hear the word “sin” in our reading this morning? Actually, that word doesn’t show up anywhere in this passage from Genesis! No—in these verses we simply hear about how God instructs Adam on what to eat in the garden and makes it clear that there is one tree whose fruit is forbidden. The story then turns to the woman’s temptation by the serpent, who tricks her into thinking that God’s instruction can be ignored for one reason or another, that the forbidden fruit was good, and that if she ate it, her eyes would be opened to “be like God, knowing good and evil.” The serpent was partially right: the fruit of that tree at the center of the garden was good, and their eyes were opened when they ate it, but he was very wrong in suggesting that God’s instruction could be ignored. Our reading this morning cuts off God’s extended statement of the consequences of this action, but it is still very clear that everything has changed for humanity through this one act of disobedience.

For centuries, Christians have used this story to define us as sinful people, to describe our so-called “original sin.” Sin is so deeply ingrained in us and our world, beginning with this story of Adam and Eve, that even the psalmist could write, “Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.” It is tempting to focus our energies in thinking about this topic by trying to figure out how this sin is transmitted from generation to generation, but I think it is more important to focus on what this “original sin” means, as Presbyterian minister and writer Frederick Buechner does in his definition:

‘Original Sin’ means we all originate out of a sinful world which taints us from the word go. We all tend to make ourselves the center of the universe, pushing away centrifugally from that center everything that seems to impede its freewheeling. More even than hunger, poverty, or disease, it is what Jesus said he came to save the world from. (Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, p. 89)

Another way of thinking about this original sin is to recognize that Adam and Eve’s story is our story, too. Over and over again, like Adam and Eve, we too ignore God’s instructions and forget that God is the source of all that we have and all that we are. Over and over again, we too put ourselves at the center of things and exclude God and others from our self-centered lives. And over and over again, we find new ways to live all this sin out in our world—or as John Calvin puts it,

This perversity never ceases in us, but continually bears new fruits—the works of the flesh…—just as a burning furnace gives forth flame and sparks, or water ceaselessly bubbles up from a spring. (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, II.1.8)

Adam and Eve’s story defines us more than we will ever fully understand, and there is clearly nothing we can do to change that.

But then Jesus enters the story. In three of the four gospel accounts, Jesus begins his ministry only after a strange period of testing and temptation as we heard about in our reading from the gospel according to Matthew. Just as the human story begins with the tempter winning, Jesus’ story begins with the tempter being defeated. After Jesus fasts and prays for forty days, the devil goes after him in three potent ways, appealing to Jesus’ physical hunger, his vulnerability in the wilderness, and a seemingly natural human desire for power and prestige. Jesus never buys the tempter’s wares, instead feasting on the word of God, trusting in the safety of God’s presence, and taking greater comfort in worshiping God alone.

In these three moves, Jesus turns the tables on sin and makes a new way forward possible for us. These are only three small victories, three initial moments where he manages to conquer the evil intent of the devil, but these three victories set the stage for everything to change as his story progresses. After these challenges, even Jesus still faces the temptations of life in the world, but in his death and resurrection God shifts things once and for all, showing us that the self-destruction we bring upon ourselves over and over again is not the end of the story, changing things not for those who are perfect but as theologian Shirley Guthrie says “precisely [for] people who are dead in and as a consequence of their sinfulness” (Christian Doctrine, p. 227).

When we put the temptations of our world alongside our natural propensity to sin, we have a truly horrid combination that can easily define us. We easily combine our very natural tendency to put ourselves at the center with the possibility of exploiting others for our own gain. We so easily take advantage of the freedom made possible for us in Christ by pushing the limits and ending up more distant from God and one another than we could ever imagine. And we so easily slip deeper and deeper into the possibilities of sin that we become mired in the brokenness that quickly spreads into all that we say and do—and into others around us.

