Sermon delivered by the Rev. Cristina Rathbone
Luke 6:27-38
“But I say to you that listen, 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.
“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.
“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven;give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”
Welcome
In many ways the reading allotted for today has no need of explanation. It is chock-a-block with straightforward, if challenging, instructions and life advice which, together, form the practical core of Jesus’ teaching, and at least a part of me worries that anything I say now will only dilute it.
Love your enemies.
Give without hope of return.
Do unto others as you would have them do to you.
Do not judge.
Forgive.
Five rules of thumb for a good life. Small enough to fit on a hand, powerful enough to transform the world. What else could there possibly be to say? Except —
…I don’t know about you, but for me it’s sometimes hard to feel the force of clear and direct statements like these, especially when they are so familiar and they come so fast and all together. Like string of pearls, they kind of dazzle me into deafness and then glide right past my heart into the air where they remain strangely abstract and out of reach.
Even the term ‘enemies’ feels too exalted to relate much to me. ‘Love your enemies’, Jesus tells us, and while I understand the challenge it’s kind of easy to skirt around in my own life because– well, because I’m not sure I actually have any enemies. I mean – do you?
Nations have enemies, I know. And people with outsized portions of power: kings and presidents and CEOs of multinational co-orporations do too. And so do TV characters, of course. Deranged enemies who plot ways to kill or destroy or take down their adversaries are a common trope. But I’m not sure I do. There are people I’ve disappointed, for sure, and people I’ve let down, and I’m certain there are people who do not particularly want to spend time with me – and who have been hurt by me. But I don’t think any of these people qualify as ‘enemies’ because ‘enemies’ sound – in a way – like something quite grand, and my life is neither big enough, nor extraordinary enough, to create such larger than life opponents. And my point is, if I don’t have ‘enemies’, well then what does it actually mean for my own life, practically speaking, when I hear Jesus say: ‘Love your enemies?’
When I have this kind of trouble with a text – the kind of trouble that prevents me from really engaging with the power that is so obviously there – I sometimes see if I can find a new approach by reading a different translation. This week I turned to Eugene Peterson’s version of the Bible called The Message. Peterson was a Presbyterian theologian and minister who did all he could to make the original meaning of the Gospel more accessible to contemporary Americans – and I’d like to read to you now his version of the first few verses of the passage we just heard from the 6th chapter of Luke.
To you who are ready for the truth, I say this: Love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with supple moves of prayer for that person. If someone slaps you in the face, stand there and take it. If someone grabs your shirt, giftwrap your best coat and make a present of it. If someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more payback. Live generously.
I find this very helpful. An enemy here is someone who:
Brings out the worst in me.
Gives me a hard time.
Slaps my face, or grabs at my shirt
And takes advantage of me.
No longer a James Bond style villain, what Jesus here calls an ‘enemy’ is not someone who wants to wipe me off the face of the earth, but simply someone who brings out the worst in me. And in this way an enemy becomes someone deeply recognizable — someone I know. Someone I shrink from, perhaps, or grit my teeth at, or try to avoid. Someone, in other words, that I think most of us encounter all the time in our lives. People we don’t like, basically – and with good reason often too. People who treat us unfairly, or who try to undermine us, or who run us down, or rip us off, or threaten us in some way. People – in other words – whose presence in the room makes our hearts sink – even just a little bit. These too are the people Jesus says we must love.
But how? I mean, what does he mean exactly by love? Well that’s all here too in wonderful, if exacting, specificity: we are to let the one who brings out the worst in us, bring out the best in us instead. When someone gives us a hard time, we are to respond not by getting riled up but with ‘supple movements of prayer’. And when someone takes advantage of us – well, we are to use the occasion to practice what Peterson calls ‘the servant life.’ “No more payback.” He writes. “Live generously.”
There is far less grandeur here perhaps than in the New Revised Standard Version we heard earlier, but – for me at least – there is far more to hold on to; far more to grasp and then wrestle with in truth. I can tell because I feel more disturbed by the words, more discomforted by them. ‘Love your enemies’ is one thing, but can I today allow the best in me to be brought out by someone who more usually evokes the worst? And can I remember to respond to even the pettiest of attacks with supple movements of real prayer and a grateful return to the servant life instead of with impatience and counter attack?
