Love Our Enemies? Proper 8C

 

The Primacy of Love: Love Our Enemies?

“When the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”[i] He sets off with purpose and intention. Unlike the rest of his countrymen, he decides to go through Samaria as the most direct route to get to what he knows will be a showdown with both the religious authorities and civil authorities in Jerusalem – literally, “City of Shalom, City of Peace.” Jesus sends messengers ahead, but they did not “receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem.”

 

Although the Jews and Samaritans worshipped the One God and shared a common ancestry, they had been divided for centuries over where one is to worship the One God. Jesus could have gone around the Samaritan region, but chooses to give it a chance. Nevertheless, his presence is rebuffed, rebuked. His messengers, James and John, “the sons of Thunder,” want to rain down fire and destruction on the inhospitable Samaritans. Jesus rebukes them. “But,” say the brothers, “they are the ones rebuking you! Why are your rebuking us? It’s what Elijah would do – what he did do to the prophets of Baal.”

 

Jesus tells them to look at their wrist bands – “Take off those WWED – what would Elijah do – wrist bands. Put on this WWJRD – What Would Jesus Really Do – wrist band and remember that I said we are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us! It’s time for love, not fire and destruction! I have an appointment to make in Jerusalem. Let’s keep going forward. And, repeat after me, “We are Sons of Love, not Sons of Thunder!”

 

Seriously, I ask myself, this is the Lesson we are given after a week like we have just been through? I am always amazed at how the Revised Common Lectionary so often does this at just the right moment.

 

As Mike Royko, a columnist in Chicago when I was growing up, used to say, “I may be wrong, but I doubt it.” If we thought the country was divided a week ago, consider: two more bombshell hearings of the January 6 commission, the Supreme Court decides all people should have the right to conceal carry  deadly weapons, and then turns around and demolishes the rights that have been in place for nearly 50 years striking down Roe v Wade. It is a week that makes the Hatfield and McCoy-like dispute between Jerusalem and Samaria look pretty tame.

 

Our texts as they confront us this week seem to be asking: are we going to be reflexive, retributive and reactionary like the Sons of Thunder? Or, are we going to take Jesus seriously and love our enemies and keep going forward, one day and one step at a time? Is it time for fire and destruction? Or, is it time for the mercy, forgiveness and steadfast love of the Lord God and our neighbors? All neighbors, enemies included.

 

No matter where one stands on all of these issues, it is time to find out what the love of God and love of neighbor really truly must look like. Jesus recognizes that standing off against one another does not help us to encourage light and life for all persons. Does not help us to strive for justice and peace for all persons. Does not help us to respect the dignity of every single human being.

Paul reminds us that to walk with Christ is freedom.  True freedom. Not to do whatever I want to do, but to do what Christ does, and greater things than these. This will lead us to serve others as he always does.[ii]

 

At times like this I find myself recalling Pastor Martin Niemoller who spent seven years in concentration camps for publicly opposing Adolph Hitler. When the war was over, he said this:

 

First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

 

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.

 

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

 

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

 

In every era one can insert the names of groups being threatened and Neimoller’s challenge remains the same. It seems it is always time to set one’s face to go to Jerusalem.

 

May God the Father, Jesus his Son and the Holy Spirit help us and guide us to learn what it means to love our neighbor, including our enemies. The future of the Republic depends on our walking with Jesus on His Way to Jerusalem, The Way toward Resurrection and New Life for all. Amen.

 

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[i] Luke 9:51-62

[ii] Galatians 5:1,13-25

Proper 7C I Don't Have a Home in This World Anymore

 

I don’t have a home in this world anymore….

Thursday, June 16, 2022 began like any other day for the people of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Vestavia Hills, Birmingham, Alabama: a parish group of pilgrims led by their rector, The Reverend John Buruss, began walking in the footsteps of Paul in Athens and Corinth, Greece; The Reverend Katherine Harper led a Live-Stream of Morning Prayer; others, no doubt, were preparing for the evening’s upcoming pot-luck supper. Later that evening, at St. Stephen’s, and for many throughout the country, life was changed by a senseless act of violence that took the lives of three people at the supper. In the words of rector John Buruss+, “hearts are broken…and I cannot begin to fathom how painful this is for our entire church, and the larger community.” I once attended a luncheon in a church basement where the guest speaker observed that wherever there is pain somewhere in the Church, we all hurt. It is safe to say this is true in the world, not just the Church. With each mass-shooting event, there are thousands, if not millions for whom the pain and grief is present, almost as if they were there.

 

Having been through a similar event ten years ago at St Peter’s Ellicott City, the seemingly never- ending onslaught of such mass-shooting events means the triggers that result from the trauma of such an event fire-off: immediately sometimes, and in delay other times. Lately, given Buffalo, Uvalde, and now St. Stephen’s, those triggers have no time to reset. In 2022 alone there have been more than one mass-shooting event per day. Every day. After hearing about St. Stephen’s, I reached out to a friend who is from Birmingham and who was also at St. Peter’s when a man walked into our office, shot and killed my two closest colleagues in ministry: Brenda Brewington and The Reverend Mary-Marguerite Kohn. She knows people at St. Stephen’s. After we talked, I proceeded to swim laps in the pool to work off some of the anxiety that was building up in me – PTSD can be a whole-body, mind and soul experience. I then pushed myself to post a Live-Stream Prayer Service for St. Stephen’s, with prayers and a Psalm from the Book of Common Prayer. It was an act of self-care as much as an outreach to others who might need a few words of strength to continue their own day upon hearing the news.