Yet Jesus changes the story that defines us. He doesn’t take it away or give it an unnaturally happy ending—he gives us a new story to stand at the center of things. Because of his life, death, and resurrection, we do not have to be defined by the story of our original sin. While we still may not be able to escape our sin that keeps pushing us away from the center, we can trust that God has conquered sin once and for all in Jesus Christ and has sought us out to make us and our world different. While we may not be able to overcome the temptations of this world on our own, we can be certain that God gives us the possibility of repentance and hope. And while we may not be able to fully set aside this very human tendency toward sin, we can have faith that God will give us grace enough to face each day anew, to walk the Lenten road with a new bit of hope each day, to seek a new freedom in the new beginning we share with Christ as we too emerge from the wilderness into the world.

So may these stories that define us, that explain us, that tell us who we are, remind us of our need of God’s grace and show us the depth and breadth of God’s mercy so that we can live in this divine love shown so freely in Jesus Christ and share it with the world each and every day. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Empty

March 5, 2014 By Andy James

a meditation on 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10 for Ash Wednesday
offered on March 5, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

There are many joys of my life in ministry—the gift of celebrating together when there is good news in life or in church, the strange pleasure of preparing meaningful worship for each Sunday, the possibility of being a part of God’s new thing that is always emerging in every community of faith and the world.

But all that joy doesn’t mean that there aren’t some challenges, too. Sometimes my humanity is on full and complete display and I’m just empty. Sometimes there are challenges that leave us with no words to say or no action to take. Sometimes there simply isn’t an easy way to keep going forward. Sometimes there is nothing more to do than to turn to God and pray for a new way to open up.

Ultimately, that’s what Ash Wednesday is about: about recognizing our emptiness, about acknowledging our brokenness, about reaching out to God to seek and find a new way. On this holy day, we “remember that we are dust, and to dust we shall return.” We remember that our life is finite, with a beginning and an end. We remember that our capabilities in this life are even more limited. We remember that our brokenness exceeds our wholeness. And we remember that our lives are so often—too often—filled with emptiness.

Even amidst any desolation in our lives, this sacred day reminds us that the story does not end like this. In our reading from Second Corinthians tonight, Paul makes it clear that God fills our emptiness, that God brings us from the place of death into new life. This is an amazing gift, as Paul says:

We are treated as impostors, and yet are true;
as unknown, and yet are well known;
as dying, and see—we are alive;
as punished, and yet not killed;
as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing;
as poor, yet making many rich;
as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

All that seems to us to be nothingness—all the sin that separates us from God and one another, all the darkness that tears us away from the light, all the brokenness that keeps us from being whole, all the emptiness that longs to be filled—God steps into all our nothingness and makes it something-ness. God fills our emptiness with the abiding presence of God’s love. God takes all our broken pieces and puts them back together more beautifully than they were before. God sends the light of Christ to shine on us and shake the darkness from around us. And God takes our sin in Christ and brings us back together with God and with one another. Paul says it so beautifully and so simply: “For our sake [God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” In Christ we find all that we need to be made whole, and in Christ we are reconciled with one another and with God.

So as we remember that we are dust tonight and go forth into the wilderness of these forty days of Lent, may God’s love fill all our emptiness, may God’s grace enter all our brokenness, and may God’s example in Christ show us the way forward through death and resurrection, this Lent and always. Amen.

The View from the Mountaintop

March 2, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on Matthew 17:1-9 and 2 Peter 1:16-21
preached on Transfiguration Sunday, March 2, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

There’s nothing quite like the view from a mountaintop. Some of you have been with me to see the view from atop Bear Mountain, only some forty-five miles from here, so you know that it is quite a memorable scene. The vista stretches across the Appalachians to the west, up to and past West Point looking north, down along the beautiful Hudson River and across to Connecticut to the east, and finally all the way back down to the Manhattan skyline. It’s one of the most unusual and surprising sights of nature within a short drive from here! But even if you can’t travel that far, there’s an incredible panoramic view of the Manhattan skyline just a few blocks from here on one of the highest hills in Whitestone!