These questions have been with me all week. I’ve carried them as I prepared for meetings in the office and prepped worship for Lent and met with folks who will partner with us through Gideon’s Garden this year, and even as I shopped and cleaned and prayed. And then a got a phone call from someone in Boston I’ve known a long time whose work often overlapped with mine – though not usually by choice. He had called because we needed to send a narrative accounting of a grant we had applied for together. The deadline was close, and he hoped I would be able to do it by the end of the week. It was a big project, and I had lots of things I had to do already by the end of the week, and during the course of the conversation I could see both of us begin to stake out our familiar ground, hear each one of us begin – professionally but clearly — to growl…..And then – out of the blue, I heard these words:
Welcome. Welcome. Welcome.
They are words I used to hear all the time from my aunt – and from my mother too, when they were both alive. My aunt practiced Centering prayer for years and her beloved teacher, Mary Mrozowski, had taught her this prayer decades before. The Welcoming Prayer, she called it. And she used it precisely as a supple form of prayer whenever she felt challenged, or poked, or taken advantage of.
Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. I can see her saying it now, silently, internally, closing her eyes for a moment, breathing deeply. She prayed it all the time – every day at least once I’m sure, and though she and my mother both tried over and over to teach me to use it too, I was reluctant for some reason and stayed away from it – until now, when, after days of sitting with this passage from Luke and right in the middle of a testy conversation with someone who always seemed to bring out the worst in me, I finally found the words on my lips – and in my heart:
Welcome. Welcome. Welcome.
The first thing I did when I got home was turn on my computer and type in: ‘Mary Mrozowski The Welcome Prayer’ – and instantly there in front of me was a picture of the woman I’d seen so many times in the photo both my mother and my aunt kept by the sides of their beds: – Mary Mrozowski – beaming as she seemed always to beam as she explained the rudiments of Centering Prayer in general, and The Welcome Prayer she herself was gifted with, which has spread, by now, across the globe. And as I sat there, and read about her, and transcribed the words of the prayer, I wept.
Later that morning, my eyes snagged on the corner of a book, buried under a neat pile of pages that have sat on the lower shelf of my bedside table since I moved here in late July. Not knowing why, and slightly surprised by my movement, I leant down, and plucked it out from the pile. The book was called: A Shorter Book of Christian Prayer. Not recognizing it, I opened the front cover and found that it was inscribed to my mother, from Mary Mrozowski, “All my love and devotion, Mary xox” it read. “July 30th 1989”.
Scarcely able to breathe, I flipped the page over – and just inside, on a yellow post it note, in my mother’s own writing, was scrawled just one word:
‘Welcome.’
Of course, I couldn’t do much after that. I sat down in my prayer corner with the book and Mary Mrozowski’s and my mother’s words, and I cried. After a time, I reached into a little box that sits on the top of my prayer table, pulled out my mother’s engagement ring, and put it on. And then – for the first time ever – I prayed the whole Welcome Prayer through
Welcome, welcome, welcome.
I welcome everything that comes to me today
because I know it’s for my healing.
I welcome all thoughts, feeling, emotions, persons, situations and conditions.
I let go of my desire for power and control.
I let go of my desire for affection, esteem, approval and pleasure.
I let go of my desire for survival and security.
I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person or myself.
I open to the love and presence of God and to
God’s action within. Amen
I realized then that this might be a way to more fully take today’s Gospel instruction into my body and my life, and that with it I might one day be able to respond to antagonism with a supple form of prayer, and to threat or push back with a genuinely grateful return to the servant life…
It’s not very grand – that’s for sure. In fact it’s pretty humdrum and kind of run of the mill – but like Peterson’s translation of our gospel passage today, I think this is part of what makes it so useful. It takes huge bright concepts like loving your enemy and not judging, and giving without hope of return and forgiving, and makes the truth of them real – step by step, moment by moment…
May it be so.
May it be so…
—— Amen