Love that is spicy and a little a bit a crazy!
Luke 6:27-38
You may find this surprising, but on occasion I like to cook. You might also find it surprising that I don’t do a half bad job most of the time. But I will never be a great chef.Do you know why? Because I refuse to follow a recipe. Now don’t get me wrong. I get out the recipe. I even read it and follow some of the directions, but I always have to change something. I just can’t seem to muster up enough trust such that I can completely follow somebody else’s prescription for a delicious meal.
I’ll be going along fine, and then we get to the salt. The recipe reads 1/2 tsp. Naw, that can’t be enough for this big pot of soup. My soup will be zestier. It will just taste better if I put in a full teaspoon, and even though it doesn’t call for pepper at all, I’ll add a teaspoon of that spice as well for the good of the soup.
And so much of the time, as you might surmise, what I cook is just not quite right. And I’m always sorry that I just didn’t follow the recipe.
To bring this up to where we are biblically this week, I think most of us go through life with that same lack of trust when it comes to this portion of Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount. This is not a message that is easy to just swallow without adding a bit of something for zest.
There was once a woman in a fast-food restaurant who sat down to eat her food but first bowed her head in a prayer of grace.
When she was through, a teenage boy yelled at her from across the room and asked, Lady? What are you doing?
I’m giving thanks to God for the blessing and gift of this food, she responded.
And the boy said almost sarcastically, Don’t you know? You’d get that food whether you pray or not?
That may be true, said the woman. But everything tastes a whole lot better when I’m thankful.
Jesus gives us a recipe in this week’s Gospel that is guaranteed to make life taste better, but who can trust it? Love your enemies! Turn the other cheek! Pray for those who wish you ill!
No thanks! I’ll just pick and choose my ingredients thank you.
I like most of the rest of the Gospel…… but not this portion.
In our world where the individual reigns supreme, and where counsellors tell their counselees to avoid negative vibes and don’t let others intrude in your emotional space, what can a love your enemies Gospel possibly mean? Maybe you’re hoping that somehow, I can make this Gospel more palatable. Maybe a seminary graduate can pull something clever from his biblical bag of tricks and smooth this one over. Well, I cannot!
The more deeply you look into this Gospel, the worse it gets.
When Jesus says, If someone strikes you on the cheek…..turn and offer him the other…..he is saying something very radical……If you turn the other cheek, then most likely, the person will strike you with the back of their hand. In the first century a back-handed slap was a double insult.
So, Jesus isn’t just saying be nice and tolerant. He’s saying love the person who is the most insulting to you. Love even the most unlovable people.
When Jesus says, If someone takes your coat, offer him your shirt as well. He isn’t just saying, be nice and give away some of your clothes. In Jesus’ day, men wore only two items of clothing, the outer coat and the thinner garment on the inside of the coat.
Do you catch the import of this proverb? What Jesus dares to suggest is that we be willing to become naked in order to clothe the naked!
So, is this Gospel just outdated? Is this Gospel a recipe doomed to fail? Please don’t allow yourself to make the same mistake I make in the kitchen time and again. No! The Son of God wouldn’t give you a recipe for life that hasn’t been time tested. We are called to become Take it on the Chin Christians.
Jesus knew, two thousand years ago, what we can’t even imagine today: that our enemies can be our best friends. As someone once said, keep your friends close……and your enemies closer yet.
If you really stop to think about it, we can learn more from our enemies than we can from our friends. If we let them, our enemies can provide us with an untapped well-spring of truth about ourselves.
—-I’ve really come to appreciate a little book entitled, Jacob the Baker.
Jacob is just a baker in the little village where he lives, but people seek him out for his gentle wisdom in a complicated world. I’d like to share one of those stories with you.
One day a man with a glow in his eye, a man who had turned his vision into a mission, came to see Jacob. ‘Jacob, I have come to invite you to take up the cause with me!’
‘I am only a baker,’ said Jacob.
‘Come on, Jacob,’ said the man, waving his hand with contempt at the bakery.
Jacob had seen this kind of self-inflation before…. and was clearly not comfortable with it.
‘I see the light, Jacob,’ the man continued, hoping to invoke Jacob’s interest.
‘I will not go with you, but I am with you,’ said Jacob. We are all a reflection of the One Light. We are all on a journey between destinations that do not exist. We are each other. To think otherwise is a case of mistaken identity.
The man moved off slowly, with a look of disdain on his face.
As soon as he was out of earshot, a woman poked at Jacob with her chin and asked: ‘Why didn’t you tell that man he was crazy?’
‘Why?’ asked Jacob, ‘because understanding is living in a house where every room has a point a view.’
‘Huh?’ said the lady, unsure of what Jacob meant and raising her nose……’Well, he shouldn’t have treated you that way.
But Jacob was not confused about who he was, and he said,
‘The part of that man I did not like is also a reflection of me!’
Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you, COULDJesus be on to something here?
It’s so easy to label someone who disagrees with us as THE ENEMY!
In the 9th chapter of Mark, Jesus says, Whoever is not against us is for us. How easy it is for us to reverse that saying. Let me repeat, Jesus said, ‘Whoever is not against us is for us.’ HE DID NOT SAY, ‘WHOEVER IS NOT FOR US IS AGAINST US.’
What would our world be like, if when someone disagreed with us or criticized us, no matter how cruelly, what would our world be like if instead of labelling them ‘the enemy,’ we paused, took a deep breath and asked, ‘What is true about what they are saying about me.’ or ‘What have I done to evoke such feelings in another?’
The times that I have tried this, and it is difficult, I have felt the tremendous power of love, I have seen my own hate and the hate of others, disabled and disarmed.
And aren’t we glad that when we rebel against God, in those darker moments in our lives, that God doesn’t label us an enemy. Isn’t the true definition of Grace that God doesn’t ever treat us as adversaries?
Jesus never gave us a recipe that he didn’t follow to the letter himself. All of his recipes have one main ingredient, and they always call for more than a dash of this ingredient, The ingredient is ‘AGAPE!’
We don’t have a word in English that describes this kind of love; It’s a kind of love that we wish would just go away; it’s crazy love; it’s love that gives and serves and sacrifices without regard to self.
It’s not a love that is popular with contemporary Psychology!
Jesus’ recipe, dictated from the Sermon on the Mount, is one that will take a lot of trust. It’ll be tempting to add another quarter teaspoon of salt, or a little more pepper. But I’ll tell you what, if you promise to try to follow this recipe, then so will I.
Let’s give thanks even for our enemies, and I’m certain that life will begin to taste a whole lot better.
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