This incredible view from mountaintops has made them an important place for people for many centuries. In earlier times, while the difficulty of building on top of a mountain made using them for cities difficult, the highest points of the landscape were always most suitable for castles and fortresses because it made it easier to see the enemy coming. Beyond their beauty and practicality, mountaintops have also been important places of spiritual life and insight in many cultures and religious traditions. In Greek mythology, many of the gods made their homes and assembled for divine gatherings on Mount Olympus. The mountainous areas of Nepal, Tibet, and India, nestled among the highest peaks of the world’s mountains in the Himalayas, are also home to countless monasteries and the cradles of Hinduism and Buddhism. One sherpa there, a mountain guide for climbers of the highest peaks in the world, told the Times last year, “Mountains, to us, are holy.”

And in the Bible, these holy mountains are everywhere! Moses encountered God again and again on mountaintops, first in a burning bush atop Mount Horeb to receive instruction to return to Egypt and lead the Israelites out of slavery to the Promised Land, then in fire and smoke atop Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments, and finally in the clear air atop Mount Nebo, where he could see the Promised Land that he would never inhabit. Various mountains figure especially prominently in the Psalms, culminating in the comforting words of Psalm 121:

I lift up my eyes to the hills—
from where will my help come?

My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.

And the great city of Jerusalem was built atop a hill, with a climb steep enough—and holy enough—to merit a particular set of verbs in Hebrew that indicate that one is “going up to Jerusalem” or “coming down from Jerusalem.”

Even with all these holy mountains throughout scripture, the greatest view from a mountaintop in the Bible comes in the transfiguration of Jesus, recounted for us in our reading this morning from the gospel according to Matthew. Each year, this story leads us into Lent as Jesus makes his way down the mountain from this brief moment of exaltation toward his execution at the hands of the religious and political leaders of his day and finally to his resurrection to new life. Like any mountaintop view, the view from the top matters immensely.

As Matthew tells it, Jesus took three of his disciples on a hike up a mountain by themselves. Once they reached the top, something happened to Jesus. Exactly what happened isn’t clear—“transfiguration” is a word that just doesn’t have much reference beyond this context!—but Matthew does tell us that “his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.” But this change in appearance was only the beginning of it all, for Jesus and the disciples were soon joined by Moses and Elijah, who came to talk with Jesus. Then, in one of those moments that makes Peter the most loveably stupid of the disciples, he offered a classic ridiculous suggestion:

Master, this is a great moment! What would you think if I built three memorials here on the mountain–one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah? (The Message)

Peter’s absurd suggestion was soon drowned out by a voice from a cloud that had suddenly overshadowed them, proclaiming,

This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!

Jesus had of course heard these words once before, at his baptism by John in the Jordan, but now his divine being and calling were being made clear to others, too. The disciples didn’t know what to do. The view from this mountaintop had shifted quickly from a beautiful landscape to an incredible declaration of God’s glory, so “they fell to the ground” but then were also overcome by fear. Jesus told them to get up, not to be afraid of this strange gathering on this unexpectedly holy place, but when they got up, Jesus was alone by himself with them. As they headed back down the mountain, Jesus told them to keep quiet about what they had seen—at least “until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

Now the other thing about views from mountaintops beyond their beauty is that they can vary dramatically. I grew up going every few years to the Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina, and they were appropriately named not because of any smokestacks around but because of the fog that could appear out of nowhere and turn a clear day into a gray mess. Nearly every mountain has this sort of changing view. When the weather is clear, the view is spectacular, but if it is foggy, rainy, snowy, or anything else, you might as well be in the valley because you aren’t going to see anything of any importance.

