7th Sunday after the Epiphany, Year C
Genesis 45:3-11, 15; Psalm 37:1-12, 41-42; 1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50; Luke 6:27-38
Today’s Gospel follows immediately after last week’s. Anyone remember what that was? That’s right, the Beatitudes. Here’s a little review.
Everybody loves the Beatitudes. Those who are poor, who are sorrowing, who are marginalized need to hear them. For us, they are nice to listen to. They are a favorite reading. They’re important. And they make us feel good.
In Luke, though, the “blesseds” are followed by the “woes,” which are pointed directly at a different audience. I tend to think they are directed at US. Simply making people feel good was rarely what Jesus was aiming at, and we need to remember that when we read his teachings. Jesus’s words often have different meanings for different groups of people. While he is giving words of comfort to those in need, at the same time he’s jolting the rest of us out of our comfort zones. He’s interested in making us change our behavior.
The Beatitudes in Luke are not just platitudes: simple, nice sayings. They’re not just words of encouragement, although they are certainly encouraging. When you add on the woes, they are aspirational. They are something to work toward. To us, to those of us with some privilege, they say, “These things aren’t always true yet, but they will be. We can do something about this. We should be working to get to a world where these things become true for everyone: where the poor inherit God’s kingdom; where the hungry always have enough to eat; and where those who are sorrowful can laugh with joy; where people who are condemned for standing up for Christ gain their reward.”
Today’s Gospel, following directly after the Beatitudes, is what lets us know that we have to actually do something about those beautiful, beautiful words. It’s a short passage that, I think, often gets short shrift because it follows the more beloved verses. At least one commentary (the Oxford Bible Commentary, if you can believe it) skims right over this passage without comment. But these verses take the goals of those glorious lines and give specific and concrete instructions for making them real, here and now. And in doing that, they give us useful instruction on how to live like Christ.
Here’s how Jesus says we get to that world where the Beatitudes are fulfilled:
That person who acts like your enemy? Love them.
That person who hates you? Do something nice for them.
The people who curse you or abuse you? Give them a blessing.
The person who hits you? Don’t hit them back.
Give to everyone who asks, even if they steal from you.
And the kicker: Treat everyone else the way you want to be treated. Note: not the way you think they deserve, but how you want to be treated.
That’s a tall order, but it can be done. And we have examples of how to do it.
We have Saint Damien of Molokai, who left Belgium to go to Hawaii and care for victims of Hansen’s disease — leprosy—continuing to work and care for them even after he had contracted the disease himself. Eventually, he died from it. He gave up himself to do what he felt Christ wanted him to do.
We have Saint Teresa of Kolkata, the nun who heard a call to serve the “poorest of the poor,” and founded the Missionaries of Charity at the age of 38. She spent the rest of her life serving the poor of every faith in the slums, and died in Kolkata. She gave herself up to the work.
Most of us will not be called to go as far as these two, but we are always called to take a stand against the evils that are in the world. Evils that may be natural, or that may be man-made.
The answer to “How do we get to the world of the Beatitudes?” can be summarized as: we must give up ourselves. We must give up our egos, our wants and desires. We must give them over to Christ. That…is a hard message, living in our world that deifies accomplishment, that celebrates rugged individualism. But Jesus says this again and again in the Gospels. “Leave everything and follow me.”
In today’s Gospel, we are told not to meet hate with hate, but instead, to meet hate with love. And that is one of the hardest things you will ever do in your life. But in giving up our egos, we no longer have any reason to hate. Dr. Martin Luther King once said, “I have decided to stick to love…Hate is too great a burden to bear.”
Some might be tempted to say that this scripture means that we should be passive in the face of evil. I really don’t think that’s the case. There are other passages that tell us in no uncertain terms that we are to resist evil. But what, we are to do is resist evil…with good. We are to show our resistance without hate, without rancor. You can stand up against someone who is doing evil without hating them. You can be angry without hating. You can respond to someone doing wrong to you or someone else without responding in kind. And that is what we are being told to do. All of our responses are to be grounded in love.
And I know that right now this might be extremely difficult. There are a lot of days when I am just not feeling it. When I want to respond in kind, to meet abuse with abuse, hate with hate. But being followers of Christ means turning away from the tit-for-tat actions that might cause us to hit back, or to call someone a name when they do the same to us. It means learning a new way to confront the evils in the world.
Moving toward the world of the Beatitudes means learning to live by the law of love, instead of the law of the jungle.
It may be the hardest thing we ever do, and we can only do it through the power of Christ.
Amen.
Becoming Dominican 