Saturday, July 2, 2022

Proper 9C The Violence of Love

 

The Violence of Love

“The Violence we preach is not

            the violence of the sword,

            the violence of hatred.

 It is the violence of love,

            of brotherhood,

 the violence that wills to beat weapons

            into sickles for work.” 

– Archbishop Oscar Romero, November 27, 1977

 These words from the martyred Bishop of El Salvador, Oscar Romero, “The Violence of Love,” are meant to shock us into waking up! How will love and brotherhood beat weapons into sickles for work? Isaiah, some 2600 years before the Archbishop imagined a world in which we will “beat swords into ploughshares, and spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war anymore.”[i] It’s a vision of a world that becomes God’s kingdom, or, God’s dream – “a friendly world of friendly folk beneath a friendly sky.”[ii] It’s a dream of Shalom, Peace – justice and peace for all people, where everyone respects the dignity of every human being – beings created in the image of God.

 

Jesus has set his face toward Jerusalem. Jesus shares this dream of God’s. He sends 70 of his followers to the towns he plans to visit to announce that we can all live in the world of God’s dream here, and now.[iii] As has always been the case, a lot of folks are just not friendly – living out of visions of fear and scarcity. Jesus instructs his advance teams to offer God’s Shalom wherever they go. If others accept the news, God’s Shalom will remain with them. If not, eat whatever they offer you, and when you leave remind them that nevertheless, the dream of God’s Shalom is at hand. It is near. Just reach out and you can touch it, feel it, see it.

 

Some verses have been left out. For those who reject the news, Jesus says, it will be better for Sodom than it will be for them. The Sodomites who would not open their homes in a spirit of hospitality and shalom for all, which had been the custom of our people all the way back to when the ancestors were nomads, wanderers, sojourners in foreign lands. You were once strangers in an inhospitable Egypt, unwelcome except to be worked to the bone. The Sodomites are described by a first century historian as, “overweeningly proud of their numbers and the extent of their wealth, insolent to men and to God, not remembering they had received from God, they hated foreigners…so God resolved to chastise them.”[iv] The Talmud describes them this way: “Since bread comes forth from our earth, and it has gold dust, why should we suffer wayfarers, who come to us only to deplete our wealth? Come, let us abolish the practice of traveling in our land.”[v] As the prophet Ezekiel succinctly summarizes their guilt: “This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” [vi]

 

We are to welcome wayfarers and sojourners in the land, of course, because it is not our land, it is God’s, and God’s dream is one of sharing with others as they have need. This is the very heart of the command to love God and love neighbor. Because we were once poor and needy and God offered us a helping hand. Madeliene L’Engle, in The Wind in the Door, writes, “This is what love is: Love is not a feeling, it is what you do. To which God would add, “for others.” Love is what you do for others.

 

Evidently the advance teams are hospitable to the people they meet, because they return joyfully proclaiming, "Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!" Jesus at first is pleased to hear the news of their success, but then must remind them that much like his own authority, their success points beyond them to God as the source of all they were able to do, all authority, and indeed life itself.[vii] The real source for their success is God working through them.

 

The lesson in Luke Chapter 10: welcome strangers, welcome sojourners in the land, as Abraham had entertained strangers, as our people has welcomed and met the needs of any and all who travel through our land – all that is, except the Sodomites, who paid the price for lacking hospitality with fire and brimstone. Hospitality is at the heart of the Dream of God!

 

This begs the question: when it comes to hospitality and love for strangers, who is the Host? It is God in Christ Jesus. We are sent out as his representatives. His ambassadors. The advance teams carrying out God’s dream of a friendly world of friendly folk beneath a friendly sky. Sure, the work is hard – Archbishop Romero was assassinated for proclaiming God’s love - and our work never seems to end. But when we forget our appointed work as those who welcome strangers, the results are tragic, as they were just this past week at our southern border: 53 wayfarers left to die in an abandoned and locked truck in San Antonio, Texas.

 

The Apostle Paul writes to the church in Galatia, “So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest-time, if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.[viii]

 

We must never forget, we are here by the grace of the God of mercy, forgiveness and steadfast love. God is the Host, now and always. We work on God’s behalf, not that of the kingdoms of this world. We are not guardians of God’s table, but servants at his table. We are not gatekeepers, but rather those who fling wide the gates to one and all. We are those people who have promised to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourself.

 

All of this is what Archbishop Oscar Romero means by “The Violence of Love” – A love that welcomes all others to share in the Dream of God. A love of justice and peace for all people. A love that offers hospitality to others – all others -to share all that we have and all that we are: God’s people, sojourners in God’s world who seek to sustain the vision of God’s Dream such that all that we say and all that we do proclaims that the promise of God’s Shalom is near, at hand, here in this place, now and forever and ever. Amen.



[i] Isaiah 2:4

[ii] Howard Thurman, quoted in Verna Dozier’s, The Dream of God (Cowley Publications, Cambridge,MA:1991) p.31.

[iii] Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

[iv] Josephus, Antiquities 1:194-95

[v] Babylonian Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin 109a

[vi] Ezekiel 16:49

[vii] Ring, Sharon, Luke (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY: 1995) p.154

[viii] Galatians 6:9-10


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