7th Sunday after Epiphany Year C

7th Sunday after Epiphany Year C February 24, 2019 I’m so happy to be back with y’all after a lightning-fast 8 day trip through the Holy Land last week. It was an incredibly rich and full experience that I am still processing and savoring. I had thought I might share with you about when we visited the supposed sight of where Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, but alas, the lectionary has pulled a fast one and given us, instead, Luke’s version of the Beatitudes which is known as the Sermon on the Plain. Our gospel reading for today picks up immediately where we left off last week. The crowds have gathered around Jesus on a level place; they have come from all over to hear him, and they have brought their sick and their demon possessed for him to heal. Luke tells us that Jesus “lifts up his eyes” or looks up at his disciples and tells them this list of blessings and woes that is Luke’s version of the Beatitudes. Our reading for today is a continuation of that as Jesus says, “But I say to you that listen” and then he proceeds to tell his disciples (and the crowds who are listing in to his teaching of his disciples) how his disciples should deal with their enemies. And it is almost preposterous in its difficulty: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.” We’ve been talking about the upcoming Sunday readings at the Wednesday healing service every week, and what struck the group this week is how Jesus’s instructions to his disciples on how to deal with those who persecute them is counter to how we human beings seem to be hard-wired. So how can we possibly accomplish it? Thankfully, the lectionary has also given us a snippet of the story of Joseph and his brothers from Genesis as our Old Testament reading for today. This is toward the end of Joseph’s story. You will recall that Joseph was most beloved by Jacob his father of all his brothers, and he had the gift of interpreting dreams which had been given to him by God. What Joseph did not have, at that point in the story, was wisdom or humility, and he proceeded to tell his already jealous brothers that he had a dream which showed him that he would be raised up higher than all of them and that they would eventually worship him. So the brothers did what most jealous siblings would do. The sold him into slavery in Egypt. While serving as a slave there, Joseph was falsely accused by his master’s wife and thrown into jail. And that could have been the end of it all right there. But while Joseph was in jail, it came to Pharaoh’s attention that Joseph could interpret dreams, and since Pharaoh had been experiencing a rash of troubling dreams, he called upon Joseph to interpret them. Joseph divined that Pharaoh’s dreams meant that Egypt was about to have 7 years of plenty followed by 7 years of famine, and he instructed Pharaoh to start collecting the food and resources from the years of plenty to see them through the years of famine. Our reading for today picks up two years into the 7 years of famine, when Jacob’s sons have come to Egypt to seek assistance because they are all starving in Canna. Joseph revels himself to his brothers in our passage for today, and rather than offering them some well- deserved retribution, Joseph humbly forgives them and tells them how their actions, though meant for evil, have been a part of God’s plan to bring about good for all of them. It’s an astonishing moment when we think about all that has happened to Joseph and how he had been so haughty in relationship with his brothers before. And there is only one explanation for how Joseph could have reacted the way that he did. That is that he had been transformed by God’s grace. In our gospel reading for today, Jesus offers a refrain that our New Revised Standard Version translates as “what credit is that to you?” "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” The Greek word that the NRSV translates as “credit” is charis which actually means grace. So what Jesus is actually saying is “what grace have you?” or “what grace is there in that?” This three-fold mention of charis or grace points us back to the nature of God revealed in the person of Jesus; it reminds us of God’s characteristic of grace that we, as followers of Jesus are called to model. It reminds us that it is only through the grace of God (and not through any power of our own) that we become transformed.i I shared with you before of a difficult time I had in the life of my last church. During that difficult season, the vestry had a service of reconciliation when we were invited to share one thing that we regretted during that season of conflict. We sat in a circle and went around, each person being vulnerable and expressing regret over things that each of us had done. When it got to be my turn, I shared a regret of something that I had done. And then came the turn of the woman next to me, who had been my biggest adversary in all the conflict. Her response to me of her regret was, “I regret that you did that, too.” And then she looked to the next person to go, her turn clearly being over. Rather than becoming vulnerable as the rest of us had and naming her own regret, she weaponized my regret against me. I felt like I had been punched in the stomach, and I opened my mouth to verbally eviscerate her, the words already forming there in my mouth and in my heart. But then I closed my mouth and sat in silence. For months after that, I wondered at her sheer audacity to use my regret as a weapon against me. But then later, I began to wonder on a deeper level, why I had not spoken those harsh words already bubbling forth from my heart into my mouth. I believe it is because I had been praying for that woman and her husband every day for months, not because I was holy or good but because I was desperate and didn’t know what else to do, how else to survive. And what I learned in that is that you cannot pray for an enemy daily, remembering them before God as a fellow child of God day after day after day without being transformed. I didn’t respond in anger (the way that really I wanted to) that day, because God was working to transform me through God’s grace, and God was, already, bringing about good from an evil situation. Your invitation this week is to pray daily for someone who has hurt you, someone you might consider your enemy. It won’t be easy. If you find yourself struggling with how to pray for them then you can do a couple of things. First, ask God to give them all that you would most desire in your life. Or second, you can just imagine placing that person in the hands of God and surrounding them with warm light. As we were talking about the readings this past Wednesday, Reverend Aimee shared with the group that she had listened to a podcast on conflict recently. She said the message of the podcast boiled down to two options that each of us have during times of conflict. We can be right, or we can be at peace. Which will you choose? i. The translation of the Greek and other inspiration of this paragraph are taken from http://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2019/2/19/grace-in-action-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-epiphany-week-7