 

A diocesan official texted to see how I was doing, who also knows people at St. Stephen’s. Someone else called to check in. Then I did what I most often do at such times: I picked up my guitar and began to play My Heart with Filled with Love by Joyce Andersen, Mercy Now by Mary Gauthier, and I Ain’t Got No Home in This World Anymore by Woody Guthrie. It can feel like that for survivors of these mass-shooting events. The reality is, we are all survivors. I was recently asked if survivor’s guilt is a real thing. It is.

 

For Sunday, I was planning to pick up on the theme of “Going Home” at the end of this week’s gospel, Luke 8:26-39. Jesus invites the crowd of disciples traveling with him to visit a man in Gentile territory so possessed by demons who had been chained with no clothes in a tomb far away from his home town. Jesus restores him to his right mind. When his neighbors see him now clothed and in his right mind we are told, “they were afraid.” More afraid than when he was possessed and they removed him from town. Understandably, the man wants to travel with Jesus and his companions, but Jesus says to him, "Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you." We all need to return home.  It is Augustine who reminds us, “Lord God, our hearts are restless until we find our home in thee.”

 

Whether or not I am in my right mind is open to interpretation, but it is this instruction that leads me to share all of this with all who care to listen. The implications of an event like that at St. Stephen’s or St. Peter’s, or Buffalo and Uvalde and, and and, is far reaching. Each event, of which there have been more than one for each day of this year, triggers a crisis of faith and of feelings and a sense of déjà vu for countless numbers of people throughout our church and throughout our country. To quote a friend of Woody’s, “when will it ever end, when will it ever end.” [Pete Seeger] By which I mean, when will we stop the tsunami of guns, including weapons of warfare, into our society?

 

I write. I sing. I run. I swim. And I am fortunate there are those who know my survivor-story that call or text or email to see how I am doing each time. Checking in on one another is God’s way of making a difference. This is how I have learned to cope over the past decade. I invite you to sing along, or listen, or call your congress person or senator, or call someone you know is hurting today, or whatever helps you to sleep after each time we re-live one mass-shooting event after another. We are all of us survivors over and over again. As the old spiritual says, “I sing, because I’m happy/ and I sing because I’m free/ his eye is on the sparrow/ and I know he’s watching over me….” Sing for St. Stephen’s and everyone everywhere who carries the burden of the endless carnage that ravishes our good land. We are all looking for home in the steadfast love of God and one another. This is what God has done for me. Share with others what God in Christ as done for you. It will make you and all of us whole once again. Which is what healing is all about: wholeness and love. As it is for the man in the story – there is a home for us in this world when we walk together as children of God.

You Are Home

 

Be unbound

Go back to your home

 

You are free

You are whole

You are loved

You are home once again

You are home

 

Be made whole

You are no longer alone

 

You are free

You are whole

You are loved

You are home once again

You are home

You are home

You are home, once again

 

Copyright Sounds Divine

Kirk Kubicek

You Are Home Once Again

Pentecost 2022 - The Primacy of Love

 

Pentecost 2022-The Primacy of Love

The essence of Pentecost and the Good News of Jesus is: We come from Love – We return to Love – We belong to Love – Love is All Around! God is Love. We belong to Love!

 

The feast of Pentecost was an Israelite spring harvest festival that also celebrated a renewal of the peoples’ Covenant with the God of the Passover-Exodus event. As a group of 120 frightened men and women from Galilee were hiding from the Jerusalem and Roman authorities, the Spirt arrives with a sound “like wind,” and something “like fire.” This recalls that the Spirit descended upon Jesus at his baptism “like a dove.” There was no dove, no wind or fire, and no words to describe what it was like that day in Jerusalem. Jesus’s baptism and Pentecost were such mighty and mysterious events that there are no words to adequately describe them! Storyteller Luke must resort to figures of speech that can only suggest the arrival of the Spirit is “like” wind, fire and a dove.

 

We also note that these events were not personal inner experiences – but rather an outpouring of God’s energy that touches everyone present! All those visitors from all those other countries were astonished!  Someone who attends our Noonday Prayer likened it all as “an astonishing miracle of overwhelming grace!” Like the crowd in Jerusalem at 9:00am that morning of Pentecost, we ask ourselves, “What does this mean?”

 

It means that all people from all over the world, from every nation, every tribe, every family, are people of the Spirit – the Spirit of Love! At his baptism, Jesus hears a voice declare, “You are my Beloved – I am well pleased with you!” I have long believed that when we are baptized, there are Seraphim and Cherubim whispering in our ears, “You are God’s Beloved! God is well pleased with you!” We are God’s Beloved! God is well pleased with us! This is the Good News! Every day we wake up we are forgiven, we are loved and can begin again – renewed, revived to return to God’s way of Love as described in our Covenant promises to seek and serve Christ in all persons, and to strive for justice and peace for all persons. All persons are worthy of God’s love.

 

Martyr and Saint, Archbishop Oscar Romero once said it like this: "Each of us has an individual greatness. God would not be our author if we were something worthless. 

You and I and all of us are worth very much, because we are creatures of God, 

and God has prodigally given his wonderful gifts to every person."

- Archbishop Oscar Romero, September 4, 1977

 

As we join Isabelle and Kaitlyn who are being baptized today and renew our own Baptismal Covenant, let us know that the essence of it all is that God loves us, and calls us to love one another – including strangers, enemies and people from all over the world. For all people and all creatures on earth come from Love, will return to love, and are sustained by the love that surrounds us on all sides! We belong to Love. For God is Love. We are God’s Beloved. God is well pleased with us. All of us are worth very much, because we are creatures of God! Amen.