So on this Transfiguration Sunday, what is our view from this mountaintop? Does this story and this vista make something about Jesus more clear than it was before? Is the view from this high and holy place clear or cloudy as we look to the things behind us and before us? Can we see and understand the gifts that God is placing before us in these days and respond with joy and gladness? Do we have the confidence in God’s mercy and grace to journey the Lenten road with Jesus and trust that we will find our way to more mountaintops ahead—to the Mount of Olives to pray with Jesus and the disciples, to Golgotha to share in the despair of death, and finally after the resurrection to the mount of the Ascension to witness Jesus’ return to glory? Will we do as Second Peter suggests and pay attention to this mountaintop view “as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts”?

Now there will surely be days on this journey when our view is not very clear, when the pathway to the summit is not easy, when what happens there is confusing or uncertain, when we start babbling incessantly about nothingness like Peter, when we fall down in fear and wait for Jesus to come and touch us and tell us that there is no reason for us to be afraid. Yet still, slowly but surely, the Spirit opens our eyes to the incredible view from the mountaintop, a vision of Jesus Christ, transfigured and transformed, making a way through all the wilderness of our world so that we too can be made new.

So today as we make our way to this table, to this little mountaintop where we too are promised a glimpse of God’s glory in Jesus Christ, may the Spirit clear our view from the mountaintop so that we can go forth as transfigured people ourselves, shining forth the glory of God in all that we say and do until the transformation of all things begun in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is complete and all things are made new.

Lord, come quickly! Alleluia! Amen.

Challenge and Hope

February 23, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on 1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23 and Matthew 5:38-48
preached on February 23, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Christ is made the sure foundation, Christ the head and cornerstone.

Those are such wonderful and important words from our last hymn, such important statements of our faith that help us describe God’s presence in our lives, such seemingly simple approaches to belief that will help us fit into what God is doing in our lives and in our world. These great words dating from the medieval church echo the wonderful words of the apostle Paul from our first reading this morning that help us to identify the source and foundation of all that we live and all that we believe—yet that too often leave us thinking that the pathway to following Christ is easy.

The bigger reality is that our two readings this morning from Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth and from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as recorded in the gospel according to Matthew both tell us that it will be hard to follow Jesus in our world. First, Paul insists that the way of life in Jesus Christ doesn’t fit into the ways of the world. We are holy temples, he says, built on the foundation of Jesus Christ, and God will defend that temple against any worldly enemy. But even more, he declares that the wisdom of this world is not wisdom in God’s eyes:

Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.

Paul suggests that we must set aside even our best attempts at our own wisdom and instead trust that God will guide us. In this, then, we will gain so much more, for “all belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.”

But if that challenge weren’t enough to make our faith difficult, today the Lectionary also guides us to one of the most difficult portions of Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. As one commentator describes it, “The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus at his ornery best: offering ‘advice’ that makes no sense divorced from the nature of the one giving it.” (Jason Byassee, “Theological Perspective on Matthew 5:38-48,” Feasting on the Word Year A, Volume 1, p. 382.)

Here Jesus instructs the large crowd who had gathered to hear him teach that they must change their ways. He first suggests that we must set aside our hopes for vengeance and instead seek transformation and reconciliation. His instruction here is not easy to hear:

If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.

This is dramatically different from our human instinct. We seek self-protection at every turn rather than risking our safety to bring the possibility of transforming those who attack us. We hoard what we have rather than offer from our abundance to respond to the needs of others. And we do only what is absolutely required rather than literally going the extra mile for anyone.

If all that weren’t enough to scare us away from following Jesus, we need only continue to Jesus’ second instruction:

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

Some days it is hard enough for me to love my friends, let alone even begin to think of loving my enemies! But here Jesus insists that even the deepest-seated enmity must be addressed not through ever-more-hardened hearts but through love and grace for everyone. Then he sums it all up with the most challenging words of all:

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

For our great foundation, our head and cornerstone, to insist on this way of life is quite a challenge. Setting aside the wisdom of the world, approaching enmity with hope for transformation, praying for our enemies, even being perfect—all these things go against the grain for us, and our initial response is all too likely to try to give up on it all. Commentator Jason Byassee clarifies the challenge—and the solution:

We are called here to love as God loves. This cannot be done out of our own resources. So this is no admonition to try harder—if it were, it would indeed be recipe for despair. It is a plan of action rooted in the promise to be made ‘children of your Father in heaven’ (v. 45). The Sermon [on the Mount] here and elsewhere is a portrait of the very heart of God, one who loves the unlovable, comes among us in Christ, suffers our worst, and rises to forgive us. Turn the cheek, give the cloak, go another mile, lend, love the enemy—because that is how God loves. If you want to follow this God, fleshed in Jesus, you will be adopted into a life in which you find yourself loving this way before you know what you are doing. (Jason Byassee, “Theological Perspective on Matthew 5:38-48,” Feasting on the Word Year A, Volume 1, p. 382.)

As some of you know, I spent a good bit of my college coursework studying and thinking about the Civil Rights Movement, and I’m still learning about this incredible time in our nation’s history. I am increasingly convinced that this movement was one of the great embodiments of these challenging texts. The Civil Rights Movement set aside the wisdom of the world that encouraged patience and careful obedience to the rules and replaced it with a worldview that said that civil disobedience would call appropriate attention to the unjust system of racial segregation that bordered on apartheid. The philosophy of nonviolence that prevailed through so much of the Civil Rights Movement was built on these very words of Jesus that sought to transform violence against African Americans into real and direct action against injustice. Throughout the Civil Rights Movement, women and men built up the spiritual capacity to turn the other cheek, to offer more than what was unjustly requested of them, to go beyond the basic expectations, to love those who were declared enemies, even to pray for those who persecuted them. All this love for the other was grounded not in digging into one’s own personal resources but in the foundation of God in Jesus Christ.

These ideas echoed throughout the movement. Whenever organizers were planning and executing direct action campaigns, participants gathered in regular mass meetings that resembled revivals as much anything, encouraging the community to stand firm amidst the challenges of the world and instead turn the other cheek, pray for the enemy, and give of everything that they had.

During the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956, as he stood on the porch of his parsonage that had been bombed just hours before, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., suggested that these ideas of Jesus ought to be made real.

Let’s not become panicky. If you have weapons, take them home; if you do not have them, please do not seek to get them. We cannot solve this problem through retaliatory violence. Remember the words of Jesus: ‘He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword.’ Remember that is what God said. We must love our white brothers, no matter what they do to us. We must make them know that we love them. Jesus still cries out in words that echo across the centuries: ‘Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; pray for them that despitefully use you.’ This is what we must live by. We must meet hate with love. (quoted in Charles Marsh, The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, from the Civil Rights Movement to Today, p. 37-38)

And even years later, an African-American activist who had faced the worst of white treatment and persecution made her understanding of Jesus’ message clear:

Of course, there is no way I can hate anybody and hope to see God’s face. (Lou Emma Allen, quoted in Charles M. Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle, p. 309.)

These challenging and hopeful words of Paul and of Jesus, then, have been and continue to be a real challenge to us. Every day, we are called to set aside the wisdom of the world and insist that there is a deeper and better way in Christ Jesus. Every day, we are called to turn the other cheek and offer even more than what is asked of us. Every day, we are called not to work against our enemies but to seek God’s transformation of them and us and our whole world as we work to embody God’s amazing grace and love. It seems almost impossible to “be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Yet while it may be impossible for us, “nothing is impossible with God”—and God is working in us and through us and in spite of us to bring about this perfection in our lives and in our world.

So may we join in this difficult but certain work of transformation and new creation each and every day, strengthened by the love of God that makes it possible for us to be something more than we have been, empowered by the grace of God that shows us the depth of mercy gifted us in Jesus Christ, and guided by the light of God that shines on us and shows us the way to join in this work in our lives and our world. Thanks be to God for this incredible challenge and hope! Amen.