February 23 2025 Epiphany 7

Genesis 45.3-11; 15    Psalm 37.1-11; 37.40-41    1 Corinthians 15.35-50    Luke 6.27-38

I say to you who are listening….., or maybe, I say to you who are still listening.  Our readings today speak loudly of forgiveness, but it may well be a type of forgiveness we struggle to show to ourselves.  Jesus is continuing his ‘sermon on the plain’, he has just called the 12 to be his disciples, then gives the whole group the ‘beatitudes’, and now he is continuing to give us advice about how to live ‘kingdom’ lives.  Because that is what all this is about, which may be why we need to address it to those who are still listening.  Love your enemies, do good to those who hurt you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you, turn the other cheek.  None of that is ‘routine’ behaviour in our society or the society in which Jesus was living.  Our society, and his, lives by the concept of ‘get what you can, while you can’, give so that you will receive, love only those who will do you good.  Basically a ‘tit-for-tat’ society, and while we may deny and decry that behaviour, when we do things contrary to that way of living we are looked at as ‘strange’ or maybe we are even looked at suspiciously as if we have ‘ulterior motives’ for our counter-cultural way of living.

And let’s face it.  Loving your enemies is not easy, and one of the problems is how we interpret that word love.  Loving your enemy does not actually mean you have to like them; it just means we are asked to treat all people, including our enemies, with respect, kindness, and mercy, treat them as valued ‘children of God’, there is an old saying that the trick is, when we look at people we should look into their faces as if we are looking at the face of Jesus.  And then Jesus asks us to give without asking to receive, and that is also not something we do easily.  But what Jesus is saying, I think, is give without the ‘expectation’ of receiving.  And when we give without an expectation of reciprocity, we free ourselves to continue to live well.  Because if I expect to receive something back every time I give, then I will find myself stuck in a ‘holding pattern’ until that gift is reciprocated; so I will be restricted and stunted in how I continue to live because I am ‘waiting’ for that ‘something’.  But if, when I give, I allow myself to have no thoughts of reciprocity, then I can continue my life free from restrictions or anxiety.

God’s kingdom is unlimited, unrestricted and freely given, and that is how Jesus is inviting us to live.  When we look at Joseph in the first reading; yes his behaviour to his brothers, up to this point, has been a little hard to fathom.  Intentionally setting them up to look like they have stolen from him but then also secretly returning all the money they paid for the grain they bought.  So, when he finally reveals his identity to his brothers they are dumbfounded to say the least, because all of them, except Benjamin, had sold him as a slave and then made out to his father that he had died.  And it is easy for us to question ‘how can he possibly forgive’ the treachery they inflicted on him, but as far as Joseph is concerned ‘God used his brother’s bad behaviour and turned it into a good outcome’.  Because Joseph had ‘God’s ear’, he was able to foresee the seven years of drought and put into place strategies to ensure they would all, those in Egypt with Joseph, as well as everyone in the surrounding countryside have ‘back up’ to survive until the drought was over.

Jesus also gives us, what we refer to as the ‘golden rule’ – ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ – but this rule is problematic for most of us in that we understood it according to ‘human standards’, and they are not always the best standards.  But if we turn this rule around and understand it as ‘treat all people according to Kingdom ways just as you are treated by God according to Kingdom ways’ then we will get close to what Jesus is meaning here.

And forgiveness is also not something that comes easily to most of us, and sometimes the person we struggle most to forgive is ourselves.  When we say the Lord’s Prayer, we pray ‘forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us’.  And that can be understood in differing ways.  Forgive me in the same way I forgive others or, maybe a better understanding would be, may I give to others the type of forgiveness I have received from God.  And that makes it a much bigger scenario.  But the question is - does that mean we are expected to forgive everyone regardless of what they have done?  I think it is important to remember here that abuse, and violence, should never be tolerated or ignored, but neither should they be reciprocated.  The adage (which has its own problems) of ‘hate the sin not the sinner’, means that regardless of what is done to us, unless we are able to ‘forgive’ the person, then we are not allowing ourselves the freedom of moving past the incident.  If I hold on to the injury, I am imprisoning myself in an emotional state that will colour and affect how I live into the future.  But if we are able to ‘forgive’ the person (and you do not even have to tell the person personally, just allow yourself mentally and emotionally the privilege of forgiving them), then the hold that person has on you, because of their behaviour, is broken.  Violence should never be tolerated, and showing the world a different way of acting, will go, at least some way, to diminishing the effect that violence has on those it affects. 

Jesus also tells us ‘judge not lest you be judged’, and this statement is often thrown around in spirited conversations, especially when we express disquiet at some behaviour or activity.  But Jesus’ words are not, I think, telling us not to judge behaviour for its ‘rightness’ or ‘wrongness’, but simply warning us not to ‘assume’ we know God’s judgement of the person responsible for the action.  There is nothing wrong with stating that certain behaviour or actions are ‘not the way you think God is asking you (or others) to behave’, but we are cautioned against assuming we ‘know’ what the verdict is from God for the person doing it.  Every person has the opportunity, until they take their last breath, to repent of our actions, so it is not up to us to ‘decide’ which way God will lean when assessing the behaviour of others.

God’s power, God’s love, God’s mercy, is like the merchant that fills the measuring container to the brim, shakes it down so every nook and cranny is filled, then pours the overflowing grain into the apron of the buyer to carry home.  It is unmeasured, it is bountiful, it fills us completely and overflows us, and it will fill our communities, our society, our world, if we are able live a Kingdom filled life.